Come PIN with me.

Have you heard of Pinterest?  It's wonderful, amazing, terrific, exciting and yet another great way to spend time on the internet.  Did you notice how I didn't say WASTE time on the internet? Pinterest is an online catalog that will allow you to organize and keep all your inspirational pictures for the home, ideas, recipes, fashion or DIY's in one nice place....not cluttered all around your desk, or table, or floor.  Gone are the days of ripping pages out of magazines! For the last year I have had a hard time remembering what blog or site I wanted to remember certain things from-but not anymore.

I would highly recommend that you get a Pinterest account.  It is free and I can send you and invite ASAP so that we can start pinning together.  HOORAY. Or you could also request an account from pinterest.com-just note that it will take around 7 days for them to email you with an activated account. SO just leave me a comment and make sure I have your email address.

I found a great pinterest tutorial from Beth over at Home Stories A2Z.  The tutorial takes less than 5 minutes and it will help you navigate around the site- instead of muddle through everything like I have for the last month. Click Here

Come on what are you waiting for.?. Christmas has come early :)

We already needed a break.

Just as the title implies, Bart and I already needed a break from the house, so we went down to southern Utah for 3 days.  My best-est cousin Liz invited us to their cabin with some friend from their neighborhood. Now don't get me wrong I love all my cousins and have a great time at family functions but Liz and I are only 3 months apart.  Growing up, I thought that going down to her house in St. George and swimming and playing dress-ups was the greatest vacation in the world! Liz and I have shared many memories together including our semester in Nauvoo in 2003. FYI- Liz has actually know Bartus for almost as long as I have-12 years.

Back to the cabin.  

We had a wonderful time riding 4 wheelers, paint-balling, picnicking in the meadow, shooting guns, playing games and sleeping in.

 

Once Bart taught me how to actually AIM the gun I was a pretty good shot. I was even privileged enough to shoot Bart's Sig Sauer-all 6 bullets hit the target (mine are the bottom 6)-I took the picture for proof :)

 

We ate way too much food and had a run in with 20 horses grazing on the property. The horses must have seen us out on our picnic and decided that humans = food, so they trotted over...but they really scared some of the kiddos.

I am so glad that Liz planned such a fun weekend (even though she was diagnosed with pneumonia 3 days earlier) and that we were able to enjoy lovely weather, great company and beautiful Grass Valley.

Get out of jail

When we bought the house the front entryway looked like this.

It reminds me of jail bars. I have now referred to the entry way as a jail and the basement a dungeon-HMMM. Over the long Memorial Day weekend, one of our many projects was to remove the jail bars and the planter that held it up.  Really, the bottom was a built in planter box for plants-fake plants I assume.

I think the entryway already feels better and looks bigger.  We have begun working on other projects- like creating a sound barrier in the ceiling and sanding the floors.  More posts to come. Thank you for your comments and taking time to do the stain poll :) I'm glad that no one likes jacobean.

Help me choose

I added a poll because I would like your opinion on which color you like best for the hardwood floors upstairs.  You have three options-any help would be greatly appreciated.

Left is Jacobean, middle Special Walnut and right is Dark Walnut.

Jacobean: dark with a black tone



Special Walnut: the lightest



 Dark Walnut; darker with a warm chocolate tone

Out with the old

The first area of the house Bart and I are focusing on is the basement. Why the basement you ask? Because there is an apartment that we want to make into a LEGAL basement apartment that we can rent. Now that we have the permit, Bart has jumped in with both feet and is ready to go. We don't want the basement to feel like a neglacted old dungeon- which is exactly what it feels and smells like currently.

 Can you believe the taped windows? and yes we knowingly bought it this way...

The basement has 3 bedrooms or 2 bedrooms and an office.

The first thing we are doing is adding some natural light by cutting out the small windows and replacing them with much much larger windows. Natural light is wonderful!  We hired Omar from ksl.com to cut out the windows because he was the least expensive and would do it on a Saturday, but before we could have the windows cut Bart had to DIG DIG DIG.

 Bart also had this delivered because he needed to fill the window wells with something...

he only had 11 tons of gravel delivered. Geeze, I'm not sure if we will have enough :)



After cutting out the windows, Bart has demolished the old bedrooms.  We plan to redo the ceiling (to make it soundproof), frame the bedrooms (currently it's just foundation wall), add insulation, change the duct work, run new electrical wires and boxes, drywall and of course new pain and carpet.  I finally will come in on the paint and carpet part.

LET THERE BE LIGHT!!!

This is the house that Bart will rebuild

Do any of you remember the children's book/nursery rhyme, This is the House that Jack Built? Well I have decided that the theme for our new house will be "this is the house that Bart rebuilt".  I think it's kind of catchy :)

This picture is of the house before Bart (BB). We think the house has "good bones" and a lot of potential.  We love that it is a brick rambler with a 2 car garage on the main floor.   Hopefully you will enjoy our house projects with us these next years.

By the way, the house is in Provo, we decided to stay here so Bart won't have to commute again. We would love for you to come visit and help us plan our renovations but we don't have any seating yet.

Guess What...

We BOUGHT a house!  That is why I haven't be able to blog...we don't have the internet set up, or television and for a couple days we didn't have water or heat. I will post pictures as soon as I can.



I am now in my last semester of school. I am doing my rotations in a variety of places like a family practice office, women's health, gastroenterology, dermatology and pediatrics.  I am very busy so it's a good thing Bart has hundreds of new house projects.

Roller Coaster

This last week has been one of ups and downs and then some more ups and ....more downs.  I will be glad when these next couple days are over.

I need a book to read

I am once again asking for suggestions on good books to read.  I know that I could go to the library or look on goodreads.com but you gave great suggestions the last time!!!

Rent this movie!

I would recommend that you go to your local Redbox or use Netflix and get Temple Grandin.  It is a fabulous movie about an autistic girl who grew up in the 1960's.  Claire Danes stars as Temple and Julia Ormond as her mother. I enjoyed this movie because it helped me understand a little better how people with autism think and function. It was worth watching.

If any of you have already watched this movie, what did you think?