House

Our room looks like a page out of the JC penny catalog! I love our new bed set.


Things are going well. We're both happy to have carpet in the house, and we're finishing up the last touches. Would post more pics, but the computer is being weird. Love!

My Husband can Cook

And he's good at it, too!

We went to Sangria (an Italian restaurant in town) the other night, thanks to the gift card from the Schingecks... i'm pretty sure i spelled that wrong. But yes, we went to Sangria and I had some mediocre Shrimp Scampi. I never finish my meals when I eat out, and since Bran and I have been on a pretty tight budget, i decided to take it home. Bran decided he'd heat up the leftovers for lunch the next day, and the result was incredible. He added red wine, balsamic vinegar, Parmesan cheese, and then some "random spices". It was so good! He was very proud of it :) I took a picture, but don't have it uploaded yet, so i'll post it when i do.



On an entirely different note, the house preparations are coming along really well. We painted the main stairwell yesterday, and have been making a lot of progress in the basement. We get carpet tomorrow, which we're both really excited about. Once that's in, I'll post some more renovation pictures.

We love and miss everyone at home, and would like to give a shout out to the "O' Dwyer's" - you guys rock.

<3

More Oregon Pics

Here are the pictures i promised of Oregon! Enjoy!

Imnaha Day of Rest (aka Weekend of Camping)

Whew this week went by so fast! Time flies when you're workin' hard...

After throwing ourselves into the house so hard last week, Bran and I were quite burnt out by the weekend. The timing was perfect, though, because we had planned to go camping with the Tollefsons and some others. We needed to get away from the house for a while, and camping was a wonderful way to do it.

We left early Saturday morning and headed out to Imnaha, Oregon. Jon Tollefson's family is from out there, and once a year his father's church (his dad is a pastor) has what they call the "Imnaha Day of Rest" (it's just like what CREC does at Conquest Beach). Friends of theirs own a beautiful cabin that's on a piece of property way back in the mountains along a river (the river bends right around their property, so there's water on three sides - it's beautiful). It took us about 5 hours to get to the cabin (Jon wanted us to all stop and get lunch, and it ended up being about a 2 1/2 hour lunch stop......) Bran and I hate taking forever to get places after the cross country trip, so we were very happy to finally arrive a few hours later.

The weekend was full of good food, good friends, and lots of babies! We took our dogs with us (Duke, the lab, and Moose, a border collie/blue heeler mix) and weren't sure how they would do with all the kids around. Duke was wonderful - he's 3 and 1/2 and has really mellowed out (he's a lot like Mercedes... he let the kids pull on him and all kinds of stuff, and he just sat there!). Moose was a little bit of a different story. He's only 7 months old, and so really he's still a puppy. He didn't like the kids so much, but did his best to avoid them rather than bite them. The one time he did snap at one of them, Bran put the fear of God in him... i don't think he'll do that any more.

Bran and I decided to stay an extra day (making the best of our unemployment). We were really glad that we did, because we were able to help make sure everything was cleaned up at the cabin, and could take our time packing up. We tried to swim in the river, but it was so cold and so incredibly strong that we changed our minds.

The weekend was so much fun. I absolutely love having so many friends that are couples!! I know none of you know these folks, but in case you meet them, i'll tell you who went: The Antkowiaks, the Tollefsons, the Dowers, the Wolfs, and the Stevensons. And then Sunday morning a bunch of people from the Tollefson's Church in Oregon joined us for the Day of Rest.

It was a wonderful weekend. Oh, and Oregon is astonishingly beautiful.


My computer is taking a long time to upload pictures, so i'll try to do a follow-up post with more!

My husband is amazing.

I wasn't feeling great tonight, and Bran insisted that I take a bath to help me feel better. (Those who know me best know that I love to take baths, whether its for stress, health, boredom, or basically any other excuse I can come up with.) So I happily complied, but had no idea what he had in mind.

While the tub was filling, Bran went all around the house and gathered every candle he could find, and then put them all over the bathroom and turned the lights out. Then he got me a glass of wine, and told me to stay in the tub for an hour. It was heaven on earth... until the hot water ran out about halfway through the tub fill-up. But once again, my husband had a plan - he spent about 15 minutes running back and forth between the stove and the bathtub with pots of hot water so I could have a hot bath! It was wonderful... and really funny, because every time I thought he was finished, he would bring another pot of water. I'm pretty sure he used all of my pots....

Needless to say, I'm feeling much better, and will sleep quite soundly tonight :)

(Note: This isn't my bathtub, though I wouldn't mind if it were.)

truckin' around

Two posts in one day... oh well. I was told by someone that I don't post enough (ahem karen ahem ;) ) so I figured you all wouldn't mind! Sunday afternoon's weather was absolutely beautiful and since Bran had been dying to work on his truck since we got here, we both decided it was the perfect time to do it. When we took it up Moscow Mountain, the paint took quite a beating, and so he decided it was time to put bed-liner on the bottom of it. It's basically this really tough rubbery paint with sand stuff in it that makes it super tough and un-chippable. The result was pretty awesome. Bran also decided to put in his grill inserts (homemade, mind you - from the truck store they would cost $150, but bran made his own out of gutter guard for $3).

Home, sweet home.

We've finally finished enough of the painting to post pictures!! The folks we bought the house from had the entire thing painted white as a selling point, so Bran and I have spent the past week painting away. Our goal is to not have a white wall in the house by the time we're done.

We started with our bedroom, so that we could have some space that wasn't under construction (when we first moved in, we slept on a mattress in the living room, so having our bedroom done was pretty important to us). This is our bedroom before the renovations:



We painted, installed wood floors, a ceiling fan, and new baseboards.... ta da!

oh and we also pulled the pink tint off the windows...

Then we moved on to our upstairs living room, but i don't have any pictures of that yet because it's not done. We painted it green, ripped out the carpet, and now Bran is installing some built-in bookshelves along one of the walls - i'll post pics as soon as its done.

Our next project was the downstairs living room, dining room, kitchen, and foyer. The Antkowiaks graciously gave us their living room furniture, which is kind of a southwestern-style, and so we decided to do a southwestern theme in the living room, without being obnoxious. We went with a light yellow on all of the walls, except for the one with the fireplace, which we painted a burnt orange. Here is the before and after:


The last thing we have to do in here is finish hanging the molding (you can see it kind of half up at the top of the picture) and then buy a curtain. We're so pleased with the colors - the yellow is my favorite color out of all the ones we picked.

Then we moved into the dining room and kitchen. The dining room and the wall that extends to the side door are yellow, and then the rest of the kitchen is the same blue that was in our bedroom:


And thats it for now!! We're still working on the foyer, which will be burnt orange with white window trim, and the hallway, which will be yellow. Later in the week we're going to start on the basement.

Let me know what you think of the colors!!

Happy Fourth of July!

Bran and I had an awesome day - we painted the living room/dining room, and then had Mike and Catherine over for a cookout (we invited others, but everyone already had plans!). After dinner, Bran took me up Moscow Mountain, where we got some fun pictures of his truck being tough :)

Love and miss everyone!

having friends is a wonderful thing...

In town for 3 days and having people over for dinner already! Mike and Catherine Church came over for dinner tonight (bran wanted to use his new grill, so we had steaks). They even stayed and helped us put in the new wood floor upstairs and do some more painting. The house is looking beautiful, and we're so excited to get everything done!! Love and miss all you easterners...