Ruthie turns two!

I'm a little late but Tuesday was Ruthie's 2nd Birthday!! We gave her a special bone treat, and I think she ate it in less than 2 minutes...

Happy Birthday Mom!!!

Your card's in the mail... :-)

Countertops!!

Mmmm...aren't they beautiful? This weekend I think we're planning on painting the ceiling and I know Keith has plans to start this afternoon on plumbing the sink - and maybe even my dishwasher!

Are you sure you don't want to visit?

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=76560

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, in case I don't get a chance to tell you! We are going to have a big dinner at Keith's sister's house. Keith's mom & step-dad are coming to IL as well, so it will be nice to spend time with them as well. We won't be going to MN since we were just up there for my grandmother's funeral. Though it was for a sad reason, we got to visit with a lot of family and visit my friends, Stacy & Loni! :-)

We found out we are getting countertops installed December 6th. We've got a little bit of work before then, mostly just getting the plumbing ready and finish painting. Keith installed my range on Saturday. I made my first baked good - a super delicious apple spice cake with caramel swirl buttercream frosting. It was YUMMY. But apparently, not good enough to win our office's silly baking contest - by the way, hamballs & scalloped potatoes won. (Mom, your scalloped potatoes are better!!!). I think the whole contest was not fair due to the whole weight watcher crew around here!!! Anyway, I baked. It took me forever to find out where I put stuff (when I packed to move, I just shoved crap in boxes and hauled it upstairs...), but I did it. :-)

Happy Halloween and other stuff!

Since I've got the camera hooked up, I thought I would share these photos of Halloween and dogsitting.

Big changes!

So....I've been lazy about putting new pictures up for you to see. Though maybe it's because I want to keep you in suspense. :-)

Anyway, we've got up 2 coats of primer and a coat of paint, installed the cabinets and Keith has got my light installed!! We've got our countertop ordered (I can't believe we are getting the granite - don't worry - it was on sale, so it was actually cheaper than solid surface stuff!) . Here are some pictures of us painting & Keith impersonating the garbage disposal.

And...ta da! Here is your first look at our cabinets! I'm so excited. I can't wait to use them! Now that I look at the photo, I don't have our light fixture in there! I'll guess you'll just have to wait to see that!

Christmas comes twice a year?

Well, here is your last chance to see the plain drywall! Yuppers. We've got it finished and we'll be putting on primer & paint this weekend!

By this time next week, we will probably have our cabinets installed. We received them Wednesday!! One box wouldn't quite fit in the door, so we had to take the cabinet out of the box and squeeze it around the doorway. It was like opening that first present on Monday morning before dad was done with chores on Christmas morning! :-)

Here's a sneak peak at our cabinets & hardware... (sorry - not the greatest pictures as I took them in the dark).

It's like Christmas!

This weekend we "moved" - we're still technically not moved out of the little yellow house (lots of stuff still there..) but we are sleeping and 'eating' in "The Big House." Notice I said eating - and not necessarily preparing meals! We have set up a temporary "snack room" as the nieces call it. And Monday we received our appliances so we at least have a fridge and microwave now! I think I am going to LOVE my microwave! I made a breakfast sandwich in it this morning - and much better texture than the one I made in our other microwave. Lots of magical buttons on it, as well as the "Turbo Fan." Man, you can almost dry your hair with that sucker...

And our fridge should be wonderful, as well. I have told myself not to think about the stove, because that will just make me want to bake! I can't wait until I pop out that first pie!! (Haven't decided what kind to make first, though - apple, cherry, pumpkin?) Oh and the dishwasher. What Dishwasher? You mean that thing in the box that I'm keeping hidden from view? :-P The cool thing about our stove, though, is that it was dented in the rear bottom right corner. We got yet another 10% off for keeping it! Yeay! (And no one will ever know because it will be hidden by cabinets.)

I'm back!

Hello, folks!

No, I haven't been ignoring you - just busy with the house and work. I got to get out of the office this week. Flew to Dallas by way of San Antonio on Sunday. Visited with a major customer of mine on Monday. Monday night I flew to NW Arkansas (and no, I didn't see any hillbillies!) so Tuesday I could meet with a couple more "chicken pluckers" that use our products. Wednesday, took a 6:00 a.m. flight (YUCK!) to Atlanta, met with a couple more customers and then flew out of Nashville, TN Thursday morning...

So, yeah. I'm a little tired, but had a great time and learned a lot about the poultry industry, since that's what most of my customers in that area do.

Keith was left at home, but he got a lot done on the house. Look what I came home to - DRYWALL! He's got a little bit to get finished, but we've started mudding a little bit. These pictures are current as of last night.

Also, we had been working on trying to get the living room painted so we can get the piano moved in. However, we came to a problem. Ceiling took awhile, but it's done (after three coats of paint and one of primer). Then, when priming the wall, part of it started to bubble - basically where the previous owners had screwed the t.v to the wall (and left a big gaping hole for me to patch). After looking at it, I tried to find where the "bubble" ended, but ended up peeling the latex paint off like a fruit-rollup off it's waxy wrap thing. Not good! I did some research, and I guess when the previous owners took the wall paper off the wall, they exposed the plaster covered with calcamine paint.

Back in the day, you had to let the plaster 'cure' for 30 days or so before you could paint it. Using this calcamine paint (made from calcium carbonate/limestone), they could paint it right away. However, not much sticks to it and reacts to water. The only way to REALLY get rid of it is to scrape off all the paint and scrub the walls with TSP. We're going to try to just do it in that one location and then maybe go over it with an oil based primer (?). Anyway, we've decided that we're just going to shift our focus on the kitchen and maybe move the piano to a temporary spot in another room until we get that problem solved.

By the way - that hospital green color is the primer, the actual paint color will be much more pleasant. :-)

But we're hoping to move this weekend. We're getting our appliances on Monday! Yeay!! Not that I'll really be able to use the stove or the dishwasher...but I have them.

House Update

Here are some pictures we took last night. Keith framed the door in last week and even did it the right way by putting in the header! (By the way, Mom & Dad - if you see Lynn Tienter, please tell him "Thank you" for me! :-) He taught Keith how to do most of this stuff). But we just need to level out the floor where the cabinets go (to make up for the wood flooring, the five layers of linoleum and the Pergo on the rest of the floor...) and electrical stuff and we should be set to drywall!

And in the living room, I've been working on the walls. They are plaster and someone made LOTS of drippies ALL over the stinkin' walls and where they filled in the cracks, they left big marks. So I'm sanding them out and filling in the big holes. I am sooooo sick of sanding! That is all I have been doing to the past week.

Sarah's Birthday

It was our niece's birthday a week or so ago. We got to go bowling with all of Sarah's friends Saturday morning - Katie was so cute to watch dance after she'd roll the ball.

And then we had a fun supper on Sunday night, complete with "Chicken ala Sewer" and S'mores. Yumm!

Mark Twain Riverboat

Melvin & Francis (Keith's dad & step-mom) came up from southern IL to visit us last week. Friday night we went on a dinner cruise in Hannibal, MO and had a very fun time and yummy food!

Amberley, Reed & the kids had lots of fun, too - and JT looked adorable in his tie. The women on the boat couldn't get enough of him!

At its worst, we hope...

Here's what we think is the kitchen at what we think is its worst point. There's a little more destruction yet to do, but not a whole lot. We've got the old cabinets out - we'll see if we can salvage them for the garage or somewhere. Karen tore down almost all of the drywall that's missing from the lathe!

Keith of course, being the man, gets to use the saw.

Last night we even discovered square nails and some funky wall paper!

We've got our house!

Hey there. After over a month of dealing with the seller's mortgage company, we finally closed on our house Friday, August 17th. It's just a couple blocks from where we live now, but at least twice as big. Who knows what we'll do with all of that space, but eventually we'll think of something. For the time being, we're going to block off the upstairs and not heat it this winter (except for our bedroom).

We've got some work ahead of us (as you can see from the photos...), but the big things are taken care of - new roof in '01, new super-efficient furnace in '01, new windows in the past couple years. Anyway, I hope this link will work - there are some pictures we took this weekend before we started doing any work. I took more, but I guess there's a storage limit on free accounts, so I'm going to save some room for more!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11787633@N02/

Our first project is obviously the kitchen. We're fixing that weird doorway situation and putting in new white cabinets, painting the walls Red Dahlia and I think dark brown countertops. We've already done some demolition, and hopefully we can get a new door in there soon (that back room is unheated).

Hello there!

Hello! Since I sometimes feel overwhelmed by all of the people so far away that I have been neglecting to e-mail, I thought I would start this nifty little thing. I can share our photos, my scrapbook pages and let you all know what boring things Keith, Ruthie, Randy and I have been up to. :-)

I know some of you are not very Internet savvy (yes, mom & dad, I'm talking to you...) so I'll try to make things as simple as possible. But be prepared to see some things change as I fiddle around with it - I've gotta keep you on your toes, ya know! :-)