She's Back! (Sort of...)

Well, the last two weeks have been interesting. It took four days instead of the 24 hours promised to get our internet back up. Our home phone number changed three times!! (I am not currently a fan of AT&T :-/ ) We moved. Our three-month-old grandniece in Maine died of SIDS, which cast a pall over Christmas festivities. Nevertheless we decorated, went to Christmas mass, and shared breakfast and presents with our kids and grandkids.

And oh, yeah, my computer did not make the move in functioning condition, so that I am currently using Arwen's Macbook while she and her family are visiting friends and having dinner with Bryan's parents. However, my very own laptop is now on order, so maybe you'll be hearing more from me here.... Have a Happy New Year celebration, and I hope to see you soon!

Internet Silence

Sometime tonight or tomorrow our internet at this house will be cut off. At some point (shortly, we hope) thereafter, internet service will begin at the new house. But anyway, I'm going to be kind of busy this weekend... See you on the other side!

What I Should Have Said

My family all know that I have difficulty coming up with snappy comebacks. Unless I'm quoting an appropriate line from a movie, I mostly can't think of anything either funny or pointed in time. They all have heard the story about the one time I did manage the right line at the right time ad nauseum. ( I'll bore you with it in some other post.) But here's one that came late but is too good to sit on.

Over this last insanely busy weekend, at one point one of my children -- I forget which -- said "I didn't know Tiger Woods was married." I don't remember what I actually did say (probably along the lines of "Yeah, he is.") But I wish I had said " Yeah, apparently neither did he!"

House Update

The painting is done. It took three days to strip the kitchen wallpaper and wash the walls. It turns out there was primer under there; also at least two coats of paint and the remains of yet another kind of wallpaper (only the tiniest scrap in the edge of the electrical plate behind the refrigerator.) The hardest part was scrubbing off the sizing from the professional wallpaper job. I vow never to inflict that on any future owner of this house!

Yesterday the guys (Roger, Kelson, and sons-in-law Larry and Bryan) put in 800 square feet of pre-finished hardwood and 200 of vinyl plank. Today they did the trim, and tomorrow the carpet installers come to do all four bedrooms. I will be scrubbing down the kitchen, pantry, and bathrooms, so that we can begin shuttling things over before the big push on Friday afternoon and Saturday. Whew!

I hope to be back here before Christmas, but if I don't make it, have a Merry one!

Seven Quick Takes -- Once-Again-Homeowners Edition

Seven Quick Takes are hosted here.

1. So we finally closed on our new house. But because we bought a HUD foreclosure, we had the bank closing here in town -- we took out a small mortgage to cover repairs and updates -- and then had to drive an hour each way to nearby-medium-city where there is a HUD office for their closing. It took five minutes. And a HUD agent was doing other closings in our town today, but "couldn't work us into his schedule". We would have had to wait ten days longer to get on his list. At least we had a nice lunch.

2. Who knew that new houses came with "goodie bags" from the realtor? Ours gave us gift cards to Lowe's and some gift certificates to The Raven, which is only my favorite coffee shop within a hundred miles. If houses weren't so expensive, I might buy one more often! ;-D (NOT!!)

3. I am beyond excited to get into the new kitchen and start stripping wallpaper. The wallpaper is not exactly ugly, but it is torn, and anyway I just like to strip wallpaper. Which reminds me, I think we need to buy more primer, because I think this is the original 1964 wallpaper, and there's nothing under it but naked drywall. I'm doing the kitchen in two shades of (aqua-ish) blue, and I'm also going to paint a couple of our older, cheaper bookcases in the darker (accent) color. The part of the kitchen that is designed for a breakfast table is going to become my office, and I want to preserve all the counter space for actual appliances and food. Until I packed them, my cookbooks took up almost 10% of our current counter.

4. Our bedroom is also going to be in the coordinating blues (Behr 510C-1 and 510D-4, if you want to Google them ; I can't figure out how to link it) and I get to choose coordinating fabric for curtains and to cover our current comforter. I expect that the actual sewing project will have to wait for January, along with the decorative shower curtain and bathroom window treatment. We decided to go with plain white paint for the bathrooms, and I found a mostly-green fabric that works with the pink I mentioned here. I'm optimistically hoping that this will turn the pink tile into an accent color. Wish me luck!

5. We did go with the local shop for flooring. They came in at almost 20% below Home Depot for essentially the same product. And we have been very satisfied with the job they did for us 10 years ago. So that's a win-win! Carpet in all the bedrooms (and the office, which is really a bedroom), industrial carpet in the basement, hardwood in the living and dining areas and hallway, and vinyl plank in the kitchen and half bath. The full bath and the entryway already have acceptable tile, so we're not going to worry about them.

6. My nose is recovering. I felt MUCH better after all the scabs finally fell off. Now it only hurts if I touch it the wrong way, or when a pressure front is going through. But I've always had sinus pain with a pressure front, so I'm not sure if this is really different. we nee to take a still-red-but-not-scabby picture soon.

7. I need to finish this and get out the door. We are eating out again in celebration. Buffalo Wild Wings by teenager request! See ya!