{Not} Living Vicariously

Am I allergic to CA?

We have spent the last week in CA, having a belated Christmas with my side of the family. And, once again, after being there for a couple of days . . . I start feeling all snuffly and sneezy, then the "cough" arrives. I don't run a fever and I don't ache so I know I'm not catching a cold, but it sure isn't fun and I don't get to enjoy as much. So I wonder, am I allergic to California?

On the flip side, this past week was lots of fun! We spent some time at Disneyland with my parents and aunt and uncle. Six adults, no kids, and short lines with fantastic weather. There are worse things to do, definitely! In addition to that, we did some geocaching and lots of cooking (before I started to feel bad!) and stocked my parents freezer with homecooked meals. That was their type of present. Dad gets to eat homecooked food and Mom doesn't have to cook it.

I love to visit "home" and then love to come "home" because I do miss the four legged fur babies. Now if I can just kick this cough . . .

Woe on a Wednesday

We had our new back door installed on December 1st. Guess what? It was only primed and not painted . . . as were the frames both inside and out. And now look at our exterior frame.

 
Yes, that would be the primer peeling away. No one mentioned it would need to be painted SOONER rather than LATER! And I have to say, the weather has not been cooperative. We have had more snow earlier in the season that I can recall since I moved here in 2002. Since both the primer and the paint state to use only when the temperature is between 50 and 90 degrees F. and it isn't supposed to be in the 50s again until January 18th according to AccuWeather, I have a bad feeling I'm going to lose a bunch more primer before I can sand, prime, and paint that back door and frame. I just hope damage doesn't set in to the wood in the meantime. Sigh. Woe is us . . . and a lesson is learned.

My poor crocs

I bought a pair of brown mary jane style crocs some years ago and have loved them ever since. I've lost them and found them and want to wear them almost every day. However, that is not appropriate. I have also made a major mistake in this heat.

Leaving wet and covered in grass crocs on the back porch so you don't track stuff into the house for a few hours is fine. Leaving them there for several days when the temperature is in the high 90s and the heat index averages around 108 is not fine.

They have shrunk and my feet no longer fit inside of them. I'm so sad. I hope to invest in a new pair soon and I will treat them with the respect they deserve . . .
 
 

Creative Storage 2

Our kitchen is bigger here than the old house. Yet somehow I still seem to have very little storage room. Maybe that is because I'm trying to actually unpack and use some of our wedding gifts. Anyway, I came up with some creative storage for our everyday fiestaware that adds some color to our decor and gives me more cabinet space for things that are not so pretty.

I'm pretty happy with it!
 

Creative Storage 1

Even though this house is bigger than our tinker toy house we just left . . . it is still missing some major storage opportunities. One of them being a coat closet! Luckily, Randy had made us a coat rack for Christmas, while we were still in the old house. We had not had an opportunity to accept receipt of said coat rack due to travel schedules, etc. But while we were up in KY over the Fourth of July we finally got our present and it is very useful here in the new house. Look at the craftmanship on this piece:

Come winter time, expect to see every hook in full use. I own a lot of coats . . .
 

I need cheese . . .

Yup, I'm whining . . . went by the new house after work so I could bust out that last coat of paint on the guest bedroom. However, that room faces north (I think) and only has one light bulb fixture so it was too dark to paint. We have lamps that might work, however it would be best to paint this room in the morning so I think I will have to wait until Saturday on that one. And it was really too late to start prepping any of the other rooms for painting as well so instead we did a little bit of clean-up and then came home to dinner. This is definitely going to slow our roll through the painting chores. Oh well, hopefully I can get lots done this coming weekend and Aaron can play around in the garden in the meantime.

On a happy note, I did see a hummingbird at our feeder and we got the purple martin house up so maybe we'll have lots of visitors soon.

Boy I'm tired . . .

What a weekend! Actually, what a week! Ever since we got back from our little jaunt up north, we've been focused on working on the house. We did lots of little things after work last week and then had big plans for this weekend. Did everything get accomplished? Definitely not! Did we get a lot done though? Actually we did. Thanks to Aaron's brother coming in to town on Saturday and staying through today . . . we even got more done than we would have otherwise. Pretty much the entire house has been primered, except for the two bathrooms which are waiting on their new vanities before we prep them, and I even got two coats up on one room and one coat up in another. I will get the second coat up in it after work tomorrow if all goes well and then the two smaller bedrooms will be close to being done. The trim will still need to be dealt with as well as the doors. It is amazing how disgustingly dirty everything is now that we're actually dealing with it up close and personal.

The reason why we didn't get as much done as I wanted? I have two complaints there. One is that the thorough cleaning that was to be done before we started was not the cleaning I expected. I had wanted a deep down wash the walls and dust the crevices sort of cleaning. I got a standard maid service type cleaning. Oh well, at least I only have to pay for what I got, not what I had wanted. Mix-up in communication. Second complaint would be that I meant to purchase the paint with primer built in. Somehow the paint guy didn't hear me request that and sold me regular paint. And I didn't realize how different the two paint cans would look (or cost). So when I went back to buy more paint this morning after realizing one coat of paint on top of two coats of primer wasn't going to cut it . . . I found out my mistake. Sigh. The paint guy was very apologetic that he sold me the wrong stuff on Saturday. Too bad he wasn't willing to come out and help paint. Anyway, I now know what to look for and the next time I decide to try and paint a whole house I will verify the paint before purchasing.

Anyway, I think I will stay very busy for the next several weeks. I hope to have some great after pictures though! Be good . . .

Color Schemes

So I've been dreaming of colors . . . working on color schemes for the new house. I have to say, I thought I'd finally figured it out: colors I like, colors Aaron will live with, colors that meet the towels and linens we reigistered for when we got married, all except for two rooms that have a crazy deep red carpet that we knew we'd have to work around at the beginning. Then, we went over there yesterday to take some pictures and some measurements. I had made the terrible mistake of forgetting about the floors and counters in both the kitchen and baths. Oops! Back to the drawing board. However, we do think we have a transitional plan in place and while it won't be quite as I imagined at the beginning, I think we'll like what we end up with. Let me end this by sharing some of the crazy existing color schemes in this house (the random white primer spots are covering up issues - it was a foreclosure after all).

Kitchen

Eat in dining area
 
 

Living room

Wow! I'll share some more gems in a day or two . . . 

when did my Gap store stop carrying khakis?

My work's dress code is "business casual" which means I can wear corduroys in the winter and khakis in the summer. I'm quite pleased with this as I wouldn't know what to do with a suit. I do get to wear skirts and dresses also, as well as dressier pants, but I love being able to fall back on corduroys and khakis. My favorite pair of khakis were showing their age when they managed to get a salsa stain on them that I couldn't get out. No problem, I'll just go buy a new pair. I always buy them at the Gap, I'll go to the Gap. Imagine my surprise when I got there to find no pairs of khakis. They had khaki colored capris . . . which are fine, but I own a pair already. They had khaki colored loose cotten weave pants . . . which are also fine but don't quite fit in the "business casual" mode I need for work. They had khaki colored shorts . . . well you can see how that won't work! So I walked out of there khaki-less. I need to shop around and find a pair elsewhere . . . any ideas? A larger Gap? Or another store completely?

"spring back; fall forward"

Yup, I know it is supposed to be Fall Back; Spring Forward . . . and I love being in daylight savings time (even though I hate to lose that hour of sleep) . . . so I am thrilled it came early this year. However, oops! As I was setting my alarm clock last night, I accidentally "sprung back" instead of forward. Luckily F.P. caught it and reminded me that it was actually 10:30, not 8:30. Otherwise, I would have been just a bit late to work this morning . . .