Christmas Festiveness.

As mentioned previously, this was Christmas decorating weekend in our household. Really, everything on Sunday was part of the "get Laura more into the Christmas spirit" movement. Some progress was made, but the 65 degree weather is definitely not helping me feel very Christmassy. 

A view of the Christmas tree and the marriage tree. We receive this sculpture for our wedding and it was possibly our favorite gift ever. We tend to decorate it with simple decorations for each holiday or season.

This poor little guy was in the box of ornaments. I think the rest of the ornament was originally a spaceship. But it's ok, Marvin's head is on the tree. The N-boy seemed to find this creepy but acquiesced to the inclusion of Marvin. Or at least Marvin's head. 

The brother-in-law and sister-in-law-in-law got these super awesome Christmas Carol rubber duckies for me a couple of years ago. The N-boy set them up on top of the TV (we'll see how long that lasts with the cats) and didn't even realize that Scrooge duck is facing the opposite way as all the others. But really it seems appropriate so we've left it as is.

Our friends gave me this drink container last year and had it filled with Christmas ornaments. I loved the idea so we decided to repeat it for this year's festivities. 

We've got a couple of other decorations up, but nothing too crazy. I have a bag full of obnoxious red bows that I'll probably hang up around the house over the course of the week as the mood strikes me. 

Weekend fun and games.

The N-boy and I had a pretty quiet weekend, following a rather stressful end to the work week.  I love working with students, but sometimes it can be hard. 

Saturday we saw Skyfall, drank a lot of coffee, and watched college football. Let's just throw in a Go Irish! for good luck here. I cannot believe that they're undefeated and ranked number 1. It's absolute craziness.

On Sunday we took pictures of the N-boy with the awesome steel frame bike he received from Grandpa for his birthday. This bike had been hanging in Grandpa's garage for years. He moved into an independent living facility this summer, and the Momcat found the bike when she was helping to clean out the house. N-boy loves his newest bike (this would be bike number four for those keeping count at home), and we wanted to let Grandpa know that.

I also worked on some English paper piecing for a project (more on that project coming Wednesday!)

And we baked sourdough rolls to take to Thanksgiving. Don't worry; we checked and made sure they weren't poisonous before we packed them up. ;)

Our biggest adventure of the weekend was the eviction of an opossum who had taken up residence in the garage. I'd heard something rustling around in the garage earlier this week and had actually called the N-boy on my phone from the garage to come take a look. We couldn't find anything then, but the next day something had gotten into the birdseed and made a mess. The N-boy thought it was just a squirrel or a chipmunk so he blocked the crack under the side door and cleaned up the bird seed. Then today he went out to rake leaves and when he grabbed the big canvas leaf bag found Mr. Possum inside hissing irritably at having been disturbed from his slumber. 

Animal removal is definitely not thing we learned in grad school. We called my parents to see if they had any suggestions (their ideas were leaving the door open so he'd come out, calling animal patrol and something involving dry ice-I didn't ask for details on this last one). Finally we just used a long pole to loop through the bag handles and pull the whole thing outside, shutting the garage door behind it. We went inside to give the poor little guy some space to get out, but a couple of hours later it was obvious that he had no intent of leaving his comfy nest. The N-boy (carefully) used the pole to move the bag into the backyard and gently pushed the bag over until the opossum crawled out. Hopefully this is the last animal adventure we'll have for a while. 

Have you ever had to conduct any animal evictions? 

Eating Out(side)

At the beginning of every summer I get the urge to create a summer bucket list. All of the things that I should do during the summer to truly enjoy the long days, warm weather and general happiness that comes in stark contrast to the month of February filled with lake effect snow and frigid temperatures (please, ask me how I feel about February). 

I'm still putting the 2012 list together (and possibly writing it down this year so I don't forget!) but I know there is one thing I've already started trying to do more of: eating outside. 

We have a nice patio in the back of the house, with a door leading directly onto it. With a wrought iron table and chairs set that is also quite nice. So there's no reason that when the weather is this gorgeous (look at that sunshine in the background!) that I'm sitting on my butt in front of Netflix eating pizza rolls. Summer calls for sitting outside, with SALAD (I hope the MomCat doesn't pass out when she read that), and with Caprica the Computer so that I can catch up on blogs. Huzzah for Summer!

Snow!

We made it back from our New Year's trip to Germany and Austria in the nick of time, pulling into town right as the lake effect storm was starting to let loose on our area. The N-boy took some pictures on Saturday, I think about half way through the storm. 

Looking out our kitchen window.

Looking out the front door.

Total snowfall for the storm was over 33 inches! With the record for most snow in a 24 hour period being broken with 25 inches! Thankfully the streets were mostly clear today when I headed back to work after a glorious two week vacation! 

Up this week, some pictures from the trip!

First weekend of Summer.

Even though Memorial Day weekend isn't until next weekend, it seems like Summer has officially kicked off here in Northern Indiana. The humidity started in on Saturday, with Sunday bringing high temperatures and bright sunshine to make it altogether rather sticky outside. 

Saturday we rode our bikes down to the Farmer's Market, where we got a LOT of meat, fresh veggies and some shade plants for the garden. 

We spent the majority of Saturday afternoon outside putting in these plants, and our first ever vegetable garden. 

We're growing acorn squash, beets, zucchini, bell peppers, eggplant, chives and basil. We're using the marigolds as a natural version of pesticide.

It's not a huge garden, but we're very excited for our first year growing our own produce. We restrained ourselves, otherwise we would have gone WAY overboard for this first year.

Saturday night we cooked out on our patio (some of the newly acquired meat) on our brand new Weber grill that the Momcat and Daddo got us for our fourth wedding anniversary. It was SO much easier to use than our old travel grill!

Thanks, parents!

We've spend a lot of time outside in the last week, so I really haven't done much (any) crafting. But I leave you with the N-boy's artistic contribution to our landscaping design. He's been taking the bricks (we live on the edge of an old railroad embankment) and rocks we've found in the yard to create festive piles and designs. 

Hopefully I'll get some crafting done so that I, too, have a creative contribution next week. 

A visit from the family

A busy long weekend, had I. The momcat was in town for five days giving us plenty of time to cause lots of ruckus in the house. We got a lot done inside the house, and made some good progress on planning things to do outside the house in the yard. Pictures to follow this week of some of the interior decorating/organizing changes we made.

Somehow, I didn't take any pictures of the Momcat and I working our little tails off! I did, however, end up with a couple of BabyBrother who randomly showed up in town for an Ultimate Frisbee Tournament. Nothing says fun at 7:00 am on a Saturday like receiving a text letting you know someone is coming to crash at your house! It was a very nice surprise, and it was good to see him.

He looks very thoughtful and intelligent here. Don't let that fool you. Just minutes before he was chasing a frisbee and then catching it while slamming face first into the ground.


Yay for BabyBrother. Come see us again anytime!

Finished for Friday: Unpacking!

Another Friday has arrived, and with it, Finished for Friday with threeundertwo over at Lit and Laundry. I'm always so proud when I have something to post for this event, and especially proud this week as we have finished unpacking!

I suppose in this technical sense we still do have a few random odds and ends that need to find a better/more permanent home. But I think we're at the point where I can count this as a victory. Now we just have to go back and finish cleaning the apartment and turn in our keys before we're completely done!

Although I don't have any pictures yet of the inside rooms, I thought I'd share my favorite moment of our move-in experience: the card catalog. Let's just say it was the last thing we moved in, it was very late, and it was very heavy. I've been forced to promise my coworker who helped us that I will never again purchase such heavy furniture from surplus, but will restrict myself to feather pillows and the like.


We had to take all 72 of the drawers out.


And assign two strong men to carry it.


And it was a tight fit getting through the front hall way.


But in the end we got it inside and it sure looks cute! Although we're not quite sure yet what will go inside. I'd originally wanted to put it upstairs in my craft room, but that idea was vetoed by the strong men pictured above.

Be sure to checkout the other finishes on Finished for Friday!

Getting back to the blog...

Wow... I can't believe it has been so long since I have last posted. It's been very busy, moving into the new house, doing Fall Student Registration, and helping the N-boy get into his new routine for his fall schedule (which includes TA-ing!). 

I've also somehow ended up with a fairly busy social life and several groups of friends! It's not like I didn't have friends before, but when we've been moving around so frequently it's been hard to get too attached to anyone when I knew we'd just be moving on soon. But here I've managed to join: 

-a knitting club

- a quilt guild

-a book club

- a support group

- and now a brand new cooking club (inspired by the movie "Julie and Julia"

-and I'm taking a family education class through NAMI for the next 10 weeks. 

I'm not complaining-I really enjoy being busy and having lots of people to do things I like with, but it is busy. I've also got lots of projects and crafts going on, in addition to new things we'd like to do with the house. We're also working on re-organizing how we take care of household things given our new fall schedules. 

So, for today (and this is for you parents) we have pictures of the N-boy and I at closing:

A picture of me and our realtor at closing: 

And Norman the Penguin on our new Sink!!!

More to follow this week as I finish unpacking my craft room and get back to work on all of my projects!

New House, New Furniture

It's been a very busy week here at work, as we prepare for the return of the students to campus. We're already started having orientation for new students, and are generally just gearing up and preparing for the onslaught of 200 new students who need to be registered, oriented and assisted with pretty much anything you can think of.

I've worked on my scrapbook some this week, continuing the basic page layouts that the Momcat and I started at Scrapmania last weekend. It really helps me to just get the pictures down on the page first, knowing that I can come back later to do some journalling and embellishing. I've also been working a bit on my knitted dish towel, starting to prepare to move and have finally finished HP 7! I'll try to get some pictures of my projects up this weekend.

In the meantime, I've been wanting to share picture of one my latest finds. This was found at the University Surplus store, which is open to University employees and students each Thursday. The selection varies widely each week, and it's very much a first come, first serve atmosphere. I'd wanted one of these since I saw them at someone's house during book club, and they had seven of them! For only $25!!!
Why would a library ever want to get rid of their beautiful Card Catalogs!

It's one of the larger ones, with 72 drawers.

Each drawer still has the metal system inside for inserting the library cards.

I'm hoping to be able to use it for storage of some of my crafting supplies, such as yarn, knitting needles and fat quarters. The N-boy, however, has expressed doubts about getting this up the stairs in our new house and into my studio room! We'll see...

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Goldilocks and the multiple houses...

I cannot believe it has been so long since I last posted. It has been super busy. And I do mean super busy. With what, you may ask?
Well I haven't made any progress on knitting the sweater....

I haven't worked on any quilts...

But instead.... the N-boy and I bought a HOUSE!

The original plan was to buy one by the end of July. Due to the N-boy's health crisis this spring, this was not an option. I was upset, but ok, the plan changed and we moved forwards. Fast forward to last week. We'd already decided that we were ready to start looking again, and so we got in touch with a friend of mine who is also a Realtor. On Monday we went to the bank to start the pre-approval procecess. On Tuesday we met with Realtor and her sister (they work together) to go over what were were looking for in a house neighborhoods we liked, etc. On Friday, we got a call from the Realtor: someone else had already made an offer on one of the houses we'd really really liked online. We panic and run over to the bank after work, begging them to give us something to use as a pre-approval letter. As we are sitting in the bank, our Realtor calls to say that the first deal had fallen through. Phew.

Saturday morning we go to look at houses. We look at about ten of them.
Some of them are nice,

some require too much work to fix up

and one had a stream, fountain and koi pond in the back yard.

Which while festive, does not fit our current needs. (This is starting to feel like a bad version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.)

But there was also "the" house.

A three bedroom, one and half bathoom, 1456 square foot house with a basement, hardwood floors, two car garage, and nice yard. And it's super cute. By 3:00 on Saturday afternoon we'd put in an offer. By 5:30 on Sunday the sellers had accepted the offer.

Today we had the inspection, and with the exception of a few things we would like to be fixed, it was GREAT. The inspector said it was a great house.

The listing is no longer on the website and there is this beautiful sign in the yard!

We close on August 25 and are so excited! Now that things are calming down, I'll blog more this week. Anything to keep from having to pack!