That New Stuff State of Mind

In the year that I have been out of work and home with Deuce, our fixer-upper house has gone unfixed, for the most part. With the notable exceptions of the fence and the guest room (the latter of which I did for under $50), DeuceDad and I put our home improvement plans on hold.

There are things around the house the DeuceDad and I each can't stand, but we're living with it in the name of financial responsibility. DeuceDad hates out kitchen with the fire of 1,000 suns. The carpet and wall colors in the office sap all my creative energy.

What I really can't stand isn't the lack of floor molding - it's the broken things. The fridge door doesn't stay closed. I broke the handle off my washer. One of the burners on the stove doesn't light. I was plotting a coup in which I order new appliances and deal with the payments later (somehow). But then my cell phone broke, which actually changed things for the better.

I knew I couldn't call customer service and act like a reasonable human being. DeuceDad generously offered to call AT&T and try to get a replacement - and he succeeded! No yelling required! New phone was set to arrive on Friday, and life would be restored to normal. It was almost too easy.

Wednesday was a little hectic, and when I came home to some destruction in the garage from the dog I decided I needed to tackle some of the things that had been driving me nuts.

I ordered a new knob for my washer. I rented a carpet cleaner and cleaned the filthy carpet in the family room and our dog-smelling couches. I cleaned some kind of sediment off the innards of the stove burner so the igniter works. My cell phone arrived and I synced it - although I need to reenter all my contacts (argh). In the period of a few hours I resolved a lot of things that had been bothering me without spending much money.

The temptation to get new stuff was so great - I like to have nice things as much as the next person. But a little research and elbow grease did the trick for now, and I'm really proud of what I was able to do.

I used:
Taylor Rental
Sears Parts Direct
Palm Support
Yahoo Answers
And my own two hands!

Not too shabby

We've made some pretty serious progress landscaping the house in the last week. The first step was to remove the original landscaping, then step back and enjoy a clean slate. Check out what DeuceDad accomplished this weekend!


All along the porch were three 5 ft high shrubs. Yes, only three of them. They took a chainsaw and a stump grinder to remove.

I basically just wrangled toddler and dog, and hauled brush. So today I thought I'd contribute a little more to the yard cleanup and demo-ed the "planter." I use the term planter loosely as nothing was planted in it.

This:

Was reduced to this... (don't ask where the grass went. It's only April in upstate NY, which, sadly, is too early for grass)


... and this...

Deceiving how many bricks were in there because many of them were buried. Yes, buried in the earth. When people retire they need to take up golf, not burying masonery supplies in the yard!

After that satisfying demo, it was lunch time and time for some more domestic pursuits. Spring cleaning has created unprecidented amounts of laundry. (2 days, for reference, and contains pillows):

All work and no play makes me hungry for cookies, so I whipped up a batch of these lovelies!

Those are Amish Sugar Cookies, with spring M&Ms added. I hadn't had this recipe since my grandma moved to senior living, so maybe 7 years ago, and I forgot how delicious and fine-textured they are. The M&Ms actually kind of take them down a level. They would have been better substituted for chips in the tollhouse recipe.

But back to the cookies at hand. This is an awesome recipe I need to put back into regular rotation and is from my Grandma Anne - no idea the origin (but if you had to guess? maybe the Amish?).

Amish Sugar Cookies

1 C butter, softened

1 C vegetable oil

1 C sugar

1 C confectioners sugar

2 eggs

1 t vanilla

4 1/2 C flour

1 t baking soda

1 t cream of tartar

Combine the butter, oil and sugars in a large mixing bowl. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat 1 minute until well blended. In a separate bowl, sift and combine flour, baking soda and cream of tartar. Add to wet ingredients and mix to combine. Drop by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 375 for 8-10 minutes. Enjoy!

Makes 5 dozen.

Spring Eating

I love buying in bulk, and it shows.

I don't even have a picture of can-cabinet part deux and the spice cabinet!

One of my spring cleaning/moneysaving tasks for the week is to use up some of the food we have. Did I mention we have a chest freezer too? My goal is really to have one cabinet with canned goods (instead of the second overflowed one), no food on the top of the fridge, and bulk storage in some of the useless recesses of the cabinets (have I mentioned this kitchen is poorly designed? No? Oh, well it is.).

The situation isn't too bad as is, but there are still boxes of kitchen items to be unpacked, and there is nowhere but nowhere to put anything addtional in this kitchen.

The best part is that when we've used up some of the old stuff, I get to buy fresh new pantry-fodder! Don't say it. I know ;)

So Yummy

Nope, not a food post. I'm done with my scrap room reorganize and I can see all my tools and products. So Yummy.

Here's everything in mountainous piles:

And the after shot:

So happy!

Scrap room purgatory

Three days removed from scrapbook hell, and 11 hours of moving, sorting and dusting later, I find myself in scrapbook room purgatory. It's not heaven, it's not hell. It could go either way. There are still some key elements that haven't found a home in the room yet (namely my bins of actual "scraps" to scrapbook) and I haven't made a page yet, so I have no idea if I'm going to be able to pull out a piece of card stock without the whole mess falling on the cat.

But I don't get the sensation of rolling anything uphill all day long when I come in here, so it must be time well spent.

Oh, and my cameras have a real home! Right next to the books I need to read... I swear sometimes projects like this turn up more to-do list items than actually resolve any problems. For example, I overheated the shredder 3 times after cleaning out the filing cabinet. Poor innocent shredder.

I've also been listening to music - I try to make a point of doing this so that Deuce doesn't grow up in a world of only "Rubber Ducky, You're the One." I borrowed Snow Patrol and Jack Johnson (Sleep Through the Static - who knew he had released another album?), and when those wore out I switched over to last.fm. I was a huge fan of the now-defunct Pandora, and last is even better because you have unlimited skips!

So that was my day. More to do, but that's what gets us up in the morning, right?

Tackled - Yard work!

I finally put my nose to the grindstone and did yard work. I raked a mountain of leaves (that' just what was in the front yard by the way)...

And planted 100 bulbs (and 2 mums) in the front bed so I'll have some flowers in the spring!

So here's where I do a little environmentally-friendly encouragement. To all out there in temperate climates with lots of deciduous trees in their yards - please, please for the love of all things holy, please quit with the leave blowers! Think about what you're really doing - burning up fossil fuels in an inefficient stinking two-stroke engine and creating so much noise pollution that the operator wears ear muffs. None of the innocent children trying to play outside have ear muffs on by the way. Please use your arms, grab a rake, brake a sweat if necessary and leave the power tools in the garage.

Three days as a housewife

So I came home on Tuesday, drank two beers, and painted my living room. If this bout of joblessness is anything like the last one, I have a long to-do list and limited time to accomplish.

We chose to keep Deuce at daycare through the end of the week to give me some time to unwind, do a couple of projects that aren't toddler friendly. May I introduce you to the bordello of blood:

That's one coat of primer and one coat of Cranberry Whip on my kitchen wall. It's less like a chainsaw massacre after the second coat.

I'm a crummy housewife, let me just put that out there. I would rather do projects (or shop, or nap) than do laundry and dishes. I justify it to myself that the big projects are more important. Whether they really are more important than domestic tranquility isn't mine to say.

Suffice it to say that my three days as a housewife were a bust, and I'm looking forward to time as a SAHM so much more. We can do toddler activities, like the Zoo Boo we went to this weekend.

Greatest excuse ever for not doing laundry.

Work 'til it hurts

Physical labor (or movement of any kind) is not on my to-do list most days from 8-5(ish). I go in to the office, sit at my desk, and occasionally walk to another person's office where I then sit down. Needless to say, after 3 days of lifting, ripping, pulling, prying, scrubbing, and constantly running up and down stairs, mommy's tired.

We're taking lots of before and after pictures, which I will share just as soon as we find the elusive computer-and-phone-cords box.

Until there are photos, allow me to step you through the high points.
Friday:
The closing was super easy and we didn't have that nerve-wracking "I'm signing my life away" feeling we had with the first house. Had a little lunch, called a flooring guy, took some before pictures, changed to work clothes. And then the fun began. The odor in the house improved immediately after the carpet was removed. I gave the bathrooms the once over. My mom brought dinner and we ate on the card table in the front yard. (In other words, we started classing up the neighborhood right away.) Eventually we couldn't stand tack strips any more and went home.

Saturday:
The sun rose on what would be a hot and humid, disorganized and, for me, somewhat demoralizing day. High of 94 with high humidity and no A/C. Awesome. We had a short term plan going in - focus on the main and upper floors, then move in and then do the lower floor (family room, office, 2nd bath). The plan was being adhered to until my boss showed up, started peeling old self-adhesive tiles off the downstairs bath and all but kidnapping me to Home Depot to buy tile. We wanted to tile the downstairs bath eventually, but he was there and volunteering and the new me does not turn down offers of help. Despite working through the worst part of the day (which we had intended to spend floating in the pool), it came out awesome and really gave us a leg up (ha ha pee joke) on fixing up that bathroom. The upstairs bathroom also got (re)scrubbed 3 times, and an entire bottle of Simple Green was used to get greasy mess of the kitchen. Fun was had by all. At about 9 we managed to get home and cool off in the pool.

Sunday:
So tired. Had to go to Lowe's for plumbing supplies which took about 2 hours in our exhausted state on a rainy early morning. DeuceDad grouted while my father attacked the dripping upstairs tub faucet. The grout went well and looks great. The bathroom... well let's just say my dad sawed 2 holes in walls, broke off one of the knobs, determined there are no shutoffs to anything (save the house) and no actual progress was made. The problem is now understood and a plan is in place. While he was back and forth to his house for tools, I decided to work on the lingering old-man-urine odor. The house has hot water baseboard heat and there is a heater next to the toilet. Probably a good candidate for a source of the smell. I took the cover off and almost got knocked on my kiester by how bad it smelled. I cleaned it with Clorox Cleanup with Bleach (not environmentally friendly, I know, but I needed to bring out the big guns). I scrubbed and rinsed for an hour, and the smell was better but not gone. I was nauseated from the pee smell, dizzy from the cleaner and generally disheartened by the thought that I now own a house that some old dude peed all over. We got more work done, but my heart just wasn't in it. Luckily, by best friend came by for dinner and some work, so while DeuceDad hayed mowed the lawn, she and I sang to the Boyz II Men greatest hits CD and put on the new kitchen cabinet knobs and papered the shelves.

You'll notice that Deuce didn't get mentioned in there. My mom watched him all weekend, which was wonderful because we got a lot done. But the weekend is my time with him. My dad put it into perspective saying that the faster we get our stuff done, the sooner we can all live under our very own roof again. He has a point. But I miss him... so tonight I am taking the night off. We're going to go for a walk and hang out together. Then tomorrow, back to the grindstone.

Wow, congrats if you read all that! As a special prize, I'm offering bags of vinyl flooring scraps that were used to line every shelf in the house!