phases 1 and 2 are complete...

We are working hard on our kitchen and I am loving how it is turning out so far.  Phase 1 was installing the backsplash.  Phases 2, 3, 4 and 5 involves painting the 4 different colors of paint we bought.   I'm just making these phases up to sound super organized....but it's really a disaster zone here.  However, here's a section that IS completed...and clean. lol!  In real life, the yellow paint isn't that yellow...more of a dirty mustard color called Cork from Behr.

So much better than the super bright white wall above the cabinets and lemon yellow paint where the backsplash is....oh, and the new stove (to replace the 16 year old one) is pretty slick too!

Eeeek, I am so excited and I cannot wait until the transformation is complete!!

"Transform....transform...."  A Bug's Life quote that is now stuck in my head.  Michael watches a lot of Disney and Dreamworks movies that we can almost quote by heart.

'round here

Spring has sprung and the weather has been gorgeous! Everything is growing and coming back to life.  Time to have the windows wide open, do some yard work, kick my mulch addiction into gear and get my flowers from the local greenhouse.  While mowing the other day, I counted 7 bird nests.  Easy to guess what kind of birdies these eggs belong to:

I couldn't wait to get started planting and I purchased quite a few herbs (fresh herbs are so expensive at the store) a couple of weeks ago.  I only had to bring them inside a couple of times because of frost and freeze warnings.  We've already used the herbs in quite a few meals.  There's something kinda cool about being able to open up the back door to pick fresh ingredients for dinner.

(cilantro, rosemary, sage, oregano, basil, a tomato plant, and green onions are around the corner)


Still working on cleaning and organizing my office space, but it's hard to make any progress with my mess maker around.  :) 

(Yes, that's the keyboard he ripped out of the computer, that almost fell off the desk--he has a thing for keyboards, carries them around the house.)

I've almost made enough money selling my precious goods on eBay to cover my CS4/CS5 Photoshop purchase-YEA!!!  So all of the pics I've been posting since October have been SOOC (thank goodness for the "vivid" feature on my Nikon).  I cannot wait until the software arrives!

catching up

This post used to be titled, "okay, enough snow already"...but I waited so long to add the pictures that the snow is now completely melted and long gone!  I procrastinated so long that the season has changed!
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We got some pretty serious snowfall here over the weekend (in February).  We shoveled and shoveled like crazy.  Sore arms, shoulders, backs.  G's parents told us we could borrow their snowblower, but the snow was initially predicted to be around 4-6", maybe even 8", maybe mixed with rain, maybe this, maybe that, blah, blah, blah.  Nah, we didn't need their snowblower, we could handle 6" of snow.  Well, it kept snowing and snowing and it we got about 16" or so.

As usual, Michael enjoyed playing in the snow.  Scooting, hopping, lying in the snow, making snoring sounds, scooping up snow and letting it fall, and having so much fun.

The snow was so deep that when he was scooting through the yard on his hands and knees, his arms would sink so far down into the snow that his face was almost buried.

I was surprised his mittens stayed on throughout it all - those are usually the first to go.  This time it was one of his boots that decided to be pesky and kept coming off.

The city plows came down our street, but plowed only enough for one lane.  Today, the bus was slip-sliding around on the snow plow drifts in the road.  (BTW, Michael is 51" tall...so that kind of gives you an idea how tall the snow is in this picture.)

There's more snow coming Tuesday and Wednesday that is supposed to bring another 6-9".






































Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal except that I am supposed to leave for Seattle on Wednesday afternoon (gotta get outta this snow!).  Fingers are crossed that I still get to have my little weekend getaway (updated to say that I did make it out of Columbus for my trip, but had to spend the night in Chicago on the way home because the Columbus airport got snowed in-stupid snow).

I'm a winner...kinda sort of...but not really

I submitted a photograph for a little contest that Canon had back in January.  I received an email a few weeks ago that my photo was one of the 9 first place winners (1 grand prize and 9 first places)!  How cool is THAT?!?!

I'd guesstimate that it was a prize package worth about $600 that included a Canon Inkjet Office All-In-One wireless printer, as well as a Canon PowerShot A495 point and shoot camera, a beautiful leather carry-on/laptop bag (it has that wonderful new leather smell, mmmm) and a few other goodies.

The two large prize boxes arrived a couple of days ago and I was beyond excited about all the loot.

Before you leave a congratulatory comment or pat me on the back for having such great photography skills, I should mention that the contest wasn't really based on skills.  It was based on what was depicted in the photo.  You see, it was a contest for having the most unorganized home office.  Talk about being humiliated and embarrassed.  At least it was the first time I could tell my husband that being unorganized paid off for once, right?

Oh yeah - the other goodies that were included?  A new Franklin Planner portfolio and 2010 refill packages, along with 4 organizing books.  I am full of hope (or full of something) that I will have a wonderful "after" picture to show you.  But for now, here is the prize-winning "before" picture.  Please don't judge.

In the meantime, I'll be selling all my crap precious goods on eBay.

where have I been?

Unfortunately, I haven't been anywhere. Our computer crashed, but luckily Gary was able to load the recovery software to get us mostly up and running again, except for a few applications (like my Palm software...error, error=grrrr). A week later, after we were getting back into the technology groove - you guessed it: the darn computer crashed AGAIN. Gary ran some diagnostics on it (yeah, he's pretty smart...and yeah, I guess we're a little nerdy) and it came back with an error code of FATAL crash imminent. That was Saturday morning.

I have a far-fetched wishlist in my head (and heart) that includes a dreamy Mac computer and it's been on my list for a few years, but they are so expensive. I mean, it financially didn't make since to buy a Mac because you could purchase 2, almost 3, new PCs for the price of 1 Mac.

BUT, after 3 PC crashes in 3 years, 2 of them within 1 week, the Mac was starting to seem like a better option. We did some research online (Apple had just had a one day sale on the iMac and a Macbook Pro on Friday- $100 off of each, not really that big of a sale, but it was big for Apple...let me remind you that it was now the day AFTER the sale) and we found the best deal at Best Buy (mostly for their financing)...especially considering the nearest Apple store is about an hour away.

We head to Best Buy to check 'em out in person. OMG! There they were on the display table... showing off their sleek sexiness...they might've well been topless for Pete's sake. And let me tell you, the new 27" iMac is....HUGE!!! We talk to the Apple Guy, who gives us a 2-3 minute demo...and wow oh wow. We were pretty sure we were going to make a purchase - even G admitted he had been thinking of switching to a Mac, which surprised me! But watching the Apple Guy edit photos, create a picture book, create a family newsletter, create a DVD with your pictures set to the beat of the music from your iTunes library...all in 3 minutes....well all I could say the whole time (after I wiped the drool from my chin) was "Yes. OH. Wow. Yes." Almost a When Harry Met Sally performance, let me tell you.

The sales guy was great, no pressure, go think about it, down-to-earth realist, etc. etc. So I ask him what he could do for us if we bought not one but TWO Macs. He left to work out the numbers and we came home with these:

A wonderfully, glorious 21-1/2" iMac and a 13" MacBook Pro. I swear I heard the angels singing and a golden light appear when we opened the boxes.

Just one more picture for you that makes me chuckle, the juxtaposition of the two computers. We could SO turn this into our own commercial.

The only downside of the whole transition is that Adobe would not let me switch my CS3 software from a PC version to Mac version because it was 2 years old. They did offer a discount to upgrade my software to CS4 in a Mac version for a mere $500 (which is actually a very good discount), but still....it bummed me out, and we did not (could not) purchase it...at this time. So no 'real' photo editing going on for awhile. WYSIWYG SOOC....and all that jazz.

It'll be awhile before I come down off of this cloud. {sigh}

overwhelmed with projects

Lately I've been feeling overwhelmed with the amount of projects going on here. Most, if not all, of the projects were self-created because of this need I have to be "working" while I am not working. But I'm not good with having this disheveled look all around me. I'm kind of anal about being organized and things having a proper home, although you wouldn't be able tell this by taking a peek into our house right now. This chaos makes me want to purge...The. Entire. House. To make it feel light and airy and clean and relaxing. Which in turn makes ME feel lighter and less stressed (I'm already "airy"- hahaha!!). Having less stuff and being organized allows me to accomplish so much more.


But purging itself is a project that I'll have to add to the bottom of our list of things that we are working on: the 2nd bathroom remodel (which is like 3 projects in one), landscaping (another 2 or 3 parter), jobhunting, Michael's summer therapies, and then the normal day-to-day stuff like housecleaning (bleck!). Shoot, I find myself busier now than when I was working...I think it's because I want to have all of these projects done before going back to work.


So in order to make a dent in these projects, I better get crack-a-lackin' and get back to it!!


And since a post isn't a post without a picture:



That's Michael "petting" Cally. She's such a great cat...she seems to understand Michael and tolerates a lot. He used to chase her around the house to try to sit on her.

destruction #1 - complete!

Holy cow, it's been almost a month since I last posted (did you miss me??)...but we've been crazy busy around here. Today is no exception!

I wanted to get some before and after pictures on here of our master bathroom remodel.

Here's what it looked like before:
It wasn't bad, but it's had the same look for almost 14 years now so we were ready to change it up.


And, ta-da, here's the after:
It feels so good to have it all done and I think it turned out pretty good. As you can see, our bathroom isn't some big, spa retreat or anything like that...just your normal master bath: toilet, shower, double sinks. But it feels kinda spa-like and relaxing to me now though and that's all that matters. :)



This is our laundry list of things completed:

• new shower door
• new shower faucet/head (shower jewelry, if you will)
• regrouted shower
• installed ceramic tile
• made and installed frame around mirror
• installed new lighting
• painted
• caulked

I still want to decorate a little more, hang a picture or two, maybe get a cool vase for between the sinks, but for the most part it's done. We definitely earned our vacation to Florida after that. Whew, it was a lot of work!


And because we're obviously insane, we've started the destruction on our downstairs bathroom.

symphony of destruction

We're redoing our bathroom. Completely spur of the moment kind of thing though - totally unplanned. It all started innocent enough with a leaky shower faucet/handle.

We didn't want to do it ourselves because you have to change the faucet/handle out by cutting a hole in the wall behind the shower. The only problem is that the wall behind the shower handle is split into two sections: our bathroom linen closet and our master bedroom closet....which means two strategic holes, some saudering, pipe cutting, patching the holes, etc.. Long story short, we got a couple of estimates and the leaky shower was fixed yesterday. Yea! Good thing we had it fixed when we did, because it turns out the valve assembly was a little corroded. That means it was starting to leak between the walls and we would've had a much larger repair on our hands down the road.

I bet you're wondering how our simple faucet repair (I can say "simple" when someone else did it for us) turned into a complete redo. Well, while we were walking around Lowe's and Home Depot shopping for new shower fixtures, we found a really good deal on bathroom lighting for all 3 bathrooms. Then on a subsequent trip, we see a huge deal on tile flooring. Heck, we might as well throw in a new shower door too. And what about the grout? We should regrout - I can do that myself. It'll be fabulous! That's a whole other story, the regrouting thing. I don't have a job and I have time during the day...and it saved us a lot of money to do it ourselves...but never again!

While the shower repair was going on yesterday, we noticed that our kitchen sink sprayer was slowly leaking into the cabinet below. So now the state of disaster in the bathroom expanded into the kitchen. Luckily, the kitchen leak was easily fixed by Gary.

You'd think that I would've had the dishes done before we had to shut the main water off for the house, but I was tired and I had grout issues and the leaking stuff took priority.

Hey, I'm just keepin' it real...it's how I roll.