The Final Days of Spring

How is time just flying by? I thought I had updated the ol' blog not too long ago, maybe a week? Wrong! Where does the time go??

Let's just make this random.

I moved! But this time, not to a new house but... to a new office space. There's a lot of shuffling happening at work right now and in a few days the floor I work on will have 8-10 extra people. Translation: goodbye private office, hello cubicle. Wah wah.

The good news is my boss is awesome and my downstairs coworkers are awesome and basically everyone is saying - do whatever you want! Which means Rebecca (coworker that also got moved from her private office to the cubicle next to mine) and I painted. I'm sad to not have my beautiful gray wall color anymore, but the color we compromised on is still very nice. Best of all - it looks clean and fresh. Now I just have to unpack and decorate.

Old office all packed up...

...and new office, still in boxes but with new paint!

Sorry, the new office picture is terrible. I'll take more pictures once everything is unpacked and looking better.

I'm still adjusting to cubicle life and have quickly realized one thing - headphones are very important! I'd be interested in getting a pair that goes over the ears, instead of earbuds. Any recommendations that aren't $$$?

Continuing with randomness - our friends Dylan and Brittany were in town for a wedding, so we got coffee with them. They moved to Dallas a few years ago, but both went to Eastman, and Dylan was actually my intern at the RPO many moons ago!

 

It was really great to spend time with them. I should also mention, Dylan grew up in Seattle, so.. duh. He's awesome.

Now it's time for cute pictures of Birdie!

Here she is playing golf with Andy in our backyard. She loves to chase after the balls and even brings them back. Such a good little girl.

She also went to the groomer and got her short summer haircut.

She got to play with Alyssa's dog, Cooper!

And most of all... she loves to play with Pig. Who she destroyed a few days ago. We go through roughly one pig every other month.

I love her so much. She is so CUTE! However since her trip to the groomer, she has rolled in death twice and has gotten two baths since! Stinky pup. Good thing she's cute!

Moving on!

Andy's clarinet studio had their "end of the school year" recital. 

These aren't even all of his students! For a guy who oftentimes flies by the seat of his pants, I am amazed he is able to keep so many kids on track!

As far as house things go...

Our garden has really taken off. I took these pictures a week ago and they pale in comparison to what it looks like today! I'll post more recent pictures soon, but in the meantime, enjoy these before and afters.

In the past week we've had a ton of sun, so I'm sure that helped. I also spread llama poop in both! Weird huh? But I think it's working!

I also trimmed the bushes in the front of the house and cleaned a lot of dead stuff out of the flower bed.

And possibly my favorite project to date... we hung string lights on our back deck! Since it's my favorite, here are a million pictures. Oh also... the hanging of the lights opened a can of worms because we had to trim a tree... which led to trimming other trees.... which meant many many many hours of tree trimming. But back to the lights!

I love them!

One thing I do not love about our house is our awning windows and the impossible nature of those housing a window unit AC - of which we have three... that are just sitting in the basement... and it's gotten up into the 90s....

To get some much needed AC relief after our day of tree trimming, Andy and I went to play Bingo!

No we did not win, but we both got close! You know, I've played bingo a handful of times before and I've never won... grrrr.

And if that weren't enough - or as Billy Mays would say, "But wait, there's more!"

Andy and I started the Whole30 lol. For those of you who aren't familiar, the Whole30 is a challenge where you eat only meat, vegetables, fruits, and healthy fats for 30 days; nothing processed, and no grains, legumes, dairy, or anything with added sugar. Fun! Andy's friend James did the challenge with his girlfriend and was pretty excited about it, so this was actually Andy's idea to do. But frankly I needed to do something - I had gotten so off track with food while I was on crutches - a reset is exactly what I need. The tricky thing about this for me... I haven't eaten meat in a year.... I did actually have some chicken the other day... it was underwhelming and felt like I had a rock in my stomach. Needless to say I'm not dying to jump back on the carnivore wagon... but I have been having more fish than I normally would. Today is day 10! Lordy. I'll do a more dedicated Whole30 post soon, but here's a quick look at some of the meals we've made so far.

Veggie eggs w/avocado:

Cod w/asparagus, roasted potatoes, and cantaloupe (upper right corner)

Salad, sweet potato w/pico de gallo and avocado, eggs:

And chicken salad with homemade mayo:

I mean... it's not that bad. More on it later!

Alright! That more or less catches us up to where things stand today. My parents will be here in one week! Yay!!!!! Until then, more Whole30, more unpacking my office, more working on the house, and more snuggles with Birdie. :-)

(it is so nice to walk again)

Home Sweet Home

In my last post I promised updates on a number of things, so here we go! 

Let's start with the house...

We moved 2.5 months ago, and in a lot of ways it seems like we've been there much longer... until you look at all of the boxes that haven't been unpacked, and oh yeah... we just moved. Part of the "problem" is that up until very recently, I couldn't really help to get anything unpacked or set-up. Now that I can move, I'm hoping to get things in shape around the house.

However! We have still managed to make some improvements in the short time we've been there. Andy has turned out to be very good at house things (thanks to Google and YouTube, lol). Here are some of the projects we've worked on so far:

1) "Pantry"

The kitchen has a LOT more storage than our last kitchen, however once we unpacked all of our weddings gifts, we ran out of space for food! And so, we have been working to turn the basement stair wall into a pantry. Here's the before...

...and (sort of) after! 

I say 'sort of' because we have since cleaned it up and added a lot more to the shelves. Our plan is to add one more shelf, and also to give the whole area a fresh coat of paint. :-)

2) Kitchen

Unfortunately I don't have a picture, but one of the best things that we've done to the kitchen is added some shelving inside some of the larger cabinets - and the shelves are customized to the items we wanted to store. I'll have to take a picture because it really is very cool. But that's not all! We also put handles on all of the drawers (that was WAY harder to figure out than it should have been...).

But wait, there's more! When my mom came, we made a trip to Ikea. Thanks to a little Pinterest inspiration and a lot of elbow grease on behalf of my mom, we have a wall o' pots and pans. We love it!

3) Closet

Andy took out the wooden rod in his closet, and replaced it with a wire closet system that gives him double the storage. This picture was taken halfway through the process, but you get the idea...

4) Paint

We still have a few rooms to go (bathroom and our bedroom) but we got the living room painted. The shade is pretty close to what existed before, but the old color had a peachy undertone and our new shade has more of a yellowy undertone. The only reason I know this is a before picture is because the paint rollers are clean, but you can see the paint in the tray is veeeery similar. Honestly it really doesn't matter - the new coat of paint really made the room look a lot cleaner and I'm very glad we did it.

5) Laundry

Of course our dryer died after about a month of being in the new place. To be fair, both the washer and dryer looked like they were from the stone age, so I am not entirely surprised. We found a used appliance store and managed to get a matching washer and dryer at a very good price. Bonus - we were able to switch from an electric dryer to a gas dryer, so it will be less expensive to run!

6) "Farm"

There were two raised garden beds in the backyard when we got the house, so once the weather was cooperative, we planted vegetables! I'm not very good at keeping things alive but I really hope they grow. Unfortunately I've caught a few squirrels in the beds since we've planted, so I'm not feeling very optimistic, but it's fun nonetheless.

Here's what one of the beds looked like before...

 

...and here they are now!

We also got a planter and planted some herbs.

Farm montage!

7) Lamppost

I don't know if we missed this during the inspection or if it broke sometime between that and our closing, but when we moved in the front porch light and the lamppost light didn't work. Andy has a friend who's an electrician so he came over and was able to get the porch light working again. He looked at the lantern of the lamppost and said the wiring to the house was still good, but the light fixture itself needed to be replaced. 

Here was the lamppost with the broken fixture...

The old one was black, and of course the new fixture we picked out was a dark bronze. The paint on the lamppost was badly chipped anyway, so it didn't really matter. Andy stripped the pole and repainted it!

Lamppost montage!

8) Garage Door Opener

No photos of this one, but we replaced the garage door opener. The one that was in place when we moved in was so old, it didn't have any safety sensors to make the door go back up if something was in the way. There also weren't any remotes for your car so the only way to make the door go up/down was to press the button that was installed... in the kitchen. Now! The button for the garage door is in the garage, we each have a remote for our car, and there's a keypad on the outside of the house we can use to make the door go up/down as well! And instead of a chain, the door opener uses a (rubber?) belt so it is much quieter. 

Pretty good for only two and a half months huh???? Oh but there's still this to tackle...

Pretty much all of our boxes etc ended up in the three-seasons room. UGH. 

What have I learned from doing these projects?

- Every project will require 3 trips to Home Depot and/or Lowes

- You cannot make an initial trip to Home Depot for less than $100

- YouTube is the new Bob Villa. It will show you how to do everything (at least so far)

Andy and I will chip away at unpacking over the next few weeks, but then the big guns are coming. My parents!!! Not only will they bring a U-Haul of garage tools, patio furniture, THE TREADMILL (!!!!!!!!) but they bring their 30+ years of DIY home improvement expertise. The plan... to tackle the basement! Stay tuned for more pictures of how we hopefully transform a concrete spider paradise into a clarinet studio. :-)

I CAN WALK

Hello! I know it's been about a month and a half since I've written. I'm sorry! Last time I wrote I was still on crutches. Up until yesterday, I was still using a crutch first thing in the morning. But I can now report that 111 days after my stupid fall.... I am 100% done with crutches!!!! Now that doesn't mean I am 100% normal at all - and I'll admit... I thought once I was done with crutches I would be perfectly fine. That's certainly not the case, but I continue to notice improvements each day. I suppose that's all I can ask for.

Alright, I owe you all a million updates, like...

- How things are going with the new house
- My precious Birdie!!!
- Moving my office...
- Normal day to day happenings
and of course...
- Details of my recovery

I don't have enough time to actually write updates on all those things, but I'll leave you with a few pictures of my road to recovery. Physical Therapy has made a world of difference for me, and I have been very consistent with doing the exercises they give me.

To battle the Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (seriously) that I was developing, I had to do a contrast bath, moving my foot between hot and cold water. It was a 40 minute process, so I got a lot of reading done. I am now of book 3 of the Outlander series.

 

I must say, the Outlander series really saved me during this whole process. I've read over 2,000 pages over the course of these last 3.5 months.

Birdie also liked to help me do my exercises. :-)

Alright, sorry for such a short teaser, but I'll be back in blogging business on Monday - I promise! Have a great weekend!