Fly Away!

I'm off to sunny Baltimore for the weekend - a quick trip and yes, leaving my boys at home (Reese and Matt)!
As much as I hate flying, Southwest and their humongo airplanes make it much easier for me. That and it only takes 90min to go from NH to Baltimore! woot!
I'll be back soon!

A low-key weekend

We have enjoyed quite the relaxed weekend! And it has been wonderful :)

Friday night has become our 'date nite' with something easy for dinner like pizza and beer while we sit on the couch and watch something fun! This week we rented Real Steel - the robot movie about boxing with Hugh Jackman. I love robots - ever since Short Circuit - so I thought the movie was great while Matt said it was a Rocky movie with Robots and a kid. But even he thought it was a fun watch :)

Saturday was our get-stuff-done day: we went to BJ's, Hannaford's (side note on groceries: I have started to get into coupons again and was SUPER excited that we saved just over $30!), Kitchen & Co, Children's Orchard and then home to finish M's Basment Corner clean-out. We then went through the stack of clothes for Goodwill, made a list and packed them into the car for Sunday before settling on for our second movie of the weekend: I Am Number Four. Also interesting but mostly it started a series, so lots of new characters and threads started that went no where because they are leaving them for the series. We still enjoyed it though!

Sunday was our lazy day. mmmmmm, yummy. Slept in, brunch out, drop off at Goodwill, NH Liquor store for a few items that were on sale (no coupons needed!) and then Lowe's. The latter was suposed to be the exciting stop for the weekend - shower door for our master bath - but alas, the door we found, liked and thought would fit, turned out to be a no-go when I found our shower in one of their books. Sooooooo, now the project has been delayed slightly while we wait for a special order door (could be 3 weeks or longer) instead of the stock item we thought would work. We went home a bit bummed out, but the project is still moving forward, and as Matt and I discussed, it's better to find out now than then we are trying to have the door installed! 

So maybe not super relaxing, but it was nice to not have anything scheduled on the calendar and we made our own plans as we felt like it. Also awesome to spend the whole weekend with Matt and Reese - that hasn't happened since Feb sometime!!

I hope you all enjoyed your weekends too :)

one of my FAV places

The Container Store. happy sigh. I love it there. Total organization and wonderful tools to keep house, office, car, everything! organized. There is no store close to me so I order everything online. The only bad thing I've found with this is I find their shipping prices to be a bit high. I really wish they had free shipping!

Recently, while ordering replacement charcoal filters for the kitchen trash can, I found a small sale on hanging closet shoe organizers and picked one up! It allowed me to move the printed one I had in my bedroom closet, to  the study closet and the new one went into the bedroom closet.

 TA DA! :)

Yes, I love shoes.
And yes, the closet in my study has a strange combination of out-of-season clothes, shoes and art supplies.


This is the other fun thing-a-ma-jig I found! Combo ironing board and iron holder!
It meant I got to pull the ironing board and iron from the basement stair landing
(bad place for them but they've been living there since we moved in) and put them in the laundry closet.
A much more sensible place AND gets them out of the basement! Another win!

M's Basement Corner

When we cleaned out the old buffet under the old TV in the basement, the folding table got covered with random stuff that had been inside the cabinet and didn't have another immediate home. It was a goal of mine to clean it out anyway as part of the clean-up-the-basement-before-renovation project. I really don't want to put anything back in the basement after the reno that we won't be keeping. (A lofty goal, I know!)

We've been slowly chipping away at it, but this past week we made such a

HUGE jump towards the goal, I thought I'd share! :)

Since the finished basment will have built-in storage all along this wall, I thought it would be a good trial-run to see if we like it there by stacking storage bins, suitcases, and I slid down the shelving unit to fit there are well.

It created a much more open center floor which we used to pile all the boxes from Matt's corner so we could sort through them making piles of keep, shred, trash, recycle, and Goodwill.

(Reese stayed underfoot enjoying the new found space with his ball)

It also forced me to finally stack all the Holiday decor back under the stairs where it belongs instead of being scattered about the room. Yep. We have a TON of holiday decor. (I looove the holidays!)

YAY! for stack of empty (moving) boxes that will be put with other recycling this Friday! You can't see all the boxes, but for those counting (me) there are 4 large moving boxes with a few assorted smaller boxes as well.

And this small stack is all we have left!

Here's an old picture of the stack in the corner before......

And here's after! wooohooo!

Changes in the Yard Plans

I got an email from Home Depot (I thought) last week about a sale on young Maple Trees - so over we went on Sunday to check them out and maybe pick up 2 or 3 for the yard. Home Depot didn't have any Maple Trees though - I might be loosing my mind! - so we browsed through their selection but nothing really caught our eyes.
On a whim, we headed over to Lowe's where we found quite a few things that made us stop and think about the yard plan.

Blossoming Cherry Tree

This would be lovely to replace the dead tree we had to take down in the front of the condo's. It doesn't grow very large and would be a lovely ornamental tree on the front shared lawn. We also looked at some Chinese maple trees, but either way, since this is a condo assoc decision, we decided this would need to wait for a bit.

Maple Tree

This was our original thought. It would still be lovely in the side yard. A wonderful shady tree - but not even Lowe's is carrying them right now - we found an awesome alternative though! See the next one!

Cleveland Flowering Pear Tree

Neither one of us had heard of this tree, but it's a fast growing flowering tree (awesome since we've delayed yard plantings for so long!) that has lovely white flowers in the spring, green leaves all summer that then turn red in the fall! We are thinking bottom of the right side of the driveway to give the edge of the yard a little Umph! and get a bit more shade and color going over there. Depending on how well it takes, I think I could find several other places to put them as well!

Both above and below pictures are American Boxwood.

Matt had me look at these for the yard hedge (we've talked about putting in a living hedge ever since we moved in since we can see our lovely neighbors living room from our deck and they can see our entire back yard, deck and first floor.) instead of doing Forsythia, which was the original plan. Matt said he doesn't really like the yellow and brown 'twiggy' look of the Forsythia when it's not in bloom - which, to be honest, I hadn't thought about. So I thought about it, and I agree, I'd rather have a solid green background. Even better, that once they really grown in, if we want to, we could create more of a hedge look as seen below.

Traditional Rhody

These are also great for creating living hedges. They do take some time to grow, but the flowers are big and bright (come in a few diff colors!) and would fill in nicely as years go by. These do bring another element - bumble bees - and I am NOT a fan of bees, but the big bumble ones are usually ok by me :)

 

While we cannot plant the entire hedge in one year (too many plants = too much $$) we walked the yard and found our priority spot that will be the focus of this years new plants for the hedge. Yay for progress!

Little Bits of Organization

As this week goes by, I've been doing a lot of little busy-work type things:

• I've started to shop sales and get numbers($) ready for projects.
• I've found some supplies for planned projects (everything needed to paint the front door!) and started a list of what needs to be picked up (fabric to re-cover dining room chairs) for others.
• I've been preparing another Goodwill run and working on cleaning out the basement.
• I've signed up for grocery coupons on http://www.couponmom.com/ and discovered the awesome fact of simply googl'ing items you're going to purchase in order to find coupons online! (Thanks, Kel!)
• I've caught up/ emptied the DVR of shows - yay for Bones and The Finder and Fairly Legal and Psych!
• I've re-organised Matt's closet, my closet and my study closet (out of season clothes and painting supplies)

sorry, no pics of any of these things - but Matt and I are headed to Home Depot on Sunday to check out shower doors and maybe a maple tree or two. I will let you know what happens :)

PS - Reese gets to come to work tomorrow and Haley might be up for a visit on Saturday! woot!

Easter

I took some quick pics. Here is the mantel decor:

I bought two table runners and put one on the mantel. The wooden bunny is from last year; the glass vase is from our wedding; the eggs in the vase are from Michael's - I hit a great sale!

Wooden Easter sign was an addition this year as well - Home Goods - along with the glitter egg candles which also came from the great sale at Michael's.

Who can celebrate Easter without candy? Mini Cadbury chocolate eggs and Dove chocolates!

More sparkly eggs in a bowl on the entertainment center to add some color :)

I originally had my white cake plate in the center of the table, but it was too white, so last minute switch-out to flowers! And the white cake plate went to the bar for a small candy display. Also, seen below, is my first attempt at bacon wrapped scallops (almost right on the first try!) and our cheese and cracker plate, which, was enjoyed!

Below is a no-bake dessert I made with nutella, oreo cookies, cool whip and a few other yummy ingredients. Matt, who is not a fan of nutella even loved it!

Portsmouth Bridge is Disapearing!

As the weather has gotten warmer, I've been taking walks on my lunch breaks. It's a nice change of pace to get out my cube and get moving for 20 - 30 minutes.
Today, I walked down by the old Portsmouth Bridge which has slowly been disappearing but making little progress since the center portion was loaded on a barge and taken away.
Until now.

One whole side of the bridge is now gone!

 This looks towards the Maine side, where you can still see the bridge...

 and here's the empty view of the Portsmouth, NH side...

 they've taken this side back almost all the way back to land....

  The empty piling in the middle of the river shows where the bridge used to be and the cranes have all moved to the Maine side...

Big empty view!

Changing up the Layout

I'm changing up the layout of the blog a bit. It's still in progress so hold tight. I will be putting some sort of blog header/ picture at the top. But in the meantime - this is what we've got!

Musings....

I have been thinking. About a few things:
- Passover and Easter. Family. Friends. My brother, who celebrated a birthday yesterday :-)
- spring and the garden - or lack there of - make that work to do in the yard and gardens
- new blog I found http://www.migonishome.com/ which focuses on living large in a small space
- house projects and looking ahead to everything we want to do, but still recognising how far we've come.

I find myself in love with our house again. I know that may sound funny since we haven't been there all that long -2 yrs- but when we first moved in I loved it and had so many expectations, plans, dreams, drive to get it all done right away! Maybe I should mention this is our first home and so those of you who have been home owners for longer than we have, I'm sure are laughing right now.
So, of course, once reality sunk in and projects slowed down and life went on, I was upset by the lack of progress. Lists that weren't being crossed off and ideas that just were sitting. Waiting. For us to have time, and money to complete them. Priorities shifted and we had other items, people, Reese, job changes, that were more important in that moment. No regrets!
But now, the pendulum has swung again, and I'm learning that this is life. The priority list changes and then changes again. House projects have once again surfaced and I'm loving it - I love the way the house is now, but I'm so excited about the changes coming. There is something to be said for letting things 'sit' for a while once you finish a project or two. Then tweak them when you need a small change.
Matt and I spent some time this past Saturday going through the project list and changing the order around to reflect what needs to be done more urgently and those that can wait. We also broke some larger projects out into workable chunks - time and money chunks - so that we can move forward with pieces of projects. Getting quotes for projects so we know what we need to save first is helpful too!
Our basement is a prime example of this: the house has no attic, so all the current storage is in the basement and garage. BUT, in order to finish the basement, we have to empty it. Which means we need to put in the overhead garage storage, but in order to do that, we need to empty the garage storage by putting in the shed in the backyard. Once the garage/outdoor storage has shifted to the shed, the overhead garage storage can be installed, which helps to empty the basement. Also, putting in the dining room storage unit/ hutch will also help take the glassware and kitchen storage out of the basement. This will empty the basement to the point of cleaning out the stuff we don't need/ want anymore (something I'm working on now, actually), Matt's desk and his files and storage. The latter will go back into the basement once it's finished.
Armed with a new project list, freshly prioritized, we are making appointments for quotes and figuring out budgets for this years projects. The goal, is to have the entire list done in the next 2 yrs. Granted, things may change again, but I'm getting better - it's a learning curve, but I'm getting there!

Decorating for Passover/ Easter

Passover and Easter fall on the same weekend this year, making it busy time for us - so I'm happily decorating ahead of time for Easter! Matt's parents always host Passover (although I will share recipies and dinner menus for both as we get closer)

The plan for Easter decorations are as follows:
Front door wreath - made of colorful eggs
White wooden bunny and painted wooden Easter sign on the mantel with green paper grass

then set out on Easter Sunday:
3 silver bowls (scattered around living room) with cadbury mini chocolate eggs
I have some other fun assorted easter candy that I'm sure will be around, just no solid plans for them yet
White table cloth and napkins, blue table runner, low table flowers and fun 'egg' placecards
Possible second runner used on bar under apps

here are some pictures of fun things I'm collecting and pulling out for Sunday :-)