The End of a BIG Year

Well, it's New Years Eve. And man, so much happened this year! I got a new job... then left that job for another job. And we bought a house. And Brian started down a path for school that he's actually EXCITED about! And then we got married (wow). And I'm getting ready to start grad school. What a massively huge year! We're excited to continue on with another one. And I'm looking forward to documenting all our little adventures here!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

A Slight Change of Scenery...

So all of you thousands of faithful readers (aka myself and that one dude in Texas) may have noticed DSIFQ looks a little different these days. I have updated the site design! I think it's a little fresher, and a little more us. Also it's a much wider format which I really like.

I'm excited to continue rambling on about my mundane life while dressed up in this nice new wrapper!

Post-Christmas Christmas Post

Yeah yeah, I'm a terrible blogger. Don't I know it. Well my lovely hubby and I have been running around all crazy with the post wedding madness, school prep, family stuff, etc but we did actually decorate for the holidays!

I am aware that you wouldn't know that... because i haven't shown you. So I'll fix it now! I know it's a few days post-yule but hey, it's still before the new year so I technically still win right? Rather like it's ok to send Christmas cards late as long as they get there before Jan 1, so I shall shower you in terribly awful pictures of our decor. My camera is failing. I need a new one... just ad that to the pile of stuff on our 'spend money list'!

Our lovely tree. It's new, 7.5 feet, only 550 lights but it's LED and one of the best fakes I've seen. Also it was very easy to put up! It's in the corner of the living room near the dining/kitchen.

The downstairs which i still don't like. But since we have no furniture down here yet, it was kind of an afterthought.

My little village on the sideboard/dresser. And I hung some ornaments from the light ala newlywoodwards. Gotta get some better ornaments for next years though.

Some of our cards, and you can see the banister in the background. The one going down to the entryway has a garland as well.

And last but not least, our outdoor lights. We're going to add to it little by little as we go :). Our decorations that FILLED our 650 sq foot apartment definitely aren't doing it anymore!

A belated Merry Christmas from DSIFQ!

An Exercise in Terror

Ok so I've been loosely planning something for a few months and I am TERRIFIED of actually doing it. But I guess it looks like I'm plunging in. I am going to attempt to get a Masters degree.

Pardon me while I go look in the mirror and ask myself why I'm doing this...

Ok, I'm back.

I'm not sure if I can answer that question, but I might as well tell you about the decision a little bit. I have a bachelors in Art and Design and for the past 3 years have worked as a graphic designer. I love my work, but I've kind of been kicking around words like 'betterment of self' and 'growth potential' and 'badass guru of awesome'.  And I determined that more school might help give me an edge in my future, so I started researching masters programs. I finally settled on one for Integrated Marketing Communications which happens to be at a large university right by our house. And luckily it can be done online so I can do it in the evenings after work.

I applied. Then I got in. Then I got loans. Well crap, now what? Am I actually going through with this? Looks like it. Why am I so terrified? Is it the massive student loan debt I'll accumulate? Is it the extra work when I'm tired already? Is it that I'm scared this will slow down plans like having kids? Is it the concern that this path might take my future in the wrong direction? Yes, to all of the above.

But here we go I guess. As scared as I am, not doing it just doesn't seem to be an option.

Wedding Recap 4: The Reception

Well, I'd been holding out for our professional pictures before posting the wedding recap finale, but I still don't have them. So I guess you'll just have to put up with one more wedding post when they DO come in! For now, I'll take you through our reception.

After taking lots of glorious pictures around Ann Arbor we headed into the Michigan Union.

The Union is a gorgeous Art Deco style building (which worked great for our 20's/30's vintage look!) right in the heart of Ann Arbor. Those big windows on the second floor nearest the camera are where we were going to party the night away! We were in the Pendleton Room, which is a stunning little number that seats about 100. I personally like it better then the main ballroom as it's got great details and a fireplace at one end.

We decked it out in copper and cobalt blue, with accents of gold and orange. You could see the blue ceiling floods from the street which just added to the anticipation! But once you got inside, this is what you saw:

Well, that's what you saw if you were my awesome friend Samara and got there before the room filled with people! I'm glad she got this picture, because we didn't arrive until later.

Our short centerpieces. There were tall ones on some tables as well. Also check out my DIY table numbers!

While we were taking pictures our guests enjoyed drinks and hors d'oeuvres (shrimp tempura, bruchetta, and california rolls to name a few) and listened to Ron Newman play some gorgeous piano. Then we made our entrance! After the DJ announced us and our party into the room we went straight into our first dance. I thought it ended up running very smoothly, and I love our song (Call Off the Search by Katie Melua). I didn't even trip on myself!

I love this photo of my parents watching our first dance.

After that came dinner. London broil, asparagus, garlic russet potatoes... crap, I'm making myself hungry. So as dinner was finishing the party started! We did the father/daughter and mother/son dances. And we also included an anniversary dance:

"Anyone who's been married less then a day, less then a day go sit down..."

We did all the cheesy stuff, cut the cake, threw the bouquet, all of it. In the midst of the dancing my mom noticed some people who hadn't been there before... crashers! My dad grabbed one by the scruff of the neck and threw him out the door! His friends followed meekly behind... There was a big cheer and the party continued on. I actually think that's quite the compliment that people would want to crash our party!

Shortly after that, we must have been partying too hard because suddenly the music stopped! Instantly our friend Rick ran over to the (now vacant) piano and started playing chopsticks! It was hilarious, and the music came back on shortly thereafter. Apparently in their anger at getting tossed, our crashers got into the electric box outside and flipped the power off!

After the reception started winding down some of our friends accompanied us to Bar Louie, which is a really nice bar/lounge up the street a ways. We had a few more drinks and I chowed down in a most un-ladylike fashion on some french fries. There was actually a bachelorette party there and she came over and got a picture with me in my dress.

Then Brian and I went back to our beautiful hotel room and had some of the great champagne and strawberries my Grandparents ordered for us and PASSED OUT. Truly, we could not have hoped for a more amazing and perfect day. It's been almost 2 months now and I can't think of it without grinning like an idiot. I think our friends and family had fun too, and I'm so grateful that we were able to start our marriage off on such a happy note!

Bathroom fun!

Ambiguous title maybe? Yeah, but I swear this is just about decor. A couple weeks ago, Brian's family's contractor came to help us with some house stuff. A lot of this work was in the bathroom, mostly a new fan and light, and GFI outlets. Yay meeting building codes!

It's very quiet, and ads a lot of extra light (when it's on) as well. All in all one of those nice additions that you end up noticing/liking more then is probably necessary.

Another big change came in decor. We got a beautiful dark copper piece of wall art from my cousin Chelsea for our wedding. The little alcove the toilet resides in was just screaming for some focal-art. Especially since it's visible from the master bedroom. Buuuut, it was much classier then our polka-dot ikea shower curtain and mis-matched bathmat. Off to Target I went!

 

We went with a combination of Asian textures and a little 'fussy-french' thrown in in the shower curtain. I think it works.

 

The curtain is blue and white woven flowers (with a separate liner). I like it because it covers the whole shower which still desperately needs to be retiled... The mat is actually a bunch of wooden hexagons. You'd think that would be a weird bathmat, but I really like it against the fabric curtain:

 

I also got new curtain hooks that match the ginko wall art:

We've definitely made some big changes in this little room! More than any other room in the house...

Also, a HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all! I know a bathroom update isn't really thematically correct, but I'm thankful to have this nice bathroom!

Wedding Recap 3: The Ceremony

I swear we're almost done with these... I have some fun stuff we did to our bathroom last week to post once I find my camera cord! For now though, lets continue the wedding recap before I forget everything that happened.

When Betty motioned for the girls to come upstairs I was so nervous! But we walked up the steps and got in line and I could see through the mullioned glass that everyone was seated in the church and it looked beautiful. I saw a few people sneak in late too at this point. But this is when everything became ok, I just wasn't nervous anymore! It's go time!

Here are some pictures of the gorgeous church taken by my oh-so-talented friend Samara:

Inside, and then outside:

The ceremony was short, sweet, and beautiful. And nothing went wrong. I'm sure we didn't step at all the right points, but I doubt you could tell.  Here is my dad walking me down the aisle:

The minister (who we LOVE btw) did a great piece. It was about your 'marriage box'. You can only get out of marriage what you put into it. It stuck with out guests as well because several people told me at the reception how much they liked that message. We lit our beautiful unity candle, and suddenly after only 20 or so short minutes he was pronouncing us married and I got to kiss my new husband!

Back out we go:

Then our parents and us stood near the door and had our receiving line. Brian and I laughed about it later because we both got skipped by a few people. Then we went back up to the alter to sign the license and take our family photos. Our photographer was the amazing Amanda Williams, and she is a goddess! She was so efficient! After those pictures we went to take our more fun/artsy shots with our wedding party while everyone else headed off to the cocktail hour.

We don't have our professional shots back yet, but she did send us a couple sneak peaks from the after-ceremony pictures! Midway through we had to take a time-out to take off my cathedral veil and bustle up my giant dress! Neither were easy tasks...

(I made my bolero, you like?)

I'm really excited to get the rest back. After that it was up to the reception, which we could see through the windows of the Michigan Union, was going to be awesome!

Wedding Recap 2: Getting Ready!

Let's continue the wedding day saga... I swear there will eventually be more pictures. I haven't gotten them back from the photographer yet!

About 8 am on October 23rd I snapped awake when there was a sharp knocking on my hotel room door. I ran to answer it and my mom and little sister were standing in the hall. They cheered "Happy Wedding Day!!!" And I officially started to freak out.

We started the day with a big family breakfast at Angelos, an Ann Arbor breakfast staple! And by we I mean me and my family and grandparents. Brian was noooowhere near! I totally did not do what you're supposed to on your wedding day and avoid grease (I guess it helps a nervous stomach to avoid that stuff?). Nope, eggs, bacon, toast and home fries were on the agenda! I was so excited it was hard to sit still. After a nice breakfast we went back to the hotel. I didn't need to be at the hair salon until 11, but the girls were arriving there, and I didn't want to sit still!

When I got there my bridesmaid Emily was just finishing up, and she looked like a total rockstar. My maid of honor was supposed to be there, but we couldn't find her. So we decided to try the beauty school down the street (they are the same company, but one is a school, the other is the official salon, it's a little confusing). Sure enough, she'd made her appointment at the wrong place! It was a little tight in there, so Em and I went for hot apple cider at Biggby. We wandered around town until it was time to go back to the salon.

I loved my hair and makeup! They did such a great job, and it was a lot of fun. They even gave me a hand massage! When we were all pretty my mom and sister went back to the hotel while my girls and I went to get some lunch. We went to Potbelly's on the corner of State and Liberty. Like they often do, they had live music, so it was a great lunch. And did I mention I was doing all this while wearing a cathedral length veil? Those aren't easy to get around in!

After picking up my dress at the hotel we went on to the church! There the girls did their makeup and got dressed, and I jittered around the room nervously. The flowers arrived (they were perfect!) and so did the photographer and videographer. I wasn't allowed to get dressed until the last minute. So pictures were taken and my parents showed up. The guys were upstairs, and I was jumping out of my skin.

My girl Katie and I as we were getting ready!

While we waited for the go-ahead to get me dressed we played old games like 'telephone' and 'down by the banks of the hanky panky' to pass the time. Then suddenly it was time and I was dressed and ready to go! We took a few portrait photos and then it was time for the ceremony. While we waited downstairs I felt like I was going to throw up, and my dad looked like he felt just the same!

Wedding Recap 1: Pre-Wedding

Ah the wedding, seriously it could not have been more wonderful. My grandparents have said that the entire weekend was great, from the moment they arrived on Friday. So that's where I'll start, with the pre-wedding wind up.

I started a brand new job the Monday before the wedding. Crazy? Yes. A teensy bit maochistic? Probably. Worth it? YES. I looooove my new job. I've only been here about 3 weeks but it's been a great change. Anyway I was able to get Friday and Monday around the wedding as unpaid vacation, which was wonderful for getting everything taken care of.

Thursday night I stayed at my parent's house, and my mom, sister, and I got mani/pedis. Then Friday morning I came back to Ann Arbor for final preparations. I cleaned the house and finished wrapping the wedding party gifts. Then around 2 people started to arrive! My family showed up with my grandparents, who had never seen the house, as did several of my bridesmaids, so several tours were in order. Everyone was so excited! It was totally infectious. After tours, and gift-giving and lots of hugs we all headed off to the hotel.

We stayed at the Bell Tower Hotel in Ann Arbor. It was so nice! The elevator was the slowest thing on the planet though, so we took a lot of stairs. It kind of looks like the shining in that there are a ton of long narrow hallways. My parents got a suite on the 3rd floor, so that was kind of the 'base of operations'. We had my dress, veil, the tuxes, hats, everything in there. It was a little tight.

Then before we knew it it was time for the rehearsal! We took 2 cars over (we could have walked, but we had to drive to the dinner after anyway). My parents, sister, and grandparents in one and my brother, me and grandparents part 2 in another. It took the valet so long to bring the car around I was starting to get worried. Then of course it took us 15 minutes to go 3 blocks and find parking! I was wringing my hands and panicking in the back seat, picturing the minister refusing to marry us tomorrow because I made the rehearsal late!

Of course that didn't happen. The rehearsal was orchestrated by the minister and the church's wedding coordinator 'Betty'. Betty was like a drill sergeant! The rehearsal actually made me more nervous, there were so many times to step or not step or turn around, or hand my bouquet off, etc etc etc. Oh well, just hope for the best!

After the rehearsal was over we all piled into cars and headed to the dinner at the Gandy Dancer! The Gandy Dancer is a very nice restaurant in Ann Arbor, it used to be the train station. It's all stonework, and the food is amazing. We had our own room, and it was so elegant (picture below). One family was about an hour late, so we ate later then expected, but it was cool. Everybody got along (and as I anticipated there was some major flirting between a few of the singles in the wedding party...) and it was so nice to have a relaxed evening with everyone before the crazy next day!

A million little fixes

So this weekend a LOT happened on the house! Unfortunately though we can't take credit for doing it... Brian's parents have a totally awesome contractor, and he came out and brought a whole bunch of things up to code!

I don't have pictures of these things, but they aren't really the 'take exciting pictures' type of fixes anyway...

1. All of the sockets at counter-height in the kitchen and both bathrooms are now GFI's! They were regular old plugs before, and not exactly up to code. No bathroom electrocution for us!

2. Installed an exhaust fan in the bathroom! Remember when this happened in our bathroom? Well that was all because we didn't have an exhaust fan!!! So now we do, and it's small and quiet and wonderful.

3. Our front porch light now works. It had never worked right, but it stopped working completely a couple weeks ago. The light switch NEVER worked... well it turns out the last owner completely disconnected the switch. The light was directly hardwired in 'hot'. And it was attached to a crappy timer/motion sensor which had finally quit. So we took the ugly sensor down, and now the switch works! Just as it should!

4. When we bought our house, there was a loose piece of siding up on the second story on the side of the house. The seller fixed it as we requested (after we moved in and had to complain because a raccoon had been up there tearing foam out). Well apparently it wasn't fixed right, and was still close to coming off again. So they fixed that the right way.

5. Checked out our garage electrical (ugly but fine), and our fireplace. We can't use the fireplace yet because the last owner ran the gas line in the wrong spot... coming in the chimney and DOWN THROUGH THE FLU! So the flame gets a little close to the line for comfort, so that needs to be re-run before we use it. Otherwise though our chimney is good, so that's a relief!

We are so so so grateful. It really is a big weight lifted to have those things fixed. We could have possibly done them ourselves, but nowhere near as fast, and they had expertise on what to look for and stuff to fix things. It totally made up for getting up at 6:45am on a Saturday!

Witness Our Spooktacular Return to Blogging!

Whew! Well guess who's baaaack? No, not the McRib Sandwich. It's us!

Our wedding was absolutely the most perfect event we could ever have asked for. So perfect in fact, that I can't decide if I would want to relive it. I think if I were to do that, there's no way it could be that wonderful twice... even though I'd love to have that day again and again and again and.....

I'm collecting pictures from everyone, and I'll do a recap for ya'll next up don't worry.

It's been about a week and a half, (the wedding was on the 23rd of October) and we didn't go on a honeymoon or anything, so what took so long to get back to the blog? Well ya know, LIFE. I've been getting settled in at a new (and totally awesome) job. And we had HALLOWEEN to prepare for!

Halloween is a super big holiday for Brian and I. For several years now we've hosted an annual party. This year was very low key. And the entire week between the wedding and Halloween was spent cleaning up wedding and putting out Halloween! We cheated a little and just shoved some of the wedding mess... what does one do with a bunch of wooden table numbers?

We decorated the crap out of our house, unfortunately there are only a few pictures, and even fewer good ones. I feel like that's what happens when you have to rush things. We made quite a spread though, we only had 8 this year but we had cupcakes, cider, pigs in a blanket (mummy weenies), cookies, chips/salsa, candy, etc etc. And we all ate way too much and imbibed a little too.

Here are a couple of pictures of the food:

 

And our banisters got 'webbed'

And there's a bunch more, but none of the other pictures I took really turned out. Oh well, maybe next year.

Now what's Halloween without some costumes? We had some good ones from guests this year, and Brian and I recycled last year's. Both because of lack of time, and because I really enjoy working with liquid latex...

Yup. Those are some zombie newlyweds. I don't think my faces were quite as believable as last year however. Ah well! Happy Halloween!

Hey...Guess what?

We're married, and we're exhausted.

That is all.

OMGWTFBBQ

We interrupt your blog-post-hiatus to bring you the following:

1. I have a new job

2. I got into grad school

3. We are getting married in 3 DAYS!!!!!

Deep breaths.... I'll elaborate soon hopefully.

Wedding Prep Weekend Extravaganza!

So this weekend was crammed full of wedding prep! On Friday night my maid of honor came out and took me for mani-pedis! It was super super nice, even if we did almost get 'shanked' on our way out! It wasn't in the nicest part of town...

The next morning I had my second dress fitting, it went really well. The bustle is awesome and she's taking it in just a smidge more, so I'll have 1 more fitting before I'm all done.

After lunch my mom and I went to the salon for hair and makeup tests. They totally NAILED the look I was going for, I was thrilled. My mom still isn't satisfied with hers, so we're still figuring that out. Before we left they took my hair down and styled it down so that it would look fab and not ruin the surprise for my bachelorette party!

We had an absolute ball. We had a limo and went to dinner, a chocolate party, wine tasting and VIP'd at a club! I will never forget how awesome that was, I seriously have some of the best friends on the planet! The next day we went to breakfast, and then I went home to celebrate some family birthdays with surf 'n turf!

What a weekend, now it's back to regular life!

We interrupt your regular blog schedule...

I just wanted to take a moment to apologise for our rather sporadic updates the last couple weeks. We are now 1 month out from our wedding! Eeeek! Needless to say that means we've had a million demands on our time, so posting has become a little tricky to keep up with.

Rest assured single reader,  I have a new post in the works and I'm sure we'll be back to a more predictable schedule once the madness ends.

By the way, I'm always on the fence about this, would anyone actually be interested in reading posts about our wedding plans? I tend to keep them away from here because I know some people get sick of hearing about weddings, etc. Let me know in the comments!

Landscaping MAGIC

Ok, so maybe it's not magic, but it's still pretty awesome if I do say so myself.

We've finally made progress on the front yard! I decided the weather was perfect for planting, so I went to Home Depot (sigh~* I do enjoy that store...) and made a tree-style decision! I got us a little 5 food Cleveland Pear. She's purty, and supposedly will grow fast! My first trip to HD last weekend resulted in this:

That's 50 bucks worth of fun right there.
1 Tree
2 Potted Mums (the ones I got from Meijer just never took right, I don't think they were good quality)
1 jug of Preen ~ for the winning of the weed war
4 New house numbers!

50 bucks of home improvement stuff can go a long way! After I got home Brian and I stood in front of the house for a good hour hemming and hawing over where to put the tree and what else we should do right now, because even after we planted the tree and put out the new mums it was still going to look fairly hideous. So the decision was made to mulch.

In fall??? Yes, in the fall. We'll spread more in the spring, but will be worth it so that I don't have to cringe when I look at our raggedy dirt clod farm. Also it's on sale right now, since it's fall. So back to HD we went...

Of course though, mulch was not all that caught our eye. Oh no. They had my hearts desire hidden amongst the junipers and shrubberies... a dwarf burning bush! I have always known I wanted these, I love burning bushes like mad, but the regular kind get so huge! But I didn't think a big-box store like home depot would carry that variety for some reason. Needless to say we bought it. Then we had to get it home....

Yeah, that's the ticket! Don't worry, we were gentle. I think it was still a little peeved though, because it did try to eat Brian on the drive home...

He survived, and the trauma is nothing a few decades of therapy won't fix.

So after we got the mulch and my new bush friend home, we stood in the yard and moved stuff around for another hour, then got to work. We knew we had to put the tree at least 10 feet from the house, and surprisingly, the dead spot in the middle of the yard was exactly that! It used to have a tree in it, which was a stump when we moved in. Then we had the tree people grind it away, so it was just an empty dirt pile.

We got them planted and I spent that evening and some of the next day spreading mulch. We also planted the new mums, got the fall wreath out, and Brian went up to the eave to figure out why one of our shutters is pushing away from the wall. It's bees. It's always bees for me. He hit them with some 'anti bee' stuff and soon he'll knock the nest down so we can realign the shutter.


First, a reminder of what it looked like when we moved in:

Then all summer it looked like this:

So embarrassing... And without further ado:

Ta da! The tree is right on the edge there...

There it is, and that's the bush as well! I'm actually pretty amazed at how much better it all looks with a little mulch and a couple starting plants. Yeah, we know the yard itself isn't there yet, but one thing at a time people! Also, here's a closer view of the festive front door:

I will be adding to the festive-nature of the front door, but Brian won't let me yet, he thinks it's still too early.

One last thing, I am liking the view out our lower level window now!

That hosta better watch its step, it's the only one that survived from the previous owners. The others didn't know their place...

I love thrift stores.

Last weekend before the football game (yay football! Oh how I've missed you.) I went to this awesome place in Ann Arbor called Treasure Mart. It's part thrift store, part antique shop. They have a ton of stuff and the level of quality tends to be much higher then your average thrift store, they're hours are pretty short though so it can be hard to get a trip in.

I went to poke around, there are a few things I'm looking for like nightstands, chairs for the lower level, etc. but also it's a really fun place to browse. Actually I found my favorite geisha doll there doing just that. This time I struck gold! Literally!

As you probably guessed from the last post that included that lovely renaissance faire photo I am hugely into historic fashion. ( man I am so many different types of geek I shock myself sometimes...) One thing within that that I think is cool are fashion prints. Old ones. I found this pair of prints in vintage frames on top of a pile of crap:

The prints feature one woman from about 1580 (left) and the other is from about 1865, these are estimates of course, but I'm judging by what they are wearing. They are matted with velvet ribbon, and in the gaudiest frames I've ever seen... they're perfect! I'm not sure when they were printed, but I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm going to hang them in my studio by my sewing machine. With the orange walls and ultra modern equipment I think they will contrast nicely! I am not ruling out painting the frames, but for now I like them as-is.

This also reminds me, I have a fashion catalog from the 1940's. I think it's Macy's but I'll have to check. I've got to figure out something cool to do with that as well.

Happy Autumn Everyone!

So Labor Day has come and gone, and you know what that means? I can put up the fall stuff and nobody can give me a hard time about it! Such a wonderful time of year... I've already put up our fall wreath on the front door!

We did use every moment of the long weekend, let me break it down for you (because I know you're soooo excited about it)

Friday: Took an hour long walk around the neighborhood, then came back and made Noodle Meat Stuff (yuuuummm) and watched a movie.

Saturday: Brian had to work, so our friend Sanjeev and I went downtown and watched the opening football weekend craziness! I also went to the antique and thrift store downtown and found a few treasures that I will detail in a subsequent post. Then we came back home to watch the Wolverines thrash UConn. Fun was had by all.

Sunday: My family joined us at Brian's family's lake house! It was great to get everybody together, and we got to play around on the water, even though it was cold.

Monday: I geeked it up at the Michigan Renaissance Festival! I wore this dress:

It's my favorite :) And yup I made it cause I'm a huge dork. It rained and got very muddy, so hopefully I can fix that...

And last night my family got together for Brian's 25th birthday! He didn't know the entire horde would be there, so it was a very fun surprise.

So now hopefully life will return to normal (and I can get back on the healthy-eating bandwagon, yikes!) and I can keep moving on the piles of projects we have lying around!

An Epic Tale of Love

Wow. While I'm still reeling about the fact that Brian actually made a post I figured I'd tell a story.

It's a story about love, marriage, and building a collection of phony-baloney proposals.

Brian and I have been engaged for almost two years now. Our wedding is less then two months away and we're super excited about it! So of course proposals and wedding stuff has been on the brain a lot lately, and that includes our Cedar Point extravaganza last weekend.

We were trying to think of things to do for the ride cameras on the coasters, and somebody said we should stage a proposal on the Magnum (the original big-drop!) and of course, then it had to be done. And it turned out so well that we bought the picture:

And don't worry, that's not really my ring in his hand.

I'm not sure how these things evolve, but we are now on a mission to stage whatever random proposal stories we can come up with so we can totally mess with our future kids later just for fun. Some will real photos, and some may have a little help from photoshop.

Yes, I know. We're weird. Don't act so surprised!

Also, Cedar Point remains one of the coolest places ever.

Oh my God! He does exist!

Hi!

I'm the aforementioned fiance. I don't really have anything near as epic as tension rods to talk about, as I'm usually the one doing the behind-the-scenes maintenance work and/or grunt work (Lawn mowing, garage cleaning and the like). More than anything I'd guess I'm going to be doing a lot of color commentary on the topics at hand. For right now, I'll just say thanks for reading.


On a side note, if you had a hand in the "surprise" birthday trip to Cedar Point. I thank you, and my feet are mildly displeased with you.

Privacy Problems

Ok, the weather in Ann Arbor has been pristine! Low sixties in the mornings/evenings, about eighty during the day... knock ten degrees off both ends and we're in my favorite time of year! So let's shut out all that beauty with curtains shall we?

On our lower level we have a big window, it matches the window upstairs in width but because the lower level is halfway underground it's shorter. This presents an interesting decor problem: what do we do for curtains?

We definitely want curtains down here, it's street level, and it's essentially our office, so ya know, privacy is a good thing. I couldn't figure out what to hang for curtains until Brian's mom perfectly solved that problem for us! She gave us these cute white valances with white leaves on them. They'll work well in this green room, which for how much time I spend in it, is sadly neglected in the decor department.

So what's the problem? We have curtains, why aren't they up? Well, this window is 92 inches wide. And it's less then 1.5 inches from the ceiling. This presents a bit of a problem in the curtain rod department. I don't want to hang a curtain rod right at the top edge, it looks awkward, and I don't want to put it below the opening because that's EXTRA awkward. I have decided that a tension rod would definitely be the prettiest and cleanest solution for the space. But where do I find a tension rod that long? The search is on, and hopefully, we'll have curtains up in the lower level very soon. And pictures once I find my camera cord...

Also, it's time to call a chimney sweep! We want to make sure our fireplace is in proper working order so we can use it this fall/winter.

That yard post I keep talking about

I know I know, I'm a terrible blogger. It's been a whole week since my last post! But I went on my trip and then there's been some life-crap going on, which I won't bore you with here. But at long last here is the yard post I know you've been eagerly awaiting...

Last week I decided enough was enough. I had to make a tactical strike on our yard. Lucky for me, my friend Sanjeev had nothing better to do, so he came and helped! First we started just yanking weeds on the front and side of the house. The weeds have been nothing less then vicious this year thanks to all that rain. So they were monstrous. Of course I forgot to take a 'before' picture, so you'll just have to believe me that it looked even worse then this:

Yes those red dots are the evil eyes I'm sure were in there when we started. We also had to pull out 3 massive rosebushes. While they still bloomed nicely, they had been neglected for so long that they were breaking! They had years of random growth and they couldn't hold themselves up anymore. We also pulled tons of grass and other weeds that were crammed into the tiny space. Then it looked like this:

Wow, it can breathe! Although, I think I'm going to move a couple of the shrubs on the left. You can't see them all, but there are 4 crammed in there! There's one of whatever-these-are along the side fence in the back all alone by itself, so I'll probably put them there.

In the back corner there you can see the electric meter, and it's case is missing. That's because Sanjeev knocked it off, and we left it there. We left it there because it was full of HORNETS! Huge ones! After they had dissipated I snuck back over and got a picture of the empty nest:

I was surprised it was so small since the bugs that came out were so large! They must have just moved in recently. I am still majorly creeped out.

After that we moved on to the back yard. Again, lots of weed pulling and shrub trimming, but no massive bush evictions... yet. We need a chainsaw.

Also we got a new (to us) fun toy in the back from my parents:

hmm, maybe you can't see it from there, try this:

Yeeeeaaahh. That's the ticket. We have a hammock now! The trees already had hooks in them from the previous owner, and I love hammocks so it was a done deal. I haven't gotten to use it yet, but I'm going to use the crap out of it as soon as I have a spare 5 minutes!

On a less related outdoor note, any history buffs out there might get a kick out of our air conditioner:

We think it's from between 1973 (when the house was built) and the revolutionary war, but we can't get more specific then that. Truly it works well, we're just not sure for how long! Eventually when it does die and we replace the unit I want to move it out of the center of the backyard.

And finally, I'd like to have a moment of silence for our lovely hose. Brian ran over it with the mower (I still can't figure out how, it wasn't out in the yard!). It was a good hose, and will be missed...                    Thank you.

And again thank you to Sanjeev for all your help! You rock!