Ryan and Shelley

Cake Wrecks: The "Winter Underlined" Tour

2011-10-26T14:20:00.001-04:00

Last night I went to the West Hartford Barnes and Noble (my first trip to Blue Back Square!) with Marcella for the Cake Wrecks book presentation and signing. I haven't seen Marcella in forever (except for a short time at the Berlin Fair in the beginning of October), so it was nice to catch up with her :) We got to the store really early (the evite said 126 people were coming, so we wanted to make sure we got a seat!). We grabbed some food from the Starbucks in the store and I bought one of the Cake Wrecks book to have signed. Marcella made this for Jen, the brains behind Cake Wrecks. She loved it!! It's the carrot jockey baby from one of the cakes, and is the blog's logo. Cella did an amazing job with it!

The crocheted carrot jockey baby

The cake slice shaped bag and a picture of the inspiration :)

Jen and Marcella

Right before the presentation started, Sarah Dunn (Botta) showed up! She had seen Marcella's status on facebook saying that we were going and was home so she decided to come too! It was so great to see her! I haven't seen her in 10 years! We kept telling people it was our mini high school reunion! We got to eat this delicious cake while catching up on the last 10 years. All in all, an amazing night!

And the best part was when Jen signed my book she signed it "To Shelley, with an extra "e"" which is how I always tell people it's spelled :) Yay!

Birthday Manicure/Pedicure

2011-06-18T23:01:00.002-04:00

Today Beverly came to Reading to take out Lauren for her birthday. She also invited me and Becca. We first went to Wilmington to get manicures and pedicures. I got a French manicure and I love it! I just wish that nice nails lasted longer on me. After the nail salon we went to Lexington to Margarita's for lunch! I looooveee Margaritas!! The lunch taco basket was the same size as the dinner one though so I was wicked full. We then had to make a quick trip to Stop and Shop, where Becca slipped on some water (and Lauren's first comment was "Are you hurt? You could sue!". When we were getting back in the car, Beverly thought she recognized someone she knew from high school, who ended up getting into the car next to us. She went over and knocked on his window and scared him :) Turns out it was pretty random.. they both grew up in Saugus, he lives in Western MA now and she lives in NH. And they both happened to be in Reading at Stop and Shop parked next to each other lol.

When we got home, me and Becca made jello infused cupcakes to bring to Lauren's birthday bbq at her house in Saugus that night. They came out so cute! (Bad pictures though.. the lighting was weird..)

We finally made it to Lauren's (only a half hour late), where Jason cooked hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner. Everything was really good! Stephanie and Jenn Silva were also there. After dinner, Lauren's soccer friends started showing up. One of them brought watermelon vodka, and suggested adding it to the pink lemonade Lauren had made for me. Omg.. it was delicious!! I'm usually not a fan of vodka, but this was delicious!! And on top of all of the fun, Lauren had put together a birthday bbq playlist, complete with BSB, NKOTB, NSync and Hanson. It was pretty awesome.. though Ryan and Jason didn't agree. By the time we all left, we had had waaaayyy too much to drink! Becca and I were way too fascinated by the 20 bougies (what a funny word) (aka birthday candles) while Ryan met up with Mark.

Our Three Year Anniversary

2011-06-14T23:13:00.000-04:00

Today was our three year wedding anniversary!! Unfortunately, it fell on a Tuesday, which meant we spent most of the day apart. While Ryan was at work I ran around doing errands all day. I had some birthday and Father's Day gift shopping to do (plus last minute anniversary gifts).. and I also had to return a book to the library and renew Madison's license (well.. technically, register her in Berlin).

When Ryan got home we decided to go to Renaldo's for dinner. Neither of us was in the mood for a huge dinner, and we didn't want to spend an enormous amount of money, and Renaldo's is always our go-to restaurant when we can't make a decision. We should go out to dinner during the week more often! Our salads came out with our drinks and the dinners came out before we even had time to finish our salads! As always, everything was crazy delicious. And I had leftovers that I'll have for lunch tomorrow. All for only $27, including tip!

After dinner we headed to the mall because someone (RYAN) still had to buy me a present and card. Of course we went to Hallmark, where I chatted with Sarah while Ryan (with Zoe's help) picked out a gift and card.

Ryan got me an adorable Precious Moments.. the anniversary one (which we discovered is from 2003.. coincidence? :)). I got him The Sopranos Season 6 Part II (the only Sopranos box set we were missing), an electrical outlet/wire tester thing (he really really really wanted this.. and proceeded to play with it for an hour after opening it) and a couple other little things for the grill.

Here are some pictures of us from the last year... It was definitely a good year...

At Erik and Colleen's Wedding - North Conway, NH - August 2010

At Krissy and Eric's Wedding - New Haven, CT - July 2010

At Matthew and Jenn's Wedding - Oxford, CT - October 2010

On Vacation - Winthrop, ME - August 2010

At Water's Edge - Westbrook, CT - August 2010

Closing on our house - East Berlin, CT - July 2010

The Little One Turns 4!!!

2011-06-13T22:05:00.001-04:00

I cannot believe she is already 4!! There is no way we've had her for four years! Although, at the same time, we can't even remember what life was like without her. If we're out all day without her, we miss her like crazy and find ourselves rushing home to her. Best.Baby.Ever!

Madison celebrated her birthday with an Ooh La La Peanut Butter Pie made by her mommy, and got four presents (four for the four year old). She got a squeaky monkey with rope arms and legs, a pink frisbee, a pomegranate chewie and a new Zhu Zhu pet. We're going to visit Auntie Sadie and cousin Declan this weekend, and she's planning on bringing some of her birthday pie to share with them.

House Renovation

2011-06-12T14:39:00.000-04:00

My mom is finally getting her new kitchen! After 32 years. My dad "promised" her when they built the house that they would make the kitchen bigger. And it is finally happening.

I've been working on the plans for a couple months now, and this morning we met with one of the contractors (the one I hope will get the job!).

When my mom called him to schedule the meeting, she screamed and danced around the Dining Room when she hung up. Yea. She's that excited!

If I work my butt off and get the documents ready in the next week or so, I'll be able to give them to the contractors to bid on (we still need to meet with the other contractor too... even though my parents really liked Rick, it's always best to have at least 2 or 3 bids), and submit them to the town for the building permit. We'll also have time to order the windows and cabinets before demolition starts, which will help speed things up. Rick would be able to start toward the end of August (with my luck it'll be the week we're in Maine..) and he estimates that it'll take 6-8 weeks.. finishing around October. We'll be doing a lot of the work ourselves.. which'll make for an interesting summer/fall. Working on our house and my parent's house!

Thanksgiving in May

2011-05-08T21:56:00.001-04:00

For the longest time I've been saying that when we have kids I want to have major holidays at our house. Yea, it'll be a lot of work and a lot of craziness, but it seemed like the only fair option for our parents.

So this year we decided to host Mother's Day. Back in November we got a free turkey from ShopRite. It was the week they opened (the week before Thanksgiving) and you got a coupon in the mail for a free turkey if you spent $15. Pretty good deal. We bought our groceries and got a free 20 pound turkey (valued at about $25). But what are two people going to do with an entire 20 pound turkey?? We couldn't eat it ourselves, and even with eating leftovers it just seemed like a lot of it would go to waste. So it sat in the freezer at my parent's house until now.

Since we were having turkey for dinner, it only made sense to have a mini-Thanksgiving. In the end, it was pretty good practice for us for the days when we will be having Thanksgiving here.

Sunday morning we both woke up at 6 am to prepare the turkey. I had made the stuffing the night before, so while Ryan cleaned out the inside of the turkey, I got the oven and stuffing ready. I used a disposable pan (the $2.50 was worth it to not have to clean that nasty dirty pan afterwords). The stuffing I made is my mom and grandmother's recipe.. it has celery, onions, ground beef and sausage in it, in addition to the box of stuffing.

Then the turkey just cooked for 6 hours. While we were waiting for everyone to get here we cleaned up some of the boxes in the Dining Room to make room for the tables. We were having 9 people for dinner, which meant that we needed 2 tables, just so everyone wouldn't be crowded. The Dining Room was much more spacious than the Kitchen, and was another hint at what it would be like when we have holidays here. I set the table with our everyday plates (fancy ones for the mom's) because I don't have a full fancy set yet (only 6) and the serving dishes were a mismatched bunch because I haven't unpacked all of my boxes yet :)

Nothing too super fancy (in fact our candles were shot glasses with emergency candles, courtesy of my husband, because we couldn't find the box with our candlesticks), but it was really nice. And so bright in the Dining Room all afternoon!

As soon as Ryan's parents, grandfather and sisters got here, I started to get the rest of the food ready. Then once my mom got here it really got crazy. We were lucky that she was so willing to help on Mother's Day because otherwise I don't think I could have pulled it off. In addition to the turkey, I served Brown Sugar-Glazed Carrots, Green Beans Almondine, Mashed Potatoes, 2 kinds of Cranberry Sauce, Stuffing, Gravy and 2 kinds of rolls. Ryan's parents also brought a couple kinds of wine. We also had lemonade, iced tea and apple cider. We are nothing if we aren't over-serving hosts.. I swear, we always have too much! :)

Everything came out amazing! And everyone LOVED all of the food! I was so happy! I will admit that last week I was a little nervous about the turkey, but in the end it wasn't as hard to make as I thought. Pretty easy actually. Yea, so I had to get up a half hour earlier than usual to put it in the oven. But the timing was perfect. Everything was ready and we were sitting down by 12:45ish. Exactly when I had planned!

For dessert, keeping with the Fall theme, I served hot apple crisp. Earlier in the morning I peeled and cut up the apples, and then put them in a bowl with sugar and cinnamon and put it in the fridge. Then, about a half hour before we were ready for dessert I made the crisp topping and popped it all in the oven. Warm, fresh from the oven dessert.

It really was a good day.. big success. Now I know it'll be different if/when we have screaming babies or kids to have to deal with while doing all of this preparation, but I feel a lot more confident now than I did a week ago :)

Productive Day!

2011-01-23T22:46:00.001-05:00

Since I went back to work on Saturdays, not much has been happening at the house on the weekends. And especially lately, when I have to work 10-5 on Saturdays. I get home and we meet up with my parents and have dinner. Sundays are spent doing laundry, trying to relax a little (not much!) and just finishing up things that have to happen, such as washing the dishes that I've been too busy to wash all week (we really gotta get a dishwasher!).

This week's Saturday wasn't much different. Worked till 5, then we met up with my dad and went to Renaldo's for dinner, then went grocery shopping. Sunday, however, felt really good.

I slept until I woke up on my own (which was only 8:30, but still better than how early I have to wake up on weekdays!), then read for about an hour. Then I moved on to my office and finished putting together my new bookcase my mom got me for my birthday. I'm still buying another bookcase to go next to it (it's half the width, but will go almost all the way to the ceiling).

Then I went downstairs and marked all of the locations for the Kitchen cabinet hardware so Ryan could drill the holes. Once I was done and he was set up and ready to get to work, I headed back upstairs to organize all of the Christmas decorations. After Christmas I bought 3 new Christmas tubs, two are very big and the other is specifically designed for organizing strings of lights, on sale, and was very excited to finally be able to fit all of the Christmas decorations in their own boxes. Up until now, I'd have to put some Christmas stuff in other holiday's boxes, which always frustrates me because then I never remember they're in there.

Then it was back downstairs to make dinner. For months I've been wanting to make a Crockpot Hawaiian Chicken recipe I found on Lauren's Kitchen. I woke up this morning with it set in my mind that I was making it today. Until I went downstairs to put it all in the Crockpot and realized I didn't have pineapple. Basically the main ingredient besides chicken. Then I realized that I didn't have brown sugar. After about a half hour of searching online for other Crockpot chicken recipes that I had all of the ingredients for, I came up empty handed. So I decided to wing it. Ryan always says that Sundays are the only day I'm allowed to experiment with dinner.. It seems that whenever I do it during the week it's a disaster (probably because I'm tired from working all day). So I changed Lauren's recipe by substituting white sugar in place of brown sugar (same amount.. no molasses), substituting mandarin oranges for the pineapple, adding coconut, and changing the cooking heat and time. Oh my God it was delicious! I was really worried as I was upstairs folding laundry (I seriously got so much done today!), but then once I went downstairs to put Kitchen towels away and smelled it, I knew it would be good. It was sooo soo good! I'm so glad to find such a good Crockpot recipe.. and it's definitely the easiest one I've ever made.

While the chicken was cooking, Ryan was in his office working on our taxes (looks like a good refund year.. thank you new furnace!), I was in our bedroom scraping paint off of our door. Either this spring or summer we'll be completely redoing the back hall, stairs and lean-to, so I figured I'd get a head start on it. The two doors in the hall will need to be scraped, sanded and repainted, and it's going to take forever to scrape them. A good project for weeknights, or whenever I have a spare hour or two.

During/after dinner we watched more Lost. After our little mini-marathon Saturday night, we're now on Season 4. Everyone keeps telling me how the show got horrible after the first season, but I think we're both more obsessed with it now than we were then! Yea, there are a million side stories, and plot lines, and rather than answering questions we just get more questions, but I love it! And Sawyer may have something to do with that too..

Poor Little Bloggie..

2010-12-21T11:56:00.000-05:00

I feel like I've broken up with my blog. In the past 2 1/2 months (aka since we moved) I've only blogged 3 times I think. So sad.. It's not like there isn't anything going on in our lives... in fact, we're really busy, which explains the 0 time to blog.

We had our first Halloween in the house... with no trick-or-treaters! We were so prepared... and not one kid showed up! Madison (aka the pumpkin) was so disappointed :(

So much has been going on with the house... I still don't feel like any one room is completely done yet... but we've been making a lot of progress in the Kitchen, even though it doesn't feel like it. It's really tough because I've been working a LOT lately, so there's no time at all to do work. A couple weekends ago Ryan installed the beadboard backsplash, but we've had some problems with it... this is why I wanted to go with a mdf sheet of beadboard rather than the real stuff... Ugh. First we had a little miscommunication on how it was suppose to look, so half of it had to get torn down after it had been glued and nailed, which was difficult. Other parts were already dried and wouldn't come off, so we're not sure how to fix those. Then we had some issues with the nails cracking the wood. And then when we used the stove for the first time since the beadboard had been installed the heat made the beadboard pull away from the wall. UGHHH

Around Thanksgiving the house had a lot of visitors... two of my cousins and a bunch of friends. Everyone seemed to really like it.. and we've come to the conclusion that Emmy (cousin) is one of the house's prior occupants reincarnated..

The day after Thanksgiving I went out with Aly to Ruby Tuesdays to catch up... which was a lot of fun! I hadn't seen her since August when we went to NYC to pick up Yoori.

We went back to the place in East Haddam to get our Christmas tree. We brought my parents this year and they really liked it. I guess that means we'll be going back next year! That day we got a lot done.. Ryan and my dad cleaned out our gutters for what appeared to be the first time in about 15 years. Every time it rained we'd have waterfalls of water coming down the house, and also coming into the house, because the gutters were so backed up. While they were doing that I got the tree decorated. And finished decorating it. That's never happened before! All in one day!

Madison has been acting up since we moved... It started off with her not liking people's feet. She lunges at them and attacks whenever someone besides me, Ryan, and immediate family members move their feet. It's the strangest (and most annoying!) thing ever! She also has forgotten how to be out of her crate. Back in Middletown I'd sometimes leave her out of her crate for the hour and a half between when I leave for Hallmark and Ryan gets home. She enjoyed this time, sleeping on our bed instead of in her crate. But since we moved, whenever I do this (which has only been like 3 times) she finds things to destroy. The first two times it was the paper packaging of a new pair of socks... she wouldn't touch the socks, but she mutilated the paper. The latest time it was a purple pen... which she first used to draw Mommy some pretty pictures on the white comforter. Thanks baby. Then she decided to eat the pen. Yum.

...and my New Year's Resolution is to come around blogger more often! :)

Crazy Fun Weekend

2010-11-14T09:23:00.000-05:00

I think I need a weekend to recover from this weekend.

Friday: Worked all day, then met up with Jenna, her friend Devin, Chummy and Paul at Margaritas in East Hartford. We go there every time they're home. Really makes us miss Keene. It was so nice seeing everyone! I miss them all so much! And of course the Russelritas and taco baskets are delicious too! After dinner Jenna and Devin came over to see the house. Madison still doesn't like Jenna, though we learned that with some cookies, she will come within a couple inches of Jenna (to take the cookie) without barking or growling. Jenna and Devin LOVED the house, which makes us happy because we do too! :)

Saturday: I was suppose to work from 10-2, but due to some scheduling craziness and new product coming in, I ended up staying until 5:30. I would have stayed longer, but we had made plans to have my mom and dad come over after supper for birthday cake since I had to work on my mom's birthday. Ryan was nice enough to make the cake for me since I ended up having to stay at work. While I was at work he also installed some smoke detectors in the house and reversed the door swing of the refrigerator so it now opens up toward the countertop, which makes much more sense! For dinner we went to the Cromwell Diner. I got the turkey dinner and salad, and Ryan got baked macaroni and cheese and clam chowder. Strange combination, but apparently delicious. Then we went back to our house for birthday cake and presents. But our night wasn't over yet. Then we went to Plainville to Shooters to meet up with Jenna and Diana and a bunch of Farmington people. Mmm... midori sour :) After spending a little time there, I kidnapped Diana and brought her back to the house. Madison loved her. She cuddled right up with her in the car and fell asleep. Diana also loved the house! Jenna called while we were there and I had her on speaker phone. As soon as she said "hello" Madison started barking. It was pretty funny.

Sunday: Emily and Eric's wedding.. which will be in it's own post with lots of pictures :)

Etsy

2010-11-05T10:23:00.000-04:00

After a brief hiatus due to the house, I'm back on etsy.com (http://www.etsy.com/shop/HaleyHandcrafted). I am currently only selling hand-made, hand-quilted pillows. I'm also taking custom orders. I have TONS of Christmas and winter material, and will make any of the listed pillows using your choice of material for the same price as the pillows listed in the shop. I will also give discounts for purchases of multiple pillows.

These Christmas pillows make great presents. Get all of your Christmas shopping done early!

The First Night

2010-09-26T10:13:00.000-04:00

We spent our first night in the house last night. It actually wasn't bad. Just in case, we all slept in the same room... Lauren dragged the twin mattress into our bedroom and we all slept on mattresses on the floor. Without bottom sheets because I couldn't find any. We all got a really good night's sleep though, except for about a half hour from 3:30-4 am. Madison woke up at 3:30 and started walking around the room very obviously confused. Poor thing! So I very quietly tried to get up to get her before she woke everyone up. Too late. She found Lauren and jumped into "bed" with her, so now we're all awake. And now we all had to go to the bathroom. And then Madison wouldn't go back to sleep. So I slept the rest of the night (a total of almost 12 hours!) with her curled up in my arms.

Luckily tonight we will have our bed, so we (and Madison) will be a lot more comfortable.

Day 16 - Moving In!

2010-09-25T17:03:00.001-04:00

This morning we went over to the house very early because the Comcast guy was coming between 8 and 11 (not 11 and 1 like we thought). After a little bit, Ryan and Lauren left me and Zoe at the house to clean and wait, while they went and started loading the truck. My uncle showed up at the house and started working on some plumbing for us. Turns out we need to clean out our Kitchen sink waste pipe.. it's clogged up with black grossness! When they went to the apartment to help pack/move, I started cleaning the fridge. For now we're planning on using the existing refrigerator, to save some money. It's in good shape, just disgustingly dirty! Well, a whole bottle of Soft Scrub later, it's sparkling! Now I'll put food in it!

The first load of furniture and boxes arrived and were unpacked very quickly! Then we all headed back to the house and loaded up again. Then me, Ryan and Jason went down to Deep River to get the washer and dryer. When we arrived back at the house, pizza from Randy's was waiting for us! Yum yum! The washer and dryer went upstairs without any problems, but the box spring for our bed was another story. It was about a half an inch too big to fit up the front stairs, so Lauren and I came up with the idea that maybe it could fit up the back stairs if we went in through the shed. Well, about an hour and 2 taken apart stair treads later, it didn't fit. I was telling my mom about this and she said that Jenn and Miguel cut theirs in half and then bolted it back together to get it in their house, so maybe we'll try that tomorrow. For now everyone is exhausted!

All Packed Up

2010-09-24T16:48:00.007-04:00

Ok, now I'm getting sad. All of our stuff is packed up (with the exception of some clothes, shower stuff and the router for my laptop), and the apartment looks sad and empty. I met with the apartment owner and maintenance guy this afternoon so they could look around the apartment to see if there was anything we needed to fix. They told us that we'd have to paint the Living Room too! So uncool. That color is so light! I think they were just frustrated because now that they bought the complex they don't let anyone paint anymore, but we painted when the other owners owned it, and they said it was okay. No fair.

Later in the afternoon me and Ryan (and Madison) went to pick up the UHaul, and then Lauren and Zoe met us back at the apartment. The four of us had supper at the mall because we had to pick up the hand truck and more boxes. Me, Ryan and Lauren got the honey glazed chicken from the Cajun place that I love so much. Zoe got Charley's. Then I spent the rest of the night cleaning and organizing all of the boxes so things would go as smoothly as possible tomorrow when everyone is helping us.

My Very Generous Clients

2010-09-22T22:15:00.000-04:00

One of the jobs John and I are currently working on is a house renovation in Deep River. I got an email from the clients tonight saying that they would like to give me and Ryan their washer and dryer! For free! The asbestos removal at their house begins on Monday and they need to have the house cleared out by then, so the only catch is that we have to come this weekend to pick them up. Well guess what! We already have the UHaul scheduled for this weekend! Piece of cake! I can't believe they're being so generous! A new washer and dryer weren't exactly in our budget (there are a lot more things that we need sooner than a washer and dryer) we were just going to use my parents' washer and dryer.

YAY YAY YAY!!!

Day 15 - Kitchen Cabinets

2010-09-19T18:40:00.002-04:00

Looking around the house at the end of the day, I was shocked to realize that we've only spent 2 weeks working in the house, and look how much we accomplished! It seems like it's been longer than that because technically it's been 2 months since closing, but in reality, we've only spent 15 days physically working in the house (and 2 of those days don't count because we didn't really get anything done). Crazy!

Today we got to the house early and Ryan primed the Kitchen so it would be dry and ready for cabinets when my dad and uncle arrived. We also met our other next door neighbor Dot, who said she was very happy to have next door neighbors because no one had lived there for so long. She also thanked us for leaving our exterior lights on at night because it made her feel safer. She was really nice.

And here is my Kitchen... well, about 1/8 of it. They're not the best cabinets, but they'll work for now. They look good, so that's something! We were a little disappointed with the corner lazy susan cabinet, which isn't 36"x36" like the sticker says... there's a big gap between the cabinet and the wall, which is strange, and wasted space, but whatever. A lazy susan is better than butting two cabinets against each other, creating a deep cabinet where things will get lost. The gap to the left is where the range will go, and the open area on the right is where the dishwasher will be. To make everything go quicker and easier, I chose cabinets that would place plumbing fixtures and appliances in pretty much the same place they were originally so we wouldn't have to do a ton of plumbing and electrical work.

Upstairs, I got the trim around the windows painted, as well as most of the wall around the windows. Just painting the trim really helped the room. It doesn't make the windows look like replacement windows, they blend much better now. And the white really reflects the light a lot, making the room even brighter than it was last weekend (though it looks dark in this picture..). While I was painting (and Becca was painting more trim), Ryan's mom organized all of the boxes we had brought over, putting them in their respective rooms. That'll really help when I need to unpack!

Toward the end of the day we girls made one last trip over to the apartment to get boxes. We were so tired one trip was all we had in us. But most of our boxes are now at the house! Next weekend is the weekend we are officially moving in. That's when we'll get a UHaul for our furniture and the remaining boxes. But it was a huge help to be able to move as much as we did this weekend!

Day 14 - Drywall!!!!

2010-09-18T22:30:00.000-04:00

I have an almost new Kitchen!!! It's amazing what a difference drywall makes... This house keeps amazing me.. just a fresh coat of paint or something small makes such a big difference. I love it!

Today while I was upstairs painting (guess where), Ryan, my dad and my uncle put up drywall in the Kitchen. They did a great job. It was Ryan's first time, and he did all of the taping and mudding. It looks awesome.

While they were doing that, and while I was painting, Ryan's mom and Becca were helping me out upstairs cleaning up the bedrooms. They washed the floors in the front two bedrooms and they look amazing now! Becca also helped me paint some trim in the office.

My mom stopped by around lunch with Subway for everyone, which we ate while sitting on folding chairs in the backyard :)

After lunch, us girls headed over to Middletown to move as many boxes as we could. We made two trips (three cars each time) and brought over a ton of stuff! I was so proud of us! We made a ton of progress. We even brought over a box of Madison's toys and her chair/bed. She was so happy. She jumped on it and started whining and crying and rolling around on it. We wish we got a picture of it. I love how the chair looks in the room... the brown with the green.

For dinner we all went to Renaldo's. All 8 of us! We had to push a couple tables together. Ironically, there was only one other group of people in there (it was like 8 pm) and they were a group of 10. Usually Renaldo's is filled with tables of 2 or 4. Everyone really liked their food!

Electrical Work

2010-09-16T20:15:00.000-04:00

This week the electrician came in and rewired our Kitchen. He installed a bunch of new above counter GFCI outlets, hidden outlets for the dishwasher, garbage disposal, range and microwave and/or hood. We also had him install switches for the 2 existing Kitchen ceiling fixtures, the exterior light next to the door, a switch for the garbage disposal and a switch and wiring for future undercabinet lighting. It's gonna be a beautiful kitchen! He also ended up replacing some other Kitchen outlets for us and two in the Dining Room!

Day 13 - Lots of Painting Progress!

2010-09-12T17:21:00.001-04:00

Woah... we definitely tackled some painting today! Lauren and Becca wanted to paint again, so the three of us went to Lowe's to find a paint color for the Guest Room. I think I want the ex-Twilight Room to be a nice yellow (it'll be a future baby nursery, so I figure we'll just paint it yellow now instead of when the time comes), and the Office is the blue-green, so we wanted to find something that went well with both colors. We unanimously decided on a light sage green. It looks amazing! The room went from being overloaded with pink (the reflection off of all of the pink (walls, rug, curtains) was so bad that Ryan was convinced for days that the ceiling was also painted pink), to being a beautiful serene Guest Room. Which is good because in 2 weeks our mover helpers will be sleeping in there.

Before

After

This picture makes it look a little darker than it actually is because it was late afternoon when I took the picture.. But it's so bright and inviting in there now. We didn't paint the trim because it looked like it was in good enough condition, but now that the rest of the room is painted, it looks like it could be touched up a bit. But who knows when we'll get to that..

While they were painting, I was next door painting the office again. Day 5. Ugh. But the good news is that the paint on the beams passed the lead paint test... No lead! So Ryan has the go-ahead to sand those down so I can paint. Who knows when he'll get to it though. We're getting down to the wire here... we need to start moving in soon!

Day 12 - Priming the Twilight Room

2010-09-11T11:09:00.002-04:00

This weekend Lauren and Becca came to visit and help out. This is their first visit to the house, so we made sure to put them to work immediately! They really wanted to paint something, so we got some primer and they painted over the purple, black and pink stripes in what I've taken to calling the Twilight Room (because of all of the Twilight posters on the walls). Surprisingly it only took one coat of primer to cover the stripes... I was shocked. This room scared Ryan's mom, but now it looks so much better! With just the primer on the walls, the room feels so much bigger and brighter now. Seriously makes you wonder what people are thinking when they paint rooms sometimes...

Before

After

And of course while they were doing that, I was hard at work in the Office... it's getting there!

Day 11 - Back to the Office

2010-09-06T17:04:00.000-04:00

I wish I could fast forward to this office being done. I love being in the space, it's going to be a great office. It's so bright in there now! Especially in the morning. Getting all of the old furniture and books out of the room and just the little bit of paint I have so far has made a huge difference! It'll be a nice open space to walk through and work in.

After today, this is what I have accomplished... slowly but surely I'm making some progress.. I love how the fireplace and bookcase look painted white. The top picture is one of my favorites... I love the white, blue-green and brick.

Day 10 - Our New Door

2010-09-05T20:41:00.003-04:00

The back door, in the Kitchen, is the door we use to get in and out of the house. We changed the locks on the closing day, which made it easier to unlock, but getting the door physically open has always been a problem. You have to turn the handle, lift the door, and kick it with your foot to get it open. I foresee a problem when it's raining out and I'm getting home from work. SO... since we couldn't do the Kitchen this weekend as planned, we decided to replace the door.

And since nothing is easy in this house, this quick switch turned into a day-long project. My dad, uncle and Ryan took the original door off, only to discover that the sill was completely rotted out. Well, we can't put a brand new door on top of that! Enter Lowe's trip #1 of the day (they know me there now... it's pretty sad). A couple hours later, we had a brand new sill, complete with flashing and insulation!

Yesterday when my dad and I bought the door, I decided that I wanted a door with full glass. When we were taking down the cabinets and drywall, the back door was completely open and I realized how much light came in from the backyard and loved it. I didn't really like the Dutch door, other than the advantage that we could have the top open to let in light and air while the bottom was closed to contain a certain puppy. But I told myself that if the full glass door was too expensive, for now I'd have to settle on a new door with only glass on the top half. Well, in the already blessed trip to Lowe's (my $50 window), we discovered that the full glass door was only $10 more than the half glass. No-brainer!

The door is absolutely beautiful. I'm so in love with it! And Madison loves it too! She loves being able to see people outside, and just simply sitting in front of it staring out at the birds and squirrels in the backyard. And the light in the Kitchen now is great. And the views! The door lines up perfectly with the doorway into the Dining Room, so now you have nice backyard views from the Dining Room too. And it looks great with the new oil-rubbed bronze door hardware we bought the day we closed (and it's awesome to have a deadbolt on the house now). I'm loving my house! :)

Day 10 - My Office

2010-09-05T19:52:00.003-04:00

While the guys were downstairs working on the sill and the door, I was upstairs painting my office. Last night at Lowe's (Trip #4 for Saturday), I picked out a paint color spontaneously with my mom. It's a really light, bright color, which will make the space seem bigger. Add that with the soon-to-be white trim, and you have a beautiful office space!

So remember when I said how easy it was to take down the wallpaper in the office? I thought it would take a whole day and it only took about 2 hours. Well, the room made up for that time we thought we gained. It's taking about 4 coats of white to cover the trim, which is fun, especially on the built-in bookcase and the fireplace. And for the walls, I have to wash them with TSP, then sand them to get rid of the leftover pieces of wallpaper, then wash them again, then fill in the holes and imperfections, then sand again. Five hours later, I get to paint that wall. AHHH! AND, the beams have peeling paint on them, so if it's lead paint, it'll need to get removed, or if it's not, it'll need to get sanded. Either way, it's not something I could do today.

This is all I got done today. All day. This room is going to drive me crazy!

Oh, and look what my uncle found in the walls of the Kitchen.. Cute, huh?

Day 9 - Kitchen Demolition

2010-09-04T22:14:00.002-04:00

Today with the help of my dad and uncle, we demolished our Kitchen. It felt great! I tell ya... if you're ever having a bad day and need to let off some steam, pick up a crowbar and tear down drywall! Great stress reliever! My uncle brought his sawsall and went a little crazy on the cabinets, so we had the nastiness out of the house in about an hour!

Of course, we found a couple unexpected things. The first being the open electrical box that was behind the dishwasher, with live wires sticking out of it. Lovely. Luckily we have an electrician coming in this week, so he'll take care of that for us. The dishwasher wasn't even hooked up to that.. it was hardwired through the floor (as was the stove). Again, it'll all be taken care of, thank God. Electrical stuff scares me.

Another minor problem we found was the floor beneath the sink cabinet. Not only was it disgusting and filled with dirt, acorns, toys, food wrappers, bottle caps, and BONES (mice and other larger somethings...), but the plywood was completely rotted. So we made our first Lowe's trip of the day and got some new plywood.

Next came tearing down the drywall. My dad kept trying to talk me out of it, but I'm glad I insisted on tearing it down. In all of the other rooms we've been leaving the plaster and/or drywall and just painting over it for now, due to our tight moving-in schedule. But in the Kitchen, the wallpaper was fused to the drywall and would not come off. No matter what we tried. And it was old and yucky, and I'm sorry, but Kitchens need to be clean (ok, according to me, everything needs to be clean, but Kitchens especially). There isn't a ton of drywall in the Kitchen because there are so many openings and the huge fireplace, so it wouldn't be that bad. As soon as all of the drywall was down and out of the house, everyone agreed with me. The horrible smell that had been in the Kitchen was now completely gone. The smell was probably a mixture of moldy drywall, mouse poop in the cabinets and the rotten floor. All of which are now in the backyard in a portable dumpster. And we got the pleasure of seeing what the walls in the Kitchen used to look like.... very very wide, very very detailed wood panels. Yet more proof of the Wilcox's wealth.

Old wallpaper, also showing where the original wall was (the back half of the house was originally split up into three rooms

My backyard

And this is when we hit the major snag of the day. Electrical outlets. There weren't enough in the Kitchen, both for code requirements and for Shelley's small appliance requirements. So we had to call an electrician to run some new wires for a bunch of new GFCI outlets as well as outlets for the dishwasher, microwave/hood and stove. And why not throw in some new wall switches while we're at it. So here's the problem. It's the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. We're not going to get anyone in this weekend. So this ruins our plans. We had 3 days straight to work on the Kitchen and get it done, but now we have nothing we can do. We can't move forward with anything until the electrical is done (No drywall, no floor, no cabinets, no paint, no trim, etc, etc, etc).

So, you ask, what did we do? We found stuff to do (not hard to do in a 239 year old house). Today we decided to replace the one old window in the house. It was left, most likely, because it was a taller window, and the Kitchen cabinets had been installed right in front of it. Turns out, it was also open, letting in more smells and mice. Woohoo. Enter Lowe's trip #2 of the day. My dad and I went in search of a matching window, but in a shorter size, so that it would fit above the base cabinets. All we could find in that size were windows without an mullions, or with a 4/4 grid. I can't do that when the rest of the windows are 6/6 and it would be very very obvious if this one was different. So I set off wandering around the store looking for someone to help me (which never happened... one guy said the window guy was on his lunch break, and he'd send someone else over to help. No one ever showed up). On my way back to my dad I noticed a window on a cart in the back of the store. No label, but it appeared to be the correct size. After arguing over the windows some more, we decided to go look at doors instead (to replace the back door that is impossible to open). Now my dad sees the window, and discovers a tiny price tag on the top. It was a special order that was returned. Originally $239... we get it for $50! Now that's a great deal!

Before

After

The Kitchen at the end of the day

Day 8 - Discovery

2010-09-03T18:41:00.002-04:00

Another day that was too hot to work. We should have stayed in Maine a couple extra days. We came home early to have some extra days to work in the house, but it's been so hot and humid we haven't gotten anything done! Grrr.. I want to be back on the the beach with my book!

Today while Ryan cut the grass I attempted to get rid of some more "brick". I didn't get very far. I've been using a crowbar, and Ryan bought me something at Lowe's that he thought would have been perfect, but frankly, the crowbar works better. Not by much though.

When Ryan was done outside, we removed the center cabinet. It was nasty underneath there! Worse than the top of the cabinet, which we thought was really bad. We did find some cool stuff though, including an old Bayer aspirin tin... complete with 2 aspirins! It must be really old because my mom doesn't remember it.. so it must be from at least the early 50's. We also found a million dead bugs, rat poison, dust, garbage, pennies...

Then my dad came over to help Ryan remove a piece of plywood. I ripped up the threshold between the hall and kitchen and could see that there was wood underneath the plywood that was level with the hall floor, so there was something under there! An hour later.. this is what we found.

Original, wide plank flooring. But this isn't a happy ending. It's not in good shape. It's really soft and damaged. It's the room's original sub-floor (which was not a common construction practice in the 1700's, so we're special). It appears that at some point (most likely 1953 when the Kitchen was renovated) the original floor was taken up and the plywood was put down, and then a vinyl or linoleum floor put on top of the plywood.

So here's where I get upset. The Kitchen floor is already raised up about an inch from the Dining Room and Hall (which is only the sub-floor, but yet is level with the Living Room, which has both layers). When we add the new flooring on top of the plywood, we'll be raising the floor even more. Unless we go with a laminate (which is really thin), but that would look absolutely horrible. I couldn't do that to the house! We found a floor at Lowe's this morning that we liked, and it's only about 3/8" thick. I think it would look better than tile (and be a little bit cheaper)... but I'm not 100% sold on it yet. Our other option (which Ryan and my dad were quick to nix) would be to take up the plywood and original subfloor, then put down a new plywood subfloor and install the new wood floor over that. It took them an hour to remove one piece of plywood, let alone the entire room. Plus removing and replacing the original subfloor is a huge ordeal. So.. for the time being, I'm going to have to learn to deal with a floor that will be higher than the surrounding rooms and about 1/4" higher than the hearth.. Ugh..

Day 7 - Floor Demolition

2010-09-02T18:25:00.002-04:00

Today we attempted to tear up the Kitchen floor. We want to install cabinets this weekend (my dad and uncle are coming, and it's Labor Day, so we have 3 days to work), but first the floor needs to come up. As we suspected, the vinyl was glued down to a plywood substrate. I tore up a threshold and was able to see that there was old wood beneath the plywood. The old wood was level with the wood floor in the hall between the Kitchen, Bathroom and Living Room. Since the hall floor is a nice finished floor, I had high hopes for the floor beneath the plywood. However... that floor did NOT want to come up! And it was too humid, even with the air conditioner and fan blowing right on me, I couldn't work more than 5 minutes without getting overheated. It was horrible!

So we gave up and moved on to the Dining Room and finally painted it! I picked out the paint color for the Dining Room the day after we moved in. I opened the paint book and there it was. It was perfect. Benjamin Moore Pewter. A month later.. we finally paint this room. I really like how it came out.. it's a little bit bluer than I thought (I thought it would be grayer), but it looks really nice with the creamy colored trim. It totally changed the whole look and feel of the room. It looks so nice and formal and beautiful in there now!

Trip Back Home

2010-09-01T19:16:00.000-04:00

We left the lake after lunch today :( We wanted to stay longer, but we thought it would be nice to have a couple extra days to work in the house. We missed a turn, and ended up taking the scenic route to the highway.. but we love taking these scenic trips sometimes.

The ride home didn't seem as long as it actually was. I guess because it was a Wednesday afternoon there wasn't much traffic. I read almost 150 pages in The Fiery Cross just in the car!

Lazy Day

2010-08-31T21:05:00.002-04:00

I love being lazy. Sitting around getting a tan (NOT burning), reading, swimming, eating, going on the boat. Not thinking about packing or renovating.

Mid-relaxation today, Becca saw a snake. In the water right next to her. We were all reading our books. We were all sitting in the water in our chairs, but I had just moved a couple minutes before to go sit back on the beach, when a huge snake (at least 4 feet long) swam right past Becca's chair. We all freaked out! It didn't bother us though... just kept swimming down along the beach in the water.

Becca and I wanted to make s'mores tonight but Ryan was playing Scrabble and wouldn't build us a bonfire. So we improvised. We turned on the stove burner and made them that way. Everyone laughed at us, but then once they saw us enjoying our s'mores, they all asked for one too.

Lake Swimmin'

2010-08-30T22:53:00.003-04:00

Today we headed off for Augusta and the antique store and the museum. The antique store was fun. In fact, I found something very exciting. There was a cedar box that was in the house when we first went to view it. My mom has the same box and I've always really liked it. Well, the seller took the box with him and I was pretty upset because I would have loved it. Guess what I found at the antique store! For only $8! YAY!!! I'm soooo happy!!! I also got two old postcards from Keene.. one showing Main Street, the other showing Fiske in the '20's or something. They're really cool.

The museum was fun too. Last time I went there it was closed, so this was my first time. After the museum we went to the state library with Ryan's mom to do some genealogy research, but they didn't have any New Hampshire records, and since none of my ancestors ever lived in Maine, there wasn't anything for me to do :(

After we got back, me, Lauren and Becca all got our rafts and laid in the lake for awhile. It was sooo nice. I'm not really a lake swimming person, but being on a raft was okay I guess.. I couldn't feel the yucky bottom of the lake (it's a clean lake, but I just don't like the weeds and stuff) I did see a couple fish, but they were pretty cute. We did find a creepy scary bug though.. not sure what it was. We decided we wanted to go jump off the boat in the middle of the lake, and had Ryan take us out. We each only jumped off twice, but then the boat (and Ryan) started to float away so we decided to just swim back to shore. It was a lot farther than we thought. Oops. But a really good workout! And now I can say I've swam in a lake. Go me!

We took all the pups out on the boat again.. and they all loved it! (Declan did throw up once though.. but that's because he had just eaten.)

I also started and finished Lean Mean Thirteen today. It was pretty good. I love how interested I get in these books... I just can't put them down. Even 13 books into the series they're still just as good as the first couple. Better even. Lean Mean Thirteen put me up to 54 books for the year. Even with the house, I think I might get to my goal of 75 books! Yay! I started The Fiery Cross tonight too... book #5 in the Outlander series. I'm really liking it so far.

After dinner, Ryan, Lauren and Becca were playing around with flashlights and cameras and got some fun pictures. We also had a bonfire on the beach and toasted some marshmallows. It was amazing how many stars you could see standing on the beach.. it was insane. Ryan even managed to get some good pictures (like astronomy text book pictures) of the stars.

Boat Lovin' Pup

2010-08-29T22:34:00.000-04:00

My baby is afraid of water. Like really really afraid. She doesn't like going out in the rain... we have to force her to go outside. She doesn't like baths... she finally gets in on her own, but she has a terrified look on her face the whole time. She doesn't like swimming and freaks out when she's in the pool. HOWEVER.... she LOVES being on boats! We took her on a boat tour of York last summer and she loved it! Ryan's dad rented a boat for the week and so this morning we decided to take it out for a drive around the lake. Ryan was on the boat, and I was holding Madison (in her cute life jacket). As soon as we got near the water, she flipped and came out of her life jacket. I caught her and picked her up again, and she got out of her harness and ran away. Luckily she ran right to Lauren. We finally got her on the boat (after she managed to scrap and bruise up my arm pretty bad), and she was so calm and happy. By tonight she practically ran into the water to jump on the boat. It was like a different dog.

I finished Linger tonight. My reaction? eh. Not even close to Shiver. I loved Shiver.. couldn't put it down. Linger just didn't have the same "gasp" and "love"moments that Shiver did. I didn't feel as attached to the characters and storyline as I did in the first book. I think a huge part of my dislike for it was the fact that I was totally confused for the first almost half of the book. I just read Shiver 8 months ago.. I shouldn't have been so confused. It was written like it should have been read immediately after finishing Shiver.... no explanation of past events, like in most series books.

Off to Maine again...

2010-08-28T21:27:00.002-04:00

Today we set off on our second "vacation" to Maine this summer. We went to Kennebunk for 3 days back in June, but this was more of a real vacation. We went to Lake Maranacook for 6 days of peaceful relaxation.. no work, no packing, no renovating. Nothin'.

We came up to Reading last night after work, to break up the LONG drive from CT to ME (over 6 hours). Which was great. However, we didn't take into account the traffic in Hampton from the air show at Pease. Oops. But the good thing was that we got a free air show. The AFB is right next to the highway, so while we were stuck in traffic, the planes were flying right over the highway. It was pretty cool. Lauren and Becca (and Declan and Sadie) were driving behind us, and Madison peeked out the back window at them a couple times. She was so cute.

After a brief stop at the Kennebunk rest stop for lunch, we made it to Winthrop around 1:30ish. After unloading all of our stuff in the house, we immediately plopped down on the chairs on the beach. It felt so good to just be able to unwind and not have to think about anything. To be able to read my book without feeling like there is something else more important that I should be doing. I started Linger (the 2nd Wolves of Mercy Falls book), and I'm not enjoying it as much as Shiver (book 1) so far. It's really slow going, and I'm not a fan of one of the new characters (Cole). But the book is special because Jess got it signed for me (and Shiver too)... and I just love autographed books!!!

Day 6 & Jenn's Bridal Shower

2010-08-22T21:35:00.002-04:00

Today it was just Ryan, Madison and my dad at the house. My dad and Ryan painted the trim and ceiling in our bedroom, but it wasn't covering very well, so we'll need to do at least a second coat. I just want one room to be finished already! Ahh!! And while they were doing that, Madison was busy painting her tail. Silly pup! I think she was getting high off the paint fumes because she was insane when I got there at the end of the day! She started flipping out when she saw me, then insisted on showing me what they'd done all day. It was the cutest thing. Ryan and my dad started walking up the stairs and Maddie kept coming back and like pushing at my leg, then running up ahead. Then she'd come back to check that I was still coming. And then she was bouncing off the yucky old mattress that was left in the room like it was a trampoline. No wonder she got paint on her tail!

I wasn't at the house all day because today was Jenn's bridal shower at Jennifer's house. It had a Japanese theme, and it was nice to have something different to eat at a family function (sooo used to having Italian food! It's good, but still nice to have something different!). We had stir-fry, fried rice, chicken salad appetizers, egg rolls, and other Asian food. Yum yum!

Day 5 - Kitchen Demo

2010-08-21T20:24:00.003-04:00

Jason and Cappy came down last night to help us with the house today. Last night Ryan made a yummy supper of pizza, which everyone loved! He even broadened his pizza experience by making a green pepper pizza for Cappy, which was apparently, really really good!

Today me and Cappy tackled the office wallpaper while Ryan and Jason tackled the Kitchen. The ugly grass wallpaper in the office came down a LOT easier than we anticipated! I thought it was going to take us all day, but it only took a couple hours! We had to peel off the upper grass layer, and then once the bottom layer got wet it just peeled right off! It was amazing! So we were able to move on to some other rooms. We also got all of the wallpaper out of the Dining Room and both Bathrooms. Ryan attempted the wallpaper in the back hall, but it's a lost cause. As is the wallpaper in the Kitchen. We'll just take down the plaster and drywall in those two rooms and replace it.

Before

After

Jason and Ryan had the hard job of the day. They took down all of the upper cabinets in the Kitchen. And made a hole in the ceiling. Oops. The cabinets were disgusting... the tops of them were covered in more mouse poop and dirt than I'd ever seen. Good riddance! They also took off the doors of the lower cabinets and discovered how the mice had been getting into the Kitchen. There's a hole cut into the floor to run wiring to an outlet. The mouse/mice would squeeze through the hole, rubbing against the wire, rubbing the protective coating off the wiring. So they quickly unplugged the stove (I already miss the clock.. I'll have to bring one to the house now), and turned off the power to that outlet. They also investigated the stove condition more closely (not like I was going to use it anyways!), and it turns out that it was so poorly maintained that the burners have just disintegrated. Gross.

I'm in shock...

2010-08-16T22:10:00.001-04:00

Today was a long day at work because we have a meeting tomorrow morning. I texted Ryan to let him know that I was leaving late, and he immediately texted me back offering to bring me home, if I would just wait like 15 minutes. So I did a little bit more work and waited for him.

As soon as we got on the highway he broke the news to me. Skye had died that morning. I didn't believe him, but at the same time, didn't know why he'd lie about it. Apparently he was fine when he woke up, but mid-morning started throwing up so my aunt and Matthew took him to vet, where it was discovered that he had a tumor. He died at the vet's. Halfway through Ryan telling me this I just burst into tears and didn't stop crying until after we got home. He was only 8. I just can't believe it. I just saw him a couple weeks ago and he was crazier and more playful than usual. At least my last memory of him is a good one. He was so happy to see me, his girlfriend, without the little baby brat (aka Madison)! Apparently Ryan knew all day... but bless his heart, waited until the end of the day to tell me. Thank God because otherwise I would have been a useless mess all day. He even took me to Moravella's for lunch. I don't know how he lasted all day without telling me.

R.I.P. Skye 10-30-01 ~ 8-16-10

Day 4 - Our Most Productive Day Yet!

2010-08-15T22:01:00.000-04:00

More insanity! Ryan's parents and my dad met us at the house this morning and, once again, we immediately got to work! Me and Ryan's mom worked on the bushes in front of the Dining Room windows. This went much better than the other side because by now we had it down to a science! We found a nice bird's nest, which we preserved and plan on giving to my mom for school. We also found a baby maple tree, which was growing in between the bushes. We left that for now... I didn't want to cut it down, I want to transplant it somewhere, just don't know where yet. While we were working, another neighbor came over! Aneta, who lives in the brick house next to us. We talked for a really long time, and she even invited me and Ryan's mom over to her house to check out the house and yard. She's really nice! AND she has a teacup Yorkie!!! Sooo cute!

Once the bushes were down and cleaned up, I went upstairs and helped my dad paint the Master Bedroom. We decided that for now we'd just paint it the same color as our bedroom in the apartment. When we painted that room, we miscalculated the amount of paint we'd need so we had a gallon and a half left over. So... might as well use it! The room looks much better now, and smells better too. The room didn't really have a smell, but it's amazing what a fresh coat of paint will do! Now all that's left for that room is painting the ceiling, radiator, trim and doors. Speaking of doors... I tried scraping the paint off of the back Bedroom door (that leads to the back hall).. yea.. that didn't go well. We'll have to use a sander or something. While me and my dad were painting, Ryan's mom took down all of the neon blue "cloud" wallpaper in the pink bedroom. That room is officially not revolting anymore! No pink curtains, no pink carpet, no green carpet pad, no blue wallpaper! YAY! I love this room now!

Day 3 - Goodbye Bushes!

2010-08-14T21:48:00.004-04:00

Today can only be summed up with one word. Insane.

Yoori and I started off the day by driving around Southington, checking out the sites. We went to my house, her old house, Dunkin Donuts (coffee break), by school, and to visit Zoe at work. After a shared lunch at Five Guys (Yoori said she'll never be able to eat McDonalds again after having a Five Guys hamburger), we stopped at the house to pick up Ryan and headed off to the train station to drop Yoori off. It was so sad. But she might come back on August 25th for the day, so that'll be fun :)

When we got back to the house we immediately got back to work. Ryan's parents came down for the weekend and were helping us out with some stuff in the house. By the end of the day we had outlets we can actually plug stuff into, light switches that work, visible Living Room windows, a vacuumed "pink bedroom" and front hall, and a weeded front walk. I was so happy to finally vacuum up the green (smelly, sticky) carpet pad in the pink bedroom. It's amazing how much better the floor looks now. That green pad smelled so bad. I'm so glad it's gone. The shop-vac did a great job at getting it un-stuck. It was also great to finally vacuum up all of the dead ladybugs in the pink bedroom and front hall.. it was getting pretty disgusting! I also worked on the bush/trees in front of the windows with Ryan's mom. That was insane. Ryan had to go to Lowe's to buy us this special trimmer saw thing because the trunks on the bushes were about 5" in diameter! It was insane! This things are wicked old! It's so weird to be able to look out the Living Room windows though.. but great. There isn't a house directly across from us, so looking out the windows you don't feel like you're looking into someone else's house.

After we were too exhausted to move, we met up with my parent's at the apartment and we all headed off to dinner at Tommy's. Everyone loved it! It was Zoe, Ryan's mom and dad's first time there. We kinda had our own private room (because there were so many of us we had to sit in the back room, and there wasn't anyone else in there)... and we were there for a really long time!

Yoori's Pizza Experience

2010-08-13T21:47:00.000-04:00

Apparently, pizza in Korea is crap. We took Yoori to Bertucci's in Southington for dinner (with Ryan, Zoe and my parents). She had never been there, because when she lived here, there was a second Friendly's there. She loved it though! We had so much fun. It was one of the best dinners in a really long time. We were there for hours!

Back to School.. Back to School..

2010-08-13T15:40:00.001-04:00

Today we went back to DePaolo, our middle school.. where we met. It was weird being back there.. even though Zoe went there after me, I never went back in the halls or classrooms after I "graduated". It was weird and fun walking around, especially since it was with Yoori. We kept looking in rooms and remembering which class/teacher we had in that room. She remembered so much more than me! It was sad.. but then as soon as she'd mention something it would come back to me like it happened yesterday. We left some notes to some teachers in some rooms, but no teachers were around. As we were walking out we did see our old Life Skills teacher Mrs. Carey though, so we talked with her for a little bit.

We found our class picture in the typing classroom!

Mrs. Carey, our Life Skills teacher

Back in the cafeteria... which has apparently shrunk since we were there. At least, according to Yoori.

A Day at the Zoo with Hartford

2010-08-12T22:12:00.000-04:00

Zoo Day!!! Ever since we were like 11, my mom wanted to take us to the zoo in Providence to see the red pandas (Yoori and I had this strange obsession with them after a school trip to the Boston Museum of Science.. don't ask). But she never got the chance. So as soon as she found out Yoori was coming to visit she said that we had to pretend we were little and go to the zoo with her. Of course, neither of us protested.

We woke up pretty early, so Yoori, Madison and I took a little side trip to Dunkin Donuts and the house (where we ate breakfast). Yoori loved the house... and we joked that we should remodel the attic so that she could live there instead of Korea. We had to be back at the apartment by 10 because my mom was picking us up. The second I opened the door my mom burst into tears! And then Yoori started crying once she saw my mom crying. It was a mess :)
We had a lot of fun on the drive to Providence. Yoori kept asking my mom questions about teaching in CT because she really really really wants to move back here. Like really bad!

The zoo was a lot of fun. We had to first have lunch, because we were all starving (well, actually, I wasn't hungry until I took my first bite of my hamburger. It was so good that I gobbled the rest down. We were attacked by killer bees though so we had to eat fast. Then it was panda time. They were adorable. And HUGE! For some reason we had all been under the impression that red pandas were smaller. These things were twice the size of Madison! And they were so cuddly and cute! They kept taking turns laying on a tree branch, playing and running, and one of them we dubbed the "security guard" because every once in awhile he'd take a walk around the fence and check out the perimeter. I think we spent over an hour staring at them.

The zoo closed at 4, so we didn't get to see all of the animals :( We checked into the hotel and then headed out to find somewhere to go for dinner, with some shopping thrown in there. We ended up choosing Smokey Bones, which is an awesome restaurant. Yoori said on Wednesday that she'll eat anything.. so we're giving her a wide range of American food to try! Fish last night, doughnuts and hash browns for breakfast, half a meatball panini and half a ham wrap for lunch and now a huge dish of BBQ goodness for dinner. We both got pulled pork and spicy sausage with cinnamon apples. We split sides of BBQ baked beans and steamed broccoli. It was delicious! And we managed to shock our waitress by both cleaning off our dishes.

After dinner we hung out in the pool and hot tub at the hotel for a little bit, until it made us too tired to talk anymore.

Oh, and 나는 당신의 나의 눈을 떨어져 지킬 수 없다.... I'm never gonna let you forget that.

A Day in New York City

2010-08-11T21:04:00.007-04:00

12 years ago my best friend in the entire world moved back to South Korea. It was devastating. Especially since we were inseparable... I haven't seen her since. She wasn't even able to come back for my wedding. BUT... today, we were reunited. Yoori's sister YooJung has been working in New Jersey for MetLife for a couple years now, and Yoori's mom (who doesn't speak a word of English) wanted to visit her. Which meant that of course Yoori would just have to come along to translate for her mom. And NJ is so close, so of course she had to come to CT for a visit.

This morning I drove down to Fairfield to meet up with Aly, and then we both took the commuter train into Grand Central. The first thing I saw when we got out of the station was this. Madison Ave. <3

After a short stop at Tim Horton's to caffeine up, we took off for Penn Station, where we were meeting Yoori. This trip included my first time on a NYC subway... which was... well, hot. It was so stuffy and humid down there!

Meeting up with Yoori didn't result in any crying. We were both so shocked. After so long, and no tears! Lots of happiness and hugging though! Our first stop was Koreatown. It was awesome. I knew there was a Koreatown in Flushing, but didn't know about this one, right off of 5th Ave. In Koreatown we stopped first in a book/music store where I got a CD and New Moon in Korean. Woohoo! Then Yoori took us to the most popular cosmetic store in Korea, where Aly bought some stuff. None for me, though I almost bought some whitening cream for Zoe as a joke. We also hit up the Korean grocery store where I got some yummy snacks.

Because it was so hot out, we decided to go to Pinkberry for some frozen yogurt in lieu of an actual lunch. It was my (and Yoori's) first time at Pinkberry and it was awesome. I got chocolate with mango, pineapple, strawberries and blueberries. Yoori chose mango yogurt (which I didn't even notice in my excitement) and let me have some and it was really good!

Me and Aly at Pinkberry

Me and Yoori at Pinkberry

After Pinkberry we decided to head over to Times Square to walk around a bit. We stopped in the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. to buy Ryan a present (he loves the way I say Bubba Gump for some reason). It was in Times Square where I saw the Naked Cowboy for the first time! I was so excited!! I'm upset every time I'm there and never see him.

We were starting to get really hot and tired by now.. it was over 90 degrees, and in the city it's always so much hotter because of all of the pavement, buildings and people. We took a side trip to Central Park for a bit to cool off.

Then after a quick stop to buy some pretty pictures from a street vendor, we took Yoori to F.A.O. Schwartz for the first time! Yoori and Aly bought some candy and I bought a baby toy for Madison. We got back on the subway and took off for Grand Central to come home. The subway station was COVERED in ads and posters for True Blood. It was glorious :)

We got back to Fairfield around 4:30, and because we were hoping to miss the rush hour traffic, we headed for home almost immediately. We got stuck in a little bit of traffic around New Haven, and since it took us so long to get there, we realized that if we went east instead of north, we could meet up with Ryan for dinner when he got out of work. So we went to Lenny and Joe's for supper. Me and Yoori tried to play a joke on Ryan. He had been all worried that Yoori wouldn't understand enough English for him to be able to talk with her. I kept assuring him that she spoke better English than me, but he was still worried. So we came up with the idea (while stuck in traffic) that it would be funny to pretend that she didn't know any English... had forgotten it. So when we met up with him she was trying so hard to pretend, but she kept laughing, and he caught on. We had a really nice dinner, and Yoori bought a famous L&J's T-shirt.

After eating, we took Yoori to Water's Edge, to see where our wedding rehearsal was. It was fun going back there and remembering it all. And wishing she was there..

When we got back to the apartment, and after confusing Madison, Yoori gave us a housewarming gift (our first! yay!). It's a frame with three Korean traditional masks in it, which are suppose to clear the house of any bad spirits. The masks scare Ryan, but I love them! I can't decide on where to hang it (though we did discuss next to Ryan's side of the bed, in the bathroom, etc., anywhere to scare him)!

Driving the Kancamagus

2010-08-08T22:46:00.001-04:00

Time to head home :(

The church where the wedding was

We started off the day with another delicious (and free) breakfast at the inn (for those interested, we stayed at the Wentworth Inn in Jackson, NH... no complaints!). Today we got to eat out on the deck, and enjoy the nice FREEZING NH air. It was so cold at night that we actually had the heat on Saturday night... crazy. But wonderful.

After breakfast we said goodbye to everyone and headed into North Conway. There were a couple stores that I wanted to stop in. We bought a cool "thank you" gift for my parents for watching Madison... a cute gift set of maple syrup and pancake mix, all made in Jackson. We also stopped at Four Your Paws Only and got an adorable life jacket (with easy retrieval handle) for Madison for when we go to Maine (be looking out for pics when the time comes.. she looks adorable in it!) and a stuffed NH moose, with squeakie (she hates it when we get her stuffed animals that don't make noise).

We took the Kancamagus across NH to 89. It's such a beautiful drive.. I love it up there. We stopped at one of the "Scenic Vistas" and a guy from another car offered to take our picture. It's one of my favorite pictures of us.. we were very photogenic this weekend apparently!

The guy who took our picture asked us if we saw the moose down the road. He told us that there was a moose on the side of the road back the way we had come, but it was dead. But still.. it's a moose.. we had to go check it out! I recognized the guy's car, and remembered driving by it when it was parked on the side of the road, and knew that it hadn't been that far back. We finally found it. It was just a baby moose. The good thing is that it didn't look like it had been hit back... Poor poor thing...

And what trip to New Hampshire is complete without a stop in Keene? We got to Keene around 4ish, and decided to stop for an early dinner at Papagallo's, the best Italian restaurant ever! After dinner, we wanted ice cream from Rick's (I got blueberry.. soooo good!), but felt like we needed a little break in between, so we stopped by school and took some pictures of Madison's namesake (Madison Street and the Madison Street Lounge).

Congratulations Erik and Colleen!!!

2010-08-07T23:03:00.000-04:00

Seriously one of the best weddings ever! The day was beautiful, the location was beautiful, the minister was hilarious, the food was good... I could just go on and on!

The groomsmen (plus me and the girlfriend of one of the groomsmen, Caitlin) and Erik all met up at 9:30 for breakfast at the inn. Turns out breakfast is included! It was a real breakfast too! I got 2 sunny side up eggs, home fries, bacon and toast and Ryan got a ham omelet. We saw the mom of one of Ryan's friends while we were eating and she told us that she broke her foot the night before before the pizza party! She fell in the bathroom while getting ready for the party. Crazy! After breakfast we headed back to the room to get ready for the wedding. Ryan left a little earlier than me, after making sure I was ok getting to the wedding by myself (it was across the street from the inn :)).

I sat with Caitlin at the wedding and we were the unofficial photographers. The minister was hilarious! He was making jokes the entire time. "It's great that all of you could be here for Erik and Colleen today. So many family members and friends. And I thank you too because just by you being here today, you have tripled our town population!" (and there were only maybe 40 people in the church :)) He also made funny comments about their rings, all of the bridesmaids and groomsmen (including calling Ryan out for missing the rehearsal). By far, the funniest wedding ceremony ever!

The reception was just as awesome. I walked around cocktail hour with Ryan's friend Mike (Ryan was off taking pictures with Erika and Colleen) and by the end of the hour, was already on my third midori sour. Yum yum! As I went to find my seat, I saw that I was sitting with Caitlin. When I sat down she told me that we got to sit with the groomsmen!!! Erik and Colleen had a sweetheart's table, so the groomsmen got to sit with us! I was sooo happy! I had been so worried and anxious because the only people I knew at the wedding were IN the wedding, so I was all worried about who I'd sit with and who I'd talk to. Ryan kept promising me that as soon as they were done eating he'd come sit with me... but he didn't have to!! Instead of favors, they made a donation to the American Cancer Society in Erik's dad's name, which was really nice.

I'll just tell the rest with pictures...

Groomsmen lined up for duty

Saying their vows (see the awesome minister?)

Some of the groomsmen (Mark, Ryan, Tom and Eric)

The delicious, and location appropriate, cake

Colleen and Erik

<3 Love this picture of us <3

Mark loves Ryan

The Groom

What the other Reading cops did to Erik's truck

Road Trip to the White Mountains

2010-08-06T22:36:00.000-04:00

Today was one of the craziest days we've had in years. We woke up bright and early because we were heading to the White Mountains for Erik and Colleen's wedding.
We started off our day by dropping off the baby at my parent's house, where she'll be spending the weekend. Then we had to stop by the mall so Ryan could pick up his tux. I waited in the car. After about 10 minutes, he called me to let me know that the tux (which was suppose to be ready to pick up Wednesday, but came in way too big) wasn't ready yet and wouldn't be ready until 12 pm. We had a 5 hour car trip at least, and the rehearsal started at 5. While Ryan was waiting, I did some shopping and bought some pretty candle sconces for the Dining Room fireplace and some candle holders for the Living Room mantle. The tux actually ended up being ready at about 11:30. So then we were off..

We stopped in West Springfield at Burger King for lunch, and then the worst part of the day happened. We were on 91 north in Holyoke/Northampton when the SUV pulling a camper in front of us swerved from the left lane into the right lane. Then swerved again into the breakdown lane. Then flipped over about 9 times and ended up on it's top in the grass in the median. It was the scariest thing we'd ever seen. I just kept saying "Oh my God Oh my God" over and over again. Ryan said it was like watching a movie in slow motion. It was horrible. As soon as the SUV landed, a guy from a car on the other side of the road which had stopped when the rolling started jumped out of his car and ran over to help the people in the SUV. We pulled over, along with a bunch of people behind us. A state trooper showed up almost immediately because there was road work going on on the other side of the highway. We didn't get out of the car and moved on after a couple minutes because we were already running really late and it seemed like enough people were there and the cops were there. We kept checking the Springfield news to see if there was anything about it, but there was no mention of it. I take this to mean that no one died or was seriously injured (which is shocking).

Our new Garmin is retarded. I hate it. It told us to get off 91 in Brattleboro and go through Keene to Concord. When I checked Google Maps before we left, it showed that we had to go up 91 pretty far, and then cut across a road that runs parallel to the Kangamangas. Instead, Garmin took us back roads zigzagging throughout New Hampshire. Including through summer Friday afternoon traffic at Lake Winnipesaukee. Every time I looked up at the Garmin it had added 15 minutes to our trip. We didn't make it to Jackson until 6:15. A hour and 15 minutes after the rehearsal. We were late for the rehearsal dinner. Ugh. It was so frustrating. Especially since we got started and left at 9 am.

But our day isn't over yet. I couldn't eat anything at the rehearsal dinner, so me and Ryan set off to find some dinner for me. We tried a restaurant in North Conway called the Muddy Moose, but the wait was forever. So we decided on a tiny little take-out pizza place called Elvio's. Elvio's slogan is "Best pizza north of the Bronx". And know what? It was! The pizza was amazing! We got sausage and ate it outside at a picnic table. It was one of the best dinners ever... food and atmosphere. Because our hotel room didn't have a fridge, we had to eat the whole pizza.

Then, we had to meet up with the wedding party at Colleen's parent's condo for a post-rehearsal pizza party. 2 hours later.... after getting lost in the White Mountain National Park in the pitch black nite in the middle of nowhere... after driving up and down the main street in Jackson 6 times... we finally got a hold of Mark and Erik and found out that the condo complex was right across the street from StoryLand. Which we had driven by like 10 times. Ugh. Not a good start to our mini-vacation...

The Living Room is De-Papered

2010-08-01T19:50:00.002-04:00

We worked together today and got the entire Living Room done. In only 4 hours! Pretty impressive, especially since it wasn't like the wallpaper was exactly coming off easily. The metal putty knives we were using to remove the bottom layer of paper and glue were puncturing the plaster in some spots, exposing more of the sand. Also, it appears that in this room, all of the walls (with the exception of the stupid closet) are the original plaster. Removing the wallpaper also exposed some structural beams, which was pretty cool. That wood is probably like 300 years old...

It was over 80 degrees outside, but it wasn't hot or stuffy at all in the house. Gotta love houses designed before central air or even fans were invented. We had our first meal prepared in the house... delicious lunch wraps. Strange meat combinations though, because it was leftover deli meat from Jessie's party on Saturday. I had pepperoni and roast beef and Ryan had pepperoni, roast beef and ham. Still pretty good though. We ate sitting in the backyard. We also had our first neighborhood invite! Rick from across the street came over in the afternoon to let us know that they were having a party and that we were invited to come over and jump in the pool if we wanted to take a break from our hard work. We would have loved to go, but we didn't have our bathing suits with us, and we really wanted to get the room done because we don't have a free weekend again until Labor Day! Ugh!

After all of the wallpaper was down, I went around with the new shop vac and cleaned up the wallpaper and as much dirt and dead bugs and spiderwebs and general debris as I could (the only grounded outlet is in the downstairs bathroom and the shop vac had a really short cord. Luckily Ryan found a mothball smelling broom in the closet, which helped a lot). The room just seemed so much more comfortable after cleaning just that little bit. I have a strange thing with dirt and germs and bugs... but I'm totally more comfortable now just knowing that I was able to clean it a little bit.

Madison has been such a good girl in the house. I had always been a little bit apprehensive about having her there when we're doing work, but after today, she's allowed to be there, unless we're doing something totally major. Yesterday we brought in her travel bed and set it up in the middle of wherever we were working, and she would crawl in and take a nap. Today she would just lay in there watching us. She never came over to whatever we were doing, didn't try to eat anything bad, wasn't scared, didn't bark... nothing! She did bark crazily at Rick when he came to the front door, but other than that, not a peep out of her all day! She only disappeared once, and we found her sitting halfway up the stairs, which apparently has the best view out the front door.

And last but not least... the dumpster at the end of the weekend. We were definitely grateful to have it for these two days.. otherwise we would have had to deal with lugging that stupid big pink rug to the dump ourselves. It was enough trouble dragging it across the house and out the window directly into the dumpster!

Day 1

2010-07-31T16:34:00.002-04:00

We headed over to the house this morning to start working. I immediately got to work taking down the wallpaper in the Dining Room. I was going to start in the Living Room, but that room doesn't get much morning light thanks to the big bushes in front of the windows and we didn't have any lamps. I started in the corner by the fireplace, and quickly discovered that the wall between the Kitchen and Dining Room is drywall... not plaster. The only reason we came up with was that while remodeling the Kitchen in the 50's they took down this wall for some reason. Maybe it was cracked, or they destroyed it while remodeling. The exterior walls of the Dining Room are plaster, but they didn't appear to be the original plaster.

While I was taking down wallpaper, Ryan was walking around the house removing clutter left by the owners and carpeting. Whatever we didn't want to keep was thrown in the dumpster. He also took down all of the curtains and shades, which really brightened up the house. He also took down some wallpaper in the upstairs Bathroom and discovered some mold. We were planning on just cleaning up this bathroom and leaving it pretty much as-is until we put on the garage/Master Bedroom addition. I was planning on putting the laundry in here (there's already hook-ups), and then when we did the addition, move the laundry to the Twilight Bedroom area, and remodel this whole space as a big bathroom. Oh well. We're both allergic to mold, so this will have to get taken care of now. I guess the laundry is staying in the basement for the time being.

The curtains in the Dining Room came in handy... I used them as drop clothes to protect the floor from the wet wallpaper debris.

After awhile I moved on to the Living Room. The wallpaper was a little bit harder to get off in here. It appears to have the original 1700's plaster. On the wall near the fireplace we found what kind of looks like a bullet hole beneath the wallpaper.

The plaster is different from anything I'd seen before. It appears to be a top coat of lime (maybe) with sand beneath it. The sand is very dry, if you touch it you get a sand waterfall out of the wall. The lime (?) on top of the sand is very thin.

We're Homeowners!!!!

2010-07-30T22:53:00.001-04:00

Today has been an insane day. It feels like it flew by, but at the same time it feels like we fit 60 hours into one day.

We woke up early, and headed over to the house at 9 to meet Lisa for our final walk-through. Last night on our way to Margaritas we drove by the house and noticed that there was a big dumpster in the driveway. So while we were waiting for Lisa, we did some dumpster diving (well, technically Ryan did the diving.. I just stood on the edge and pulled stuff out). It looks like Morgan, the seller, cleaned out the garage into the dumpster. We found a couple good things, like some really old skis, an old wooden sled, a computer (which we'll try to sell at the tag sale), some really old glass bottles, some Christmas stuff, and a ton of other stuff. When Lisa came and we went in the house, the first thing Ryan noticed was that the kitchen table was gone. Morgan was suppose to leave it for us. It wasn't a nice table or anything, but it was free, so we figured we'd take it. But since it wasn't exceptionally nice, I wasn't too upset about this. I wasn't upset until we went up into the attic. Which was picked clean. It was completely empty. He was suppose to leave everything up there for us. Including the 200 year old spinning wheel and WWI army foot locker. It's all gone. Gone! I was so so upset about this. Other than the missing stuff, everything in the house looked good, so we took off for Chester to meet with the lawyer (with a quick stop at Dunkin Donuts on the way).

After almost getting killed on the highway by a green pickup and a quick stop at the bank to get a massive bank check, we arrived at the lawyer's office. BOA hadn't sent him the paperwork yet, so he said we could either wait in his office until it arrived, or go down to Simon's for a coffee or something. So we took a walk to my office and hung out with Sherrie for a little bit. About 10 minutes after we got back to the lawyer's office, Morgan showed up. So we talked with him for a little bit. He was giving us little tidbits about the house, suggestions of good restaurants in the area, that kind of thing. He used to be the Town Engineer in Berlin, so I asked him if he knew my neighbor, who is the Town Engineer in Southington, and he did!

The paperwork wasn't as bad as I had been expecting. I swear all of the paperwork BOA sent us a month ago was worse! Today was a piece of cake! Morgan even gave us his phone number, and told us to call if we had any questions, which I thought was really nice of him. He also told us that the dumpster will be there until Tuesday, so we should feel free to put anything we want in it, which is awesome because I'm planning on demo-ing a closet this weekend, which will totally be headed to the dumpster! Now we don't have to worry about bringing it to the dump and dealing with it.

After we left the lawyer's office, we headed up to Home Depot to pick up some faucets for the upstairs bathroom and some new door locks. I really like the door locks we got. They're oil rubbed bronze, which matches the rest of the hardware in the house, and they were very reasonably priced. I also found a ton of helpful wallpaper removal stuff, and a big orange Home Depot bucket. We then stopped at the apartment to pick up Madison. Then it was back to the house.

We let Madison walk around freely for the first time, and she seemed very comfortable. Sometimes when we're visiting other people's houses she's a little on edge (obviously, because it's not her own house), but despite the 250 years of smells in this house, she was fine. Which is a great thing. It'll be her third home with us, in 3 years, and I was really worried that she wouldn't adjust well. She had just turned 1 when we moved to our current apartment, and she's been here so long that I know she has a big attachment to this place.. But by the end of the afternoon she was wandering around on her own, sniffing, barking.. It's going to be interesting to see how long it takes her to master the back staircase though. Toward the end, the treads are angled, and Madison being the daredevil that she is, likes to take stairs 2 or 3 at a time. But when she tries to do that here, she ends up falling. She didn't hurt herself, but I can see it happening in the near future. She did very well on the front staircase though!

My dad came over around 3:30, helped Ryan with a stubborn doorknob (he was trying to take it out to replace it, and it was jammed in there), and then he and I took off for New Haven so I could make my first Craigslist purchase. When we moved into our current apartment I bought our Living Room furniture (TV stand, end table and 2 bookcases) from Ikea. But now, 2 years later, they've discontinued it. I'm so mad at myself. I should have bought the other bookcase, a second end table, and the coffee table, but we couldn't fit all of that in the apartment Living Room, so I figured what was the point! So I have been searching Craigslist for months looking for any of these pieces. Yesterday I found the coffee table in East Rock for $100. It was originally $200. After some negotiation, we agreed on $85. Not bad for a $200 coffee table! The seller was a really nice girl named Elise. And the coffee table is in great condition. It doesn't look used at all! It's our first piece of furniture in the new house :)

On our way back to East Berlin, we stopped at Franco's and picked up some pizzas. My mom came over (and put some balloons and a present on the front porch), and we all ate dinner sitting on some folding chairs Ryan found in the house. It was awesome. As my mom was leaving, she took some pictures of us in front of the For Sale sign and in front of the house. As we were walking to her car, our neighbors from across the street, Rick and Marie, came over to introduce themselves. They were really really nice. It was so exciting to meet our first neighbors! They seemed to really like us (and especially Madison) too. They have been living in their house since the mid 70's, and completely remodeled it and added on. They think it's great that we're willing to tackle this house, because it's such a cool house and has so much potential!

We didn't get any work done today. We were too tired. It was an exhausting day. So we packed up and came back to Middletown around 7:00. We have a really busy day planned for tomorrow.... I have to make a fruit salad for Jessie's graduation party and finish up her present, then we're going over to the house to take down the wallpaper in the Living and Dining Rooms, and then going over my uncle's for the party. I have a feeling we're going to fall asleep at the party!

24 Hours..

2010-07-29T17:12:00.001-04:00

Today we had a meeting with Nicole from Pella. She brought us lunch. And she randomly got me my favorite thing from Simon's, the Cobb Wrap (turkey, bacon, lettuce and tomato on a whole wheat wrap). It was soooo good!

As I was sitting in the meeting, which started at 11:30, it hit me that in less than 24 hours we'll be homeowners. Finally. We've been actively looking at houses for over 2 1/2 years (since January 2008), and even longer on the internet. We've gone through 5 serious houses, only to have 4 of them fail, all memorable, horrible memories. There was the Ray Hill Road house in East Haddam (spring 2008), the new construction in East Hampton (summer 2008), the memorable Moodus house (summer 2009), and finally the New Kids on the Block house in Marlborough (winter 2009-spring 2010). It's great to finally see the end in sight. We'll finally have our house... we'll finally have all of our stuff in one place, instead of spread out between an apartment, a CT parent's house and a MA parent's house, and be able to remodel a house our own way. Oh, and have a yard for Madison. What a lucky pup she is.

I Take It Back..

2010-07-28T22:08:00.000-04:00

I take it back.. we ARE closing July 30th! I swear to God... all of the back and forth with this house is killing us! As we were getting ready for work this morning, Ryan and I started thinking about the money we have in our savings account, as well as my paycheck this week and a health care reimbursement check Ryan was due. Turns out, we were able to scrounge up the money we needed to reach the downpayment amount, without having to worry about the money that BOA put a hold on. Yay! So now the bank is rushing to get everything together for Friday. I'm getting excited....

Hold?

2010-07-27T22:03:00.000-04:00

Bank of America has put a hold on the money we deposited (at a Bank of America branch) on Saturday. Which means that it won't be available until August 2nd. And we need it July 30th. So it looks like we won't be closing until next week sometime now.. The next free weekend we'll have after the closing will not be until September!

Mothers & Other Liars

2010-07-25T16:23:00.002-04:00

Fellow nestie Jennie won the an ARC (advanced reading copy) of Mothers & Other Liars by Amy Bourret on Goodreads. It was such a good book she decided to start a nestie book tour for it. I was the second to get it, and I finished it in less than 2 days (probably could have finished it in one sitting if we weren't so busy). I really enjoyed it. My only minor annoyance was that there were a LOT of similes.. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love a good simile every once in awhile, but there was an overload of them in the book. But the story is so good it's easy to get past that, or at least it was for me.

The book is about 27 year old Ruby and her 9 year old daughter Lark. Within the first couple pages, you learn that Ruby reads something in a tabloid about her daughter that worries her. Turns out the abandoned baby she rescued 9 years ago from a gas station garbage can was in fact a "kidnapped" baby (the baby's mother was carjacked, and her car was stolen, along with the baby in her car seat). No one in Ruby's life knew that Lark wasn't biologically hers, or how Ruby came about Lark. Ruby is torn between doing the right thing (reporting what really happened that day and giving up Lark to her biological parents) or or keeping quiet and not breaking up their happy little family. The rest of the book is about Ruby's torn feelings, her decision and the results of her decision. It is an amazing book, especially if you're a mother (as the two previous readers in the ARC tour are), but even if you're not, you'll find it tugging at your heart strings. I recommend it to anyone who likes Jodi Picoult or Billie Letts (or any other similar author). It is released in book stores (and libraries) nationwide on August 3rd. Check it out!

Pups in the Pool!

2010-07-25T13:45:00.000-04:00

Madison and Declan went swimming today! Well, me, Ryan, Lauren and Becca did too. Madison, of course, was terrified of the pool for about the first half hour we were in the pool. Anytime either of us would come out of the pool, she would run and hide in the garden under the squash plant or under the picnic table. Then Lauren and Becca came out with Declan and finally got him into the pool. That intrigued Maddie, and after a lot of help from cookies, we got her into the pool. It was so funny seeing the difference between her swimming and Declan's swimming. He was calmer, whereas Madison looks like she's spazzing out in the water. They're both good swimmers though, without any help from their mommies. I was so so proud of Madison. She's really scared of water, but she did really well. We would put her in the water and let her swim around to all of us, and then after a couple minutes, let her get out back onto the deck, and sit/lay there for a bit, then bring her back in. I think it really helped her. She was even wagging her tail!

Madison's First Swim - July 2008

Joseph's Christening and Davis Square Pizza

2010-07-24T21:58:00.000-04:00

Today we headed up to MA for Joseph's christening. We didn't make it on time for the church, so we met up with everyone in Reading, and headed over to the party at Mike and Evelyn's new house. We had a lot of fun at the party, but it was really really hot and humid!

Around 6 we headed over to Somerville to see Jason and Cappy's new house with Madison and Becca. We decided to get supper from Davis Square Pizza. I got ziti and sausage and they melted cheese all over mine, so we had to go back, but they were very nice about making me a new one. After eating (and Madison spilling water all over the floor), we decided to walk to J.P. Licks in Davis Square for some ice cream. Without realizing it, me, Jason and Cappy (the only ones to get ice cream) all got some kind of Oreo ice cream. I got Oreo hard frozen yogurt, Cappy got Oreo soft frozen yogurt, and Jason got Mint Oreo ice cream. It was my first time having Oreo ice cream (it's only been recently that Oreo's are dairy friendly), and I really enjoyed it!

Quiet Friday Night By Myself

2010-07-23T22:31:00.000-04:00

Tonight was Erik's bachelor party at Foxwoods, so I had the apartment to myself. After a yummy supper of kielbasa and fresh squash, sautéed together in olive oil, and some leftover macaroni salad. While I was eating, I watched Management with Steve Zahn and Jennifer Aniston. It was interesting.. but pretty good. Then I did a little reading. I'm part of an ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) book tour for the book Mothers and Other Liars. It's good so far. Then it was back to Netflix for another movie.. The Answer Man with Lauren Graham and Jeff Daniels... kinda boring, so I stopped halfway and went back to the book.

YAY!

2010-07-22T18:08:00.000-04:00

Are you noticing a pattern? One day - happy. The very next day - angry. The next day - happy. The next day - angry. In order to continue with this pattern... let me fill you in on what happened today!

Ryan emailed his dad during the day explaining our frustrations with BOA. Basically it comes down to this. Either we come up with a large amount of money in the next 7 days or we lose the house. BOA brought up the suggestion of switching BACK TO FHA (hahahahaha no. This is no joke. He actually said this.)... but I said no way will we do that. I'm not going back to the seller for a third time in two weeks to have him switch back. He won't do it. And I won't. I'm not painting that house to only have them next week say to Ryan "Oh, wait. Your name is Ryan? Oh we thought it was Bryan. We don't give loans to people named Ryan. Sorry, unless you legally change your name, we can't give you the loan."

SO.... Ryan's dad suggested he co-sign on the loan, but the bank said no. So then at dinner Ryan's parents were discussing our newest problem and Ryan's grandfather decided to give us the money!!!!!! He is awesome! Ryan told him we'll name the house after him after all he's done for us!

So we're back on schedule for closing next Friday (omg.. next week!!!). Hopefully everything goes okay with the transferring of the money from Ryan's grandfather's account to ours, and it happens in time. Luckily we're going to Reading this weekend so we'll be able to have him sign the gift letter thing the bank requires. I'm soooo happy!!

Vegetables and Drawings?

2010-07-22T17:32:00.000-04:00

Today I had to go to Ciel to pick up some drawing sets that I had them make for the contractors for our Deep River job. While I was waiting for them, I saw a basket of fresh vegetables. There was a huge squash in the basket, so I asked if they were for sale (yellow squash is one of my favorite vegetables). The woman said, no, they're free. Take all you want! So I took the squash and a huge cucumber! I can't wait until we have our own garden...

Surprise Surprise!

2010-07-21T22:02:00.001-04:00

I know this is going to come a shock to most of you, but guess what. BOA sent us a "but" email again. The appraisal came in ok, but in one spot the guy checked off the "declining" box under market values. So since the market values in the area are declining (oh, and it's not even for Berlin, they couldn't find any for Berlin so these declining market values are for Wethersfield, which it then goes on to say does not share any government or school systems with Berlin), we have to put down an additional 5% as a downpayment. Right... cuz we just have tons of money laying around. Good one BOA. We gave them a really hard time with this... especially since in two other places on the appraisal he said the market values were stable. In spot he even wrote out "the market values appear to be stable, with houses selling at 90-100% of their asking price". On the first appraisal the guy had checked "stable" in all 3 places... so 2 weeks ago it was all stable, but now it's declining in Wethersfield.

Can they fix this? No, just because of what appears to be an error in checking the wrong box, we have to give them another 5%. So we have now gone from putting down 3.5% to putting down 15% in just about a week. That's a butt-load of money! Money that we already had assigned to things. A new car for me. Repairing the sill. Re-doing the 1953 kitchen. Adding a garage. It's all gone now. Of course, the monthly payments will be considerably lower than they would have been a week ago, so there is a small silver lining..

The Results Are In...

2010-07-20T17:55:00.002-04:00

It appraised at $5,000 higher than the listing price (we're paying less than that), so we're good there. And no required repairs. YAY!

This means there are only 3 things left to do next week. Verbal employment verification, title check and Amica needs to give BOA our homeowner's insurance binder. WOOHOO!!! We are finally almost there!

Baked Scallops with Bacon

2010-07-19T18:37:00.001-04:00

I usually keep my food posts over on my food blog, but this one was so yummy I had to share over here.

I love scallops, especially bay scallops, but I really only knew one way of making them. Fried. Which is delicious, but very time consuming and not exactly the healthiest meal, so I really only make them once or twice during Lent. A couple weeks ago while on vacation in Maine, we all went out to dinner and Becca got baked scallops with bread crumbs and bacon crumbled on the top. It was also cooked in tons of butter, so I didn't get to try any, but I heard it was amazing. So this weekend I found a great deal on bay scallops, and set out in search of a similar recipe.

And this is the end result. So so amazing. I completed the dinner with some rice pilaf and green beans which I sauteed in some Tutti Amici olive oil, the best olive oil in the world, (I'm selling bottles of the olive oil.. let me know if you'd like to purchase some!), a little salt and pepper, and marjoram. Click here to try the recipe!

30 Boxes. So Far.

2010-07-18T19:33:00.017-04:00

I spent the entire day packing today. Madison helped a little bit. She wanted to make sure we didn't forget her!

This time around I'm doing the most organized packing ever. When we moved to this apartment, we were so anxious to move that we literally just took boxes and threw stuff in them. Nothing was organized. We probably could have packed half as many boxes if they were packed properly. Also, probably 3/4 of our stuff was wedding/shower stuff, which was all still in their original boxes/gift bags. Needless to say, it was horrible moving and unpacking. So I promised Ryan that this time would be different. I'm packing slowly. I pick up each item and think about where I'd want to put it in the new house, and I pack the boxes accordingly. (For example, I have a box for stuff that goes in the built-in cabinet in the Dining Room in a separate box from general Dining Room stuff. I'm that serious.) I'm also keeping a list where I write down the room and box # (which also go on a paper I tape to the box), and a list of pretty much everything that's in the box. This way, when 2 months from now we're looking for our meat thermometer, we'll know which box it's in (we bought a meat thermometer right after the wedding, and just found it last week in a box in Madison's room...).

Of course, all of this means it's taking me FOREVER to pack, but at least it's being done better. We're going to be moving gradually over to the house, so it'll make that easier. As soon as we finish a room we'll bring over the boxes for that room. Moving will be easier (rather than 1 hot day where we move everything we own) and unpacking will be easier and quicker.

House Appraisal #2

2010-07-17T20:52:00.000-04:00

The second appraisal was done today... Keep your fingers crossed that it went well. The sill damage really worries me. The first appraiser (who was the one who theoretically was the pickier of the two..) didn't pick up on it, so hopefully this guy won't either..

Let's just say that church was very beneficial tonight.. lots of necessary praying being done.

Carrie, Nettie and Hattie Mildrum

2010-07-15T20:11:00.002-04:00

From approximately 1850-1953 the Mildrum family lived in the house. Mrs. Mildrum was a great-great niece of the house's original owner Stephen Wilcox. In 1860 there were 11 people living in the house! Into the early 1900's, three of the Mildrum sisters who were unmarried lived in the house, and lived there until at least 1953 when Carrie died (another member of this family who lived to the age of 97!). Tonight I found some photographs of two of the sisters.. Hattie and Nettie.

Nettie B. Mildrum

Hattie A. Mildrum

Mortgage Commitment

2010-07-15T16:37:00.001-04:00

Hallelujah! We have a mortgage commitment from Bank of America. It only took (for this house) 2 1/2 months!!! I can't believe it!

So we officially switched back to conventional. After expressing our (and the seller's) frustration with the bank, they agreed to email all of the paperwork to us (rather than have to wait for the mail to send it to us, and then back to BOA). Within a hour we had printed it off, signed it all, and sent it back. It felt really good. However, we were told last night that because the new appraisal hasn't taken place yet they wouldn't be able to give us our commitment. Yet, around lunchtime, it was emailed to us!! It looks so beautiful. I want to frame it!

The new appraisal (cross your fingers he doesn't notice any new problems!!) takes place on Saturday. The bank has until next Thursday to give us a complete appraisal report, so we had to get another small extension for this (but it's not so bad because we do technically have the commitment letter). They say we're still on schedule for our original (from 2 1/2 months ago) closing date of no later than July 30th. Woohoo!! That's only 2 weeks from now. I'm actually feeling good about this.

Because of the seller credit at closing, we were able to get 2 1/2 points on the loan, bringing the interest rate down to 4.675%. The points and closing costs will be paid for by the credit, which is awesome.

With taxes and insurance, we're looking at a monthly payment of approximately what we pay now for rent... which isn't too bad. At least it's an amount we already know we can handle. I had hoped that switching to conventional would lower this amount even more, but it only went down about $200 (which I guess is still pretty significant).

Random Maddie Comment

2010-07-13T13:34:00.000-04:00

Back Story: I'm sure I've mentioned it here before, but Maddie is a cuddler. It's mostly my fault. I read puppy books when we first got her that said the best way to help her adjust would be to have her sleep on top of my chest, so she could fall asleep feeling my heart beating. It would be how she'd fall asleep with her mommy, so it would be familiar and comforting to her. So right off the bat at 12 weeks, we started napping like this while watching TV at night. Ever since, she's loved it! She'll crawl right up on me when she's tired, or as soon as I lay down on the couch. I love it too.. especially now that she's older.

Which leads me to my Random Maddie Comment for the day. I love when she's sleeping on me and she scrunches up her paw and grabs onto my shirt. It is the most adorable thing in the world, and as her mommy, I love it! It's like she can't get any closer to me, so she has to grab on to me. It's times like that when I feel most ready to be a real mommy (if that makes any sense at all to anyone but me).

Ovo

2010-07-11T22:14:00.000-04:00

This afternoon I went to see Cirque du Soleil's newest show Ovo with my mom and my aunt. We had amazing seats! Right up next to the stage!! It's amazing the stuff these people can do. There's no talking during the show, just music. And since they still need to tell a story, some gibberish talking (which I realized was French gibberish (they're from Quebec).. it was pretty funny).

After the show, we went to Wood 'n' Tap for dinner (a really late dinner) because there wasn't anything I could eat at Cirque du Soleil, and the food was wicked expensive, so my mom and aunt didn't eat much. I got the mini bar burgers, which are soooo good! Yum yum!!

Ornament Premier and Zoe's Graduation Party

2010-07-10T23:01:00.003-04:00

Today was Ornament Premier day at Hallmark. Right at 10 when we opened, we had people waiting outside. I've seriously never understood this. Big deal. It's not like we only get 2 of each ornament and you need to come in NOW to get it. We have a whole backroom filled with them!! Our first three customers spent between $400 and $600 each. Then we had a guy spend over $1,000! All on ornaments. Crazy! I also sold my first set of frogs, which was exciting! And we lost power. It was a pretty crazy 4 hours at the Meriden Square.

I got out at 2 because we were having Zoe's graduation party. Ryan went over early with all of the food (this morning he made Cocktail Kielbasa and last night I had stayed up late making Cookie Dough Brownies and Graduation Sugar Cookies), and then picked me up at the mall after work. It was a fun party. It was suppose to rain all day, but the worst that happened during the party was a light sprinkle, so we were able to spend most of the day outside. She loved the presents I gave her.. some teacher stuff, a frame, a bear, and the big present: a GOOD fm transmitter for her car (it's the newer version of mine).

We played some brown bag bingo later at night, and I got some cool stuff. A dog toy and 2 balls for Maddie, a T-Rex squirt gun, some ice cream dishes, candy, etc.

To Switch or Not to Switch

2010-07-09T22:08:00.000-04:00

We are now forced with the decision of switching loan types. When we originally signed this contract (2 months ago), we had listed a conventional loan. Our loan officer (LO) strongly suggested we switch over to FHA, which would require a much smaller down payment, leaving more money "left over" to spend on renovations. We liked that, but were concerned about the age of the house and the strict FHA requirements on older houses. The LO assured us that these days FHA and conventional loans are basically one in the same when it comes to house conditions. We asked, will we have issues with the lead paint and structural issues? His reply was a flat "no." Ok, then we'll switch.

Fast forward to today. Due to this paint issue, we are now stuck between a rock and an unpainted house. Switching back to conventional would get rid of the paint issue (not that there should be one anyways, but I digress)... but would also require going back to the larger down payment. We have the money, but since we switched over to FHA, we have gotten used to the idea of having so much money left over after the purchase to put toward renovations and the addition. A nestie brought up the fact that yea, we're putting more down, but that also means that our monthly payment will go down, so theoretically, we can put the money we would have been paying each month back into our savings account. This pretty much convinced me. This plus the fact that we'll be that much closer to 20% and getting rid of the PMI.

So Ryan emailed our LO to let him know we were okay with switching, AS LONG AS our closing date of no later than July 30th didn't change. We were assured it wouldn't. Our mortgage application/process was pretty close to complete, all we would have to do would be to change the loan type.

A couple hours later however, things took another turn. Turns out he was wrong. Can't just change the loan type. Turns out he had to cancel our existing FHA application and start ALL OVER. Another forest of paperwork we'll have to have mailed to us, sign, then mail back (we're looking at a week here start to finish), then they have to do another appraisal (look how long it took them to get this done last time... 2 months!), and then go through the rest of the commitment to closing process. Ugh. His advice? What's the alternative/the worst that can happen? You lose the house. It was also brought up a couple times that this would have all been avoided had the seller just agreed to paint the house. I don't blame the seller for not painting. He shouldn't have to. If I were in his shoes I wouldn't do it either. I just hope that all of this hasn't tainted his opinion of him because it appears we're going to have to go back to him for some more extensions. (Cross your fingers and pray we won't and that we'll have keys to this house on July 30th!)

What the What?

2010-07-06T22:14:00.000-04:00

Every day it's something new with this house. It's getting absolutely ridiculous. I keep thinking to myself "what have we done to have to deal with this crap?".

I tell Ryan every day to email (aka: bug the crap out of) everyone at BOA to get our stuff moving. They were suppose to have a mortgage commitment to us by June 10th. That didn't happen. They didn't even do the appraisal until June 10th. On June 23rd, they gave us a completely wrong appraisal report, that had us questioning if the guy was even at the correct house until we saw that he had taken photographs. We kept our mouths shut though because it appraised at the right price. However, they noticed the mistakes (which made the house look worse than it actually is... but it appraised anyways. Any corrections should have just increased the price)... and made the guy go out and clarify a few things. Long story short, yesterday Bank Guy #1 emails Ryan and says that "we just have a few things to finish up and we're there." Those few things include SCRAPING AND REPAINTING THE ENTIRE EXTERIOR OF THE HOUSE! That was never an issue! In fact, it wasn't even something that was on our immediate home repair radar! We were going to leave it because the siding is in good shape and the paint isn't peeling, and replace it all/paint in a year or two! And now they're saying that it's a marketability thing. If we decide to stop paying our mortgage (their exact words), a fresh coat of paint on the house will make it more marketable to potential buyers and the bank will sell the house quicker. I kid you not. These were their exact words!

This is getting insane. The bank can't keep to any schedule or deadline THEY set up. We keep having to go get extensions. Time is running out on our lease. We've put in a ton of money already on this house and of course all of those wonderful non-refundable deposits and fees to the bank. We're out a couple thousand if we lose this house. More than a couple.

My comment to it all (once I was finished cursing BOA to the moon and flipping out)? If they really want to make the house marketable, we should spend $100K re-doing the kitchen. Any potential buyers who go to this house are gonna see the Kitchen that hasn't been touched since 1953 and that will be the sore thumb sticking out in this beautiful house. NOT the exterior paint that is in pretty good shape. Should we replace all of the original wood with vinyl siding? Would that be better BOA? As you know, we're at your mercy, so anything you say!

Happy Fourth of July!

2010-07-04T23:27:00.000-04:00

How did we spend our fourth? In the morning Ryan and my dad fixed my car (no AC and the blower didn't work either, so I didn't even have hot air!). He took Madison with me so I could have an empty apartment. I packed. I packed a lot of stuff in Madison's room.. we're trying to pack as much stuff as we can. Stuff we don't regularly use. We have every weekend from now until the end of August booked up! It's insane! Once we close, we're not going to want to spend time packing, we're going to be working on the house so we can get as much done before Sept. 29th as possible, when we have to move in full-time.

At 4 we went to my aunt's for a cookout. Miguel got a new puppy for his birthday and he's only 9 weeks old. He's so cute! Auntie Claire and Johnny's dog was visiting too (Boo). She and Madison got along really well! My dad, Ryan, Maddie and I left earlier than everyone else to go see the Lake Compounce fireworks. The only parking spots at our normal spot were really far away, and we didn't want to take Madison out of the car. So we drove around a bit, and decided to park in the Kizl's parking lot. We got a really good spot, and then about 10 minutes later this stupid SUV pulled up and parked right in front of us. And they didn't even sit in their car. They just parked there. And they could see we were sitting in the car! So we moved to another spot. Grr.

Right before the fireworks started, we heard a big crash in the parking lot. I turned around and saw a crazy lady in a minivan screaming and yelling. Then a bunch of people came over and they were all screaming and yelling at each other. Then they got in the minivan and crazy lady sped away... backwards... out of the parking lot and onto busy West Street. From what I could hear, I assumed she hit a chair or something of one of the people with her, because no one else ever came over or said anything. About 5 minutes later we heard sirens and a cop car pulls into the parking lot. Then 5 minutes after than, an ambulance. And of course the fireworks started as soon as the ambulance pulled in. And the worst part? Madison slept through the whole thing! We went for her! She loves fireworks!! But she naps a lot during the day and she hadn't had 1 nap all day, and ran around a lot at my aunt's, so she was exhausted! As we were leaving, we got a conclusion to the crazy minivan lady story. She rammed into a Camry. Nice. She was probably drunk. I hope the Camry people got her license plate!

Wilcox Cemetery

2010-07-03T15:22:00.002-04:00

Today on the way to the movie theater to see Eclipse we drove by the house and explored the other end of the street. We discovered the volunteer fire department (complete with a small library attached to the side!!!), a park, and most importantly, Wilcox Cemetery. In my research, I discovered that Daniel Wilcox (Stephen's father) deeded part of his land to become a family cemetery. The cemetery is still being used today, 250 years later. After a little bit of exploring, we managed to find Stephen (who shockingly lived to the ripe old age of 97! So uncommon for the 1700's!) and Mary's tombstone, as well as that of Josiah (who built the house "across" the street). In some more online research I had found out that two sisters (Hattie and Carrie Mildrum, who are related to the Wilcox's) lived in the house from at least 1869-1920. Well, we found their gravestones too! It appears that Carrie died in 1953 (Hattie before that), which fits with the story the seller told us about the house last being renovated in the 1950's. Which means that we could potentially be only the 6th owners of a 250 year old house!

1771-1848 Stephen Wilcox
1848-1869ish ?
1869ish-1953 Carrie and Hattie Mildrum
1953-1967 ?
1967-2010 Current Owner

Stephen and Mary Wilcox

Eclipse

2010-07-03T13:20:00.000-04:00

We finally went to see Eclipse today. The movie theater was dead. I was really surprised. It was busier when I went to see New Moon with my nestie friends in December, more than a month after New Moon was released. I guess everyone was away for 4th of July.

It was pretty good. I thought the acting was a little better, though I was really disappointed in the tent scene, one of my favorite scenes in the book. I also hated the way Bella and Jacob's relationship has been portrayed in the movies. I think whoever the screenwriter is is a Team Edward member. It just seems out of place for Jacob to constantly be like "you love me" when movie doesn't show any interest in him. In the books she's torn between them. That's a huge part of the story! Ugh. It's just another thing that makes the movies seem stupid and childish.

We Meet the Seller!

2010-07-01T19:26:00.001-04:00

The seller wanted to meet us! He asked that we come over to look at everything left in the house to see if we wanted anything before he threw it all away.

We met him at the house at 6:00 tonight. He was really nice! We walked around the house with him for about an hour. We finally decided to have him just leave everything, rather than pay for someone to come in and empty out the house. Ryan and I will go through everything, keep what we want, and sell/get rid of everything else.

He also told us that the smoke damage listed on the disclosures was in 2008. The flue backed up and the entire house filled with smoke and soot. But he had it cleaned very well because you can't even see any trace of it. In 1993, the house was hit by lightning in the kitchen. Luckily it saved the beautiful (sarcasm) 1950's kitchen cabinets, but he had to replace the stove and countertops.

He also confirmed that the builder/original owner was Stephen Wilcox.. which is what I found via my extensive internet searches :) Go me!

Three pretty cool things that he's leaving are: a riding lawn mower, his father's WWI army foot locker, and a 1700's spinning wheel!

Mortgage Commitment?

2010-06-24T18:06:00.001-04:00

Nope. Another extension. We're now out to July 15th. 15 days before our last possible day to close. Ugh. That's more than a whole month late.

The reason they claim we're having the delays is because they're dealing with the tons of people who got under contract on April 30th in order to still qualify for the $8,000 tax credit. They need to close by June 30th. We got under contract on May 5th. We missed the credit by 5 days. And yet we keep getting put off for these people who do get the $8K. Sometimes it just feels like we're having our faces rubbed in it. You don't get $8,000 AND you don't get to close. Ha. Ha.

I Think I'm Getting an Ulcer

2010-06-23T17:37:00.000-04:00

Courtesy of BOA. Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I'm really at the end of my rope with them. Every day it's something new. We had to ask for a mortgage commitment extension of June 24th after BOA gave us the excuse of "we can't meet our June 10th date because we're backed up due to the first time homebuyers refund crap". So here we are... June 23rd. And guess what. Ohh... we all of a sudden have gazillions of problems we didn't have yesterday June 22nd! Surprise! (So sorry for all of my negative rants and pessimistic views lately... I'm just so angry with them!)

So today they sent us the appraisal (finally!), but they send a "but..." with it. Here's the appraisal, but we can't issue the mortgage commitment yet because all of these things need to be cleared up. Such as some stupid crap with a transfer we made in May from one of our bank accounts to another (it was our money so why does it matter? It wasn't a strange deposit that can't be legally described), a termite report that they claim they never got, etc.

So I'm reading through the appraisal, and it's filled with errors! It shows the lot size at .69 acres, when it's actually 1.14 acres. It says there are 3 fireplaces, there are 5 visible, 2 more that are "hidden" behind paneling and drywall. It says that the furnace is new and in working condition. It's shown at the wrong address on the map. The square footage is wrong. Among other things.

However, everything that was wrong, makes it worse than it actually is. And even with these errors, he approved it for approx. $15K more than we're paying. So that's good. And we are keeping our mouth shut!

If we don't have that commitment tomorrow I may just flip...

Nestie Eclipse Exchange

2010-06-21T23:38:00.000-04:00

When we got back from Maine, my nestie gift was waiting for me!

My elf was Katrina, and she got me lots of Twilight goodness! I got a Twilight cookbook (didn't even know one existed!), the Eclipse soundtrack (amazing!), a set of Bath and Body Works Twilight Woods scent and a Jacob bookmark (sooo excited!). As silly as this sounds, I was most excited about the bookmark because last Christmas Ryan's mom got me, Lauren and Becca Twilight bookmarks, but she said she couldn't find a Jacob one. So I have one with B&E that I've been using. I'm so happy to now have a Jacob one to switch over to sometimes.

2010 Mini Vacation: Day 3

2010-06-21T20:55:00.010-04:00

Time to go home :'( We had a lot of fun, and today was a nice beach day, so we were really bummed we couldn't stay and go hang out at the beach with everyone.

Before leaving Kennebunk, we had to stop at Kennebooks, the bookstore down the street from the cottage that Becca discovered. Despite their awesome name, and what appears to be a massive bookstore from the outside, it was pretty small inside and nothing special. But, I still had to get a picture with the awesome sign!

We first headed over to Kittery, where we hit Aeropostale and Yummies (can't go to Kittery without going to either!). Then it was over the bridge to Portsmouth (which we discovered that if you say ports mouth with a British accent, it sounds like the correct pronunciation of the town. So we decided that's why it's not pronounced like it looks/is spelled). We headed down to Hampton, where we saw what used to be Mrs. Mitchells (so so sad!). There's now a parking lot there. $15/day, but it's the closest parking to the beach, aside from the meters! I hope all the proceeds are going to rebuilding! We couldn't find a parking spot, and the beach was packed (we thought it wouldn't be because it's Monday, but I guess most schools are out by now), so no taffy :( We did get to go to the junk store though, which has been completely remodeled! I got a cool Yankees shirt for $4, some wrapping paper, binders, a soccer ball for Madison, and a bunch of other good stuff. I seriously love this store!

It was now time to head to Reading though. We had to stop at Ryan's house to talk to his grandfather about a letter we need him to write for our bank (for the money he gave us for the house). Unfortunately, we timed it wrong, and he wasn't back from the gym by the time we got there. So we had some fun playing with Declan and I read my book (I'm now on The Heretic's Daughter which is about the Salem witch trials, but it focuses on a woman and her daughter from Andover).

We got to CT around dinnertime, which worked out great for us! We had dinner with my dad, and then headed back home with Maddie. We got her two lobsters in Maine, but only gave her one of them. She loves it! We also had to catch up on the True Blood episode we missed last night!

2010 Mini Vacation: Day 2

2010-06-20T23:57:00.014-04:00

A beautiful day in Maine! Started off the morning with a nice walk along the water. The beach was pretty deserted, so it was really nice. It was me, Ryan, Becca, Jason and Cappy. Me and Becca decided to walk in the water, but I was wearing jeans so I had to roll them up, so cool. We saw a lot of our clam friends, but most were sadly dead. Eaten by seagulls early in the morning. Poor little/big guys. Ryan almost stepped on a cute little crab that was about the size of a spider! It was actually really cute! When we got back, we hung out on the porch for a bit... I sat in the sun (God I love sitting in the sun! I never get outside anymore!) and read my book. And discovered that I had ridiculous looking sunburns on my legs from my oh-so-cool rolled up jeans. Yay.

We then decided to take a little drive around Kennebunk and Kennebunkport just the two of us. We walked around Kennebunkport a bit, going in all of the stores, and we actually refrained from buying anything! Go us! And one of the stores was a candy store too! We then drove around Ocean Avenue.. and drove by some beautiful houses, including George W. Bush's house.

For dinner we went out to Federal Jack's Tavern in Kennebunk. It is also where Shipyard Ale is brewed. The food was beyond amazing! Ryan got fish and chips (again! But hey, it's what you haveta do when you go to the beach!) and I got fried sea scallops. I usually prefer bay scallops (they're smaller and in my opinion have a better flavor), but oh my God, these were the best scallops ever! They were really sweet and melted in my mouth. Becca got a baked scallop dish topped with panko breadcrumbs and crumbled bacon. Unfortunately it was baked in butter, so I couldn't have it, but I hear it was possible even more amazing than the fried scallops!

After dinner, me, Ryan, Becca and Jason took a scenic drive around Kennebunkport, and saw a pretty sunset.

When we got back to the house we celebrated Lauren's birthday with some presents and cake. I made Lauren some cupcakes, but Madison ruined them yesterday (Ryan was holding her leash (and her) in one hand and the cupcake carrier in the other and Mads pulled and all of the cupcakes fell over and got smashed inside the carrier. Grrr), but they were still good. We also had ice cream cake. We then played a game of Scrabble. I think I came in 3rd out of 4, but I still had fun! It's impossible to win a game of Scrabble if you're playing with Ryan or his mom. Especially if you're playing with both of them!

I'm sad we have to leave already tomorrow :(

2010 Mini Vacation: Day 1

2010-06-19T22:41:00.004-04:00

Today after work and a brief appearance at Miguel's birthday party, Ryan and I headed up to Kennebunk, Maine for 3 days. Ryan's parents rented a beach cottage with enough room for everyone! Unfortunately, Madison couldn't come, but she did get to enjoy a fun weekend with her Grammy and Grampy.

We left CT around 4 and made pretty good time... getting to Maine around 7. I brought Dreamland by Sarah Dessen in the car with me. It was so bad that I only read about 20 pages in those 3 hours. Our new GPS took us up 495 instead of our usual route, and it felt like we got to Lawrence/Methuen so much sooner than we would have. It was the big shocker for me.

Everyone was nice enough to wait to have supper with us. We went to Duffy's Tavern and Grill in Kennebunk. Ryan got fish and chips and I got the apple cheddar chicken sandwich (sans cheddar). They had one of those menus where you have to narrow your choice down between about 10 yummy things! My sandwich was definitely different. It was a grilled chicken sandwich with cinnamon apples on it! And the fries were really good.

We walked along the water for a little bit when we got back. It was pitch black and cold, but still fun. Becca and I were the only ones brave enough to go in the water a little. It wasn't that bad. We saw tons of clams all over the beach. They were really cool! I have never seen huge clams like that on the beach! Jellyfish, yes. Crabs, yes. Clams, no! I even touched one!

Our Second Wedding Anniversary

2010-06-14T23:17:00.000-04:00

Two years ago today we were lighting a unity candle while listening to my friend sing "God Bless the Broken Road". We walked down the aisle of my church for the first time as Mr. and Mrs. We danced to "You and Me". We drank WAY too much alcohol and ate WAY too much amazing food. We sat at a picnic table at Lenny and Joe's during a thunderstorm.

Two years ago today we got married.

It's been an amazing two year. A slow two years. A fast two years. A lot has happened. And yet it still seems like the day I described above just happened yesterday.

As close friends know, we're currently saving for a house and a baby (the house a little bit more immediate than the currently non-existent baby). So our celebration this year consisted of Ryan coming to Chester to take me out to lunch. We went to Moravella's, our favorite local pizza place, where they know what I order (though I changed it up this time and got an Italian grinder!). For dinner we chose to order in, rather than go out and spend money that we'd much rather spend on the house. So we ordered pizza from Franco's in Cromwell (and to make it more special than usual.. we got side salads too! Gasp!). After dinner we watched "Year One".. what a strange strange movie!

All in all, not as much fun as last year.. when we spent the day in Newport and then had dinner at Water's Edge, but still fun. Here's to another great year!

One Year Ago Today: Our First Wedding Anniversary!!!

My Baby Turns 3

2010-06-13T10:42:00.003-04:00

My bubby turns 3 today. I can't believe it. She's not a baby anymore!! For her birthday treat, I made her Dog Carrot Muffins. SHE LOVES THEM! I think she thinks we're giving her people food (which she never gets). Her eyes get all huge and bugged out. She doesn't even chew it.. it's just gulping sounds as she inhales them. Maddie loves carrots, so that could be a huge part of it too.

She got 3 presents (for turning 3, and also because she has a million toys already!). My parents got her this funny rope/chew toy that makes strange noises. She tries to stick her nose in the chewy plastic part trying to figure out where the noise is coming from. Ryan and I got her a remote controlled car (omg she loves it!) and a new duck. She was playing with Declan's duck last weekend and it made me realize that she misses her own duck, which she destroyed over a year ago.

Happy Birthday Baby!!

One Year Ago Today: Madison Turns 2!

Book #36 - Dead in the Family

2010-06-12T22:51:00.000-04:00

I really liked this book. I liked it more than #9 in the series Dead and Gone. Dead in the Family looked into a storyline that I'm really interested in (Hunter, Hadley's son)... though not as much as I would have liked. The book mainly focuses on Eric's maker, Appius Livious Ocella, who comes to town for Eric's help. There's also a lot more fairy stuff going on, which is a storyline that I don't really enjoy. I love the vampires and weres, but for some reason the fairies just push me over the edge.

I don't want to give away any spoilers because the book just came out last month and a lot of people still haven't read it. But, it's really good, and I really recommend it! If you love Sookie and True Blood, you need to read it! I think I read somewhere that Charlaine Harris has signed on for at least 12 books, so hopefully we get some closure on the Hunter story, and there aren't anymore fairy issues!

Anniversary #1

2010-06-11T21:23:00.002-04:00

We used to go all out for our anniversaries. Our first anniversary we went to Hampton Beach for the day. I got Manny the hermit crab. We had a picnic lunch at Pawtuckaway. Our second anniversary we went to Cape Cod.

This year we're buying a house and saving for a baby (my, how our lives have changed!)... so what did we do to celebrate? I made chicken cutlets for dinner and cherry turnovers for dessert. And then we watched Shutter Island. Not as celebratory as past years, but still a lot of fun.

7 Years Ago Today...

2010-06-11T19:16:00.002-04:00

...was a day that changed my life. Ryan showed up at my house early in the morning. I still remember when he pulled up. He parked at the bottom of the hill. He had his truck. I remember standing in the front doorway watching him walk up the hill. I gathered my things and we got into the truck. As I sat down he placed an envelope on my lap that he had hidden in the visor. Inside were 2 tickets on the Green Monster to the Red Sox-Cardinals game that night at Fenway. He had told me that he hadn't been able to get those tickets. But he woke up really early that morning and sat on the sidewalk on Yawkey Way in line for them. You had to be one of the first couple people in line to get Green Monster seats... it was the first year they were available. I was so excited. Before we left for MA, we stopped at my mom's school so she could meet Ryan. I remember the car ride up to MA going by very quickly. We stopped at Ryan's house first and I met his mom. She was vacuuming the Family Room (don't ask me why I remember weird details like this). She didn't believe Ryan that he had driven all the way down to CT to get me (I had to show her my license to prove it!). After that, we drove to Bedford to visit Jay at work. The game itself was amazing. If you haven't sat on the Green Monster, do it. Great seats! I remember feeling bad that Ryan had spent all of that money on the tickets and came down to pick me up, so when we had "supper", all I got was a bottle of water and a pack of Twizzlers. Really wish I had a hot dog.. Fenway Franks are so good! The Red Sox won. But the Yankees lost that day. As we were leaving the park, they announced the Yankees score on the loudspeaker. Ryan put his arm around me to comfort me. He remembers that it was at that moment that he knew that we would be together for a long time. Amazing how a half hug can do that. We then drove to Winchester and he dropped me off at Mary's house. He didn't kiss me that night, though he says he wishes that he had.

I can't believe it's been 7 years already. It makes me feel so old!! Happy Anniversary!

One Year Ago Today - 6 Years...

Library Hold List

2010-06-10T18:00:00.000-04:00

I got an email notification on Monday that Dead in the Family, the new Sookie Stackhouse book, was available for me to pick up at the library. Looking at the notification/my account made me think about some other books I wanted. Despite my "goal" to read all of my books that I already own.. I found myself adding books from my TBR list to the hold list at the library. Before I knew it, I had added 19 more books!

And of course 9 of them came in on Thursday! So I headed over to the library after work. When I got to the counter I told the librarian that I had a lot of books on hold. Before she even scanned my card she said "I'm pretty sure I know who you are... and which books are yours!" Me: "Yea.. there are 10 of them." Librarian: "Nope. Now there are 13!" Yeaaa.... so now I have 13 new library books to read...

The plus side to having a huge bag of library books is that when I got back to the apartment I noticed that the bag had fallen to the floor. When I picked it up, I noticed that the side of it that was facing down was soaking wet. There was a puddle covering the entire passenger side floor that was at least 1" deep! I had driven through a big rainstorm on the way home, so it must have come up from underneath the car because there wasn't any water on the seat, window or dashboard. Nowhere but the floor. Thank you library books for bringing this to my attention :)

Mortgage Commitment Extension

2010-06-09T16:59:00.000-04:00

He signed the extension. PHEW!

Stupid FHA

2010-06-07T18:56:00.001-04:00

For the past week Ryan has been emailing our loan officer to make sure we were still on schedule for the June 10th mortgage commitment deadline. This morning he responded saying that the bank has been backed up for 2 weeks as a result of all of the tax credit people who have to close by June 30th, so there is no way we'll meet our deadline of Thursday. This made me so mad. We're dealing with a seller who most likely doesn't need to sell, so won't be as willing to make allowances and changes for stuff like this. It just really worries me. And I'll be REALLY mad at BOA if we lose another house because of them. So now we have to ask for a 2 week extension. Apparently the appraisal hasn't even been done yet! (It's now scheduled for Thursday) According to Kurt, we won't need 2 weeks to get the commitment, but he's just being cautious.. better to do that than have to ask for another extension in a week!

New Puppy Bailey

2010-06-06T18:48:00.000-04:00

Today we went over to Erik and Colleen's new house in Wilmington. They have their work cut out for them (lots of wallpaper to take down and repaint, flooring, etc), but they seem really excited about it! They already redid the basement "TV room" and it looks great. They got a TV from Jordans with their couch, and it's HUGE!! We watched Zack and Miri on it, and ordered sandwiches from Greg's. I got a BLT and it was the best sandwich I ever had! We also met their new puppy, a 6 week old beagle named Bailey. She is so adorable! And so tiny! I wish we knew Madison when she was that little.. though she was probably that little the day she was born! And when Bailey barks it sounds like she's yelping "Erik! Erik! Erik!". It's so cute!

Becca's Graduation Party

2010-06-05T21:40:00.002-04:00

Today was Becca's graduation party. Becca wanted to make Russelritas (raspberry strawberry margaritas from Margaritas) and Green Monkeys (the drink we both got at the Brazilian steakhouse in Manchester). So she, Lauren and I all went out to the packie in the morning to get everything we need. Turns out, most of the ingredients aren't that common. So we had to improvise. And they didn't turn out as good. We didn't get to make the Green Monkeys because Lauren and I made a mess of the kitchen trying to make the Russelritas, which were WAY too strong and tasted nothing like the goodness that Margaritas makes. Oh well.

It was really humid out, but we still got to eat and sit outside. I had a very long chat with Richard about the house. I love talking about house stuff! I also had a chance to talk a lot with Evelyn. We never get to see each other, so when we do, we end up talking for hours. Seeing her new baby really made me want one.. ugh..

Everyone loved the cake I made! Which made me really happy! It was a double cake (2 cake mixes) and at the end of the party there were only about 3 pieces left! Wow.. I'm glad I made the bigger cake!

Since we didn't have a chance to take any graduation party pictures.. here are some from the actual (rainy) graduation.

House Update

2010-06-02T19:37:00.000-04:00

We're still moving forward with the East Berlin house. As of right now, we're waiting for our mortgage commitment. We're suppose to have that by June 10th. Our loan officer says that everything appears to be in line on our end, so we should be okay this time around. We're still refraining from getting too excited though until we have all of that in writing. We've had too much house heartache in the past... Ryan drove by the house last week and saw a big trailer in the driveway, so it appears that they're starting to move some of their stuff out. So that's good news!!

Maddie and her new cousin Declan

2010-05-30T09:22:00.001-04:00

Madison is no longer the baby in the family! Lauren got a new puppy! He's a pit bull-lab mix from the Monadnock Humane Society in Swanzey. His name is Declan. He is 3 months old.

Dead in the Family Contest

2010-05-23T22:24:00.000-04:00

A fellow nestie is having a contest to win a signed copy of Dead in the Family! She went to a book signing in Dallas and got to meet Charlaine Harris (soo jealous!!!)

Here's the link to her contest Dead in the Family

Westfield State College Class of 2010

2010-05-22T20:55:00.001-04:00

Zoe graduated college today. It was a nice day in Westfield, but the graduation was under a tent, and they hardly had any seats. There wasn't even 1 audience seat for 1 family member of each graduate (does that make sense?). And since it was in a tent, as soon as you were out of the tent, you couldn't see or hear anything. Stupid design. After the ceremony (and about 2 hours of photos with Zoe's millions of friends), Ryan and I rode back with Zoe in her car (Ryan drove) and had a lot of fun (well, until Zoe fell asleep!). We stopped at Chili's in West Springfield on the way home, which was really yummy. We haven't been there in awhile! When we got home, we went to my parent's house, where Madison and a cake I made were waiting for us.

Different House

2010-05-16T13:50:00.000-04:00

Remember this house from a couple posts ago? We found it. It's almost diagonally across the street from the house we're looking at. The proximity of the two houses both in location and age makes me think that they were built by a father and a son or two brothers. So that brings us just a little closer in finding out who built the house we're looking at.. Woohoo! Here's that house today.

The Ugly Truth

2010-05-15T22:31:00.000-04:00

I looove Gerard Butler. On the nest we've all decided that if we were given the opportunity to cast the Outlander movie, Gerard Butler would hands down be chosen as Jamie Fraser. He's perfect for the part! And now I can't look at him without thinking Jamie.

We watched The Ugly Truth tonight. Why? Because Gerard Butler is in it. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have watched it. I hate Katherine Heigl. So much. And I'm so mad she's cast to play Stephanie Plum. Ugh. But don't get me started on that! I didn't really like the movie. I did like Gerard Butler's character though... he didn't have an accent in the movie, but every once in awhile I could catch a little Scot in there.. once he said lassie. :)

A Different Kind of House Inspection

2010-05-15T20:30:00.000-04:00

Today after work we met a mechanical engineer at the house to discuss the furnace issues. His installer he brought with him took one look at the furnace (after a lot of comments on how old and scary it looked!) and saw that it was wired incorrectly. No wonder it wouldn't work!! He gave us a price for replacing the part, but highly recommended that we just replace the entire furnace. Just looking at that thing, that's definitely what I want to do.

We also had an appointment with a contractor to take a look at the sill issues. My parents were also suppose to meet us out there at the same time. While we were waiting for them, we walked Madison around the yard for a bit, and gave her a tour of the house. She definitely approved! She loved the yard and all of the grass (and the millions of birds! Not just any birds, but robins! Her favorite!). She also loved looking out the windows in the Foyer... just like we knew she would!

When my mom got there we gave her a tour of the yard as well.. she loved the yard! Lisa gave both of my parents the official tour for us though because the contractor arrived shortly after and we were talking to him about the sill problem. The good news is that it can be replaced. It's not rot, it's old powder post beetle damage. The bad news is that because it's such an old house there aren't any floor joists to use to hoist the house up. So we'll have to cut out some siding on the exterior and support it from there while they take out the old sill and put in a new one. I'm a little worried about how much this is going to cost.. hopefully we can negotiate it with the seller. I'd hate to lose the house over something like this :(

After everyone had had their house fill, we all left to meet at Ruby Tuesdays (Ryan and I had to bring Maddie home first). Can I just say how much I love Ruby Tuesdays? It is seriously one of my favorite restaurants! They have the best salad bar I've ever had... some salad bars are seriously lacking in yummy veggies and good dressing, or are just icky and old looking. They replace the food so often at Ruby's it's always full and fresh. I got what I always get... Ruby's mini burgers and salad bar (not bad for $8!). And my new favorite drink. Peach Splash. My mom kept stealing sips of it because it was so good! It's peach chunks, pineapple juice and orange juice. It is delicious! And free refills, which is good because I had 3 or 4.. Yum Yum!

House Research

2010-05-14T23:36:00.001-04:00

The only way I can get Ryan to read a book is if it's house or construction related. When he was bored out of his mind during Gone with the Wind, he started reading a book he found a work about early American homes. There were some pictures in that book that could have been taken in the East Berlin house! It was pretty cool! And he learned the name (and purpose) of the door in the Dining Room. It's called a funeral door and it's there because you couldn't get caskets in and out of the front door because the hall is too narrow. Yup. That door needs to stay now.. that's some pretty cool history!

While Ryan was doing book research, I did some online research. I looked up histories of East Berlin, hoping to find a description of either the house or the street. And I came across this.

Look familiar? Built in approx. 1779 by Josiah Wilcox. But after closer examination, it doesn't appear to be the same house. There's no funeral door for one thing. This is the main difference. There's an addition, but that could have been torn down, or burned in a fire. The funeral door isn't something that would have been added later. The chimney, yard, house size are all the same though! Pretty cool! It says this house is on the same house as the house we're looking at though so we'll definitely have to go looking for it!

Gone With the Wind - The Movie

2010-05-14T22:58:00.000-04:00

Tonight we watched Gone with the Wind. Oh my God it was a long movie!!! 2 discs! And like 3 hours! Ryan gave up after about 15 minutes (basically the amount of time it took him to eat his dinner), and was on the floor playing with Maddie and making a lot of noise. Even by the end I was getting really sleepy... and hoping it would end soon. We did love all of the musical intros and intermissions (at the beginning I made a joke about how there'll probably be an intermission and then there actually was...). NOT. Ugh.. I was a little surprised about some of the changes they made though.. especially the ones regarding Scarlett's children. And a lot of it I had to explain to DH, not sure if this was because of the lack of backstory on some people/events or because he wasn't paying attention, and would try to pick it up a half hour later and be lost.

House Inspection

2010-05-13T17:49:00.002-04:00

We had the house inspection today. It was scheduled for 9 am, but Ryan and I showed up at 8:30. The inspector (the same one we used in Moodus) was already there and had gotten quite a bit done! He walked around the exterior with us while we waited for Lisa. Long story short.. he only found 3 main issues. The sill in the front corner of the house needs to be replaced. It has been completely eaten by powder post (not powder puff!) beetles. This explains the majorly sloping floor in the Dining Room and part of the Foyer. Another issue is the furnace. It's wicked old (at least from the 60's, maybe older). He got it to fire, but it wouldn't circulate the hot water through the pipes. The bad thing about this (besides needing to replace the furnace) is that he wasn't able to check the pipes to see if any were cracked or leaking. The third is that the fireplaces aren't working. It appears that there is something in the chimney blocking all of them. The pest inspector also found evidence of more powder post beetles in the attic. The good news is that they aren't in the basement anymore though!

Also, Ryan made a fun discovery. He found a secret fireplace in what will (we hope) be our bedroom! It's hidden behind wood paneling on the wall!! We also think that there must be one in the other front bedroom now, so that would bring the total to 7 fireplaces! We also found a cool door that can be used in two different doorways.. it was pretty cool!

When we were in the attic the inspector lifted up some floorboards and let us look down against the chimney, which was really cool because you could see how it was all put together. I love this kind of stuff! We were there for 5 hours with him.. he lets us walk around with him and explains as he goes. Luckily Lisa went to Dunkin and got us all some donuts!

Another Strange Pain

2010-05-11T14:47:00.001-04:00

I've been known to have some strange illnesses and pains. Well, this morning I woke up at 3:30 and felt like I was going to throw up. I had a horrible sharp pain in my upper stomach area. That pain didn't go away for the entire day. So bad that I came home early from work and didn't go to Hallmark. I'm not sure what it is. It's definitely not related to my normal stomach issues because it's up higher. I don't even know what is in that area! And WebMD is no help. Big surprise there.

Happy Graduation Day Becca!

2010-05-08T22:05:00.001-04:00

Becca graduated today!!

We drove up to Reading early in the morning. We left CT at 6:45 and made it to Reading around 9. We dropped Madison off and then took off with Ryan's parents and Lauren for Keene. We got there nice and early and got good seats. Ryan, Lauren and I were starving, so we took a trip to Flex and got hot dogs. It was pouring rain the entire time, but that didn't stop Lauren and I from reading our books (The Help - me and Hunger Games - Lauren) under umbrellas.

I was really surprised they didn't do the ceremony indoors. But I'm glad they didn't, because the only thing worse than sitting in the rain for the ceremony would have been watching it on a screen in the Mabel Brown Room.

After the ceremony was over we all headed to Manchester for dinner. Jason recommended Gaucho's Churrascaria Brazilian Steak House. It was pretty cool! We started off our meal with a really yummy salad bar (all of the salads had complete ingredient lists, so I got to have them!) and drinks. Becca and I got Green Monkeys, which was midori, sour mix, pineapple juice and Green Malibu. Sooooo yummy!

Once we were done with our salads, they started coming over with more meat than I had ever seen. Huge skewers with steak, chicken, turkey, pork.. By the time they were done bringing meat, I couldn't even remember what I had on my dish. They also brought dishes with rice, delicious potatoes (seriously.. amazing!), fried yucca (oh my God I ate cactus!), fried bananas (didn't like these) and baked beans. We were all sooo stuffed by the time we left!

Under Contract!

2010-05-06T17:02:00.000-04:00

They accepted! They accepted! We're still not overly overly excited though because we've had offers accepted before. And contracts canceled before.

But it's still very exciting :) Ryan spent the night emailing Kurt trying to get the ball moving on the mortgage process. He also set up the inspection for some time next week.

Berlin House

2010-05-05T20:38:00.047-04:00

Today we went to view the Berlin house. We met Lisa at the house at 6:30. By 7:00, we were writing up an offer.

Here are some pictures...

The front of the house. I love how regal it looks. It's set on a hill, up from the road. It's amazing how much natural light there is inside, even with the front 4 downstairs windows completely blocked by those bushes. Oh, and see those shutters? They're original!

The side yard. This is where I'd want to put on an addition of a mudroom and pantry and 2 car garage. The well is no longer used (city water! A first for us!), but it's so cute!

Built in 1771

The front hall. I LOVE the cute little bench, which is where we guess that Madison will be spending a lot of time. I also love that this house has a coat closet!

The Dining Room fireplace. There are 5 fireplaces in the house! I love all of the wood paneling in this room. The door to the left of the fireplace goes to the basement.

The Kitchen fireplace, as seen from the breakfast nook.

The upstairs hall fireplace. I love this space. I'd set it up as an office/craft room. And I love the built-in bookcase next to the fireplace!

We're suppose to hear back by 5 pm tomorrow regarding our offer. We're all really confident about it, so hopefully it works out. However, we're having a hard time getting excited because we've had so many things fall through in the past..