House Guests

On Monday I picked the winners of my Bunny Mug giveaway.  Since I only had three comments, it wasn't too hard to figure out who my winners were.  In case you were looking for a big announcement, that would be reason #1 why there wasn't one.  I ordered the mugs, and emailed the winners for their addresses.  Now as soon as the mugs show up, which looks to be sometime between Monday and Thursday of next week, I will send them out.

Other than that, I've had house guests.  My mom to be exact.  She's been here since Monday and leaves next Monday.  Then on Wednesday, my mother in law comes.

Right before receiving house guests, I was able to get my tree up and decorate my mantel.

I got new stockings for the older two last year after Christmas at Target.  

They didn't have the little one's initial.  

Plus, hers is pink, and has monkeys, she's kind of attached to it.

There used to be this company called Christmas Around the World.  

They sold awesome Christmas stuff using the home party plan (like Tupperware)

Then they wen't bankrupt.

I was sad.  

These gingerbread houses are the last thing I got from them.

I was so excited this year that I finally had a mantel again 

and could use my "JOY" stocking hangers.

I opened the box they were in to discover that a snow globe had not survived the move.

Other contents of the tote were ruined, the stocking hangers were attempting to rust.

They were able to be saved, but I did have to put new felt under the J.

These hurricanes usually have candles in them.  

I took the candles out and filled them with little wooden ornaments my mom had given me

 from when I was a kid.

 That's about the extent of the decorating around here.  New lights were purchased for the outside of the house, but since they haven't been put up yet and the hubby only has one day off this week, I don't think they are getting done this year.

Giving credit where credit is due

After writing yesterday's post, I realized that I may have exaggerated ever so slightly about the fact that my husband claims he can build stuff and yet has only ever built me a mantel.  The mantel was part of a complete living room remodel.  I've got some pictures, but you're going to have to use your imagination for some of this story.  Unfortunately I wasn't so good about capturing this whole process on film.

This is what we started with.  A cute little house that we rented for three years before we purchased.  See those two floor to ceiling windows in the front.  Yeah, I hated them.  My couch backed up to them so I could never open the blinds without showing the neighborhood the back of my couch.  Plus they were drafty.  For three years I said, "If this were my house, I'd take those windows out and put in one (dual paned) window that doesn't go all the way to the floor"

Three days after we closed escrow on the house, the neighbors were invited over, beer was purchased and within a few hours those windows were gone, and in their place was a beautiful eight foot wide by four foot high dual paned window set inside brand new framing.

Now we needed to put up new drywall, texture, and paint,  

but we couldn't do that to just this wall,

 it wouldn't match with all the others in the room if we did.  

The entire room and adjoining hallway were re-textured and painted.  

By my hubby.

We said goodbye to the 1970's style popcorn ceiling too, courtesy of my hubby.

Then he brought the room into a more modern age by installing recessed lighting, 

a ceiling fan, and crown moulding.  You can kinda see part of the fan and one

 recessed light in the picture above.

He had never done stucco before, so he called a friend that had, and the outside got finished too.

Here's a picture I took before the final color coat of stucco went on.  

Somehow I never got a picture of the end result.

I found this picture from the following Halloween where you can see just a smidge of

 the decorative moulding and ledge that the hubby built around the new window.

Then there was that mantel that I referred to yesterday.  

Here is it's before picture.

This was the crappiest mantel ever, and another thing that I had said for three years 

I would fix if it were my house.  It was made out of 4 x 4's for the pieces that surround the 

brick and then sitting on top of that were two warped 1 x 4's.  Anything I tried to set on top

 would tip over either because of the warped condition of the boards or the gap between

 them that ran the length of the mantel.

Utterly useless.

I personally got to use a sledgehammer and a crowbar to remove this.  

Oh my was that fun.

I sketched out what I wanted the mantel to look like and my hubby built it for me.

It was perfect and looked just like my sketch.

Do you think I got a picture of it?

Sort of?

Here is a picture from the following Christmas.  You can see a corner of it.

The last step in the remodel was ripping out the old grey carpet and installing laminate

 flooring in the whole house.  As soon as the hubby did that, we decided to sell the house 

and move to Arizona.  I never got any pictures of the laminate floors.

Thinking about all this reminds me of how much more fun it is to live in an old house.  

I like to build stuff.  

And break stuff with sledgehammers. 

 I need another old house. 

And some wood.

And a new saw for the hubby.

This and That

A lot has happened since I last posted.

Here is the rundown.

We moved. Yes again. For those of you that don't know, we were forced to move out of the house we had been renting back in January because it was getting foreclosed on. We looked and looked and couldn't find anything that we liked. Well we found a couple but we were turned down. Each one we liked had several applications. All the others were dumps. Finally we found one that was only month to month (because it too was getting foreclosed on too). That gave us time to find the one we just moved into a week ago. On the hottest day of the year so far. Yeah, that was fun. So for the last week I've been playing, "Which box did that get packed in?" and trying to get unpacked and organized. Little by little it's coming together.

I've had to shop and buy some things for the house. It never fails, the little things you need to make a house livable, how the things that worked in the last house don't work here. Like the basket that I keep all the medications in. I keep all the meds in the cabinet above the microwave. Out of reach of little hands. Well the basket that I kept them in for the last 5 years, the one that worked in the last 4 houses we lived in, didn't fit in this cabinet. So I had to get several smaller baskets to hold the meds.

Then there is the guest bath. I've always wanted a guest bath with a pedestal sink, and I finally have one. Of course I haven't had a guest bath in the last couple of houses, so I had to figure out how to decorate that room. On a budget. Not having a cabinet in the bathroom makes storage more interesting too. I had some silver candle holders in there that my aunt gave me for Christmas several years ago that really didn't match anything in any of my other rooms. I decided to use them, get some white towels, and go with a clean spa like theme for the room. I found a spare toilet paper roll storage container in chrome, as well as an artificial calla lily arrangement in a silver colored pot. I picked up a chrome wire basket to hold the extra towels. Somewhere around here I swear I have a white bathroom rug, but I have no idea what box it's in. If I don't find it by next weekend, I'll probably go buy another one. (then I will find it, LOL) All that's left is to find something to hang on the walls. As soon as it's done I'll post some pics.

I finally got a new phone. After the insurance sent me two more Frankenstein phones, my husband finally got them to agree to send me a BRAND NEW PHONE. The catch, they don't make the pink ones anymore. They still have them in the store, but the insurance does not have any. They tell the hubby they will send the silver phone and maybe the store will trade it for a pink one. Ya, the store said no deal since it wasn't from their inventory they couldn't swap it. So he made yet another call to the insurance, and after they tried to extort another $50 deductible from him, he finally got them to pay for a brand new pink phone for me. Wow, it's only been like 3 weeks now. I tell you one thing. I'm not keeping my phone in my back pocket any more.