aspen grove

I was lying in bed reading a good book yesterday when I suddenly got the itch to paint a mural on the wall behind the bed. I went downstairs and asked Jonathan, very sweetly, to help me move our bed.

"Uh-oh," he said, getting up to come help. "What's going on?"

He is such a good sport! He moved the bed and then he took the kids on a long bikeride and then to the park while I listened to The Beach Boys and slapped some paint on the wall.

I love it! It's not terribly original. Many similar murals and decals of birch trees have been featured on design*sponge and Apartment Therapy, but I like it anyway. There are so many aspens out here. It seems very "Colorado" to me to have a grove of them on my wall...

I had planned to do more detail, paint "notches" and such on the trunks using the wall color to represent the bark, but I liked it as it is, more simple and graphic, so I made myself stop.

Jonathan loves it. (Thank goodness!) Now I just need to find some new bedding and lamps. Jonathan says "What's wrong with the lamps?" but I have never liked them. It's just that lamps cost money. At least this mural was free!

I am hot

We have no air conditioning. Meaning not that our unit is broken but that our home has no air conditioning system. So right now it is almost 8 pm and it is 85 degrees inside my house. And that is the downstairs temperature. God only knows how hot it is upstairs!

So I have not really felt like sitting down and typing. Even my fingers are sweating.

I have been trying to cram for the biology placement test at the community college to save myself a semester of school but it is just so hot... I feel cross and filthy and sluggish and to top it off my notecards are all grubby because my hands are sweaty. Gross.

ad infinitum

I have been scrubbing our floors today. Because Jonathan's mother and sister arrive tomorrow. But mostly because they look awful! We got this gorgeous, dark wood laminate floor installed and then someone (meaning me) painted all the walls a creamy white without using dropcloths. Sigh. It is very tedious, very hard work scrubbing all of the paint spatter off of the floors. My hands are killing me. But mostly I just feel like an ass. Since the paint spatter is all my fault.

Most projects we have worked on, we are cursing the former owners up and down because of the neglect and/or shoddy work that led to the project we worked on. But this time, I can only curse myself. And I have been. All day.

The Finding Nemo mural in Lion's room is almost finished. It is amazing how expressive fish can be! I will post some pictures when I finally finish. I think he really likes it. I have caught him sleeping up-side down in his bed a few times, as if he fell asleep looking up at it. Very gratifying.

Blue wants a mural next. And it's only fair that I do one for her, too. I was thinking of a forest scene, with some flowers and wildlife, and of course a princess castle in the distance. She wants me to do something princess-y. The other day she asked me if I could paint her on the wall -- as a princess. I told her that may be a bit too difficult for Mommy's artistic abilities!

rainy day

It is raining today. So it looks like I am spending another day inside painting! Jonathan's Mom and sister are coming to visit in two weeks so that is giving me a good deadline to wrap up some of these projects.

I am loving living in an older home. It was so neglected and crappy when we bought it. So really anything we do to it is an improvement! I am in a "white" phase right now which is cracking my mother up. I think it is in part because so many of the homes featured in Domino or on Apartment Therapy had white walls and partly because the house was just so dirty when we moved in. But I am painting most of the rooms a creamy white.

Here are some photos of the family room in various stages of white. We ripped out the green carpet before moving all of our stuff in. And had a dark brown pergo floor installed:


First to be painted: the brick fireplace wall and the built-in bookcase and all of the dark brown wainscoting. I painted the inside of the fireplace a flame-resistant, soot-hiding black. Then Jonathan plastered over the ugly peachy-tan stucco walls and I painted them a creamy beige:


Then I painted the brown mantle white and I am currently painting the ceiling a crisp white:


Whether you like so much white or not, it is definitely brightening up the place!

Sometimes I think Jonathan is wondering who the hell I am, since I hated white walls when he met me! But at least, doing such a 180 is teaching me to respect other people's design choices a little more. If people want to paint their walls a dark color or even just a bright one, I can think, "I once liked that look too." And I will probably be painting all over the white walls in Glenbogle house in a couple years (who am I kidding? months) too!

busy bee

I have been busy lately. So my blog has been sadly neglected.

We are still trying to finish painting the entire exterior of the house. So whenever it isn't too hot we are outside painting. And I am painting the ceiling in the family room. Which was a nasty stained brownish color. Blech. And I suddenly decided to paint a Finding Nemo mural in Lion's room so there is that project as well. I think all of my shirts are paint-spattered. And my jeans. And my hands. And my face. Sigh.

I could have blogged last night. Jonathan and I sat down to rest (he has been landscaping and working in the yard while I paint indoors) and put up our feet. But we had just gotten "North and South" from Netflix so we spent the evening watching that. I cannot believe I watched it more than once as a kid. The script is just so bad. We just kept looking at each other and giggling.

the children's garden

Yesterday we planted the children's garden in the back yard in honor of Earth Day. Here's a picture of the area when we bought the house:

It had three tall rose bushes and some random weeds. We moved the rose bushes into the front, where there were already some rose bushes and this is what the area looked like a few weeks ago:


So yesterday Jonathan tilled the soil and added several bags of topsoil and manure. We went to Lowes and Wal-Mart and picked out some plants. Because the seeds we planted never sprouted. Well, Lion's morning glories grew like crazy but none of the others did. So we bought Blue some daisies since her daisy seeds were duds. And Jonathan bought me a hydrangea to plant in the center of the garden. (I have always wanted a hydrangea!) And I picked out some purple petunias and some little white daisy-like flowers to fill in the edges. And then (just because we love making pico de gallo) we got two cilantro plants just for fun!

Jonathan and I planted the flowers (and herbs) with help from the kids. We put Lion's morning glories in the corner so they can grow up the post for the deck.

Then Blue and the Lion helped me water everything. They are very good gardeners. Their main job will be to help me water the garden every morning. And to keep Mabel out of the garden.

So here is the children's garden now:


Notice Mabel lurking around? We put a little bunny statue in there to stand guard. But it doesn't seem to be doing its job.

I'm going to go bite my pillow!

People are so snarky! I submitted photos of the kitchen cabinets to apartment therapy and they posted them! I was so excited and then I stupidly clicked on the comments tab. Ouch. There were only 2 comments but they were both mean. Sigh. I'll stick to my own little blog where people like me.

our blue kitchen

Finally. Finally. Some photos. Jonathan gave me a new camera for my birthday, so today I washed the dishes and moved my clutter into the dining room and took some photos of the kitchen at last. I tried to get some of the same angles as the very first time we walked through the house so you can really see the transformation. Here we go:


I haven't found counter stools that I like yet. But eventually we will have stools there.

I had to post a close-up of my new pantry knobs I bought at Anthropologie. You can't really see them in the kitchen photos and I am just so madly in love with them.

And I just had to post this crazyass "during" photo. My mixer and baking ingredients are pulled out right next to a can of paint in the background. And there are Oreo balls in the foreground right next to a mini Christmas tree. I was making Christmas cookies for the neighbors right in the middle of all of this renovation madness!

Can you see the little white Dixie-cup dispenser mounted on the wall by the kitchen sink? Classic.


I guess we never took a photograph of the original stove. But that is okay. That thing was so old and gross. We ripped all of the appliances out right away. Here is a shot of Jonathan helping the delivery guys install the microwave over the stove. It is very handy having such a tall man around the house!

This next photo makes me smile. Because this is how we lived for a few weeks while I got organized and finished painting the cabinets. There are piles of appliance registration paperwork and delivery receipts in all of the cabinets and then in one kitchen cabinet: my purse, jammed in with everything else. I refused to put any dishes in those nasty cabinets until they were primed and painted.
We still need to rework some of the wiring in the kitchen because there is no electrical outlet up above the stove. So the microwave cord hangs down in front of the cabinet and is plugged in down below. Once Jonny installs a new outlet, we will nail a piece of plywood up there above the microwave and paint it to match the rest of the cabinetry, to hide that nasty hole up there. He'll get it done, eventually. It seems everywhere we look, we see more projects needing to be done.

Here's a shot of the new countertops (you can see where the old backsplash was attached to the walls) and the old dark cabinet finish sanded away:

And then a shot of the cabinet base primed. I still needed to prime and paint the inside, so you can see, still no pots and pans put away:

A funny photo of me busily priming and painting away. I have no idea how many hours I spent crouching on that plastic and cardboard. But I was determined not to rush the job. So this was what our family room looked like for several weeks. Sigh. We have a lot of cabinet doors.

And then, voila, the doors were hung and the knobs attached and the kitchen is (almost) finished!

What do you think? I think our wind-up Mario likes it:

grumble, grumble

Now that I am finally feeling better, a slight depression has crept in to make me feel like crap in a whole new and improved way. I had made some plans for last week. Jonathan and I finally caught up with Jason, my old dear friend from my Richmond days last Sunday night. And he asked us to come to his parents' house in Evergreen for a huge, happy Thanksgiving day feast. So we were really looking forward to that. Sigh.

And then I invited my new friend, Shannon, to come over on Friday with her kids to decorate some gingerbread houses. We are forever making plans to get together and then I am forever cancelling for one reason or another. So, again, sigh.

So I am feeling very lonely and isolated in our new home. With the holidays approaching, I really, really miss my family. And my friends. Who I would no doubt be asking over all the time to watch Love Actually with me for the billionth time and drink something alcoholic and eat baked goods. I really have such awesome friends back home.

And then there is Glenbogle house. Which seems so overwhelming sometimes. It really sucks, living this way. With boxes and disorder in every room still. And all of our kitchen items all over the place -- some piled on the dining room table, some on an endtable in the breakfast nook, most still in boxes in the sunroom. We have not had a working kitchen sink in two days. There are dirty dishes in a pile on the dining room floor. At which Mabel, bless her heart, has not so much as glanced.

I will spend hours painting the horrible dark brown beadboard in the family room, knowing it will still need an infinite number of coats to finally be truly white, and I will sit up to stretch my back and see the half-painted bookcase, the windows that need cleaning and trim-painting, the still-dark brown doors everywhere, the kitchen cabinets with no doors and that also need priming and painting, the dirty dingy ceiling, the ugly brown seventies banister that will need hours, days, weeks, probably months of priming and painting and I could just scream. And I do. Mostly at poor Mabel and the restless kids. To get away from the wet paint, to get all of their toys off the stairs, to leave the dog alone, to keep their hands to themselves...

But tomorrow we are taking a break from renovations. And we are going to the Aquarium. Because the kids need a bit of a fun day, too. And we are meeting up with Shannon and her children there, thanks to Jonny's plotting, so I can hardly wait. Should be a great day.

Jonathan came in here and told me to let him deal with the kids, put them to bed and all that, and that I should just go lay in bed with a good book and I snapped at the poor man! And realized what I had done and laughed at myself for being such a jerk and apologized. And then told him to get out of here before I punched him in the face.

renovations

So we have been super busy here at Glenbogle house. I am back on my feet at last, after over a week of illnesses. And I am most eager to help my poor husband with renovating our new home. I am also officially freaking out about Christmas because what with the two moves and being so sick I am seriously behind on shopping, organizing, decorating, Everything. But that is another story.

We had basic beige carpeting installed in the upstairs the day before we moved in. Then Jonathan and the movers put all of our bedroom and office furniture in the upstairs and the rest of our furniture in either the sunroom or the garage, since the entire downstairs had no floor. Or at least, had a painted subfloor.

This week we had pergo installed in the downstairs. It looks awesome. It is a dark wood, very dark brown, like coffee, and it has been completely dusty and dirty ever since installation. Because the dude was here installing it all week, so sawdust everywhere.

And Jonny has been sanding the kitchen cabinets so we can prime them -- so more dust.

And today our new (gorgeous) kitchen countertop was installed so yet more sawdust. I cannot wait to clean them up and unearth them in all their glory, but the dude is coming back to put some of the baseboards on on Monday, so I may just wait a little while longer.



We call the flooring contractor "the dude" because we never did catch his name until the final day of installation this week. You know how once you don't get someone's name and time passes it starts to become way too late to ask them for their name? I have been watching a lot of Love Actually this week so the line where Hugh Grant asks Natalie to tell him about herself ("I'm starting to feel ... uncomfortable about us working so closely every day and me knowing so little about you; it seems elitist and wrong") has been running through my head with much significance.

Now we know his name (it's Brandon) but we still call him "the dude" out of habit.

He finished the pergo installation and even under the dust and debris everyone (all contractors) who has been to the house and seen it has commented on it, saying how gorgeous it looks. Our cable/phone hooker-upper guy even took a small piece home with him to show his wife. So that is nice.

I would post some photos, but Jonathan is being secretive. He doesn't want anyone to see any during pictures so that when we post the after photos, everyone will be totally blown away by the beauty of Glenbogle house. But I am not that patient, so photos will be posted soon, most likely!

Tonight I primed the bottom cabinets. We are painting the cabinets a pretty, deep turquoise color. The inspiration for the entire house (well, the downstairs, at least) is the fabric I used to upholster the kitchen chairs
which so far really seems to suit our retro house.

My mom is coming out to visit for Christmas and I cannot wait to see what she thinks. Because she saw the house in all of its smelly, shag-carpeted glory. Good times.

chew your food!

Jonathan and I just love biting off more than we can chew. Case in point: Glenbogle house.

It is going to take a lot of work to get this house livable. Much less looking awesome.

I think this blog will become a "home improvement" blog before long.

"ET" was on television last night and Jonny and I were watching the end of it and it hit both of us that the house Elliot's family lives in looks a lot like Glenbogle house. Totally dated. And he asked me (Jonathan, not Elliot) if I will be happy there. Because, to be honest, it is not the sort of house I pictured myself falling in love with. I always imagined myself living in a very old house. Not a house from the late seventies. With cat pee saturated orange shag carpet:
and a horrible faux stone wall:And have we mentioned the ... sunroom ... that looks like a Denny's restaurant attached to the back of the house?

But who can explain love? I love this house. And not only will we make it habitable again, we will make it fabulous.

So back to the biting off more than we can chew part. Guess who volunteered our new home for his office Christmas party in mid December? That's right. My husband. And at first I was all excited and full of party plans. And then we realized we will have just moved in and not even finished unpacking, much less painting and who knows if we will have appliances or even floors installed yet... So Jonny called his boss and was like, "Um, yeah, hi. I think we will have to rethink the office Christmas party thing..."

Which brings me to Thanksgiving. We close on the house on Friday the 14th (our 10-year anniversary!) and will try to have flooring and appliances put in by the end of the month so we can vacate this apartment by December 1st. And Thanksgiving is somewhere in the middle there. And I have decided to try and have our very first Thanksgiving in Glenbogle house this year rather than going to a restaurant and having our first Glenbogle Thanksgiving next year. Maybe sitting Indian-style on the bare (hopefully non-cat pee smelling) subfloors with paper plates. But I am very excited about this idea. I plan to pack all of the kitchen items I will need for Thanksgiving in a specially-marked box so I can find everything I need. And not make a ton of food, since there are only 4 of us, but just the basics: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie...

And I was lying in bed the other night, just giggling as Jonathan and I predicted that all of my elaborate plans will probably come down to a box of Stove Top stuffing and those instant mashed potato flakes! So, we'll see...

He is doing okay today. Sad. But okay. But, like I said, Tante Inge had been very ill. It's just hard because the last time we saw her she was fine. We never saw her ill. We were so far removed from the situation that it feels very sudden to us.

Tante Inge's birthday is on November 29th so we were thinking of celebrating her life on that day. I will make her apfelkuchen and Jonathan volunteered to make some spaetzle (again, in Glenbogle house, so we shall see if this comes to fruition!) but we plan to go to the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster because Tante Inge loved butterflies. So we should at the very least get to the pavilion even if the apfelkuchen and spaetzle have to wait until next year!

Thank you, everybody, for your kind words and prayers. It means a lot to Jonathan. And to me.

three things

1. After waiting in line for about an hour so Mommy and Daddy could vote, after being shushed a million times, after waiting another fifteen minutes for Mommy and Daddy to cast their votes, Blue was so confused when we left the library. "Hey! I thought we were going on a boat?!"

2. I need to watch my mouth around the Lion: "Where is my freakin' Spider-Man PEZ? Where the heck is it?"

3. The bank accepted our counteroffer and we will close on Glenbogle on November 14th and pay $10,000 less than we thought we would!

can you hear me now?

I am a mess. Living in a messy apartment.

We had our home inspection on Wednesday. Luckily our new house, although an eyesore, has good bone structure.


We are still set to close on November 14 and that date is approaching at breakneck speed. Since we just moved three months ago, half of our belongings are in storage units downstairs, still boxed. And Jonny saved all of the boxes from when I unpacked, so I have been reusing them. It irks me to buy newspapers just to ball them up and stuff them into the boxes, but at least I have boxes, right?

So my packing style is this:

1. grab a box from the pile in the living room
2. assemble box
3. check the label I scribbled on box this summer
4. fill box with said items

So each box is a surprise. And so each room in the apartment has been half-packed, half-assed. But since no one ever pops over to visit us here, I don't care how disgusting this place is looking. In my head I am already outta here.


Jonathan and I are full of plans for this house. Which we have named Glenbogle House. If you are a fellow Monarch of the Glen fan, you get the joke. If not, um, go rent it from Netflix. You will love it. In the meantime, here is the first sentence of the synopsis on imdb:

Archie MacDonald, carving out a life for himself as a restaurateur in London, finds himself called back to his home in the Scottish Highlands to assume his role as The Laird of Glenbogle and get the 40,000 acre estate back on its feet.

Since this house is so badly in need of some tlc and since it is the neighborhood called Hyland Greens (and since I am obsessed with this freakin' show) Jonny named the house Glenbogle and the name has stuck.


PS Glenbogle is pronounced with a long "o" sound like the word "ogre." Just rent the series, for God's sake! It is awesome.

the secret

So. The house. I am so excited. I feel like I am on such an emotional rollercoaster, but it just keeps going up and up...

We had that crazy, frantic day Friday and Jonathan got to the house by 5:00 to make an offer. He made an offer and then he decided on the way home to just tell me that we had been outbid. Because I was so intensely passionate about getting that house and because he was afraid if we heard that we didn't get the house while my mom was visiting that it would ruin her visit. And if we did get the house, how excited would I be???? So somehow he convinced me we didn't get the house. And managed to keep up the deception! I am so amazed... and impressed. I could never keep such a secret. I am a total blabbermouth!

Anyway, so he told my mom what was going on because if he didn't tell someone he would just burst! And he heard back from the agent on Monday after we returned from the airport and she told him that all the bids were really close so did he want to submit a better offer? So he did and then had to wait even longer to see if we got the house.

So there I was, completely in the dark and completely crushed that we didn't get the house! But I tried not to talk about it because I didn't want to make him feel bad about it. But my mom and I went shopping on Wednesday with Blue and I just kept talking and talking about the house and its neighborhood and how disappointed I was that we didn't get it. I was also very worried about Jonathan, thinking he had insomnia because he hadn't slept in days (because he was so stressed about the house!) and so I dragged my mom and Blue to Wal-Mart on the way home to pick up some sleeping pills for him.

I walk in the door and he gave me a kiss in the kitchen and said "I love you!" I asked, "What's up with you?" and he handed me a card. Our ten year anniversary (of the day we began dating) is next month and he told me he had bought me an anniversary card but he couldn't wait to give it to me. I said, "Ohhhh, how sweet. I, um, haven't bought a card for you yet, though!" and we laughed.

I opened the card. It was a "Congratulations on Your New Home" card and I thought, he really is serious about getting us a nice house, poor guy. And then I read what he had written inside the card:

I know that traditionally I should get you diamonds for our 10th Anniversary...
but how about a diamond in the rough?

(We got the house!!!)

Love, boy

And I think I read the last line about three times before I burst into tears and asked "What? What? What?" I was so confused. And so emotional. I don't think I have cried that way since the morning he proposed. My hands kept shaking.

That is seriously the most romantic moment ever. Ever.

So we took Mom to see the house today! And I just walked around and around, breathing in the cat smell and dreaming of all of the amazing things we will do to this house. My mom loves it. She was out there weeding the garden and she picked several gorgeous roses and brought them back to the apartment and arranged them in my white creamer and they are so lovely and smell so beautiful... I cannot believe those rose bushes are going to be mine.

I can't believe it!

ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod

Jonathan completely lied to me about the house. He didn't want me to be stressed out while my mom is visiting. There were two other bids on the house but we didn't know what they were.

Bottom line:

WE GOT THE HOUSE!

This house:


and we close on November 14th, which is ten years to the day that we started dating!

ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod

drama

Yesterday Jonathan and I fell in love. With a house.

And then today we contacted a realtor and found out that this property is bank-owned and there are 2 offers pending and the bank wanted any and all offers submitted by 5:00 tonight!

So we ran around like maniacs, going over all of our debts and incomes. And Jonathan contacted a mortgage broker and got a letter stating how much money we are approved to borrow and then he drove through crazy horrible traffic to meet the agent and submit the offer. Since there were 2 other offers on the house, we went slightly over the asking price. And crossed our fingers and toes. The house needed quite a lot of work so we hoped the others had bid below the asking price.

Jonathan came home and brought me some Mike's Hard Lemonade (it has been a stressful day) and told me that the agent let us know that the other 2 potential buyers have been in a bidding war for weeks now and had both offered substantially higher than we did.

So at least now we know.

End of stress and drama and chest pain and frantic phone calls and racing around like maniacs.

It wasn't meant to be.

But I am so proud of my boy for racing around and doing everything he could possibly do to try and get this house for us. And he is proud of me that I am accepting the end result so well. And we have learned several things from this crazy day:

1. we know how much house we can afford
2. we have found an agent and a broker that we really like
3. we have really narrowed down what we are looking for in a home
4. we know we really want to live in this neighborhood!

It is a gorgeous, gorgeous established neighborhood with a pool and tennis courts and a golf course. Lots of trails and bike paths and mature trees. And the homes are all very well-maintained craftsman-style houses and there are a lot of them (it is a large neighborhood) so hopefully there will be another similar house on the market in the next few months. That won't reek of cat pee.

I didn't mention that the house smelled like cat pee? Oh. Well, it did. But we still loved it.