Excitement for the silverwares

Yesterday we went out to find a closet organizer for Mike. We found some square dealies at home depot, and then went to Bed Bath and Beyond (we dont have many options here, people) and found silverware, finally. We also picked up a towel rack that mounts to the side of the kitchen rack. Here are some pics:


Aahhh, finally. We have had just 3 forks for the longest time.. This set was super cheap but it doesnt seem like it will fall apart. It is service for 12, plus a 5 piece serving set. Then I found out later it came with a bonus of 12 each of salad forks and teaspoons. I dont know what I will do with all of it! So I had a coupon and it came out to 48! Woo!


Some of the serving part of it.


I think I forgot to tell you guys I had to contact paper ALL of our shelves and cabinets, they were raw wood and so gross. It made me feel 110% better about putting dishes and cotton balls (bathroom too) in these things.


Heres Mikes closet storage solution. Still messy but at least organized.

Sigh!

We got all our stuff moved in last Thursday and Friday, thanks to friends letting us use their truck. We were desperate to get it done before Saturday because we were due for some snowy and messy weather.

Trying to organize everything has been both easy and difficult, depending on the room. My biggest challenge is that this house is much bigger than our old one, so there is a lot of empty, echoing space. I love empty spaces, but when acoustics become affected, you know its time to do something!

The other challenge is being comfortable in a new place, and getting secure feelings.. which is especially hard now because my workplace was burgled Monday night. The building itself was broken into and our office was either open while the cleaning people were there, or left open. Either way we didn't lose anything super valuable, but it still makes you want to barf all over. I'm lucky to have great neighbors in this new place, and it seems like we would all watch out for each other.

On a different note, I ate chicken 2 times this weekend, which is really something for me. Other than a few test-tasting niblets here and there and thanksgiving turkey, I really have not eaten any meat in 11 years. I have been wanting to get back into it, but its hard, and I don't know that I could ever do red again. I want to start because I am always so hungry and nothing seems to placate me. I feel like my body is craving protien. Anyways, the chicken was good on both accounts and now I want to start cooking it myself.

I have not been able to knit all this time either, because my hands are made of sandpaper from constant cleaning (not to mention cleaning fingerprinting dust yesterday, how messy!) and being dehydrated. Hopefully things can settle down soon and I can get some relaxing work in.

To finish off, heres some little progress pics. Its hard to get a good looking picture when there is still so much crap everywhere!


A picture of the southeast corner of the mudroom before we put stuff in there. I was in awe of how much like a room this room turned out to be. It was so gross before.


Heres the other end.


Here it is with some of our bikes hanging up and crap everywhere.


This shot is of the front room, but more for the tv stand aspect than anything else. We ordered it online from Ikea, since there is no Ikea nearby surprisingly... We used to have a huge entertainment center that dominated the room. Now the room is open and airy. Can you believe the wall color in this room is the same as the mudroom? It came out looking much more white in here.



Action shots of Mike putting in shoe moulding.

Here's the really crappy old showerhead they had in the bathroom. It had no pressure and was leaky.


And here's the fabulous new one, with lots more pressure and settings and no leakiness..


The same story for the kitchen faucet. We didn't replace any faucet yet, just the aerator. But at least now the water doesn't dribble on to the dishes and splash everywhere.




This sweet kitchen cart was found at home depot on sale. I needed somewhere to put my spices and also a place to store dog food. I was positive I would need to buy a new bin for dog food to fit in this thing, but it fits snugly. I just keep salts and other commonly used spices on the 1st shelf and everything fits great! It even has a butcher block top, and it has a knife holding slot. Woo!


I doubt these colors look right on screen, but heres the colors of our bathroom. Remember it used to be yellow, maroon and blue? wtf? Now we have blue and grey. The grey is especially nice, it has a twinge of brown in it and it makes it more earthy and less cold.

I would imagine that the most finished room is the back guest bedroom. Here's what we got so far:



Ok now on to more organizing..

Deep V Neck Vest, complete

I finally got around to sewing in all the ends and blocking. The vest grew slightly in the arms and back with blocking, but it is still wearable to me. I am so happy this is finished. The part that bothers me though, is I freaked out and bought 2 extra skeins of each color as I was mid-knit, and I ended up not needing them. I wonder if the yarn store will take them back without a receipt? They weren't expensive... I guess the yarn could make some good house socks.

We have a cloudy snowy day today, but here are all the pics that were decent:






I can't wait to see the photo possibilities in the new house. Some great light comes in there!

I painted the front room as well as most of the dining room and have paint for the bathroom. I'll post pics soon of that. Mike is almost done with the tile, he had to re-adhere a few that came loose, then once that dries he can grout. We were thinking to move a bunch of stuff in this weekend, but we will see. Now that there is snow on the ground (which should probably be gone by tomorrow), I'd rather wait until it was dry.

Otherwise I have some sleeves started for Bella Paquita and I am excited about getting that one done too.

The new knitty is up and I am digging a few patterns, especially Yosemite. That may have to be on my list soon.

So much done, so much to do still.

The floors are nearly finished! Mike just missed a spot in the front room, which he will finish up tomorrow. Otherwise those will be done.

Besides that, I have been painting, and I finally convinced Mike to tear out the mud room carpet, which really really grossed me out and smelled too. He found some slate tile for DIRT CHEAP and decided it would be perfect for that room.

Here is a refresher of what the floor looked like before. It was filled with animal hair and stains, and I wouldn't be surprised if the washer or sink had leaked on it at some point.


Here is Mike laying down the new tile. Once it is all grouted it will be perty!


Yummy looking thinset adhesive. It looks like a tub of marshmallow.


Here are 2 of the rooms I've painted so far:

Front bedroom. A nice mellow yellow color that goes well with the woods and the sunlight.


Here is the 2nd bedroom. The color isn't quite right in the picture. The wall opposite of the window is going to be a darker compliment green, which I'll do later.

We also moved the refrigerator to its rightful place in the kitchen instead of the mud room. I think they never brought it in because the doors had to come off to fit through the doorway, and then the outlets before were not grounded.

We will move the washer and dryer back into the mud room later.

He also removed the little slop sink in the mud room. It didn't seem like we would use it and it would save a lot of space to not have it there. It was also leaking and a pain in the butt.

I took a picture of the nice mormon tea bush growing next to the dining room windows, not sure if I did already:


And then yesterday I noticed some sprouty stuff, which is probably tulips, growing around the house.

I've never grown them before, do you have to do anything special? Dig them up? Divide them? Do you just leave them alone and they come back??

As a salute to our horrible diets as of the last few weeks, I present Cheese Straws:

Ingredients: 6 oz cheese, 3/4 cup of flour, a dash of red pepper, and a half stick of butter. MM MMM.

Some knitting!

I bound off the last stitch of the Deep V Neck Vest today and couldn't help myself, and had to try it on. Here it is unblocked and unwoven.

Sorry for the flash!

Slammer talking


Little sprouties. The sage leaves are coming out!

Polyurethaning

Urethaned vs. unfinished.
It looks like it might just match the kitchen floors!


Mike in action.

In other news, I spent an immense amount of time cleaning out the freezer and refrigerator, and wiping the walls we aren't going to paint. I also wiped down most every inch of woodwork in that house. Hopefully I got all the sawdust and the old tenants animal hair. Ew.

Not to mention shop vacc'ing a million times and mopping raw wood. My back hurts.

Oh I have 1 row left on the neckline of the Deep V Neck vest, and the arm edging and I will be done! So lazy!

We have nice neighbors

The whole weekend plus friday was spent sanding down the floors. I think we just have a few corners to do with a palm sander, but otherwise thats done! Now to the polyurethane.. mmm.


Saturday the neighbors from across the street all marched over and gave us brownies and the little boy wrote a cute card to us with their names so we don't forget. I felt bad, he wanted to know if we had kids for him to play with. I told him not yet, but we do have a fun dog! Oh well.

Everyone on that block seems to be really great. We even met some people a block north of us who also have a greyhound and like to do fun stuff. They in turn introduced us to ANOTHER couple with a greyhound who ALSO likes to do fun stuff. I am feeling better about moving to a block I was unsure about a month ago.

I promised to share the outlet covers and stuff so here they are in all their glory..




Mike likes to sneakily take pictures of my butt while I'm edge sanding. Grr!

House work

On Wednesday, Mike replaced all the two-prong outlets with grounded ones, and replaced the outlet and light switch covers to a prettier option. We don't have pictures of that yet, so here is the more exciting stuff.

Well, we discovered the carpet was not in such good shape---the people had quite the amount of animals, and lots of throw rugs too. Apparently those were for the pee stains..

Since we knew there was decent hardwood floor under the carpet, Mike tore out all the carpet on Thursday, and Friday rented an orbital sander. Though it was getting some stuff off, it wasnt really getting us the white color we wanted. If you remember, the kitchen floors were already refinished and looked like this:



Here is what the rest of the house pretty much looked like, except more red. The floors didn't have much contrast with the trim woodwork.

So today Mike rented a drum sander, and it tore that red right off!

See the difference?

In other news, this morning I took a pretty neat "Women's Survival Lecture" that the Department of Wildlife held for free. It was pretty informative, especially for being free and seeing the amount of time they had to lecture. I also got to learn some cool new ways to start fires. They are having a beginning Turkey Hunter class, I was wondering if I should sign up... though I've never ever seen a turkey here. Michigan and Wisconsin were the only places!