His Summer Do

Happy Tuesday! I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend. Ours was busy but good. Michael and I both cursed him yesterday when his alarm went off at 6:00 am.

One of the most exciting things that happened this weekend, is Cooper's new haircut. As I am sure you have noticed from other photos that I have posted, Cooper is a German Shepherd. This means that he has VERY thick fur. This also means that he sheds A TON during the summer and always seems to be hot. So after much campaigning on my part, Cooper got a summertime hairdo.

He took it like a trooper. Yes, we are calling him Super Trooper Cooper.  Of course, we also have the requisite lion style tail. He loves it. 

Hope everyone else's summer kick off was fabulous. 

Teaser Alert!!

Hello, All!!

Here is a teaser of a progress report for what I am working on done this week, lest y'all think I am being lazy. Full confession, I do spend about half of my day being lazy, but the other half I am productive (I would insert a smiley emoticon here, but I am feeling a bit more professional than that today. After all, I used the word 'lest'. So, just imagine one there… and here).

Teaser pic #1

On a different note, I do not understand why almond colored light switches were all the rage back in the day. Or maybe this is just my dad's favorite color, because every house I have lived in has them. For those of you who do not know, I have only lived in houses my dad built. This includes the one I just bought from a complete stranger. My dad helped build it thirty years ago. So, I know who to blame for all of the things that are wrong with it, starting with the almond light switches (smiley emoticon here).

Teaser Pic #2

I am waiting to post full room shots until next week. Most of the trim will go down this weekend, and I want y'all to get the full affect of the completed rooms, but in the mean time you can salivate over the painting progress that is happening.

One area of the house that I do not think will ever seriously be included in a progress report is Michael's office. This room is the ugly step child while we focus on getting the rest of the house Frances Harper ready. For those who have seen our current office, you know that it may remain ugly forever. Those in the know is a group consisting of just Michael and me because NO ONE sees the office. It is that bad.

Hope everyone has a great Thursday!! 

Playing and Planning

Do any of y'all play the lottery?

I do, weekly. I play Mega Millions on Tuesdays and Saturdays. I want to win, but honestly, I enjoy planning out exactly what I would do with the money.

There would be no boats. No mansions. no fancy cars. Well, I am addicted to Royal Pain, the TV show, and it tempts me to buy a place in The Hampton's. Maybe along the lines of Mrs. Newburg's place? Or, this one would do.

I plan out how much I would give my parents, how my sister's  allowance would work. I plan what I would purchase for my house (I wouldn't buy a new house); I plan the type of car I would get, Subaru Forester. I also plan out how I would explain my extra funds (some of you may be thinking, 'no one would ask', you obviously do not know my family).

I would tell no one that I won (for those that telling would unavoidable, nondisclosure agreements would be involved). Also, Michael would keep working.

I know I would be ecstatic if I won, but I get more than two dollars worth of fun out of just buying the ticket and planning. This all to say, last night I matched no numbers. I rarely match a number, but I keep playing and planning anyway.

Two Days and Two Months To Go

As the title suggest, I am counting down the days until I am internally alone again. As I type this I can see movement rolling across my belly.

There are many things I miss about not being pregnant. Here are a few of them: diet coke, sleeping on my stomach, hard physical exertion, diet coke, being able to move easily. I miss the fatigue of a long run and sore muscles in places other than my back. 

While I do not enjoy being pregnant, this pregnancy has given me a great amount of free time. This time has encouraged me to try new things, such as blogging. Also, I get to spend my days doing exactly as I please (for the most part). This time has been a mini-retirement of sorts and has allowed me to learn a couple of things about myself. 

I have learned that I need daily goals and accomplishments or I quickly become depressed. These do not have to be major things. In fact, they can be as small as doing our weekly grocery shopping and vacuuming the house, but for sanity, I have to get at least a couple of productive things done every day. 

I have also learned that I need companionship more than I previously thought. I thought I was always fine on my own, but now I know that I am happier when I have a couple of people or dogs to interact with. 

These are my two most constant companions. Such cuties!!! 

I am sure once Frances Harper is here I will look back on these quiet and physical cumbersome days with longing, but right now I am just ready to have my body back. So, heres to 62 days left! 

Happy Tuesday!

Fumes, Fumes, FUMES!!

Floor fumes, primer fumes and paint fumes are abounding at the new house! Here is an update on some recent jobs that got completed without this pregnant person's participation because we could not find a VOC free primer, and we want Frances Harper to be one smart cookie. So, I was benched for these jobs, except for offering support and guidance of course.

The first update is THE FLOORS!!! A job I would not have been a part of even if I was not prego.

Pretty floors, shiney floors, ohhhhhh FLOORS! (Cloudy Mondays call for lots of exclamations. Consider yourself warned.)  

All of our trim has now been primed. I repeat ALL of our trim is primed! Sprayers and free laborers come in super handy for such jobs. Hey, Daddy!

Here we have his other half and our other free laborer. Hey, Mama! (Aren't my parents great?) She is working on cleaning and priming the windows.

We also got our interior doors all painted. As you can see from the photo, we chose the $30, six panel doors over the $60 five panel doors that we were considering. I am still coveting this, so saving $ is important (dreams are important). 

I thought this was a very clever way to arrange the doors. You can see that are balanced on a couple of boards at the bottom and have one, to which they are secured with a short nail, running along the tops of all of them. This way all sides are accessible and they do not take up much room. 

One other thing also got primed this weekend…

… Frances Harper's room!!!

We primed it with a product made by Kilz that is designed to even out the differing textures of sheetrock and sheetrock mud. The primer takes away the sheen of the sheetrock mud that can bleed through your paint and leave a visible shiny spot on your freshly painted wall. The only draw back is that it is oil based; of course, it is also very fumey.  For those of you who have used oil based, you know how awful it is. We should avoid dwelling on such nightmares. 

Hope everyone else had a great weekend!!

Doors Galores

Happy almost the weekend!!

Michael and I have an exciting weekend planned for the new house. We will be purchasing new interior doors and priming the trim, if the weather cooperates. The trim will get primed outside, so we need everyone to pray for no rain!

We are hoping this changes by tomorrow! Weathermen are consistently wrong so… hope springs eternal. 

The interior doors we currently have are similar to the ones below, only imagine this one in that nice greenish stain. These are not doors I can live with. Well, I could if there was no other option, but I would stare at them daily and wish they were different. If I was more of a free spirit, I would be tempted to say that we just won't have any doors for a while, but I am not an exibitionist. So… we are going to replace them.

While my first choice would be solid wood doors, stained the same color as the floor, that is a touch out of our price range. (A solid pine door is a little over $100.00 and this is not our forever home. Our forever home already has them.) 

I have narrowed down our door options to the following two. We would not buy it in blue, but I thought the blue was easier to see than the all white one. 

The five panel one (door on the right) is a little over $60 and the six panel door is a little over $30. I have until this evening to decide if the extra cost is worth it to me. The good new is we only need 7 doors. Part of me says, I will be using them and looking at them every day, so I should get the ones I really like. The other part of me says, it is just a door and anything is better than what is currently there. 

Decisions. Decisions. 

Thoughts? Is anyone else have home decisions to make this weekend?

Also, for anyone wondering about a floor update -- because I can not walk on the floors I am not really able to get any good pictures of them. So, tune in next week for progress pictures!

Send a Note? Yes!

"Yet, in spite of the universal need, and almost universal habit, there are really but very few persons who write a good letter; a letter that is, at the same time long enough to interest, yet not long enough to tire; sufficiently condensed to keep the attention, and not tedious, and yet detailed enough to afford satisfaction; that is correct in grammatical construction, properly punctuated, written in a clear, legible hand, with the date, address, signature, all in the proper place, no words[117]whose letters stand in utter defiance to spelling-book rules; in short, a well-written letter."

This quote was taken from the The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness by Florence Hartley (a real page turner) and is in honor of the fact that I am writing thank-you notes this week. I am sure Ms. Hartley would find my notes lacking, but I enjoy sending notes and cards and believe it is the thought that counts. I do not get caught up on saying the exact right thing, or on having perfect grammar (I never learned it anyway). A note is simply an easy way to let someone know I am thinking of them, and in this case, thankful for and appreciative of the gift they gave. 

Emily Posts has several rules for thank-you notes, but in deference to Ms. Hartley, I will keep this "sufficiently condensed to keep [your] attention" and paraphrase those rules by saying, it is never wrong to send a hand-written thank you; after all, who doesn't want to feel appreciated? And is there a cheaper or easier way to let someone know you care than simply writing that in a note and buying a stamp?

Sending cards to people also has the added benefit of allowing you to buy cute stationary, which is abundant despite the letter being a dying art. (You can see examples here, here and here.)

And if you want some more exact guidelines than my thoughts that sending notes is nice, you may go here. 

Have a great Thursday!! Did anyone else go the entire day thinking yesterday was Tuesday?