Sweet summertime!

Hooray! Summer is officially here. Complete with fireflies, or lightning bugs, which ever you prefer. The weather has been delightful, aside from a few showers and the mosquitoes are out in full force. Oh well, gotta take the good with the bad I suppose.

I took my motorcycle skills test yesterday morning - I failed miserably :-(
But the course is painted on the parking lot so I can go back every day and practice, practice, practice. The next test date is in 2 weeks. I'm confident I'll bee GR8 by then!

I love miniature things

Look what the man found in the driveway! I scooped it up and put it in the flower bed and guess what? I found 3 more. How many baby frogs are there I wonder? Oh, maybe they are toads. Anyway, they are a little smaller than a penny.

Now I can't help but wonder how many we've run over or squashed with a step. Ick. I guess I don't want too many of them in my yard, but they were fun to find.

Brokeneck dog

This is Pepper...
Ewww. I hate it when she lays like this. but she does it alllll the time. It makes her look like she got hit by a car and her neck is broken. It bugs me but I guess it's comfy for her. Ick.

coming soon...

Tis the season to be out riding!
We went for a 200 mile ride last Saturday. It was fantastic. My man says I scored big points for that. Because I didn't whine? Hmmmm, I don't think you're supposed to whine about things you LOVE to do! But I'll take the points anyway :-)


We saw the new Indiana Jones last Sunday. It was silly in parts but managed to stay true to the adventure. I also liked it that they didn't try to make Harrison Ford younger than he is. He's old, he was old in the movie too.


I'll post pictures of our rides this weekend. Oh, and the completed living room - sans furniture.

NOT about the house

I'm learning to groom the dogs. It was okay when we just had one that needed to be groomed, but now that we have two, it's too expensive. My first try wasn't too bad if I do say so myself. My second try, I clipped Greta's ear, ouch, but she was so good and doesn't hate me so I'm happy. She's much easier to clip because she's such a sissy - she doesn't move a muscle.
Pepper on the other hand is a real wiggle worm. This is Pepper's first real dog looking hair cut. She used to look like a dust bunny and now she looks like a dog. Snif, snif.

So, here is Greta - she's 4. This isn't her new haircut, I just happen to love this picture of her.

And then there's Pepper, she's 9 months

"Thanks for the haircut Mom, I'm so pretty"

No more BLUE ROSES!

Hooray!


Finally!


ALL the blue roses are gone!


~Whew~




Now there's all the sanding and patching, where I got a little aggressive with the scraper. Then the primer, then painting. I'm pooped.


Oh, here's the before picture again...ha! I almost forgot, we changed the light too.

Blue Roses

Well, I'm almost done with the blue roses wallpaper removal! Woohoo! It's taken a long time. I just need to say it again...wallpaper SUCKS! Oh, I imagine that it looks good in the right application, but it's not so great to take off. Ugh. I'll post some more pictures when the blue roses are gone.

I don't know which room will get our attention next.
I want to paint the kitchen. Right now it's a peach/pink color. Of course I'll have to take the wallpaper border off first! I want to paint it red but I haven't found a shade that we both like - yet.

Then there's the master bath. It's ugly but functional so that'll probably be a while. The weather has been very Spring like lately so we've been doing more outside.

On to the guest bdrm

Well, there's actually 4 bdrms. No, I don't know why we need 4 bdrms, but we have them. One of them would have been my office, but that was before I got laid off. Now we are thinking about turning the bdrm on the other side of the master bdrm, into part of the master bdrm! We don't have a lot of closet space so that would really help make our options better. Then the other bdrm is going to be my library/craft room. I'm really excited about that one! Oh, so this guest bdrm was an awful dark avacado green, with a wallpaper border of course - 2 of them. One at the ceiling and one at chair rail level. Man are those borders a bear to get off! Then I had to primer the whole room. I let my Mom choose the colors and the bedding, since she's the one who will be staying in it the most :-)

Here's how it turned out....The colors aren't really as bright as they look.

Then there is the bathroom

Okay so I don't have a befor picture of the guest bath. It was so shocking I just couldn't bring myself to grab the camera! It had a single vanity, from 1971. The lighting was updated in the 80's. It was a light bar with the big round bulbs in it - remember those? It was painted a bright tropical blue, like this...(this is our laundry rm)

And like EVERY ROOM IN THE HOUSE, it had a wallpaper border - light houses actually. Oh, and I can't forget the indoor/outdoor carpet on the floor. What was up with that?! Anyway, Bill had a vision for the bathroom so I let him have it and helped him put it all together. It came out pretty nice.

This is our home

Okay, so some of you want to see what's going on inside our house!

First, before we even moved in, we knocked out a wall. This is the before picture - standing in the lv rm looking into the dn rm. That passage way to the right is the kitchen. Oh yeah, that blue rose wallpaper HAS to go!


Here is the in progess picture...

That really opened things up! Now you can see from the front rm clear to the back of the house. It's so much better.

Here is a picture of the family rm before we got started, from one end to the other...


This is the wall before we removed it...

Bill took down all the paneling and put drywall up. Then he ripped out the carpet and together, we put a laminate hard wood floor in. It looks fantastic! We had to put in all new base boards but we just repainted the crown molding. We also painted the built in thingy to the right of the fireplace. It's really starting to come together.