Attic Insulation

Our house is old, which means our insulation is old and THIN. Not quite the R-39 attic insulation depth recommended for our region. With Home Depot's free insulation blower with 20 bag green insulation purchase, we decided it was the perfect time to purchase some more before winter hits. We needed 40 bags, or $215 worth of Green Fiber insulation (the recycled, none glass kind). It took all of 3 trips to the hardware store (one for the insulation and a second/third trip to pick up/drop off the machine) and about 6 hours worth of time to get the job done. You need one person to be outside feeding the blocks of insulation into the machine...

And a second person up in the attic, with a mask and eye protection, spraying the insulation to the desired depth...

To top it off, we qualify for a small energy tax credit since we didn't quite max out the tax credit from our windows!

Hopefully we will see a difference in our electricity bills this winter.

Camp Ground Cemetary

Not far from our house is a small civil war cemetery. It's so close we can walk to it. It is one of my favorite places to walk Cove too, especially in the fall when the leaves are changing...

It is so old most of the headstones are too weathered to read and falling over...

There is also a huge fallen tree that no one has cared to get rid of...

For some reason that cemetery feels really peaceful.

On the way home we made Cove take a picture by a fire hydrant that matched her scarf...

I guess not all dogs like fire hydrants, because she sure doesn't look happy ; )

Little Porch Action

As I blogged here, our porch wasn't the prettiest...

So we put in a little elbow grease and stripped all the old layers of paint off...

Then we used a little Quikrete semi-transparent concrete stain...

To get a much smoother, rocky gray look (New England Slate)...

(Little tip if you are thinking about using concrete stain...purchase a small paint sprayer that attaches to an air compressor...our first coat we rolled, and you could see every roller stroke when it dried.)

Our front part of our porch was looking a little rough too. We had actually waterproofed the porch when we first moved in, but two years later it was looking like this...

So I got down on my knees and rolled on a fresh coat of ceder colored waterproofer...

As you can see, it was a BIG difference!

Ahhhh....finally, a porch ready for fall!

Last Lake Weekends

A few memories from our last weekends with the family at the lake before fall...

Gma doing the Gma does best- fishing...

Brandon taking our niece Emarea on a Seadoo ride...

Brandon tipping Emarea into the water (don't worry she still LOVES her some Seadoo)...

Jacque giving Cove some attention...

Cove taking advantage of the attention and deciding she can be lap dog...

My mother in law is WAY TOO nice, exactly why I love her!

Counting down the days until next summer...

Quick Fix

Ever pile stuff on top of your fridge? Ours happens to be right inside the doorway, so Cove's leash and our bread usually ends up on top of it...

I decided it was time to find something to put Cove's leash in. I ended up picking up two baskets, about the same color as our cabinets, from our local Wally World...

They aren't the greatest, but they conceal our top-of-the-refrigerator piles : )

Weekend Plans

We decided to take advantage of the nice weather this weekend and stain our porch with that fancy concrete stain stuff. It really needs a face lift...

Our front door was also in desperate need of a new, darker paint color. In case you couldn't tell, our dog is a  door jumper on-er....

I took advantage of my 1-9pm shift last week, and prepped...

and painted...

the front door. The paint color is Cooper Adobe Brown from the Valspar collection at Lowe's. I've now decided that I don't like the door window trim white, so I plan on painting it too when I put the second coat on today.

Stay tuned for the front porch stain reveal after the weekend!

Random Happenings Part 2

Brandon and I decided we should find a dog park to take Cove to a couple weeks ago. She has actually only played with our families dogs, and never really been to a dog park. We were lucky, and actually found one only 5-10 minutes drive away from our house. It took her a good 30 minutes or so to really warm up, but we think she enjoyed it!

When we were looking for the dog park, we came across a wild life reserve with a trail running through it. We decided to go back over the weekend and take a little hike around the trail. It was such a nice trail I think we may go back on our bikes sometime for fun too!

Finally, my dad bought us tickets to a Royals game last week. The new stadium remodel is AWESOME to say the least. Even though they lost, we still had a blast! Thanks Dad...

I still can't believe summer is almost over!

Lesson Learned

What happens when you don't have a dryer vented to the outside of your house? The dryer causes humidity, and the humidity causes MOLD. Think about the outside of a loaf of bread that got hidden in you cabinet for couple months looking mold. You know, the bluish green mold that grows in circular patterns. This is the kind of mold I discovered on the bottom side of our lower shelves in our storage room while I was down there organizing our stuff. NOT OKAY, HUH?! Here is a little break down of what we had to do to take car of our problem.

FIRST, Brandon tackled the cause of the problem by drawing up these plans...

to build this...

finally allowing our dryer to vent to the outside of our house.

THEN, I took all of of lower shelves outside and gave them a good bath of bleach, let them dry in the sun, and then covered them up in a thick coat of KILLZ...

FINALLY, we made an all important purchase...

Yep, our very own dehumidifier. Why oh why, did we not buy one of these in the first place?!

Sweet Organization

So, what does one do when they only have to work 40 hours a week? I been using my time to condense and get organized. Since finishing pharmacy boards, I have organized...

2 closets
4 dressers
1 storage room
1 desk
3 boxes of childhood memorabilia
and every single kitchen cabinet

This may seem a bit trivial, but turning something that looks like this...

into something that looks like this...

makes me HAPPY.
I think my local thrift store is a tad bit happy with my 4 trunk loads of stuff to donate as well.

Random Happenings

Sometimes taking pictures of life events just plain skips my mind. Take for instance my best friend Shelby coming into town to visit for the weekend (the best friend whom I maybe get to see once a year if I'm lucky). We spend the whole weekend together and some how end up with NO pictures! The only thing I have to remember our weekend together is a pic I snapped afterwards to show her what I did with her gift she gave me...

Also, Brandon and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary. We dressed up and went to a fancy dinner at V's. Do I have a picture of us all dressed up? Do I have a picture of our delicious prime rib dinner? No. I have one picture. A picture I snapped two days later of the roses he picked from our rose bush in our yard....

Alas, I did snap a couple pics of the 2010 Kansas City Susan G. Coleman Breast Cancer walk...

This one TERRIBLE self portrait may be one of the only camera captured moments I have taken of us this past month....

Sad, sad, sad...

Finally, Furniture

Okay, so we bought new furniture. IN MAY, and I am just now posting about it. Do you remember our hand-me-down furniture from before? It was blue, and leather, and OLD. See, Cove tried to cover it up with her bed just to hide how old it was...

I guess I should bash it too much. They were free, and we are STILL using them in the newly remodeled basement. So on to the exciting stuff, the new furniture looks great...

We bought them from NFM. We spent $1052, plus some extra money for the furniture protection spray stuff. We actually got the sofa and the chaise from separate sets, because I couldn't find a sofa set I liked with a matching chaise. I kind of like them mismatching, so it wasn't too big of a deal. The chaise has become Cove's new bed. We typically have a chocolate brown blanket on it for her to lay on but it was in the wash...

As you may also notice, the new, wider furniture made me invest in some new, narrower side tables. I snagged the ones in the picture above for $60 apiece from Cymax online + free shipping. I sold these old ones on Craig's list for $40...

Now that I have new furniture, I've thought of a few things I want to do next with the living room, including purchasing an area rug, investing in blinds and curtains, and building an accent wall (think Lettered Cottage guest bedroom look) behind the television stand to give the room and "true" focal point. See, this wall is really bare and boring...

Maybe Brandon will be up for a new project once the weather turns cold again ; )

Confessions

You may remember my first confessions a long time ago, found here. Well, here I am with a few more to add to my list...

1. I now know what it feels like to drive a on a VERY FLAT tire. Little did I know I likely drove a day and a half on a flat tire before a kind person stopped at a red light behind me honked and pointed down enough times for me to realize something was wrong with my car. Funny part is I pulled over in the nearest parking lot, looked at the back of my car to figure out what they were pointing at and still couldn't find anything wrong. I drove the rest of the way home on my flat tire, thinking maybe my care has been accelerating slow for a day or so. I took a closer look in my driveway at home before FINALLY realizing my tire was flat. I'm a quick one, huh?! I had to drive on this lovely thing for 3 days before getting my tire replaced...

2. I have had a brand new, really nice, vacuum cleaner in a box since our wedding! We registered for one for our wedding, before purchasing our house which had NO carpet. We opened it for the first time shortly after getting the carpet installed downstairs over a year and a half later.

                                                   

3. We went to the lake for the 4th of July and the only pictures I took were of Cove. No family, no fireworks, just our smelly little bog doing thing like playing in the water with her best dog friend Riley...

                                 

And laying on the pile of limbs Brandon and his dad cut down...

                                 

It's sad isn't it?

4. Finally, I did not realize super glue CANNOT be used on plastic. I learned this the hard way. I had collected miscellaneous pink buttons to make a little letter art for my friend Mary's new baby. After learning she named her precious baby Hannah, I went right to work gluing down the buttons in a simple little H, for her adorable pink room. I came back hours later to realize the button looking like they were dissolving in the middle...

                                               

Whoops! I think I will stick to fabric glue now on...

Basement Bliss

Brandon's finally (almost) finished it, and I couldn't be happier. He has put in countless hours turning our blank-slate basement into an inviting rec room. I thought it was about time to put his progress down in print. So, this is what he started with...

(front corner view)

Yes, we had to install a new heater, duct work, air-conditioner when we moved in. That lovely hot water tank was included though! In case your wondering, the stairs come down from our dining room.

(back corner view)

Like I said, it was a blank-slate. Brandon went right to work. He started by framing in some walls.

(front, inside corner)

We left that side of the basement as our laundry room and storage area. Apparently we have a lot to store. I really need to get down there and organize that area. But, moving on...

Next, Brandon rented a paint sprayer and primed and painted our ceiling rafters...

It's kind of hard to tell, but they are a dark-gray color. Eight cans of paint later, he came out looking like this...

After all the painting was done, some foam insulation (that was laying on the ground during the ceiling painting process) was put in between the boards...

I'm sure you can guess what went up next...

Finally, we added some paint, trim, carpet, and wood accent walls (see inspiration post here) to come up with this...

(front corner)

(back corner)

(fireplace close-up)

Let's not be modest about this or anything...I LOVE HAVING OUR BASEMENT (almost) FINISHED!!!Surround sound and high-def television take our movie nights with friends to a whole new level around here.

Oh yeah, and I say almost because Brandon still has 4 more windows to change from this...

To this...

But who really spends time looking out basement window anyways...