A list of all the stuff we found in the bonus room

...mainly in the stuff Scott's parents brought for us to go through. Though we do have an entire chest left to go through... another time. I know for a fact there's a Kids Sports Illustrated w/ Andre Agassi on the cover in there.

1. 3 Starting Lineup figures in the box. 2 Cal Ripkens (worth some serious money, but apparently he's pulling a 40-year old virgin and wants to keep them.) and a Scottie Pippen. Worth $20. Will sell that one...but that's chump change compared to Ripken.
   
2. A buttload of trophies. Including a Third Place plaque for "Computer Problem Solving". It's going beside my Third Place trophy for age 26-30 women in the Myrtle Beach 5k. Booya, nobody beats us! Except for 1st and 2nd.
   
3. Scott's elementary school writings. I particularly liked "Eagles vs Colts", which was dedicated to his uncle for "getting the tickets." It was a suspenseful, true story of the Eagles losing to the Colts. "We were so mad," Scott says. "And then they drove home and slept on the way." Another great one was "Dodgers vs Yankees", which was dedicated to the Dodgers. The dedications were the best part, another one was dedicated to "Kelly and Seven." Yes, Seven. (Sorry Steve, we figured you were just a baby so you probably didn't realize anyway.)
   
4. Right after we found a dead silverfish, we found a wrapped up bundle of sheep's wool in a "PA Agriculture Education" folder. Awesome.
   
5. An itemized list of all the baseball cards he owned and their value. I guess he thought a good place to store such valuable items was beside some gross sheep's wool? The other cool thing about the list was that it was printed on that old computer paper that stayed connected. It did have the holes ripped off though :)
   
6. A magic trick involving a disappearing coin. Very magical!
   
7. Jamie had a suitcase containing the following items: Wedding dress, photos, and teddy bears... Surprise!
8. We have a glow in the dark baseball (in a case) that is signed by.... some Harrisburg Senator. Yeah.... I snuck that one into the trash.
   
9. A kush ball! Smarty was confused about this one... she kept playing with it but then got annoyed because one of the nodes was always poking her in the eye. It was quite humorous.
10. Lisa Frank stickers. *hangs head*
    

We spent a good chunk of the weekend in there... yesterday I had a major cold issue. I hesitate to say it was anything serious or contagious just because I've been sick (sinusy... super fun stuff) for a few weeks off and on which is probably pregnancy related. But, nonetheless, it was unpleasant and put me out of commission for most of the day. And today Scott wasn't feeling so hot so I was on bonus room duty. Somehow, we finished most of it, just a few more things he has to do - like move some big/heavy things up or down and pound some nails into the wall. I'm not "authorized" to do that.

Personal achievement: I managed to consolidate all of my books to ONE bookshelf. I think I'm truly transitioning from a book owner/hoarder to a community book user. I now love the Wake County Library system and combined with the NC State lib I'm able to get much of what I want when I want it. I have about 2 dozen books to list on paperbackswap in the next few days so hopefully I'll get them out of here and get some fun new books. PBS is like library-lite. I really do love not wasting money purchasing books... when I was a big buyer I'd buy so many I ended up not really liking or wanting to even read in the first place. I'm really bad with impulse book buys... now if it's an impulse I just take it back in 2 weeks! What took me so long to get on board w/ this!?

Who is 28 weeks pregnant (already)?

Me... omg.


Into the 3rd trimester - wow that sounds scary. We have exciting times ahead... going home next weekend! Time flies, anyone can tell you this. But when you find out you're pregnant the first week in May, January 8th sounds a world a way. And depending on my mood, sometimes it still does. Maybe because it's in 2010 it adds to the far-away-ness of it. But dude, it's 3ish months away. That is all. And they're starting to put Christmas stuff in stores and all I know is Christmas = almost there.

We're making progress though... we painted the nursery and Scott put the furniture together...

And this weekend, we're tackling the bonus room. This is the room that since we moved in 6 months ago has been the go-to... "oh, just throw it in the bonus room." It's shameful, we still have (shudder) unpacked boxes. I've been pretty awesome at acquiring random baby things from all of the fabulous consignment sales Raleigh has. Things like an Exersaucer for $10, and a Bumbo for $12 (thanks Heather!). Which is all fabulous, but they live in a big pile in the bonus room. And I haven't even had my showers yet. So that's the benchmark: let's clear that out before we get ANYTHING ELSE.

It'll probably be last in line for our home renovations, as it makes a fantastic playroom. It's one of those things - it has very excellent carpet that is just not old enough for us to get rid of. BUT... it's plaid. It's not terrible (not like the bathroom wallpaper terrible) so we think we can live with it for a few years. And maybe it's actually good bc then we can just say - Ok Kids, don't worry if you mess up the carpet. :) And someday when the kids are older we can make the bonus room into a sweet movie theater (Scott's dream...not mine. Oh well, he just painted a room pink, I'll let him have it for now.)



My GOD, I wish it still looked like that.

What's that you say?

... the nursery fan HAS a dimmer???

OMG, I wish I was joking. Yesterday, when I was going to turn off the fan, I inadvertently held the button in too long. My jaw drops as the light, instead of going off, grows dimmer. Whhhhaaaa?

If you haven't visited our house, or have forgotten this teeny part of the one teeny room, here's what the super space-age light switch looks like:


We usually point it out when giving home tours... and I swear, each time we find a new function. The seemingly silly part is the up/down thinger you see is for the fan speed. And all the buttons along the left side are for the fan speed. Only by holding the big button in do you get the dimming function. It's the weirdest thing ever, and we've been living here for almost 5 months and just yesterday discovered this.

This is the mixed blessing of a new home that's actually quite old: we have a dimmer, woohoo. But it's a lame switch so is it even useful? If we accidentally turn the light on FULL BLAST and wake the baby, does that defeat the purpose? These are weighty questions... and I'm not allowed to have enough coffee to really think about them so early.

So What, I'm Still a Rock Star/I wanna start a fight

Sometimes I feel like this is my theme song. When I'm running, though I'm sure Scott would refer you to the "Na-na-na-na I wanna start a fight" part. Since he told me "I know you're all pregnant or *whatever*". I'll get to that part :)

First off, this song by Pink always jazzes me up so much when I'm running. Especially now that I'm knocked up and running all slow and feeling like each run could be my last. It's empowering, bc it says "I'm still a rock star." That's just the sort of thing I want to hear when I'm running, motivational and simultaneously a tad cocky. And while I know it's not like a SUPER mega rock star, running 2 miles at 22 weeks is way more than I ever thought I could or would want to do. And whatever, if I want to be a little cocky about that, I will. Cause I'm a rock star. And I don't neeeed you...

So, oh yeah, the "I wanna start a fight" part. It's not a serious marital spat or anything, just a point of disagreement we had yesterday concerning the nursery fan. You might recall, there is a fan in EVERY ROOM of our house. Which is great, energy saving wise. I'm okay with the FAN part. I'm not saying blindly rip down all the fans (a la Trading Spaces, circa 2000). But, they annoy me because they have lights on them. And look like this:
I crouched down to where I estimate the crib mattress will be, so I'm doing an impression of a baby. And I'd just hate for our child's first words to be "Ooooh, my EYES! Turn off the damn light." Cause we have the same light over our own bed and those are my last word every night :). And I was trying to get my point across yesterday when I was told I was "all pregnant or *whatever*" and might have said it'd make the child blind. I mean, I'm no opthomologist, but that is some bright light action that can't be good for the newborn retina. Or cornea... whatever.

In all seriousness, my point is it's TOO BRIGHT and the way the light shines down is just not nice. At all. I originally wanted to just take off the light part and put a cap overtop, keeping the fan. Now I kind of want a new fan, one that has a light that looks like this:


(and for those of you who might live in PA where all the ceilings are gloriously smooth, this is what popcorn ceilings look like. You can contrast it to the smooth beauty underneath the scary ceiling fan.)

So, that's my point. And I'm not saying it's a NECESSITY, but a dimmer would also help a lot.

If anyone is so brave as to weigh in, I'd love some internet opinions. "We're all gonna get in a FIGHT!!!"

Before/After of Master Bath

Well, the new paint is certainly working out well for us, we're loving it. I threw in 3 "befores" just in case the heinousness of the wallpaper had been forgotten. I haven't forgotten, but you know.





After! We decided to leave the brass hardware, with the hopes to doing a double sink (and probably a new vanity bc theres no room for the second sink w/ the drawers, etc), miror and cooler faucets. We spraypainted the fug brass & glass light fixtures black. Also, we did white light switch covers & outlet covers and put in brushed nickel doorknobs.




So, like it?

Thoughts on the Master Bath

So, more or less, the master bath project is done. It was a long weekend goal to finish it, and, well, we got it done by Wednesday. It just kept going and going. So, the moral of this is I haven't yet done a good thorough cleaning of the bathroom, and once I do that this weekend I'll post some pictures. Taking down wallpaper is perhaps the messiest thing I've ever been part of - no matter how dilligent you try to be with picking up as you go, there are little bits of paper stuck everywhere.

Anyway, we're VERY proud of how it turned out!

During all of the wallpaper removal, we came to refer to the previous owner as Effing Brian. Because we get the feeling that Effing Brian liked to do a lot of stuff in the house himself, and let me tell ya, it was painfully obvious EB did the wallpaper himself. And didn't do it right, at that. It was hard work taking it all down, but it did make it a little better to curse his name and blame it on someone who wasn't there to defend himself. Stupid Brian.

Wanna hear some other wierdness from Effing Brian? During the walk through, we noticed one of the upstairs bedrooms had the doorknob on backwards, like with the lock on the outside. Uhhhh, Veird. And, along those same lines, EVERY door has a locking knob in the house, INCLUDING the pantry & coat closet. Seriously? The pantry? That's all I can think of actually right now. Scott also says he liked to strip out screws. God, hate that Brian.

Hey Master Bath...

Enjoy your last day w/ wallpaper, bc after this weekend, it'll be GONE! :) That is what we'll be doing this weekend, taking down this monstrosity. Wish us luck...



And though I don't know if it's fair, I think this wallpaper is making me hate the entire concept of wallpaper... And I've only spent about an hour taking down a small portion of this bathroom already.

We have Interwebs at the new house!

Woohoo! :) And all of our stuff...

So, Smarty is slowly adjusting to live in the new house...one that is substantially larger, with creaky steps and hardwood floors (not nearly as comfy as carpet!) The first day and a half she was hiding and when we'd pick her up to show her her new palace she was *shaking*... very weird. Unlike any behavior we've ever seen from her. At one point on moving day she was totally MIA for like 3 hours, turned out she was head first INSIDE the fireplace. She had soot on her little white chin :( Her new hiding place is a little safer & I assume quieter - in our closet (CARPET!) under our clothes.

(hopefully this image shows up... it's from my iphone and I've been working on figuring out how to use those images in blogposts...)

But, as this picture shows, she's slowly getting bolder and more curious... last night I was here alone and putting away our clothes and stuff and she kept kind of wandering in and out of the room...still very uneasy and freaking out at the smallest sound but at least not cowering in the closet! Progress!

This house is definitely *louder*... something that must be very different for Smarty. The creaky stairs cannot be understated...they're quite loud, and there aren't really ways to ascend or descend without sounding like an elephant. We hear this might be a challenge once there's a baby to wake up. Because, he/she WILL be woken up with these steps.

Another long day of unpacking ahead of us... I have to somehow fit schoolwork in today as well (something I've neglected for 2 days now...) I also have the goal of making dinner in the new kitchen tonight. Woohoo!

The work we've done:

Lord knows I don't have anything better to do... so I'll post some pics of our remodeling week. :)

Here's the obligatory first pic of us in front of our new home. :)
First up is the OFFICE.
Before:

After! The wall is Pinniped (Martha Stewart color...) and I thought it'd be more gray/brown, but it has a definite purple hue to it. But I'm ok w/ it, it's not too girly or anything.

Now... the Master Bedroom! Was boring white...


Now it's "Chive" :) It's the same color we painted the bedroom at our townhouse, but we really liked it and had a bucket leftover... even though it took two buckets. Oh well!


Guest Bedroom (downstairs)
Before:
After! It DOES still have the nasty brassy fan, but we're working on replacing that. Love the way this one turned out!


And lastly, the downstairs bathroom/guest bathroom. You'll surely remember this gorgeous wallpaper and drapery!

And... the AFTER! :) (I'm REALLY excited about how this one turned out, if you can't tell!


MASTER PAINTER! :) (Though, I did a lot of priming and coats of white in the bathroom too!)

Packing

Isn't our girl just the cutest? We feel so negligent... she's been spending so much time alone at the "old house" while we're spending our evenings at the new house. We keep telling her it'll be worth it, and she'll have so much space to herself, a screened in porch and a special closet for her bathroom, but she doesn't quite get it yet. When we get home late at night she's pretty much got a one track mind: FOOOOOOOOD! FEEEEEED MEEEE!

And she does love being inside cupboards, especially empty ones that have been packed up :)

(See, I'm packing!)

House Progress & I *heart* Jersey Mike's

The first weekend in our home ridiculously tiring and long... yet wonderful. Scott and I made some definite headway in our ambitious first week plans on the new house. We still have a long week ahead of us until the movers show up 9am on Friday, but I actually feel like maybe we can get there?

Our goal is to do one room at a time, and to COMPLETE that room before moving on to other rooms... like do all of the little and big improvements at once.

So here's the list and our progress. I'm hoping to get pictures up this week sometime...because I'm really proud & happy w/ how it all turned out!

-Paint the master bedroom (check), replace light switches & outlets w/ white (tonight), replace doorknobs (check).
-Master Closet: Replace brass knobs on built-in stuff (check), replace light fixture (tonight?), replace doorknob (check).
-Office: paint one wall (check) and do the outlets & doorknob (this week)
-Guest Bedroom: paint walls (check) and trim (half done), do outlets & lightswitch. We also need to do SOMETHING about the ceiling fan in there bc OMG it's so ugly. :)

So, long week ahead of us, but I also do feel that the more we can get done before all of our stuff gets there, the happier we'll be.

One awesome discovery of the weekend: I love Jersey Mike's. And Scott is eating his heart out bc at random times over the past, oh, 6 months he'd be suggesting places we could go get dinner and say Jersey Mike's and I'd be like..."meh". I'd eaten there once and just thought it wasn't that special. Well, for some reason I agreed to go there Saturday and wouldn't shut UP about how good my sub was. I think the only thing I said the whole time we were eating it was some variation of "Oh man, this is so good." Just so you know, a #7, Mike's Way? Life changing. (Or maybe we were just really hungry!) We totally had the same thing for lunch the next day.

TIRED!

One day in and we're totally drained... this could be a very long weekend! Or... 30 years.

Yesterday went well, we signed the obligatory 893 papers and initialed here, here and here. We spent the entire afternoon and evening at the house painting and getting paint on the bottoms of our feet and tracking it around the upstairs. Good times. Our new neighbors Cara & Steve brought the Welcome Wagon pizza & beer over in the evening, which was just what we needed. (I should make it clear it's not an official WW effort, they are existing friends that now happen to be our neighbors! Woohoo!)

Some highlights:

• My feet are KILLING me today because I was walking around barefoot on the hardwood. Didn't realize that would happen...
  
• We painted the master bedroom the exact same color our current master is, and somehow needed two buckets for this room where as the old room only needed one. How fun. ;)
  
• We're trying to replace the lightswitches & outlets... but we have aluminum wiring. Does anyone know how to do this w/ out burning down the house and/or electrocuting yourself? Seriously, if anyone has any advice, please email me!
• Yesterday we worked hard, we really did, but we also were dumb in that we didn't stay hydrated and well fed... must stay on top of that today.
  
• Today we get our fridge! Making the above point a little easier...
  

Today we're heading over there in a little... grabbing some paint for the guest room/Quiggy Suite (as it is now called)... We're also addressing the very important issue of the wallpaper this morning. I have this wallpaper tool that's been loaned to me that looks a little scary :)

Thanks for all the well-wishes & posts on facebook! :)

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow we sign on our new house! :) Sorry I've been a bit MIA this week... lots going on. And of course, my old stand-bys for blog topics - books & recipes - not so much doing either of those things lately! We've boxed up a lot of our stuff, and the plan is to get in there tomorrow and paint, paint, paint!! We're moving our stuff the following Friday, the 27th. Or I should say movers will be moving our stuff (and no, not the ones who asked our size in my last post!)

Of course, we're super excited. I keep telling myself this is really happening... it all happened so fast. Which is good, bc I'm generally not a patient person.

Hopefully I'll have some fun pictures after the weekend to share.

Approved!

On to closing!

You want to talk about an arduous task, try applying for a loan when you both have jobs and good credit. Maybe someday I'll write about the insanity that was our loan hoop-jumping! I'm afraid the loan industry has gone from offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to anyone with a pulse to making it overwhelmingly hard for qualified people. :)

But for now... Yay! Time to pack, buy a fridge and mooooove!

Dollar Bills

So, in an effort to scrounge every available dollar we can find, I've been listing (and re-listing, and re-re-listing) some stuff we don't need or want on Craig's List. I have such a love/hate relationship with this site... I recently sold my old cellphone (Motorola Razr) for $40! I was SHOCKED it could bring in that kind of money, being nearly 3 years old, but who am I to say no to two crisp 20's? That's the "love" part... it's all roses once you get the cash and don't have to deal w/ the junk anymore.

But, (here's the "hate") it is such a pain, because I received "inquiry" emails from about 10 people before finding the chick who was willing to drive from Hillsborough and meet me to get the Razr. And (not to generalize, but) all of the emails I've received in response to technology related postings have been in this vein: (This is a direct copy/paste)

Do you still have this phone

(no punctuation or salutation) Wow...um... ok? But you know what? I do it, because I like money. :) I also like getting rid of stuff we don't need or like.

It's time consuming, and probably not the most efficient system, but it's what we have now. Hopefully in a few years there will be a much more efficient way of doing this! But for now, we're enjoying having a little extra (just a little) cash.

I'm currently listing the first two Twilight books for $15. I'm curious how that'll go...

Snippet of a conversation Scott and I keep having, and it continually amuses us...(we, like most people, use credit cards for EV.ERY.THING, including the $1.99 cup of coffee.)

J: (takes out a $20 and looks at it quizzically) S, what do you think this is?
S: (furrows brow and ponders) Hmmm, I'm not sure... is it some sort of paper you can write notes on it? What's with all the green ink on it? Is that a picture on it?
J: I'm not sure, I don't see these sorts of papers too often. What are we supposed to do with it?
S: (takes $20 from J and examines it) It seems old.

(and on an on.) I'm so glad we have each other to have nonesense interactions with... I'm not sure that many people would continue to humor me as well as Scott does (and vice versa, of course!)

Ok, now they're all up :)

On Flickr
Feedback on decorating/painting/remodeling is truly welcome! :)

Full set of house pics!

So yesterday we had our home inspection! It was nice to spend some quality time in the new house, and "get to know" it :) I took a buttload of pictures, and I uploaded a few before the flickr uploader crapped out on me this morning. I intend to do the rest tonight.

So, interweb, take a look at these pics. They have captions and I'd love feedback on any type of suggestions you might have. Other than "Your house looks like a barn"... that's just not productive. :)

Picture Time (Check back this weekend for the full 113 picture set - right now it's just landscaping.)

And also...
Scott and I are also having an back and forth that goes like this:

J: "I think we should use mulch on the landscaping"
S: "OMG, you're so dumb. We should use pinestraw."
J: "OMG, YOU'RE the dumb one. Pinestraw is for losers."
(ETC... on and on into infinity.)

Thoughts are welcome on this topic too. Likely we'll just agree to disagree and let the yard fall into disarray. And then the 'hood will petition for our removal. (Sigh.)

...Our New HOME!

We'll be living in a house with a hat! We got a fabulous deal, and we feel really good about our new home. It grew on us the more we saw it, and hopefully that continues when we live there. We have tons to do in between now and then, including NEVER BUYING ANYTHING EVER AGAIN. :) Which could actually be a challenge since it's 2890 sf. Good deal... if anyone is giving away any furniture, holler at us.

Now, before you look at these, realize that everything will be painted (ahem Master Bath ahem).



We noticed that they DID take down this wallpaper border at some point in between the MLS pics and today. HOT wallpaper. Seriously... this will be painted .2 seconds after closing.

The GLORIOUS yard. I love it...
Some other features we liked were: intercom (yeah! 1967!), a kitty door for Smarty's litter box, screened in porch, totally awesome wooden swingset, downstairs guest bedroom, the biggest bonus room ever! We just really fell in love with it over time... it did not happen immediately. I think most definitely the kitchen is our first project.

To celebrate today, we had Kraft Mac & Cheese for dinner and a can of Miller Lite. Cause we're high rollers now that we're homeowners. :)