Saturday, December 19, 2009

My beautiful mermaid

My darling husband told me I could do whatever I wanted in the guest bedroom. So, of course, it has a mermaid theme. I really wanted a mermaid painted on the wall but I have no artistic talent. Enter: Stephanie. My little sister Stephanie is very talented. Check out these pictures and you will agree with me.


The outline.


I had an idea of how I wanted the mermaid to look; I found a picture online so that's my Macbook open to the picture.


I love her hair.



Steph worked really hard on my mermaid and you can tell. She did a some different color blending and shading and it really pops. If anyone needs something painted on a wall (nursery?) she's willing to charge like $50. That's ridiculously low if you ask me, but she's still in college, so I think it'll help build up her portfolio.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Christmas lights and the toilet

I had some time off and was able to cross quite a bit off my to-do list. One thing Joseph and I had yet to tackle was hanging Christmas lights. I knew we were going to install a new toilet Saturday, and then the Holiday party for work was Saturday night, so I decided to surprise Joseph and hang the lights myself on Friday. Luckily, my sister Steph offered to help me out.


Hanging Christmas lights.



Steph up on the roof.

The Christmas lights was a fairly easy project; there wasn't really any large disaster....other than being unable to find the lights I wanted. But the next day was Toilet Day.

I watched a video online about how to replace a toilet....it looked super easy. The video was a minute and a half long. Piece of cake, right?

Uh-huh. Because my projects always go just how they should.



The old toilet.



We got the old toilet up and I told Joseph, "We have a problem."
The flange is completely rusted.



I cut myself pretty bad ripping out the old flange.


Joseph screwing in the bottom.



New toilet.

I'm not even going to go into everything that went wrong on this project. I just hope we installed it correctly. My biggest fear as a homeowner is that I have mold growing in my walls or some slow rot somewhere that I won't be able to see until my house collapses.

But let's think positive.


Monday, December 14, 2009

If something is missing....

I had today off from work, and I got to spend some time with my Mom, Grandma and Dano. It was a fun day; we went to World Market, Pier One, Styles for Less, and Walmart in the little shopping center by my house.

At Walmart, my mom picked something up (I cannot tell you what it is because Santa is going to be bringing it for the Nelsen family) and Dano and I said, "I thought you have one of those."

Nope, she gave it to Megan (sister Megan, lives in Texas).

I said, "Didn't you need my scotcheroo recipe because you gave the cookbook it was in to Megan?" We are noticing a pattern.

A couple minutes later we were walking through the seasonal area, and I noticed a train set. I said, "Mom, whatever happened to your train set?"

Dano said, "She gave it to Megan."

Dano was joking, my mom just can't find it....it might be in the garage or the black hole she calls a closet, but the train set hasn't been seen in a few years. My mom just cracks me up; she will give you the shirt off her back if she thinks you want it.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

The Nightmare of the Closet Doors

One thing that has been driving me nuts since we bought our house is the closet in the guest bedroom. When we first did the walk-through, it looked like the doors were just off the track; I figured it would be easy enough to put them back up. When we moved it, I tried putting the doors back on the track. Well, I couldn't. The track was bent up really badly. OK, so next step. Buy a new track. I measured the doors, took my measurements to Lowe's....they did not have a large enough track. I took my measurements to Home Depot and the guy sold me a track.

"Are you sure this is big enoug?" I asked the guy. "My doors are an inch and a half thick and this says 1 3/8."

Home Depot man is sure.

Well, guess what. Track is 48" long and my closet opening is 45 1/2. All I have to do is cut it with a hack saw, easy as pie according to Home Depot guy.

I don't know who can cut through that with a hack saw but Joseph and I could not.

I was able to use my dremel tool, but that took me a good 15 minutes...and it was 15 minutes where I was a little scared that I was going to cut myself or get hit with a flying shard.

So I have my new track cut, I screw it into my closet (which is not easy....your arms start to feel funny for lack of blood flow from holding them up with a heavy drill) and I get my closet doors.

The closet doors go up. And they won't move because they are too close together. I force the front one to move and I end up scratching up the back one with the screws from the wheels.

DANGIT! The stupid track is too small and no one has one big enough. And Home Depot guy is an idiot. And I am an idiot for believing him.

Next step, buy new, smaller closet doors. Now, I waited a couple months because I was just sick of it. But Joseph's family is coming into town and his brother and sister are going to be staying with us, so we have been working on the guest bedroom. It is painted (see previous post) and we decided we would tackle the closet doors finally. We got two doors at Lowe's and some door pulls.

I am drilling a hole in the door for my door-pull.

I had to use a screwdriver to pop out the wood so that I could put my door-pull in.

It looks GOOD.

Here is Joseph screwing on the wheels to the top. We figured we were almost done. Oh, but it just can't be that easy. We got the doors into the house (we drilled the holes in the garage) and put the back one on. We were not able to get the outside door on. We pushed and pulled, grunted and swore for about half an hour. Why did the bigger doors go up but my smaller ones won't??? Finally, I stood the door up and took a look at it. The wheels would not meet the track....the track was too close to the front facade (see below picture for the facade). The reason the wheel on the old doors worked was because the metal bent forward so that the door was further back, away from the facade.

So, we had to move the track.
Unscrewing the track so that we can screw it back in.

The doors are FINALLY up!!! That is Joseph peeking out.

And you know what, they're not even painted. I don't even care anymore....we'll do it later. I am just SO HAPPY we have closet doors. I may have cried a little. And they are flush to the wall so we did a DANG good job.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Busy Saturday


My work has a Season of Sharing. We "adopt" children and purchase Christmas presents and do other nice volunteer work. This year, we also were responsible for a Christmas tree at a Children's hospital. Everyone made a little snowman decoration (that was our theme) and a group of us went Saturday morning to decorate the tree.

After the tree decoration, I ran to Target to get a gift for Danielle's baby shower later that night and then headed home.

I left Joseph an item on his honey-do list; to paint the guest bedroom. His family is coming for Christmas and we are going to have his brother Michael and his wife Sarah staying with us (the rest of the family will stay in the house they still have here in Phoenix). When we first painted our house, we painted every room except the two bedrooms (one is a guest bedroom and the other is an office) and the laundry room. Painting EVERY other room in the house was just
exhausting; we had to stop somewhere and we were ready to move in already. But it looks FABULOUS. And Joseph has some mad painting skills; he refused to take the outlet covers off the wall because he can just paint around them.


Here he is painting the corner without any tape. It looks like a professional job. Just so you know, I helped when I got home. I did the baseboards, windowsill and other small areas that he couldn't get with the roller.


Just when we finished with the bedroom, we had to clean up and leave for the baby shower.
One thing I love about my department is that if there is ever a baby shower/housewarming/etc., the people really come through for you. I know they did when Joseph and I had our housewarming this summer, and they really came through for Danielle and Brannon....they got some AWESOME stuff!

Jen put the kids to work handing out the presents. Here is Danielle and Brannon, the proud soon to be parents.

After the baby shower it was kind of late, but Lowe's was still open, so we picked up our Christmas tree. I didn't get any pictures of it...I have no idea why because I am crazy about Christmas.

One blessing in disguise; I already have most of the homework for this week done because I accidentally did it two weeks ago! And while it was an aggravation two weeks ago, it is REALLY nice this weekend, because I have a test next week. I'm pretty sure having homework, a test, and my busy Saturday would just put me over the edge stress-wise.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Moving furniture

My mom and I were lugging a desk up the stairs, and as always seems to happen, in the middle of the staircase we both got the giggles.

Laughing while trying to move furniture just makes it harder. I have no idea why I always start cracking up, but I do.

So we are laughing, and my grandma is watching us stand in the middle of the staircase, holding the desk, not moving at all, and she says, "Hold on Deidre, I'll come up there and help you!"

My grandma weighs 80 pounds.

Mom and I really lost it and I had to put my end down on the stairs before I dropped it.