Look What We Did!

We already have two dogs, and I'm allergic to cats (zyrtec keeps me breathing, and the sneezing builds character,) but have you ever SEEN kittens?! They're just too cute to pass up. We were in Brownsville, OR and walked by a kitten rescue. 40 kittens roaming around in a room, how could you not take one (or two) home? The orange cat is a boy, and Brian named him Thunder. Thunder Cat. The calico is a female and we named her Lucy. Did you know that only females can be calicos? It has to do with needing two X chromosomes. I learned that in Biology class winter term.

Maggie

So what do you get when you mix this:




With this?




Pretty sure you get a Maggie








When we first got Maggie, I found a website about dog breeds. I picked her ear shape, body shape, tail shape, etc. It suggested that she was part Leonberger and part Golden Retriever. When I read about Leonbergers though, they were HUGE, so I assumed it was wrong. We had been thinking that Maggie was just mixed with Shepherd. Last weekend we saw our first real life Leonberger, and although he was much bigger than Maggie, they were very similar. He had pretty much all the characteristics that Maggie had that weren't retriever. Then I found that side view of a Leonberger on wikipedia. Besides the coloring, that is exactly what Maggie looks like. I don't have any side pics of Maggie where she isn't....uh.....wearing my sweatshirt, but I'll have to take one. This breed also accounts for the reason why Maggie weighs a good 20lbs more than a Golden Retriever or German Shepherd should weigh. (Don't let all her fur fool you, when we give her a bath we can see that she is actually skinny.)

Probably not that exciting to everyone else, but I've been really curious about what kind of dog Maggie is....cool to figure it out!

2010 Schwinn Jenny

One movie scene that always cracks me up (in an otherwise pretty dark movie) is the scene in "American Beauty" when Annette Bening walks in to find her husband sitting in a chair with his back to her. She's just come home to find a mint condition classic car in the driveway. She asks "um....whose car is that out front?" Without hesitation, and without turning around to acknowledge his wife, Kevin Spacey responds "Mine. 1970 Pontiac Firebird. The car I have always wanted and now I have it. I rule!" He even raises his fist up in excitement. Check it out:



So I am as excited about my new bike as Kevin Spacey's character was about his car. Seriously. A 2010 Schwinn Jenny Cruiser, the bike I have always wanted. I rule.

Not only is the bike a 7 speed with hand brakes (my old cruiser has no speeds and pedal brakes...not so great) but the model is called Jenny, so it HAS MY NAME PRINTED ON THE BIKE. Who could ask for more?

The only other bike I have (besides the crappy cruiser) is a faded neon orange mountain bike I got from a going out of business sale when I was 11. It is so old that it is too rusty to adjust the seat and handlebars, and since I was a kid the last time it was adjusted....yeah, not too comfortable to ride.

We have two grocery stores right near our house, plus two days a week I work just a little over a mile from my house, and there are parks and farmer's markets nearby. I'll have lots of opportunity to ride my bike.

So excited!

GRASS

So when we first started looking at our house (around January of 2009) it had an ok lawn. It was green, it was well kept. The house had been in foreclosure for over a year, but the bank must have been paying someone to keep it up. When we went into escrow (February of 2009) the bank stopped caring about it. Since we had the WORLD'S LONGEST ESCROW (was supposed to be 90 days but didn't end until mid JUNE 2009,) by the time the house was actually ours, the grass was past waist high. Brian paid his teenage cousin David to go over and hack everything down before we moved in (on June 28, 2009.) When we moved in, the city was widening the street and took part of the front yard (but gave us a sidewalk and poured us a driveway!) The front yard was mostly weeds after all the overgrowth, so we sprayed grass/weed killer on everything and waited for it to die. Then the city had to dig up the whole yard and smooth out all the dirt, so we didn't seed the lawn until it was pretty much winter. Yes, we could have used sod...but if you walk on sod too soon it dies, and it would cost about $2,0000 to sod the front and back yard. Seed is like $30. No contest. So to make a long story short, the grass is just finally now starting to really come in. Brian mowed it for the first time yesterday. This weekend I'm going to spray something that will help kill the weeds that have popped up, and will fertilize the grass. Yay for no longer having a front yard swamp!

Oh...My....God....

This is going to be a dumb post, prepare yourself....

My all time favorite movie EVER is "Stand By Me." I saw it in the theater as a double feature with "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" at what is now the Avo Playhouse in Vista when I was 4. Yes, my parents took me to a rated R movie when I was 4. That's a whole other subject. Anyways....I've seen the movie at least 100 times. I know every single line. I've read the novella (titled "The Body" by Stephen King) at least 10 times. I own the script. I would watch "Stand By Me" right now and then watch it a second time immediately afterwards. When I was in high school I had still shots from the film on my binder dividers. I love the movie. I am obsessed with the movie. I can tell you about how "Stand By Me" is tied into "Cujo." (In the book it says that Chopper was the most feared dog in Castle Rock until Cujo came along...because the book takes place in Stephen King's fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine instead of the real town of Castle Rock, Oregon.) I like the movie "The Shawshank Redemption" because its a good movie, but mostly because it is based on another novella from the same book that "Stand By Me" is from. This obsession runs deep, okay?

So while looking for events in Astoria, Oregon, I saw that there is a 25th anniversary event for "The Goonies" this June. I just had to see if anything was going on for "Stand By Me." Sure enough, there's one in Brownsville, Oregon this July. I live about an hour from where the movie was filmed. This is a coincidence, I swear. I SWEAR.

Anyways....in 2007 the event hosted such famous people from the movie as "guy that played the dead body"..."fat lady who barfed in her purse" and "Vern's butt double" (apparently Jerry O'Connell couldn't climb the junkyard fence so they had to use a stunt double.) THIS year though, Rob Reiner, Will Wheaton, and Corey Feldman are supposed to be there....and they are in talks to get more of the cast to come....like Keifer Sutherland and John Cusack maybe?! Oh my gosh I'm so excited.

Awkwardly Shaped Room = Projector TV!

(The actual tv image will be way darker and sharper than what you are seeing now...we had lights on, plus the flash washes out the screen.)

Grand Finale

The back room got floor today. This is a momentous day. The floor was the last big project...as in the last project that we can't do ourselves. The rest of our projects are small, simple weekend projects (i.e. baseboard and trim in the back room and upstairs bathroom, painting the entry and walls in upstairs hallways, and painting both decks when the weather is sunny for long enough!)

So....what you've all been waiting for (er I mean what I have been waiting for!!!)

The pictures:









This room is getting a projector and a screen that will pull down over the water heater room door (the white door that isn't a bifold door.) So...more pictures coming soon!

The end of the pink bathroom

The upstairs bathroom was one of the areas of the house that wasn't in the online listing when we first found our Gun Club house (you knew that was the street name, right?) Maybe its because it was all pink...and carpeted...and has really low ceilings. It DOES have an awesome clawfoot tub in good condition though, so don't judge it too harshly.

As soon as we moved in, I painted the built in dresser thing and the vanity. Mostly because that's all I COULD do. I also removed the gorgeous floral curtain covering a sort of alcove/closet type thing. That was back in June. So in answer to your question, yes we had pink carpet in there for 7 months. It was really dirty and gross too. We just wore shoes all the time. I'm hardcore.

On Wednesday we got new floor, it was pretty exciting. Tuesday night Brian's friend came over and they moved the clawfoot out of the bathroom and down the hallway to a bedroom. That was interesting. The thing is crazy heavy. I read online that they way about 300 pounds, but I'm pretty sure it weighed a lot more than that. Plus, there's no good place to get a good grip on it. They ended up putting rugs on the hallway floor and using sliders to slide it into the bedroom. Worked great. They'll have to actually hold it to put it back on the plumbing stuff, but hopefully that will be ok since it doesn't involve carrying it very far. After the clawfoot tub got removed, we ripped up the pink carpet and found a bunch of yellow vinyl tiles which were either never actually stuck on the floor, or had lost all their glue over the years (they looked like they were from the 60's or 70's.) I just sort of kicked them into a pile and threw them away. If only everything in this house was that easy.

On Wednesday I went to my early class without taking a shower, because I have a break after my first class. I came home and the water was off, because the floor guys hit a pipe and water poured all over the breakfast nook area (aka wood stove room.) AWESOME. Everything appears to be ok now, and they fixed it and finished the floor. Our old contractors would have let the water run for a couple hours and then gone home.

Last night I painted the whole room and put up new towel hooks, a toilet paper holder and a hand towel holder. The tub isn't in yet, and we need to do the baseboard this weekend. We also found out that the closet area is about 1 inch too short for bifold doors. We doctored our bifold doors in our condo because we had the same problem, and that didn't go over very well. I didn't really like how the doors fell of the track every time I closed them. I found an online tutorial on how to make your own bifold doors, so I think we'll try that.

Here are some befores of the gorgeous pink bathroom. Check out the picture of the toilet....do you see the tape on it? Before we moved in, the house had been winterized, which meant that the water was off and the toilets were taped up and the sinks were covered up. The first night we were in the house I opened that toilet. If our house is haunted, all the evil was in that toilet. I don't know what was in there...but it was the scariest thing I've ever seen. We got new toilets the next day. Anyways, on with the pictures!






And now what you've all been waiting for....the afters (or I guess the "durings" since its not totally done yet.)







Here's a pic of Maggie cuz she's cute...

The saga of the back room

So during the entire construction process, we couldn't do anything to the back room, because the contractors kept all their stuff in there. It was full of table saws and wood and tools and nails that they apparently threw all around the room. Oh, and a bunch of shattered glass from when they thought it was a good idea to take out the old window and just toss it on the ground. Oh how I loved the contractors....

Anyways. While the contractors were here, the two back windows were taken out and a sliding door was put in (there was no exit to the backyard before.) The water heater room got new floor and a proper door, drywall, electrical work, and a new water heater, and the laundry room got new floor and electrical and plumbing and drywall. The carpet remained disgusting and dirty and stinky, and I spray painted numerous things directly on it....just to ensure that it would get replaced :)

Here are some befores-





Once the contractors were gone, we yanked up all the carpet and found even more grossness underneath!





Now we are seeing the beginning of the end. New floor has been ordered and should get put in either next week or the week after, and today we primed all the wood paneling (and new drywall.) Tomorrow its getting painted Behr "cream puff." The saga continues...