Scenes from Our Old Colonial

Good morning! I hope you're week is going smoothly! Last night Matt and I represented Virginia Tech at a local college fair, we had a great time talking about the campus and being stumped by prospective students about majors that we had never even heard of. All this while decked out in orange and maroon! It was a great night.

I'm still catching up on things from last week, so I don't have time to write a full post [sorry!]

But I do have, for your viewing pleasure, some scenes from Our Old Colonial:


[More Decorations]


[Painting the exterior of the house at Dusk]


[Painted Foyer-Gone are those dings from moving in!]


[Curtains in the living room being hung]

And finally:

["Did I seriously just do that?"]

Last Sunday I traveled to Bethlehem, PA to run my first half marathon: the Runner's World Half Marathon.



It was a hilly [read: challenging] and beautiful course.


[elevation]

My goal time was to finish in under 2 hours and I squeezed by at 1 hour and 58 minutes. When I realized that I had made it I almost started to cry but I didn't have any water left in me to do it!

The whole ride home Matt and I talked about the course and how the race went by in a blur. I was on cloud nine and just thrilled about my time and was even more excited when Matt told me that the route that he rant was actually 13.23 miles. This meant I ran farther (and faster) than I had thought! Once we got home we got ready to go eat our post race meal at Iron hill. We had cheese fries and hamburgers [and a little green salad]. After a long lunch we headed home for dessert: Bananas Foster with vanilla ice cream. Everything tasted so good!

Monday and Tuesday were spent moving [very] slowly, with long hesitations before ascending or descending stairs and plotting out just exactly what I needed to do if I had to move. Needless to say, I was in a bit of pain: but it was the good [great] pain: the kind that you earn from running your first half marathon!!

All that being said, I would do it again in a heart beat [after recovering of course!]!!

While I've been Gone

Hi all! It has been a while! Last week got very hectic very quick and I haven't had time to catch my breath let alone blog.

So I thought while I catch my breath I would regale you with a few scenes from the past week.

Fall is here! :)


[Fall]

After the first leaf turned to a gorgeous burnt orange Matt and I started to ponder all things fall: Pumpkin Spice Lattes, Apple Crisps, Pumpkin everything... etc.

So the first thing we did was head out for some apples to bake the perfect apple crisp. It was delicious and gone within 24 hours!


[Skillet Apple Crisp with Vanilla Ice cream]

We have also started pulling out our Fall decorations.


[Fall Bouquet]

Our house is filled with pumpkins and pumpkin candles.


[Pumpkin candle]

Most of my decorations come from my beautiful mother-in-law, June [e.g. above candle]. Oh how she spoils me!

We still need to decorate for halloween [I have some great ideas!] by carving our pumpkins, putting up some spider web and more [stay tuned]. But, not to worry, we are prepared with plenty of candy for the little trick-or-treaters to come [hopefully it will last until then!].


[Pumpkins from Halloweens of the past]

I hope you are all enjoying everything fall in your neck of the woods!

What we did get done

While we didn't get our bushes moved like we had hoped to, we have made some progress on our front yard.

We have taken out all of the grass from in front of the house and replaced it with mulch, mulch, and some plants. As seen in our beautifully sketched plans:


[plans]

The whole process started a while ago. After getting rid of the grass we covered the area with landscaper's fabric before covering that with mulch.



Then headed down to the town's free mulch [win!] to pick up 2 truck loads of mulch.


[Look at me doing all the work]

Unfortunately, we were doing this through a rain storm, which made the experience a little less fun, but when you have a job and only a limited amount of time that you can take for shoveling mulch, you do what you gotta do!

Question: Has anybody out there ever dug in a big pile of mulch before? Have you ever experienced the heat created from everything decomposing? Crazy!

We brought the mulch home just as it was about to pour again and went on with our job, regardless of the rain.


[Look at Matt doing all the work :) ]

The next step was to find just the perfect plants to put in our new garden bed. Which is easier said than done. There are two big bushes that are at the end of either side of the house, so I feel as though anything that we plant will be out of scale, unless I cut them way back [which I really don't want to do].

I really don't understand what the previous owners were thinking when they placed the bushes and shrubs where they did, but you have to work with what you've got and that is what we are going to do! Wish us luck!

Dog Shaming

Not too long ago on Facebook I shared the following link: http://dog-shaming.com/

It is a hilarious website that shames dogs for their bad behavior, if you have a dog, ever had a dog, or know anything about dogs I highly recommend that you waste several minutes on this site. Or saving it for a rainy day when you need a smile [which it just happens to be here... groan].

I believe the day after or the day I posted the site on Facebook I came home to our pantry door cracked open and a very guilty looking dog. When I opened the door the rest of the way, I found that the dog food bin had been opened and there was a serious dent in the kibbles.

Brady, with what little tail that he has, tucked his tail under his tush and whimpered with his floppy ears hanging extra low and his eyes as big as they could be.

I couldn't help but giggle though, he is always so cute when he knows he has done something wrong, but I made sure that my grins were facing the ceiling, where he couldn't see them. I gave him a stern talking to and decided that he might not have ate enough to qualify as dinner and poured some kibble into his dish.

Brady is a good dog and will wait until we say 'okay' before he pounces on his food [like he hasn't ate in ages]. This time however, while he was waiting for the 'okay' Tuxedo decided that he wanted some food.



Brady sat there being tortured by the fact that his big brother was stealing his food [don't worry he only got about 1 piece of kibble, Brady was not going to starve].

After torturing him for just a bit I said 'okay' and he nervously went over to his food and looked a Tuxedo in a way that I interpreted as him saying "Can I have my food now" in a really sad voice.

Do you have any good dog stories? Ones where your dog just surprised/astonished you with their behavior?

Arch Nemesis

Hello and happy Monday everybody! I hope you all had the perfect weekend!

Matt and I set out to do a lot of work on the house this weekend. We had huge plans. We made our list of things to do and set forth to tackle Saturday morning.

First thing I did was cut Brady's hair. Although I love his hair on the slightly longer side, we wanted to give him one last cut before he grows out his winter coat. I shaved off the equivalent of a large cat worth of hair off of him. In fact, Brady has been barking at the pile of hair in the back yard because he thinks it is an animal.

Unfortunately, the weather has turned from highs in the 80s Thursday and Friday, to highs in the 60s for the rest of the week. [Furry child parent fail]

Right after Brady's haircut, we headed out front to tackle our bush. Remember on Friday when I said that we were going to be moving two bushes to either side of our front door?


[Arch Nemesis]

Well after many many hours of fighting and digging the bushes still remain where they were on Friday. We spent about 10+ man hours working on ONE bush and couldn't even get it to hint at moving. We bought new shovels and a rock bar and there was nothing that was going to separate the bush from the soil!



In fact, in an act of defiance, the bush is holding captive our rock bar.



I currently trying to think of how to incorporate it into Halloween decorations.

So now we are debating whether or not to give up on the bushes and trim them back, hire somebody to move them, or cut them down and buy new bushes to flank the door.

How was your weekend? Did you set out to get a whole list of things done only to cross off 1 or 2 of the items?

Things to do

Ahhh! The weekend is almost here. I'm counting down the hours. I have a work function this afternoon and will be obliged to stay later than I would like on a Friday to socialize. Don't get me wrong, I love my colleagues, but sometimes you just want to go home and change into sweats and a t-shirt and start the weekend right! Are you with me?

This weekend marks the first weekend in about a month that Matt and I don't have an even to go to on both Saturday and Sunday! I'm so excited! We have big plans for working on the house. We currently have a lot of projects that are only 1/2 done. In particular, a half dug out bush in our front yard that has been sitting idle for the past few weeks because we haven't had time to finish digging it out/ we didn't have the right tools. Well, now we have the right tools and time! So tomorrow, the bush will be moved!! [fingers crossed].

Here is a quick look at the before and a sketch of what the after should hopefully look like [after moving some other plants and continuing work that we have already started on the front garden].

We are copying our neighbor's garden layout, but digging out on either side of the sidewalk and filling it in with plants. We are hoping that most of the plants can be transplanted from other parts of the lawn to save some money [we are very lucky that there are lots of plants on the property just not in the right spots: IMO].


[Before]

I think that the house just looks naked, without bushes on either side of the door or any plants [aside from weeds] in front of the windows.


[Plans-aren't you jealous of my wonderful art skills?]

Wish us luck! The bushes we are trying to move will definitely be the toughest job, but hopefully come monday they will be flanking our front door.

Rain Rain Go Away

In addition to the fact that I stayed up past my bedtime to watch two grown men talk in circles on TV, the rain has yet to disappear. So I have been a bit slow getting started this morning! I did manage to get up [after hitting snooze twice] and make my way to the pool. And I also made breakfast lunch and dinner before heading to work [I am feeling very accomplished getting all that done!]. Dinner is going to be pulled chicken from the slow cooker [yum! I definitely made enough for left overs].

How is your Thursday going so far?

I thought I would use today's post to catch up on my weekend before last. Monday and Tuesday's post were dedicated to this past weekend, but last week I never found time to post about all the fun that took place the week before. As I mentioned that our weekend of events started on Thursday, when we went with friends to Longwood Gardens to see the gardens all lit up at night.

Friday and Saturday morning we spent getting ready for friends to come by and head over to the Newark's Oktoberfest. Our house had been neglected for a couple of weeks and we wanted it to be presentable when every body came over. It turned out that nobody passed the living room, so the cleaning had been in vain, but we at least had a clean house when all was said and done.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures at Oktoberfest, it was in a big tent and there wasn't great lighting so all our pictures came out blurry, so I will spare you. We had a great time. I was impressed with how large the event was. There was music, dancing, great food and drink, and carnival rides. With the purchase of admission we were able to ride as many rides as we wanted, but only got a chance to go on one because at around 7:00pm it started to storm.

We spent several hours soaking in the German atmosphere and filled our tummies with brats and enjoyed every minute of it.

Sunday morning started relatively early [considering we had been out late at Oktoberfest]. But we had to get up early so we could get ready for: My first MLB game! Matt got us tickets to watch the Braves [his team] play the Phillies in Philadelphia. Since we didn't know about parking and how long it would take us to get there, we wanted to head out with plenty of time. Matt was also hoping that he could get Chipper to sign a baseball, since it would be Chipper's last game in Philadelphia.

Before heading to the game I was nervous about the Phillies' fans [I have heard they can be pretty rowdy]. Then I found out that the Braves and the Phillies had the same colors, so I knew that we wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb and wasn't as nervous [except for Matt's baseball cap, but I could just pretend I didn't know him if it got to that point, haha!]. So, I just put on my red, white, and blue and was ready for the game.



We didn't get a chance to get a signed autograph, but we still made it up there in plenty of time to scout out the best places to eat, check out our seats, and watch the players stretch. We ended up eating at Tony Lucke's [Matt was not going to have it any other way]. It was delicious!

It was a great game, especially because the Braves won! Matt taught me a lot about baseball and I actually enjoyed myself [this was a surprise!]. The Phillies' fans were great, we only got snubbed once by a crossing guard [but laughed it off because it was such an obvious snub, we got quite a good laugh out of it].

After the game we headed to have dinner with one of my colleagues who lives up in Philadelphia. Her and her husband spoiled us with one of the most amazing dinners I have ever had! So much so that when I found out that the recipes were from Cook's Illustrated, I immediate signed up for an online subscription [of course, this won't help the fact that her husband has amazing bbq skill and I don't, but at least I can start with the ingredients].

After spending the evening chatting about this and that we headed back home and directly to bed. As I said last Monday, it was a busy weekend full of fun... but we were exhausted!

Brass Bedroom Paint

Hello and happy Wednesday to you! I hope everybody is doing well. It has been raining here for the past 24 hours and the clouds are really draining on me! It is supposed to clear up tomorrow, so here is hoping that will happen! In other news, we have made some progress on the brass guest room!

After a couple coats of paint, our guest room went from:


[Purple walls]

To this:

[Valspar Woodlawn Bedroom White]

If you look really closely you can see there is a very slight difference between the molding color [Valspar White] and the wall paint [Valspar Woodlawn Bedroom White]. I think I would have liked a little more contrast, but I think the room is going to look great once we get all of the acceseries in place.

We already put the beautiful brass bed together [after polishing it up a bit] and put the plush white comforter on it [which after taking this pictures was quickly covered so that it did not turn black from our cats fur]. It is such a well constructed bed, they certainly don't make things the way they used to. Trust me when I say, it is HEAVY and very solid.


[Brady testing out the bed-he approves]

A lot of the accessories are still packed away [yes, we still have two rooms full of boxes even though we moved over a month ago!]. I would like to get a new rug for the room, but I'm not sure about what color. I have been pinning some ideas, but rugs are just so gosh darn expensive, so I'll likely wait until I find one on a major sale.

Hopefully, we will make some more progress on this room [and the rest of the house] over the weekend and have the curtains hung and some pictures up on the wall.

More Weekend Fun

Like I said yesterday, our weekend was full of fun events and our Sunday event was attending the Taste of Newark. The Taste of Newark was a food and wine tasting even with over wine and beer from over 10 distributers and food from over 45 of the area's restaurants. This year, the event was held on the University of Delaware's old campus in front of their art museums. We lucked out with gorgeous weather for spending an afternoon outside [it wasn't too hot and there was a nice breeze-I love fall]

And what made it even more fun is that Stefanie came up to sample all of the food with us [read: eat as much as we could within the limited timeframe that we were given with us].


[Stefanie on the 'wrong' side of the Battle of the Chefs-she was trying to sneak a taste of the Ox tail they were preparing]

As usual, we were running late and got in about 30 minutes after the event started [that is 30 minutes of lost sampling time!]. Not to worry, we made up for and tasted to our hearts content.


[One of the tents at the Taste of Newark]

I didn't get any pictures of the food [because it disappeared to quickly] but I think that my favorite entree would have to have been the harvest ravioli from Cafe Gelato and for dessert pumpkin cheesecake ice cream, from the University of Delaware's creamery [yum!].


[Matt and I]

At the end of the 3 hours that we spend there we were stuffed and groaned about how much we ate the entire way home! What a great way to spend the afternoon!

Weekend Fun

Good morning everybody! I hope everybody had a wonderful weekend. Our weekend was jam-packed with lots of fun stuff, just like last weekend! [Which I never wrote about, oops! I just never found the time! Maybe this week!]

Our weekend started earlier [although this does not necessarily qualify as the above mentioned 'fun stuff]. We took off early on Friday to get Brady and the cats checked out at the vet. We were so excited when it only took 40 minutes for all three of them. The cats were not thrilled [as no cat will ever be], but Brady was in heaven. He is the silliest dog, he loves the vet, he would get shots all day if he could sit in the waiting room at the vet and smell all of the passers by [which can get embarrassing...].


["I love the vet!"]

After the vet, we dropped the kiddos off at home and then went to run errands in preparation for our first big event: the Virginia Tech v. Cincinnati football game at FedEx field. We needed to pick up a few things for some recipes that I was making for our tailgate: spiedies, bacon avacado salad, candy corn oreo cookie bark, and a pumpkin cake [which I'm excited to say I made up the recipe for and it turned out amazing!].

By the time we were done dealing with traffic and running our errands it was pretty late, so we quickly threw the food together [marinated the chicken spiedies and made the candy corn oreo cookie bark], tossed all of our tailgating stuff in the foyer and headed to bed. We were getting up at 6:45 so that we could get on the road nice and early in order to get some prime parking.

Saturday morning, started a bit slower than it should have. When I got up I was in kind of a fog, so things weren't moving along as quickly as we would have hoped and we didn't end up getting out the door until around 10:30 [making us late] and we still needed to pick up some ice and a cooler [making us later]. Fortunately, we were able to find a Target on the way down instead of making a detour to the one we normally go to [gotta love technology].

Even though we got a late start we were able to get a great spot really close to the stadium because our wonderful friends saved us one! We had a great time tailgating before the game and catching up with friends from college that we hadn't seen a while.


[Ellie and Landis]


[Good Eats: Spiedies and Hot dogs]

About a half an hour before the game started we headed over to the stadium to find our seats, which were right behind the VT endzone. I have never sat this close to the field before and it was really neat, but I have to admit I had a hard time seeing since I'm so short and we had to watch everything that was happening at the other end on the big screen. But when the action was on our end I felt like I was in the game!!



The came was pretty intense, there were some bad calls [as there always are] and there were some bad plays [but there were some good ones too!].

In the end, we lost the game, but it was so much fun to be back at at Virginia Tech game. We certainly miss standing in the crowd cheering on our Hokies! [Matt has not been able to speak since the end of the first quarter]


[Go Hokies]

After the game, we snuck out of the parking lot quickly, drove home, and went strait to bed [after unpacking the car].

Check back in tomorrow for Sunday fun!