Woo Hoo!

Not to steal Joe's thunder, but he's been wanting a triathlon bike for quite some time now. After competing in a couple of triathlons this past summer, he discovered that he really enjoys the sport. However, his trusty old mountain bike just doesn't quite cut it when he's out there with the other racers. I didn't realize how expensive triathlons can be, between the swimming gear, running shoes, special clothing, and the most expensive part is the bicycle. Tri bikes can make a racer a lot faster, but the down side is that they are crazy expensive. Well, while Christmas shopping, I discovered a store that had some great sales on tri bikes, so I took Joe back on Monday. He looked at a couple and we ended up back at the store last night. The bike is an older model year and was over 55% off the original asking price, so we went ahead and got it for him. I have yet to see a tri bike on sale at such a low price! So he's all pumped, and once the ice and snow melt, I'm sure I won't be seeing much of him in the evenings as he'll be off riding. The store is cleaning it up and holding it for us until after Christmas, so it'll be his next week! The picture below is what his bike looks like, but taken from another website.

Christmas shopping ...

Joe and I ventured out into the snowy weather this weekend to do some Christmas shopping. We managed to pick up a couple of things, but along the way, got distracted. We've been wanting to get a large area rug for our living room to make it cozier and feel more complete. Well, Joe managed to find an 8x12 ft rug that has most of the colors, both accent and focus, of the room in it. The best part? It was on clearance! We found it at HomeGoods, the home store for Marshalls/TJMaxx, so the price was very reasonable even before it was marked down. We brought it home and it fits the space perfectly. The dogs seem to enjoy it too, since it keeps them from sliding around the hardwood floors as they chase each other. I'll try to post pictures soon, but the pictures don't do it justice.

Now if we could just get some pictures hung on the walls we'd be set!

The Other White Meat

As a disclaimer, I have grown up hating pork. My mother would make pork chops and other pork related dinners all too frequently (in my young opinion!) and I would struggle to finish them. I actually went through a time after graduating from high school until probably 2-3 years ago of never eating pork at all. Nothing. No pork chops, pork tenderloin, bacon, nothing.

Well, as most everyone knows, Joe likes pork. I started off by trying bacon, and am now wholeheartedly a fan of that. Occasionally we'll get stuffed pork chops from the grocery store, and I don't mind those either. A couple of months ago our dinner club prepared a pork tenderloin. I figured I'd try it and give it a chance - much to my surprise, I really enjoyed it!

This weekend I figured it was time once and for all to shake off my issues with the other white meat. I found a recipe that sounded really good and thought I'd try it. Last night was the big night, and I am proud to say I really impressed myself!! :) Even better, the recipe was incredibly fast and easy, so I'm going to share it. I mean, if I liked it, it's gotta be good! (And yes, Joe liked it. Of course, he likes pork anyway, so for him, this was just another good dinner, outside the realm of the normal spaghetti casserole and rice & bean burritos)

Rasberry and Thyme Pork
4 (3 oz) pork medallions
canola oil
1/3 cup chopped red onion
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
3 tbsp orange juice
1/3 c raspberry preserves/jam
chopped fresh thyme to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Heat canola oil in saute pan. Saute pork in heated canola for 3 minutes. Turn pork over and saute the other side for an additional 3 minutes. Add red onion, vinegar and orange juice to pan and let cook for an additional 2 minutes. Add thyme, salt and pepper and continue cooking until pork is glazed.

I also steamed some fresh green beans, and used sea salt on both the pork and green beans (I love sea salt - it's so much better than regular salt, in my opinion!). Great dinner, and since our pork and green beans were on sale, it was cheap too!

Icicles Everywhere

Although it's still technically fall, winter is definitely here! We had a little bit of freezing rain over the weekend that made the roads slippery, but the ice started up again yesterday and has managed to coat everything. Luckily we haven't gotten the amounts that Oklahoma City and areas north and south of us have gotten. It's raining right now as the temps hold right at 32 degrees, so keep your fingers crossed that it waits until after rush hour tonight to freeze and turn into ice!

We thought we were in the clear waking up this morning - alarms, both the bedside and our cellphones (we were in preparation mode!) went off as usual. We turned on the TV to get the latest report, and saw just enough to learn that every school in the KC metro area is closed, the roads are wet but not too bad, and then the power went out. A minute or two later it came back on, stayed on for about 5 more minutes, and then shut off for good. We fumbled around the house, made sure our power line to our house and the electrical box were still up and functioning, and then started to get ready for work. About 45 minutes later, the power still hadn't come back and it was time to head out. Luckily, with the massive school closings, there was hardly anyone on the roads, so I made it to work in record time! Here's hoping that our power is back on when we get home, and we don't find two frozen solid pup-sicles inside! :)

Lazy but Productive Winter Weekend

We had my company's holiday party to attend Friday night. Much to our surprise, we had a pretty good time. Instead of the traditional hour long, state-of-the-company speeches given, the company decided to change tracks and instead spoke for about 5 minutes, then turned the back of the ballroom we were in into a "casino." Every person was given $5,000 in chips to play for about 2 1/2 hours. We figured we'd leave soon after dinner, but ended us staying until 11pm! It was a lot of fun for next to no money.

Saturday was pretty unproductive. We stayed around the house until about 2pm, when I decided it was time to drive a stretch of KC highway looking for possible store options. My family is looking to expand the sailboat store to KC, but since they live in St. Louis, I've been spending some time researching places and potential businesses for them. We had gotten freezing rain over Friday night and early Saturday morning, so we weren't out too long. We managed to stop and pick up some sand for the driveway and have a quick early dinner. We were thinking about going to the movies, but decided it was safer to stay in and watch a movie on TV.

I had decided last week that I wanted to start tackling the 3rd bedroom projects. It's now the only space in the house that we haven't touched since we moved in, other than throwing tons of boxes into. I had bought a tall bookcase and a shorter media storage to start, and found a great old desk last week for $16 that I plan on refinishing and using up there. Joe put together the bookcase and storage unit, while I started to unpacking probably 20 boxes of office supplies, books and movies. We still have some boxes left to unpack, but the room is at least not looking like a huge mess anymore! We haven't decided how to decorate the room, so I'm saving that for later - probably a spring or next summer project. For now, the goal is to have a functional office, and possibly second guest bedroom. We just need the guests! :)

Taking a Hiatus from Highlights

I am officially a brunette again. Yes, my hair frequently is dark enough to be called light brown, but I dyed it dark brown last night. Ok, I didn't actually do it. I went to the girl who has been cutting Joe's hair for the last year. I have been hair stylist shopping since coming to KC and decided it was time to try this girl. But anyway. It's a dark dark brown, probably as dark as my sister Jennifer's hair, and a little bit shorter (had to cut it too, of course). Oh, and did I mention that I love it! It catches me off-guard when I see myself in a mirror, but it's fun.

Amazing! It fits!

Last night I decided, in light of the weather forecast predicting a couple inches of snow, freezing rain and possibly ice, that it was high time to clean out the garage once and for all. We had it almost usable a month or so ago, but with all of the house projects ongoing, it became the storage unit for our old couches, old doors, wood from the door frames, etc. As soon as I got home, I started working on cleaning it up. I managed to drag the two old doors down to the basement, put some of the old wood in one of our trashcans, and the old door frames piled neatly in front of them. The lawn mower moved around to the back of the garage as well. I knew I wasn't going to be able to pull the couch to the basement by myself so I push it to the front wall of the garage, swept the whole thing out, and the proceeded, very cautiously I might add, to pull my car in. It is only a 1 car garage, and with bikes along the wall and all of the miscellaneous stuff in the back of the garage it was slightly scary but so fun at the same time!

Joe got home as I was pulling the car in, helped carry the couch to the basement and then I was able to pull my car all the way into the garage and close the garage door.

There have been a bunch of house projects that make living in the house seem so much more enjoyable, but I can't wait to have a nice dry, snow and ice free car in the mornings! (And yes, I'll share the garage with Joe.... sometimes! :) )

Updated House Pics

Ok, so it's been over a month since I posted last. I would ask where time went, but it was spent pulling the house together for the holidays!

Above is the before picture of our living room, with the seller's "staging" stuff. Below is now.

So far, we installed 6 recessed lights in the living room ceiling, as there wasn't any light in there before. We then painted the ceiling, walls and trim, replaced all of the light switches and recepticles, and installed new air vents. We also put up new faux wood blinds, but I don't have a good picture of those. We still have a lot of decorating to do (no pictures on the walls!) but we are loving it!

Dining room before:

Dining room after (with our first real Christmas tree!):

Same deal with this room. We painted the walls and trim (still have to finish painting all of the doors on the 1st floor, but that's a project for the winter). We replaced the light switches and recepticles, and changed out the air vents. We are still in need of a new chandelier and dining room table, but for now we just use the 6 ft. folding table in the corner.

Master Bedroom Before:


Master Bedroom After:

This was the 1st room we worked on, before we moved in. We painted the walls and trim and put up new faux wood blinds (they are the same as what we have in the living room, to give you an idea). I bought new lamps for the nightstand but am still looking for better lampshades. All of our new "big girl" furniture fits (barely!). Yes, that is a king sized bed! I wish we could have centered it under the window, but there is less than an inch of space between the nightstands, bed and walls, so there was no way it would happen! I am keeping an eye out for drapes or something to put up and help minimize the lopsided feel of that wall.


We haven't done any work to the bathroom or the kitchen yet, but they're on the future project list. I did get the funniest sign to hang in the kitchen, which I absolutely love!

Chill In the Air

It's definitely getting colder outside... I shouldn't be surprised, seeing as how November starts in a week. I just don't know where this summer went! It seems like we still have so many projects on our list of things to do, and now the focus is shifting to those projects that will just keep us warm and safe in the coming winter months.

Our 1 car garage is still too full of stuff to actually park a car inside, but I think this weekend we'll tackle that project, if for no other reason than I don't enjoy getting into a frosty cold car in the mornings! We also are planning on installing the other new garage door we bought, finish installing the door knobs and locks on the exterior doors, and putting up the fun garage organizer system Joe bought a few weeks ago. Definitely doesn't make for the most fun weekend ever, but it'll be nice to actually use the garage for the first time ever!

Cookie Decorating

I've always loved to bake, and last night I thought I was going to take my baking skills to a new level. I signed up for a cookie decorating class through the Junior League (which I joined this year to get more involved in the community and to meet people). The instructor showed us some great tips, most of which involved hints like "just walk through the aisles of your local Home Depot or Lowe's... you can find great unexpected things there!" Boo. I already spend too much time in those stores!

Regardless, after about half an hour of tips and instruction, she gave us each a half dozen cookies to start trying various techniques on. I have a newfound appreciation for real bakers! We were working with glacee icing, which is the kind that goes on rather runny and sticky but dries shiny and hard. It wasn't nearly as easy as it looked to trace an outline in icing and then "flood" the cookie with the runny icing ... and keep it all in place! I think I started getting the technique down towards cookie #3, when we learned techniques to add additional colors, make polka dots, hearts, tie-died designs, monograms, etc. My cookies definitely aren't going to win any awards, but I definitely had a good time and learned some great techniques that I'm sure I'll use in the future :)

weekend fun

Joe's firm takes turns working Saturdays, and this past weekend was his turn to work. I decided to make the most of my full day of decent weather and tackle another section of the very overgrown back yard. Some of the bushes/trees have died but are still in the ground, so I was trying to cut them back so we can eventually dig them up. Lucy and Molly had a blast chasing each other and trying to attack any squirrels that were dumb enough to venture into the yard. After about two hours of work, I had filled all of our yard waste bags (8) - and only covered a section of the propertly line approximately 10 feet long. It's simply amazing to me how much overgrowth there is!

As a reminder, to date, we've gone through 30 yard bags and only attacked about 1/4 of the yard....

I also managed to finish touching up the paint in our bedroom, hang the bedroom and closet doors I had taken down to paint last week, unpack some more boxes and get some laundry done. Doing laundry in our new machines is considerably more fun - the controls are electronic and remind me to have a great day at the end of the drying cycle. :)

Joe got home from work a little early and we managed to get the rest of the fence put back together. So we now have two new fences gates, one on either side of the yard, and some new fencing. We're almost done installing the door from the kitchen into the garage - just need to finish the trim and add the door knob/lock.

I took some pictures this weekend, and once I find my cord that connects my camera to the computer, I'll be sure to add them here.

Jello in the basement??

The seller had advised us that she had experienced water issues in one part of the basement. She also advised that she had fixed these problems by regrading and pouring a new concrete patio (sloping away from the house, of course) and waterproofing the stone walls in the problem area in the basement. We took her word. Shame on us.

Every time it rains, regardless of how much, the basement gets wet in this one particular corner. We couldn't figure out where it was coming from, and suspected an old pipe or cracks in the floor we couldn't see. Well, Sunday I was in the basement, admiring our new washer and dryer, when it started to rain. Figuring I had nothing better to do, I decided to sit and wait and see if I could watch where the water came from. A few minutes went by and nothing. I was about to tell myself this was a silly idea when a heard a faint pop, and with that, water starts running from underneath a wooden shelf in said problem corner! I call for Joe to come downstairs, and with that, I begin to notice there are tiny, nailhead sized holes in the waterproofing, and water is now literally spouting out of these holes! Not a slow trickle, mind you - shooting out of these holes. Think small fountain. I figure this is the best time to try and document the problem and run upstairs to grab a sharpee marker and start noting all of the active holes that are leaking, so when the walls dry, we'll be able to see the problems.

Joe decided to take the idea one step further.

Why just mark the hole, when you can mark the stream of water? With that, he goes upstairs, returns moments later with a box of strawberry jello powder, and starts throwing the powder at the wet walls. Sure enough, we start to have red streaks of water now running down our walls. After using the entire box, we realized what a mess we created, although it's quite obvious where the walls leaked! Now we have a sweet, strawberry smelling basement corner... and are hoping the dogs don't go down and lick up all of our evidence!

First Real Dinner

I decided it was time to actually try out the kitchen in our new house, now that we're finally starting to get settled. Joe was working late last night, so after I got home and walked the dogs, I ran up to the grocery store to get everything I would need. I decided to try a couple of new recipes, Provolone and Sundried Tomato Bread, and Tomato Sausage Penne. It took longer than I had expected, as I'm trying to get used to the range and oven (it cooks very differently than the one at our last apartment!). Everything turned out great though.... and the recipe that said it fed 6-8 people easily could have fed a small army! We had enough left over for at least 2-3 more meals for both of us!

By the time we finished eating and cleaned up the kitchen, it was almost 10, but Joe had started hanging the new faux wood blinds we purchased for our bedroom. So he finished hanging those (we've had naked windows now for 2 weeks!) by about 11pm, and we finally went to bed. There's still a ton left to do on our immediate project list - more work for me tonight!