New Bedroom

Yikes! It's been awhile...hope you're still with me. Jason and I have been working, working, working. He's finishing up his last class, and I've got one more to go next spring until we both finally have our master's degrees.

We decided...well...I decided that it was time our bedroom got a face-lift. Here's a before...kinda...I forgot to take one before we took all the stuff off the walls.

And here's the after...

Much more sophisticated if you ask me and a lot less...well...yellow. What do you think??

Digital Photo Story

Something I've been working on for my grad class....

Surprise!

So Jason and I found this on our doorstep on Sunday night...

We suspected no one else except for Laurin and Lucas. Ok, so this story requires a little background...

Last month or so, Jason and I were looking through pictures, and found this one of Lucas...

Laurin hates his sunglasses, so we thought it would be really funny to print the picture, put it in a frame, and give it to her. To make things even more fun, we left it on their doorstep with a candle next to it, rang the doorbell, and drove off. Apparently, they had been thinking of someway to get us back for awhile now.

An update

I've been chastised for my lack of updates...here's one:

Same ol' shit, just a different day. :)

Fun day out

So if you didn't know this already, I'm trying to pick up the game of golf. Jason and I went out yesterday for my second try at it. We're just playing at a Par 3 course, and if didn't have to put 3 times on each hole, I might be a decent golfer. Anyways, we had fun and I did ok.

Afterward we went to Kohl's where I found Jason this tie that matched a shirt he was getting perfectly. Only problem was it was pink, and he didn't think he was confident enough to wear a pink tie. It was only $6, so I convinced him to get it. We'll see if it gets worn other than to try it on in the fitting room.

Then we went to a shoe store where Jason found these hideous boots. Always a character...

Crazy Squirrel

So Olney has white squirrels...but Pekin has a yellowish squirrel. Jason has seen this little guy running around the golf course for a few years now, but he was actually in one of our trees this morning. Interesting...

Summer's over

Gotta go back to work tomorrow...boo!

What a weekend!

First off, thanks to my parents for coming up this weekend to help us knock out a bunch of projects on our house. We really appreciated it.

The carpet is finished! Woohoo! It is just so much better. Words can't really describe how soft and clean it feels (and cat hair free!). It was definitely worth the money and the wait that we had to endure.

After we got the carpet in family room, my parents mentioned something about moving the furniture around. This is what we ended up with...the chair used to be against the wall, the couch was where the loveseat is, and the loveseat was where the chair is...it's growing on us.

I got a new piece of artwork for the wall in our office area to replace the shadowbox with my Precious Moments in it. It really matches well with the picture that we got a few weeks ago over the fireplace. I also got a big basket to house all of our blankets that were previously stored on the backs of the couches. You can see it in the corner of the picture below.

Last summer we had lights installed above our desks, but the only problem was we had to have them on when the lights in the family room area were on. The guys put a little pull chain on it so that we could turn it off when we weren't using those lights. I think it will save on electricity and keep the area cooler since the lights put off a lot of heat. (And yes, there is a light out...we know...)

Let's see...what else did Dad and Jason do this weekend...we saved a big piece of the old carpet so that we could put it down in the laundry room area. Looks TONS better and doesn't feel quite like a basement anymore. They cut around pretty much everything and made it look very professional.

We had some rugs in the laundry room area that weren't necessarily bad, so we put those outside in the garage. Also, makes it feel tons better barefoot.

If you'll remember, our carpet project was delayed because we found water leaking into the basement. Mom and I picked out the flowers and the guys plated them. Again...looks tons better (are you noticing a trend??)...

Last thing...I think...I picked out some new lights for the garage and front door. They have automatic sensors in them that turn on at dusk and will stay on until dawn or for a specified number of hours. Very cool... The old lights were gold and very tarnished, as were the house numbers and doorbell, so those got replaced too.

Whew...what a weekend! I think we're done with big projects for a bit... We'll take the rest of the year off and do that bathroom next year! ;)

DIRT!

We got about 4 tons of dirt dropped on our driveway on Friday. It was a ton extra than we had ordered, but the guy said it was the same price, so he went ahead and gave us extra...joy...

We wheeled it over to the side of the house on Friday evening, and it actually didn't take too long. Then on Saturday, we borrowed our neighbor's truck to go rent a plate compactor. I think Jason had fun operating it, but at one point I asked him if he wanted a drink. He said, yes, I'd like a beer. I told him he couldn't drink while operating heavy machinery. :) Besides that it was only 10 in the morning, and I didn't want him to look like our alcoholic neighbor.

He had to borrow another neighbor's hand tamper to get real close to the house, and after he used it for a bit, he appreciated the plate compactor.

It seemed like a never-ending process to get the dirt sloping at an appropriate level. One of those things you could probably mess with all day long. We got it to where we though it was good enough and decided to just stop.

So you may be wondering...did you use all the dirt? Not even close. We probably had about 1 1/2 tons left over. It's one of those things that you ask, now what do we do with all this extra dirt? Well, lucky for us and our neighbor (the one we always borrow tools from), she needed dirt in her side yard. It's just been washed away from all the rain we've had since it's on a major slope, and she took the rest of the dirt we had. Yes! We of course helped her wheelbarrow it over there and Jason used the compactor on it. In the end, she gave us $35, which actually paid for the rental of the compactor. I really do love our neighbors...well...except for you know who...

Maiden name might be German...

...but I'm not a fan of German food. Jason and I had our first experience with German food tonight, and there's not much to say other than it was gross. Jason had Jaegerschnitzel, thinly sliced beef, battered, and fried, topped with a mushroom gravy. I had Schnitzel Agstein, thin pork cutlets dredged in seasoned flour, dipped in egg batter and grilled. We both had a side of spatzle too, some sort of homemade noodle. It was NOT as the waitress described. We asked her what spatzle was and she said it's kind of like macaroni and cheese. I got a little excited when I heard that, but when she brought it out, I was nothing more than disappointed. It didn't look like macaroni and cheese (mainly because there was no cheese!) and it certainly didn't taste like it either. We told the waitress that we had never had German food before, and at the "end" of the meal she knew that we didn't like it either. I say "end" because it was hard to make it look like we ate anything and Jason was overly concerned about wasting food. I, of course, wasn't and most of my meal went untouched. Luckily we had decent salads and bread! What a nice waitress though...she only charged us for one meal since we didn't care for it, so we gave her a good tip. Needless to say...we won't be making any more trips to that restaurant to order German food.

(Harry Potter tomorrow night...so excited!!)

Here's the culprit...

Jason and I got busy once again scooping up rock. I'll be elated if we never have to do this again, but at least the rock is smaller and easier to pick up than the rock we shoveled last summer.

You can clearly see why we might have some water issues at this corner of our house in this picture...

And here's the rock...on the deck...

Hopefully in the next update the stumps from the shrubs and bushes will be gone...

More landscaping... :/

Let's play word association...Ashley - paint - carpet - water leak - landscaping...great! More landscaping! Well an excavator dude came today to give us our diagnosis, and he said the same thing as a couple other people...take out the rock in the landscaping and fill it in with dirt to create a slope that goes away from the house. We pulled back some of the rock and discovered our problem. The dirt is definitely slanting toward the house. It's a good 4 inches lower next to the house than at the edge of the landscaping boulders.

So...in another spontaneous move this weekend, we decided it was best to do this...

You might ask...didn't you guys just do some landscaping last summer?? Yep, almost a year ago...would have been the perfect time to take care of our water problem had we known it existed. Oh well, I didn't really like those bushes anyway, but it was going to be too much work and cost more to replace them at the time. Now we're just spending more money a year later, but we thought it would be best just to get rid of them so that we could fix the grade of the dirt as best as we could. Now I can plant pretty flowers instead of ugly shrubs!

Wondering what it looked like before??

I almost forgot!

We went out to dinner on Friday night with Laurin and Lucas and afterward made a spontaneous decision to go to the riverboat casino. I'd never been and quite frankly don't think I'll ever go back. Seemed like a waste of money and all I did was press a button a few times. Not too exciting...dropped $35 between the two of us in 30 minutes...not bad, not bad...yeah right! I'd rather get ice cream like seven times for that!

It just keeps getting better and better...

Well, we don't know anything yet about the water issue. Hopefully we'll find something out tomorrow when the excavator comes to look at it. Since our carpet installation got delayed, he rescheduled for July 21 and 22. Unfortunately, he called back last night saying that his wife had plans for those two days and that's why they were open, so...now it's going in on the 23rd and 24th. Let's hope we don't have any more setbacks...

Another setback...*sigh*...

If it's not one thing, it's another. Why can't home improvement projects just go on as planned?? Last night when we ripped up the carpet in the family room/office space, we found some rotting tack strip and Jason noticed that the pad was wet that sat around it. We didn't think a whole lot about it, but we did put the dehumidifier in that corner to dry up any moisture in preparation for the carpet today. When we woke up this morning it was raining pretty hard and after Jason left for work I went down to check on that corner of the room. Water...not a lot, but enough to halt our carpet installation until we get it fixed. What a bummer...

We're pooped!

Sorry for the tardiness of these pics, but what a day! The carpet finally made it, and the guys were here from 11:30 until 5:15 installing it in all 3 bedrooms and the hallway. It didn't leave much turnaround time for Jason and I to haul all the bedroom stuff back upstairs and all the family room stuff upstairs. I had class tonight for an hour and a half too! Anyways, we're tired, but there's still a lot more work to be done.

Here's where we slept last night due to the lack of carpet in our bedroom...it worked...

Well, you all probably saw that our desk was completely filling the downstairs bathroom from a previous post, and without my knowledge or consent, the carpet dudes put all the doors from the bedrooms including closet doors in our upstairs bathroom. Since they weren't able to lay the carpet yesterday, it made using the bathroom and taking a shower rather difficult...

So here's what you've been waiting for...or maybe what I've been waiting for...new carpet! Pictures really don't do it justice though.

Yuck! This disgusting floor is in the family room...be glad when it gets carpet!

Umm...yeah, Jason and I moved all this furniture by ourselves up a half-flight of stairs...not fun...we're pooped!

What a bummer...

Well, no carpet today... :( It was supposed to be here last week, so I called them on Friday, and they said it would be here Monday morning. Called this morning around 9:30 and still no carpet. The truck carrying it broke down around Chicago, so they said it would be on another truck tomorrow morning...we'll see if that happens. The carpet layers still came and put down the carpet pad so at least we don't have to look at the yucky subfloor. On another note, one of the guys was cleaning up the staples and old pad on the steps and I nonchalantly asked if he knew how to fix squeaky stairs, so he fixed them for us!

We're making progress!

Jason's parents came up this weekend, and we put them to work! Jason and his dad got to work on the handrail, while his mom and I ripped up carpet in the three bedrooms and basement. I will be so glad when I have my house back!

So here's a before, if you've forgotten what it looked like...

...and here's the finished product!

There's still more where this came from...

Here's our desk...in the bathroom...

Camping Fun

Just got back from a 4-day camping trip with Laurin and Lucas. We went to Starved Rock State Park and had tons of fun. Here's how our trip began...

We really wanted to take one vehicle to save money on gas, and since Jason and I have cars, we had to take Laurin's Jeep. Problem was we still didn't have enough room. Jason and Lucas rigged up a "package" made from our tarp and tied it down to the top. Luckily, Laurin's Jeep was made for things like that.

First things first...had to get the tents set up.

Oh Lucas and his clip-on aviator sunglasses...he ended up losing them after the first or second day. Laurin wasn't too upset about it and Lucas of course thinks she did something with them.

We played cards quite a bit since it was so hot in the afternoons...upwards of 90 degrees with no air...

On Friday morning, we went hiking in Starved Rock State Park. The views were amazing.

On Saturday morning, we went to Matthiessen State Park which was just a few miles from Starved Rock. The canyons and waterfalls were definitely the main attraction in this state park.

I thought this rock looked like a monster/devil/demon...look for the eye sockets, nose, and mouth...

Laurin found this popcorn called Jiffy Pop at Walmart that we cooked over the fire. It's a good thing we cooked it when we did because we got rained out on Saturday night.

The park rangers came around and told everyone that a storm with 60 mph winds was coming. We packed up shop pretty fast and ended up sitting in the car for a good 2 hours. To waste time, we went into Oglesby to fill up the car with gas and saw this beautiful view of the sky.

Since we got rained out and couldn't have our nightly s'mores, we ate them for breakfast this morning. Not very nutritious, but we had to have our s'mores! A great way to end the weekend...even though we did get rained on.