Category: things to do

Categories
nest things to do

House progress

So we’re already all moved in and a lot of this stuff is already finished, but I figured I’d still post some of the progress pictures since they’re fun.
Here’s the future laundry room. There were some really crappy shelves and awful wood paneling all over the walls so that got ripped out and drywall went up.
The window in the master almost done

We decided to rip out the wood (i know, i know) and put in carpet so we could lounge around in the living room. The wood was really dark and showed every bit of dust. We did leave it in the hallway though.

The painting starts! The color doesn’t really look like this, the blue makes it look weird in the pic.

Dad cutting out trim and baseboards

progress in the laundry room

The hall paint and trim (this picture didn’t rotate for some reason)

Last but not least, The gentleman’s new toy!! Since we have a yard now we needed a lawn mower. He always looks at me like I’m crazy when I say, “let’s stop at that garage sale” but finally I got him to stop at one and check it out! Brand new in the box at a garage sale price!
Categories
reminisce things to do

Photo Friday #19

Today’s photo Friday is a bittersweet one. My opa passed away on Thursday. His health has been fading and I’m so grateful that he is out of pain and that I got a chance to say goodbye. He was a wonderful grandfather and we will all miss him. He and I always had an understanding. He never questioned my living abroad for so long and always wanted to hear about my next great adventure. Since I’m the only granddaughter on that side of the family, he had a bit of a sweet spot for me 🙂 Of course he loved all his grandsons as well. He easily accepted the gentleman as a new grandson in the family when we got married. I’m so happy I was able to know my opa for as long as I did. He had a full life of adventures, travel, farming and family. He loved John Deere tractors and loved having four daughters. He was a tall, strong man but there was always tenderness in his eyes.
Goodbye opa, rest in peace

Categories
nest things to do

Photo Friday #18

Well, we’re moving in tomorrow! Yikes. I just hope everything gets done. These past two weeks have been a little nuts: We shot two weddings two weekends in a row (one of them I was in – my mom was the lovely assistant), have been frantically trying to get the house done, pack and got in two accidents, yeah that’s right two!! We were on our way home from one of the weddings and got rear ended while waiting at a light, then a few days later jared was in the Lowe’s parking lot and a guy born in 1922 (not a joke – he saw his ID) backed into him and knocked out one of his front lights. The guy got out of his truck and said “Did I hit something?” and he was like, “Yeah, ME!”
OF COURSE that would happen this week, but 2 really???!?!?! I suppose we’ll laugh about this later?
Well, in any case, there is always comic relief in times of busyness and stress. My mom has been coming over to help me pack this week and she totally mislabeled one of the boxes. It was supposed to say “bonus ROOM” not “rum” hahaha. I do not have such a plethora of rum that I need a separate box for the bonus rum, hah.

Categories
nest things to do

Photo Friday #17

“It’s going to look worse before it looks better.”
That’s definitely our current motto for the house. We’ve done a lot of demo and have started putting things back together. Just about one more week and we should be ready to move in!!!
Here are the “worse” pictures. I’ll update the “better” pictures soon:
Here’s my dad, hard at work:

Here are my brothers doing a fine masking job:

The gentleman and N8…not so hard at work 😉 and our ripped out baseboard and trim pile:

The beginnings of a new window, done by N8 and his dad:

The people who lived here before were kinda nasty…so I’m actually cleaning grease off the walls and ceiling so my dad can paint it, yuck!

Demo-ing [nasty] carpet and realizing there was some awesome fake wood tile stuff underneath. Maybe we should keep that?

Starting to demo the guest bath. The wood paneling on the floor was water damaged (really? water damaged in the bathroom!?!? go figure)

 

Demo is done in the master bath and ready for tile!
The back side of the house. We replaced that large transparent window with a smaller opaque one. Much more “bathroom friendly”, hah.
got the window in!
My brother and jared had some down time so they started putting our pile of rocks (there was a rather large pile of rocks in the side yard) to use…looking good!
Well, that’s it for now. I’ll post more as we go on!
Categories
celebrate play things to do

Photo Friday #14 and #15

I’ve been so busy…it’s pretty bad that I have to keep loading my once a week blog into two. Oh well. 

So here’s a bit of what I’ve been up to, in photo Friday form:

jared and I went up to Santa Barbara (where we managed to not take a single picture) to hang out with some friends. It was lovely! On the way back down we stopped in Orange County for my cousin’s wedding. I was one of the bridesmaids. I was pretty worried about wearing yellow but I think it turned out to be a “good” yellow, hah. Her wedding was beautiful! Then we stayed up there at Rachel and Matt’s house. It was a lot of fun seeing their new place and hanging out. They made delicious delicious food and even had Easter eggs for us Sunday morning 🙂 We managed to not take a single picture there either!! What is the world coming to?? We also got to experience their cute new dogs, one of them is farty. Farty dogs are pretty funny, gross but funny. Anyway, that’s what we did for spring break.

 

Here are Shannon, Diann and I at the wedding:
 

Another thing that I’ve been up to lately is going to the Wild Animal Park. I’ve been there 3 times in the last month for different Special Ed. field trips. It was a lot of fun hanging out with the kids and watching their experiences with animals. Being in speech I NEVER get to go on field trips so this was pretty cool for me.
The last time we went we actually saw a cheetah walk right by us. Apparently they are really docile animals and they walk them through the park in the mornings because the guests like it! It was so awesome!! I think the very best part though is right after we saw the cheetah, we walked by a little pond with a duck in it. One of the kids started jumping up and down screaming “duck, duck, duck, and water!!!”. We were laughing so hard, the kid JUST saw a cheetah walk by and he’s excited about a duck, oh and water. oh man.

I happened to have my camera out so here’s the cheetah:

2 days and counting until we are homeowners 🙂
Categories
eat things to do

Pumpkin muffins = delicious

So we used to go to this place Muffin Break quite regularly on Sunday mornings. It was kind of a nice way to start Sundays with something different. They had the absolute BEST pumpkin muffins. As you can see, I keep using past tenses. That’s because we went to Muffin Break a few weeks ago and they were gone! Completely gone. I guess in this economy people really can’t be splurging on muffins.

 

So of course, ever since, I’d been craving pumpkin muffins. I know they don’t sell them in boxes so I found a recipe. It turns out they are super easy and really really good. This was the first time I had ever made muffins from scratch and I have to say, they are much better from scratch than from the box.

So here’s the recipe:

 

RECIPE FOR PUMPKIN MUFFINS
From Gourmet November 2006
Adapted from the American Club
Makes 1 dozen
Active time: 15 min.
Start to finish: 1 hour

INGREDIENTS:
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup canned solid-pack pumpkin
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 tsp pumpkin-pie spice (a combo of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and allspice)
1.25 cups plus 1 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

Equipment: 12 foil or paper muffin liners; a muffin pan with 12 (1/2-cup) muffin cups

DIRECTIONS:
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350F. Put liners in muffin cups.

Whisk together flour and baking powder in a small bowl.

Whisk together pumpkin, oil, eggs, pumpkin-pie spice, 1.25 cups sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl until smooth, then whisk in flour mixture until just combined.

Stir together cinnamon and remaining 1 tablespoon sugar in another bowl.

Divide batter among muffin cups (each should be about 3/4 full), then sprinkle tops with cinnamon-sugar mixture. Bake until puffed and golden brown and a wooden pick or skewer inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes.

Cool in pan on a rack 5 minutes, then transfer muffins from pan to rack and cool to warm or room temperature.