Oh, just…Boo.

Tags

blasted fees, Freeport, MIA coffeepot

I really am a very naturally positive person.  I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately!  Could be that I started the day off without my coffee…my coffeepot is missing!  MIA!  I cannot find the confounded thing-it’s a mystery. 

I also tried to log into my business checking account last night, and couldn’t.  So I called the Credit Union this morning, and turns out that I am $77 in the hole.  This makes me so very, very sad; I had $150 tucked away in that account that I was NOT going to touch for anything except for art for my walls.  Go on a little Etsy shopping spree, or somesuch.  Well, I do believe that instead of using our regular debit card, we have been using my business debit card instead, and racked up a goodly amount of charges everytime we made a purchase and there was no money in the account.  I’m just feeling completely deflated about the ordeal.  Now that money that I had saved for so long is gone, and I have to come up with the rest to get ourselves back up to $0.   Arg Arg Arg.

Grammy is watching the boys today so that I can paint.  I had planned on finishing the bathroom, 2 closets, and at least getting a start on the kitchen.  Let’s just say the bathroom took much longer than expected.  So here I sit, with many more things on my list, and boys due home any minute.  The place is still a disaster, and I desperately want to shave my legs, but I can’t shower until the paint over the tub is dry.

Well, I’m feeling a tad better.  Always helps to write things out.  Mom and dad and I did have a wonderful day yesterday; the weather was beautiful and Freeport was lovely as always.  I purchased some bedding from the LLBean outlet and I think it will work.  Also bought a slipcover for our couch, which will not even begin to cover it; I don’t know if anything will cover this green beast.  I suppose I’ll return it and use the money to pay off my CU fees…

Here is to a brighter tomorrow!

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Roller Coaster

Tags

emotional roller coaster, New House

Wow…I can’t even begin to describe the wealth of emotions I’ve felt over the last few days.  This is our…what day is this?  Ok, it’s Wednesday, and we have officially been here since Friday night.  I’ve had really high “highs” and really low “lows”; highs coming from the possibility that I see in this house, and lows coming from what it is now, plus a healthy dose of homesickness.  Arg.  We all do miss our other little town to the core.  Another thing that would truly help my mindset is if we could eventually purchase another car; that way I could get out and about with the boys.  I feel a little trapped here.  It didn’t matter at home-it was such a “walking” town.  Walk to get ice cream, to the library, to Reny’s, to the movies, to the parks; we have wonderful parks here, but we aren’t on a walk-able road.

It’s difficult keeping the kidlets entertained, because there are still tools everywhere and danger lurks around most corners.  Jack has broken a ceiling fan globe and fell down the stairs on his tricycle.  I have no storage yet-we aren’t buying new cabinetry until our appliances come, and the old cabinetry, what is usable of it, is full of tools (always tools! they are taking over!)  We just purchased paint last night to paint our closets before we put our clothes in, so those are scattered about.  Erick and I are both a little crazy in all of this disorder, but discuss quite frequently the fact that we will not let it get the best of us and end up becoming crabby with each other.  There will be an end.

I do see great possibilities for this house.  We probably won’t be here forever, and although I always wanted to “nest” and settle down for a good long while, I have discovered as of late that I have the urge to wander.  I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but we met the original owner of the house (who was LOVELY), and found out that she sold the house to the previous owner for twice what we paid for it.  That was about 4 years ago.  If Erick and I stay here a year or two, I think we could make a pretty profit from the whole deal, even if we didn’t sell it for as much as she sold it for.  So I do believe we made a wise investment.

I’m feeling good right now-high spirits and everything.  The boys are at grammy’s, Erick is at work, and mom and dad are going to whisk me away to Freeport today.  Oh, Joy! I’m so excited.  We’ve figured out a way to finagle our finances a bit in order to do more for the house, so I’m going to see about purchasing some bedding amongst a few other boring but necessary things.  Should do my heart good to lay in a pretty bed at night. 🙂

I’m now online for good!  Posts should become more frequent, as long as I can get them in when Jack naps, because I can’t tear my eyes away from him while he is awake.  😉 Have a happy day, friends.

A Few Kinks

Tags

The Move

We arrived at the house 9ish or so last night, installed the toilet (a part was broken, deeming it unusable), and I realized I forgot our shower curtain and towels.  Needless to say, we hightailed it back to mom and dad’s this morning!  Nothing like a shower and a working toilet!

Moving more over today…we’ll see how it goes tonight.  🙂

Moving Day

Tags

Moving Day

Well, here I sit, typing my last blog as an official resident of mom and dad’s house. Erick is moving the mattresses over, then he’ll be back to pick us up, and we sleep in our new home tonight.

Happy, sad! Happy, sad!

I’m just praying that nothing goes wrong this evening while he tries to reinstall our toilet, lol! And that we can easily function with no appliances until August 9th…

I’ll be blogging from over yonder, just as soon as our new modem arrives. So I might be absent for a few days, but will be back on the ball asap.

Here’s to new adventures!

And this is where we are

Tags

bathroom redo, ceramic tile, grout problems, House Renovation, new floor

Thank you God for creating the coffee bean! It’s kept this worn out family going, I can tell you that. We are still spending the day in the midst of this:

and then coming home at night to this, because mom and dad are also doing a major overhaul…

We are however, plugging away slowly but surely. The trim is down in the boys’ room…pay no attention to the un-finished nail holes or the walls! I’m going paint their room some kind of manly blue 3/4 of the way up, line the top of the blue with a chair rail of some sort, then paint white the rest of the way up. Plan is to blow up some big black and white pictures of the kids and line the rail with those.

And this is what our bathroom floor was (first, I just had to show it-isn’t it awful? It was worse when it was nice and shiny-this mottled yellow and green) and on top of that were the squares.

That electric blue color? That was through most of the house! AHHH! It was like shiny-plastic-blue.

Here is the tile, pre-sealed. Only problem is, we sealed it with high-end stuff…now it’s discolored! Ack! We are stumped as to what to do. We are thinking of doing a grout skim-coat, if that’s allowable, then using a different sealer. If not, we’ll just have to take the grout out and redo (sigh!)

It’s kind of a beachy/khaki color. I’m really pleased with the way it turned out; will be even more so when we have the grout situation fixed!

Well, those are the most apparent recent changes. Tomorrow I’ll paint the bathroom. After that, the “final” pictures will be awhile in coming. I did our finances this morning, and we just hit that inevitable “no-more-house-money” wall. I didn’t realize we were there, which is a bummer. We are extremely anti credit card debt, so it’ll be 20 bucks a paycheck here, 20 bucks a paycheck there from here on out. With SO much more left to do! Arg! But such is life, and I’m actually eager to get creative and and see what we can do on very little. It will be a good challenge! 😉

Head in the Clouds

Tags

bubbles, dreams, paiting, seth conley, skydiving

This weekend we did a teeny tiny bit of this,

and every once in awhile a breeze would pick the bubbles up and fling them into the air; up, up and away, quite possibly to greet these fellas…

(see him? little to the left of the center) It was a beautiful day, so these guys took advantage and jumped a few times, darting in and out of clouds, which was quite a sight to behold. SOMEday, I wish to join them. Skydiving is a dream of mine, and when you see it pretty much daily during the spring and summer, it’s that much more tempting. They are so close that you can hear their whoops and hollers and hear their parachutes catch the wind.

Speaking of being in the clouds, Seth, who is the fantastically talented husband of fantastically talented Amanda, painted this picture which is my current favorite…he practically painted one of my dreams (yes, I have dreamt I was a man before, more specifically Bruce Willis, and I very often am flying or jumping through the air for long stretches at a time).

I think, after all of this house hullabaloo, I’ll be ready to take to the clouds!

Wow…

Tags

Good Friends, House Renovation

I don’t feel nearly as tired since I just read this amazing article on Jenny and Rob’s renovation. Our house? No Sweat!

Good news…appliances are purchased! The whole shebang, too. Washer, Dryer, Fridge, Stove, Dishwasher and Microwave. And the great thing? Erick pulled a Dave Ramsey, offered cash (take it or leave it, friends!) and we ended up paying about 300 dollars below the original price. (The original prices weren’t too shabby, so we were thrilled to come out even better!) It was a fun day; we took Miss Ashley along and she kept us laughing the whole day. Nothing like good friends. 🙂

The stinky news is that we won’t have our goods delivered until August 9th. Our new target move-in date is next Saturday, so that will leave us without a kitchen for 2 weeks. However, we do have a small 2 burner cookstove from Erick’s mom, and a microwave. We’ll try to hunt down a mini-fridge, but if we can’t, we’ll just fill a chest with ice. And probably live off sandwiches for quite awhile. Once the appliances are in, we’ll figure out the cabinet and countertop situation. Maybe I’ll have a complete cooking space by Mid-August.

Erick is at the house with Peter today, installing new floor trim and adding some wainscoting. Hopefully the bathroom will be ready to be painted next week. OH! Found out that we have very work-able stairs under the old grungy carpet, so that’s good news! We’ll prime and paint and eventually add a runner.

Gettin’ closer everyday. 🙂

Happy Weekend!

Oh, that Robin!

Tags

appliances, Breaking Even, decorating, House Renovation, music, Robin Jones Gunn, Sisterchicks Go Brit

So I’m reading Sisterchicks Go Brit by Robin Jones Gunn. (She’s one of my fave authors, and has been for years and years). One of her paragraphs from an aspiring interior designer was so inspiring to me; nailed it on the head, I guess you could say:

“It’s amazing how the decor of a room can affect how you feel about yourself and your surroundings. Maybe that’s why I love decorating so much. I love elevating people’s environment so that it elevates their feelings about themselves.” … “In a way it makes you remember that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. That’s what God says of us. I think we suppress our appreciation for the ‘wonderfully made’ part far too often”.

Yep, love that! Ms. Robin always comes through with some pretty wonderful quote-ables.

On the homefront…notice I’ve been absent from blogging for a few days? We’ve been truckin’ right along, from morning to night! I’ve really had fun-taken a break from scraping walls and carpet pads, and I’ve helped lay flooring; wood and tile. Erick and I make a good team-I’ve truly enjoyed working alongside him instead of in separate rooms on different projects. And I’ve officially glued together PVC pipe, layed grout, worked with the jig and chop saws-much fun, I tell ya! Here’s a picture of what the flooring throughout the house looks like now. We only have a small landing left to lay the floor on, then we’ll stain the original hardwood floor in the kitchen to match the rest of the house.

Erick has to seal the grout in the bathroom today, then I’ll post some before and after pictures. I’m LOVING the bathroom and how it’s going to turn out. Yay!

Annnnnddddd….our escrow money is starting to roll in. Which means appliance shopping this afternoon! Mom and dad have company coming in one week from now, and it’d be a pretty tight squeeze trying to fit us all in here, so we hope to be at the new place before next Wednesday. Eeek!

Oh, and one last HUGE thank you to dearest Nicole from Breaking Even, who sent me some amazing music mixes. You are such a DARLING, girl! I’m now an official fan of Carla Bruni! And I couldn’t be more ecstatic about the mix of Diana Krall/Pink Martini/Jamie Cullum/Madeline Peyroux (and so many others…I’m listening to it right now and can’t recall everyone who is on it, but suffice it to say-it’s my new happy cd!) Without tv and with limited radio reception, it’s just by happy accident that I find new artists that I enjoy. And I’m so happy to have found so many at one pop. 🙂

Erick’s home! Time to go shopping, woohoo!

A little dream

Tags

a little dream, abandoned building, Bangor, Bucksport, Ellsworth, Maine

We took the day off and spent it as a family…much needed physically and mentally! Hit up Bangor and Ellsworth; came home by Bucksport, and I took a picture of this little place that has fascinated me for years. It’s right near the entrance to Fort Knox, and I think it would be such a wonderful shop/studio. (Shop on bottom, studio on top…can you imagine all of the natural light you’d have to sew/paint/create with?!) I think I’d even add some skylights to the mix. Add all that to the fact that it’s on the river-I can’t imagine why it’s been abandoned for so long. Even though this house renovation stuff is more than I ever imagined it would be, I’d be willing to tackle this, too. 🙂

Happy Weekend!

Don’t you love sisters who have blogs?

Tags

Birthday, skater dude

Dearest Brother,

The other night we pulled out the old slides and sat down to a picture show. And ran across this. We guffawed for quite awhile, and I just couldn’t resist showing the world. You really were the cutest thing many birthdays ago, even in those cutoff jeans.

Good thing you turned into such a handsome scudder…

But I’m still glad you can get your goof on.

Love you more than words, and happy quarter century!!