Blitz Blogging

As the week goes on, I continually think of more and more things that I want to blog about.  I think I can’t wait to blog about this as I finish a craft or as we find out our home is infested with termites even after having it treated for termites about a month ago.  Then, life gets in the way.  I get so busy that I am no to the next project… and yet still no post.  So…. introducing blitz blogging!  Don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me in a week or two… and them bam… seven blog posts.  Lets just hope I remember all of the things I want to blog about when I actually have the time to blog about it.

New Desks and Wall Flowers

The other day Lan went to Ikea and got us desks to go all the way around our office.  This is the before picture (pictures after we started cleaning my stuff out)

 

We plan to paint the walls gray… but that will be a little bit later.  To jazz up the walls, we found these wall stickers at Ikea for 50 cents!  I LOVE them :)

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I just pealed and stuck them on the walls.  Super easy.  They are also easy to re-adjust.  I have another pack to put on the walls after we paint :)

The desks will go around the whole office.  We started with my side, but Lan’s is more complicated because we have to take apart all of the computer stuff.  We are thinking about putting some shelves over on the other white wall… but for now, the flowers make me happy :)

Noah’s puff quilt part 2

The finishing of Noah’s puff quilt was like a marathon.  On Wednesday I finished all of my puffs.  I laid them out in a pattern that I thought was pretty :)  Then Friday I had to get it all done for the Saturday shower.  Nothing like waiting until the last minute :)  Hey I moved… I have good excuses :)

I first sewed all of the puffs into rows, and then all of the rows together.  All of the puffiness made it hard to sew… so I did a lot of squishing :)

After I got all of the puffs together (the wee hours of the morning) I had a little mini party and showed the boys that were a movie.  I am sure that they were uber interested in the top of the baby blanket I was making…. but they appeased me with oooohs and awwwws. 

I layered the back fabric, the batting, and the top with basting spray between each layer to keep it from sliding around.

Then pinned on the binding.  I decided to buy binding because of my little time dilemma.  I found this satin binding and decided the pricy $7 price tag was worth it when I found it on Thursday night. While I was pinning it on at 2am, I knew I had made the right decision.

At 3am…. this was the blurry eyed result.  FINISHED! and cute too if I do say so myself.  I decided at that point that I would quilt the layers together in the morning.  I woke up at 8:30 and decided to just put a few stitches at each of the corners of the puffs.  At 10am… I was finally finished.  I got dressed super quick, “wrapped” the gift and dashed off to the 11am shower.  But not before snapping a few poorly light, slightly blurry photos with my iphone.

I would definitely make one again (because they are so cute and cozy), but definitely only for my own kids… or perhaps for another niece or nephew… but that is it :)

A Busy Three Weeks

Warning:  prepare for a long post.  It is hard to believe that we have had a house for three whole weeks… yet at the same time, it is hard to believe that so many things could have possibly gone wrong in only three short weeks.  I kept saying to myself and things happened, oh I want to blog about this, or can’t wait to blog that… but alas in the chaos of new homeownership and the sheer ridiculousness of the last few weeks, time got away from me.  So here you are:  the first three weeks of our house…

Within the first week of owning our home we already had a bathroom ripped our and completely replaced.  That will be a whole post in and of itself once we paint.  We have ridiculously ugly before pictures, so I really want to wait until it is actually finished so show the contrast in the after pictures.  In addition to wanting good before/after pictures, there was so much that went wrong with re-modeling that bathroom that it literally HAS to be its own post.  (it was ridiculous… and still is)

Literally the first whole day that we had our house, our bathroom re-model began.  It is good to have a contractor in the family (and yet not good at the same time…again see later post)  We had to be out of our apartment the same week that we moved in.. so as things were being ripped out of the bathroom, our belongings were being moved into rooms.  By the end of the first two weeks, I had just about everything unpacked.  (hey it helps that one of those weeks I was on Christmas Vacation)  It has been fun settling in, unpacking our things, and really making this house feel like a home.  What hasn’t been fun is all of the things that have been going wrong.

We literally haven’t been able to do ANYTHING the easy way. (you will hear more about this in the bathroom post)  The first week we owned our home, we had a sewage back up.  My father-in-law  called a bunch of people and he said the most expensive guy was $800…. the cheapest guy was on his way.  He did the rotorooter.  Apparently he also said that he needed to do this hydrocutting thing or it would get backed up in two weeks.  My father-in-law said we didn’t need it.  Guess what backed up two weeks later :) 

On the same day our sewage backed up… again… we learned that the main pipe that carried water into the house was busted.  :\  You see… we didn’t notice it before because we have been getting an uncharacteristic amount of rain.  We also had this huge trash pile in front of our house… which actually had grown since I took this picture to include all of our torn out bathroom.  So, when the rain stopped we assumed that it was just our trash pile leaking water and that is why our driveway never dried… nope. 

We finally broke down the big screen T.V. and shower stall… and toilets… and all other kinds of debris and put it in the truck to take to the dump, but our mini puddle was still there, and growing.  That was when we could actually see water coming up through it.  Great.  Lan called that Vietnamese plumber that his dad had called and asked him to come out the next day to hydrocut our sewage line, and hopefully fix the guiser that was in the middle of our drive way.  He said “Your Vietnamese, I am Vietnamese, your wife is white, my wife is white, ill work you out a deal, and he did.  He highered five guys for the day and in the pouring rain they cut a like through our driveway, laid a new pipe and re-did the cement.  Fixed in one day :) 

It may not look the most beautiful, but hey it was the cheapest and most permanent solution.  He said that we had a really bad leak.  All of the dirt under our driveway had been washed away so he tried to backfill it with concrete.  He also said to expect our water bill to be $500 or more this month…. yeiks!  glad we got that one fixed.

Here is the kicker… we had just bought a beautiful new fridge that morning.

We had a fridge when we moved in but it was an apartment frig that didn’t have an ice maker.  The house had a water line for one and it kept leaking because it didn’t have anything to be plugged into.  So we decided that with our Christmas money,we would spring for the luxury.  So between the new bathroom, and all of our pipe problems (0h and the frig) we are officially out of our house fixing up budget for the time being. 

Thankfully after all of that chaos, the last week of our vacation was spent cleaning, throwing a New Years Party, and finally enjoying our house.  Our toilets flush wonderfully and we no longer have a puddle in our driveway.  It is such a wonderful feeling to come home from work to our house which is now truly becoming our home (yes, for the first two weeks it was just our house)  I am so excited for all of the DIY projects that we are planning.

We can now safely say:  “We love our home”

Merry Christmas!

We are so excited to be celebrating our first Christmas in our new home :)  We have been able to reflect on how perfect God’s timing has been in this whole process.  We have needed to do a lot of work on our home, and if we had gotten the house when we wanted it, we wouldn’t have been able to afford it.  Instead we had to wait.. and in the mean time, we saved more money.  God’s timing may not be our timing, but his timing is always better than ours :) 

So we wish you many blessings this Christmas from our new home to yours. 

House, House, House

When we decided that it was time to start looking for a house, we had no idea the ordeal that was ahead of us.  We spend 10 1/2 months in contract on our home before we were finally able to get it.  It was a roller coaster of emotions as we went from thinking we would get the house, to thinking we would never get it and be in our tiny apartment forever.  We would go back and forth, back and forth, practically on a daily basis.

That brings us to last week.  At the beginning of the seat we were planning to cancel our contract on the house.  We kept going in circles and we were so tired of the whole process that we just couldn’t take it any more.  By Friday… we had our house.

I couldn’t believe it!  When Lan called to tell me I kept asking him “are you sure”  That day I had flowers delivered to my work from our relater, and as soon as I got off work, we rushed over to get our keys.  We almost had this feeling of … lets hurry and go get the keys before they can change their minds.

When we first got our keys and took our first walk through our home… the joy began to turn into fear.  It was a MESS!  We were scared.  We already knew that the people that were living there were not taking very good care of it… but it had gotten even worse in the last few weeks.  We had feelings of “what did we get ourselves into”.  Here are a few pictures of what greeted us at our new home…. lots and lots of trash… even a broken big screen TV.

After our relater left, we immediately got to work.  We were on a time crunch.  We got our keys on Friday and then needed to be out by Sunday in order to not need to sign a new lease.  We began by cleaning trash, removing sticky curtains (yes sticky… ewwww), and taking the vacant sticker off of our front window.

 

Friday night we did a pre-clean, Saturday we invited all of our friends to help get it in habitable condition (immense amounts of cleaner and scrubbing), and then Sunday all our friends pulled together to help us make the move.  It didn’t seem like it would be possible… but we did it and now we are at home in our house :)

***note… this was written soon after moving into our house and then posted at a later date….. after we got internet :)***

Cricut and Glass Etching

Sooooooo… this weekend Lan and I were in need of a little retail therapy.

What did you get you ask? a cricut!!! It is like a printer but it cuts stuff out. Now this is something that we have been thinking about getting for a few years… so it wasn’t a total impulse buy.

So I used my new toy to make stencils to do glass etching. It is one of the coolest things ever!

Lan cut out nerdy things that I don’t understand

Step 1: pick what you want to etch… there are these cartridges that you can choose from, or Lan figured out a way to make your own designs on the computer and have it cut those out. Then I had the cricut cut it out from contact paper. If you don’t have a cricut… and are not in need of some retail therapy… then you can make your own stencil or buy them.

Step 2: Put the contact paper on your clean glass surface and apply a thick layer of the etching cream

Step 3: wait 60 sec.

Step 4: wash it off… and done!

I was so amazed at how fast and easy it was! I made so many gifts last night and it was hours of entertainment. Now the next morning… we are right back at playing with our new toy. We need more things to cut out!

and just for fun…. here is a picture of me all focused playing with my new toys :) I look so worried and confused!