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!