Our new house

We finally got a yes from the bank about our house around 9:30 last night.  I was sure we weren’t going to hear from them until today, but apparently the VA works late!  We’re hoping to get a closing date today.

So, here are some pictures of our first house!!  We’re almost done packing and I can’t wait to get down there and get these boxes unpacked!  This messy place is starting to drive me CRAZY.

Here’s Brian in front of the house.

From the hallway looking into the office and family room.

Looking from the family room into the kitchen and breakfast area.

The deck and part of the back yard.

I’ll post more once we’re moved in.  Who wants to come help paint?

What we’ve been up to

I have a ton of pictures that I’ve taken over the past week. Since I’ve been trying to keep all of my pictures on the desk top I have to come to the 3rd floor of our apartment to work on them. The problem is that it’s been so hot that even with the air conditioning running almost non stop the 3rd floor is always like a sauna. Thank goodness our bedroom isn’t up here. So, I thought I would come up and do some work and post to my blog while it raining and still early in the morning. I can always post to my blog from my laptop down stairs, but with out any pics stored on it anymore they would be awfully boring posts. Anyway, here’s a little of what we’ve been up to.

While we were home visiting my parents over Memorial Day weekend I snuck outside early one morning and took pictures of my mom’s gardening.

Isn’t this swing and little pillow cute?

Not long after I went outside my mom woke up and came out too. She let me know that she got these from my grandma’s yard. Actually, quite a few of her plants were ones that someone “gave” her from their yard. I think she took them with out them knowing, but she wouldn’t admit to anything. Pretty soon she’ll probably be stealing plants from people she doesn’t even know.

This was our favorite house from the outside. I love the wood, stone, and brick mixture.

On Saturday Brian and I went to Homearama here in Cincinnati. We really enjoy going and walking through the multi million dollar homes and seeing the decorations and ideas. We hadn’t been in a few years, so it was nice to go again.

This was our favorite house as far as decorating goes. I also loved the copper accents on the outside of the house. Even the drain pipes were made of copper.

We were scared about going on a weekend that it would be really busy, but because it was rainy there weren’t many people there. The weather was perfect, it was cloudy, so not too tearibly hot, and it never rained on us. It did get more muggy as the day went on.

At the end of the show you get to cast your vote for best house, best decorating, and best landscape. Here are my winners for the things I wish we could voted on.

BEST ROOM:

The dog room in the basement of one of the houses. This was probably one of our least favorite houses as far as decorating because everything was so dark and gloomy, but we loved this room. It had the two beds, a dog sized sectional sofa, a plazma tv playing animal planet, and other doggy goodies. This would be the perfect place to put Maggie while we were gone instead of in her crate. The only thing it was missing was a drain in the floor to wash down the floors really well. But I guess multi million dollar dogs must not ever have accidents.

Best Basement:

Not a great pic, I took a ton of pics in this basement, but with the low lighting none of them are great. But the entire basement was amazing! It had a movie theme with old cameras and lights around. Statues like these from different movies. The bar was amazing, it looked like something straight out of a restaurant. They also had a cigar room, wine room tasting room, a huge restaurant booth, and an exercise room down there. Well, and the movie theater. The 1/2 bath down there was even picture worthy. I’ll take one of everything please.

This subdivision is really neat because there is a canal that was built to go through it. I think that Homearama has been in the same subdivision for the past 4 or 5 years as they build more and more homes there. The last time that we went it was nicer out and there were a lot more people out on their little boats on the canal.

One of our friends can get free tickets to the Red’s game tonight and asked us to go. But, I’m totally bummed that Jr hit his 600th home run last night. I was hoping we would get to see it tonight. Oh, well, it will still be nice to get to a game. I’ll post pics from it later.

Stolen

So, remember Brian’s new grill that we bought for his birthday? It was stolen today.

In broad day light. While we were home.

That sucker is heavy too. They must have had their eyes on it for awhile, pulled their truck up in front of the house and hauled it off. I will refrain from posting the first words out of my mouth when I walked out the door and discovered it gone.

My Quilts

I just got a new quilt while I was home for Memorial Day weekend. I took some pictures of it, as requested by the ladies at work. While I was getting ready to post the pictures I realized that I have never taken pictures of our wedding quilt.

Here is the first quilt. At Brian and I’s wedding we had the guests sign red fabric hearts. In the following months my grandma made a quilt using the hearts.

This is the signature from my mom and dad’s heart. If you look close you can see the hand stitching by my grandma.

If you look REALLY closely you can see the hand quilted heart design by my grandma.

This is the quilt that I got over the weekend.

This was started by my paternal great grandma.

Then was worked on by my paternal grandma.

Then lately my maternal grandma has started to finish the quilts that had been started long ago. She is currently working on another that is a double wedding ring for my sister. After that there are two more that need finished.

My sister did the tying.

Now I want to hand quilt it. Of course I have never hand quilted and don’t really know what I’m doing or have the needed equipment. I’ve been reading about quilting. Now I just need to pick a design and buy some equipment. Any tips from seasoned quilters out there? I would also like to add a patch to the back with our names, maybe in a family tree type of design.

Oh, does anyone know the name of this quilt design?

I’ve been a bad blogger

I’ve been too busy reading other blogs to write in my own.  There’s not a whole lot going on around here.  Last night Brian and i went to see the movie What Happens.  It was pretty good.  Then we went and walked by the river for a little bit down on the levee.  There was a wedding going on and a bunch of kids out after their prom in their formal dress.  It was a beautiful night.  We were supposed to go see my cousin play baseball at Ohio State today, they were doing their senior ceremony for them today.  But, it’s supposed to rain all day and turn into thunderstorms at the same time the game would be going on.  So, I think we’ll be staying home.  Maybe we’ll try to go to the butterfly show today.

It’s been raining so much this week that the drain holes in my pots can’t keep up.  I’ve been having to go around and poor off extra water in some of my plants.  It’s poring right now, once the rain lets up I’m going to move some of the pots where they’ll be protected from the rain a little bit.

Here are a few updated pictures from earlier this week.  My jalapeño is really taking off.  I will have to get new pictures of it when it stops raining.

I had these two strawberries in a bowl of cereal the other day.

This is my little parsley plant. The only one of my herbs that seems to being doing really well.

Garden Update

I can’t believe how quickly my plants are growing.

I took this when it was still dark out as I was leaving for work.  I wanted to get a shot of the tulips before they opened.

My white grape hyacinth, just starting to pop open.

My strawberry just turning pink.

A pic of my jalapeño plant starting to come up.  SPICY!

If you’re a friend on Facebook you can see a bunch of my other pics there.

Planting Season

I planted some seeds today. Last year was the first year that I managed to keep any plants alive. I don’t really keep plants in the house because our cats eat them. I am however considering getting some orchids that I would keep out of their reach. I really miss having our deck, but I’m going to make the best of it. Our deck and outside area in this house face South and the sun is blocked by the building next door, so it is in the shade all day.  I’ve had to be creative about where I’m going to put my plants. Thankfully we have windows that face the north east where they will get lots of sun and I can put pots out onto the roof.

This is a view out of our kitchen window. There’s one more pot off to the left that isn’t in this picture. So far out this window in the blue pots are herbs. Basil, oregano, chives, parsley, and thyme. I have a couple more blue pots like these to fill when I buy some more seed. The large pot has two kinds of chives, thyme, and viola flowers. The other pot outside of the picture has merigolds in it. I still want to get a few more fruit and vegetable plants to put out here. I’m thinking about a mini blueberry bush, strawberries, jalepenio peppers, and maybe a mini tomato plant.

This is a view out of our guest bedroom/my craft room. I don’t have anywhere to place the hanging basket that would be in the sun, so it’s on the roof too.  This picture makes the basket look really tiny, but it’s actually pretty big.  I put purple petunias and white verbena in it. The ceramic pot with the white flower painted on it has periwinkle in it. The blue pot has daisies in, and the rectangular pot has morning glory seeds in it.

I still need to buy seeds to plant outside the front door that will be in the shade. All of the seeds except for our herbs were taken from the plants I had last year. I can’t wait for them to sprout!! The one problem is keeping the animals from escaping onto the roof while I have the windows open. One cat already went onto the roof and Brian had to go out after it. I have to run, we’re going to watch my cousin play in Ohio State’s baseball game today.

Randomness

I haven’t weighed myself in almost a month. Mostly because I haven’t been as good as I should be and I’ve been scared to see the results. Well, I weighed myself today and I’ve lost 1.5 pounds since then. I can handle that. Especially since I haven’t counted a single point or worked out since then.

I bought a digital SLR finally! I got it a few days ago. I’m still playing with it trying to figure out all of the wheels and buttons. I got a Nikon D70 from E-bay that came with two lenses, a bag, 5 gigs of memory, and a few other things.

I had to order a memory card reader from e-bay last night. The camera didn’t come with the cable I need to hook it to my computer, and the memory card doesn’t fit in any of the slots on my computer. So, it will be a few days before I can actually upload any pictures from it and post them.

We ended up getting between 10 and 12 inches of snow. I think we’re going to go to the dog park again today. I’ll try to post some pictures from yesterday and today that I took with my other digital camera when we get back home. Hopefully Brian and I don’t end up fallling. There is no salt anywhere in Cincinnati and we used the last of ours a few weeks ago. Most of the towns around here don’t even have salt left to put on the roads. Hurry up spring! I’m ready for some warm weather!

5 Days ago it was 70 degrees

Here’s what we did today.

We got around 4 inches of snow today. But the wind was blowing so hard that in some spots you could see the grass, in other you sunk past your ankles because of the drifts.

Maggie loves the snow, so we put on tons of warm layers and headed to the dog park. We’ve done this several times when there has been a few inches of snow and we’re always the only people there.

Who knew beagles were snow dogs?? She ran, and ran, and ran.

Of course it took longer to get dressed and drive there and back than the time we were actually there. Within 10 or 15 minutes Maggie was freezing and ran to the gate to go home. But it’s still fun watching her run and dig in the snow.

We’re supposed to get another 12 inches tomorrow! I’m moving to Las Vegas! Or Hawaii! Or Bermuda!

Finally a break from the cold!!

We took Maggie to the puppy park today.  I headed out the door and didn’t even notice that I had forgotten “my” coat until I got to the car.  I say “my” coat because I’ve been wearing Brian’s.  Someone stole my winter coat at work a few weeks ago and I haven’t been able to find a new one that I like.  Anyway, it was nice being outside with out a coat and with out fear of frost bite for once.  Why do we live in the Midwest again??  I meant to take my camera, but I forgot.

I finally ordered my SLR camera.  I got it used off of E-Bay.  The seller is shipping it for me tomorrow.  I can’t wait to get my hands on it to start experimenting with it.