Another one on the list

A long time ago, it seems, I made a big list of a bunch of things I wanted to do. If you really want to, you can see it here. It has 101 things, that need to get done in 1001 days. I'm getting closer to the end of that 1001 days, so the other night I crossed #57 off the list - make cream puffs.

A little pointy, which wasn't on purpose; definitely not perfect, but they tasted pretty good! :)

Color!

Choosing our inside colors (i.e. paint!) wasn't as stressful as choosing a stucco color, because walls can get re-painted, but I didn't want to spend a few thousand dollars to paint the house if I didn't like it!

We had a hard time with the sample chart our stucco guy gave us, because all of the samples are like 1" x 2" or less, and it's hard to tell what it's going to look like with a texture, on an entire house. I could have ordered samples for $100 each, and I was going to do that, but we finally found a house we liked that he had done, and he went and ordered the color. Then he came back and told us it had been discontinued and he couldn't find enough to do our whole house. So, I went back to the little color chart, and my mother-in-law and I drove all over town comparing it to different houses, trying to find a color that didn't have pink in it. I wanted a tan color, and all of the tans seemed peachy or pinky, so it was really hard to pick! I also didn't want it to be the same brown as all of the brown houses on our block.

With the weather being not-so-great, we didn't have a lot of time to spend on picking the color, because we absolutely had to have it done before winter. We don't get our final draw until everything is done, and we really can't afford to wait until spring for the $$. :) Also, I didn't want to live in a house with just the scratch coat on for months - I want it to be done. We finally decided on 'taupe' - which in my mind is usually a grey/brown color, but this is like an orangey tan color. So, it's partially on! The rock is ordered; hopefully it gets here and on the house soon!

You can't tell in this picture, really, but the side of the garage is done, and the side of the house on the right is done, too. The jut-out part on the right is going to be rock, so it's still just the scratch coat. They've got the back pretty much done, so just the garage is left!

And the flooring is started! I'm not done all the painting, but the kitchen and living room is done, so they've started laying the hardwood. The boxes for my kitchen cabinets are getting installed as soon as the floor is in!

I went and had a massage today, and it was seriously the best massage of my life. Apparently my painting muscles are lacking, because my shoulder was killing me! It's fun to get the paint on, though, because it's starting to look like a house in there!

Baby Book

I came across this idea today on a photographer's blog and I love it! I want to make one when I'm pregnant!

You can see more of this girl's book here:

http://blog.hannamac.com/2010/08/30/mama-mias-maternity-book/

Samples

These are samples of our hardwood, granite, and cabinet choices:

The lovely tile and brown grout underneath is just the stuff in our apartment.

It's super windy out and I'm just chillin' inside editing photos - I've overloaded my poor computer so I'm working on getting rid of a ton of files. For some reason I have a hard time taking pictures off my computer - I want to be able to look at all of them really easily, even though I almost never do! :) It's been fun to look back at the photos I took a year ago, and what Clark and I looked like and what we were doing. 

Cute Bow Giveaway

Do you want to win this cute little bow ( I do!)?

Check it out and all of Jennie's other new bows here!

The Pool is Closed!

The house is still coming, just slower than we'd like. The mudding and taping is going to take at least this week it sounds like, so we won't be painting until next week. I'm going to have to use some vacation days or we'll never get it done! If anyone just has the urge to paint, come on over. :) 

My cabinets are being put together right now, they'll be ready in 2-3 weeks! I'm so excited and nervous to see them - cabinets are one of those things you don't change very often so I really hope they turn out like I'm hoping. 

Sometimes I think we really should have waited to build a house until I was a stay-at-home mom, or maybe I could have just quit my job - everything needs to be done during the work day, and we both work so that makes it really hard! Plus, we live half an hour away from anywhere with anything, so even if we went on a lunch break by the time we got there we'd have to turn around to get back on time. Oh well it just makes it interesting! Everyone says so much stuff is cheaper in the states, but we tried for three weekends in a row just get to Great Falls and it never happened. So, we might just end up paying more for some stuff.

I'm so excited to get over to our house - it's a couple months away at least but it's closer than when we started and I can see some progress so I think I'll make it. :)

This is the house with drywall!

Main bathroom:

 

Master bedroom:

 

 

Office/Baby Room Someday:

View into the kitchen:

Front door/Entryway

Family room downstairs/Clark's Man Cave:

So, about that half marathon. I didn't get very far in training before I decided I really didn't want or need one more thing to do, so I'm going to wait until January and do a spring one I think. You start out in the freezing cold, but you get to end/run the race when it's warm, instead of the other way around like if I started now.

This may sound awful, but I am so relieved that the pool is closed for the winter. The 24-hr on-call thing gets old after a few months, and the worry - did you hear about the incident at the Ramada? I can't even imagine. I get the shivers even thinking about it - so tragic. Moms, please watch your kids. I have no idea what really happened at the Ramada or who is to blame or whatever, but sometimes in Raymond I'd get so nervous because moms would just let their little toddlers wander around the pool deck and go in and out of the pool. I don't think many people realize how quickly kids can drown - it only takes 10 seconds, and that is not a long time. And it doesn't take a lot of water, either. That's why parents are supposed to be within arms reach of little kids. The first year we were open a lifeguard picked up a little girl crawling across the deck towards the pool edge, and wandered around for a couple of minutes, holding her, trying to locate the mom. I was just about the get on the loudspeaker when finally she came casually walking up and said, "Oh she's mine." And she didn't act concerned at all. This little girl was barely a toddler! So, I'm glad that stress is gone for 8 months!!

I can't believe how cold it is already - here comes winter! I guess I had better dig all the boots and coats out of our storage unit. I hope we get some nice leaves before it decides to snow - we've gotta get the fall pictures in first!