The Door and some other things...

Well its here! Our front door has finally arrived! Like everything else that I put my name on to order it has come in early and wrong (My wedding dress was ordered incorrectly but came in early just weeks before my big day such a screw up my alterations were free) As I lay stuffed up still sleeping in bed I get a call from The Hubs letting me know that its here! Its 4 days early and he is 10 min away! A quick splash of cold water on my face and some fresh clothes and The Hubs rushes into the house to pick me up. I kid you not he was flooring it off of every red light that we hit to make it to the house in time. He had called all of our good friends to take a few hours away from work to come help us carry this beast off the truck.

But first we had to guide this large semi truck down our over grown dirt road....

Clearly this is one of the times where you have to fit a square box into a round hole. 

First attempt was a no go so he left and circled back around 

This is as far as he got in before our security features (over grown bushes) began to make loud screaching noises. 

He made it past our little trees... after of course doing a little pruning along the way. 

Not sure where to go from here Todd takes over guiding the truck driver.

You see this one branch? He hung on forever but he was not alone a ton of other sticks, leaves, and branches fell off when he left. This probably wont be the last time that we have a Semi trimming our trees, remember we still have to move in and bring in new furniture! haha 

Here she is! Yep thats my name on that top box! She doesnt look like much but each box was an estimated 400 lbs. 

So our troops began unloading.

Even the truck driver helped (He was great! He didnt have to do this at all but he did and he was smiling the whole time) 

All three parts are unloaded now its time to take a look at the door before he drives off into the sunset! 

Box #1 was opened up and revealed... a giant (too big to be our door) glass door. Mind you this first box was also the box that had my name written on it. Of course I was prepared for something like this to happen (my phone was not, yet again I can only talk on speaker phone) and quickly called up our door manufacturer. While on the phone with him he told me: First, that it was not their mix up (its the shipping company's fault). Second, it was my second set of doors (we only ordered ONE set of doors). Third, they had no idea where my door frame was (maybe its somewhere in Florida) Understandably I am clearly sent into a angry tailspin for the lack of clear responses this gentleman in customer service is giving me. I told him he has 1 hour to locate my door frame and get back to me. I am super upset because we had taken time out of our day (before we were scheduled to) to unload this beast, not to mention all of our friends who stopped what they were doing as well to help us out. Temps were hitting in the 100s I kid you not and work was at a stand still on the house while Todd helped us out. 

 These packages were nailed, strapped, and wrapped shut. Power tools were needed to open each and every one and we did end up having blood shed (Todd had a slight cut on his leg but wiped it off like a real man and moved on*) Box #2 & 3 turned out to be right and our doors but that meant we were missing our door frame. The most important part! From what we could see they looked good. We didnt take them out completely because without a door fame we cannot install them at all. We had to refuse the package with my name on it and load it back on to the truck... 

This time the guys went into full man mode and hoisted it up with no lift gate at all. I was super impressed. 

My delivery slip signed with a refusal and noted a missing package the driver was on his way. We too had to leave (me back to my sick bed and The Hubs back to work). On our way back we got a call from the door company again letting us know that they have contacted the delivery service and they will get back to me within a few hours. By 6 I knew that I was not going to get a call back from anyone  and I stopped worrying about it for the day. 

Skip ahead to noon Tuesday and still no call back from the door company. Like I had been thinking no one was answering the phones now in customer service. I left a message and waited... and waited. Still nothing after an hour I tried a new extension and was spoken down to by a very rude man in sales named Lee, after asking him to transfer me to someone higher up he transfered me back to the same jerk in customer service who had not returned any of my calls, who sent me straight to voicemail. When I called back to reach Lee to explain to him how to use his phone they decided to not answer the phone at all. Yep. I am floored, I am pissed, and I am ready to gas up my car and head to Georgia to give this company a tongue lashing like never before! Time to play good cop bad cop or like my husband says "Fire & Ice" we have had a few people work with us in the company and mostly though email so we pulled another name from the hat and he gave her a call. She was supposed to send us in email outlining some of the things that we have already discussed but hours after the phone conversation there was still no email. This email was also to include how we have an extension on our time to see if there are any defects in the door.

The story above was written on June 17th and 18th and today I have finally gotten back to (after days of being angry) finish it. Today is July 1st and we finally have a door installed! I am jumping ahead a little bit so lets go back... last thing we were dealing with was the missing door frame. Well... by the middle of the week they FINALLY found it... it was... wait for it.... STILL SITTING IN THE WAREHOUSE! So then they decided to re-deliver it (we are getting near the end of the week so if anything goes wrong at this point we might just be SOL. So the new delivery day comes and I still havent heard from anyone and its 3 in the afternoon... so I give them a call, I tell them that I am NOT getting off the phone until I know it will be delivered today... well she comes back on the line to let me know that.... ITS NOT EVEN ON THE TRUCK! She says "yea... I'm looking at it right now, the driver picked up the wrong package" 

ARE YOU JOKING?! AM I BEING PUNKED?! YOU SO SILLY. 

Not a joke, and its friday and they wont be delivering it over the weekend.

Monday comes along and we were scheduled to have our frame delivered first thing in the morning.... 

Welp. It did. This time the driver decided to be a real D*ck and wouldnt pull completely down the road, so now the frame had to carted down the road... remember each one of these is about 400 lbs. this man is here EARLY, and it has been raining for 2 days now so our dirt road was more like a giant road of sinking quicksand. Lets just add the sprinkles to the top and mention that this driver has a bad back and cant help my husband lug this thing all the way down! I cant. I just cant. So bless his heart... He got it done, a guy who was working next door saw this and DID end up helping at the end.

Yes. Before this door even becomes an exciting thing in my daily life, it continues to just get worse. The frame is inches shorter on each side, making the radius off and there are no holes to drill the bolts into the wall that this is supposed to line up with! At this point we have gotten ahold of an Engineer in Tampa who now must write up how to drill the holes in this door so we can be in compliance! Aye dios mio!

Thankfully I can now skip ahead to say that....

She is installed! 

Sorry there is nothing wrong with your screen, this is all that I am giving you! Hahaha after all this build up this is it... Dont worry my darlings you will get to see it when its complete! I do have other things that I can share with you!

We are on day 943 of rain, at this point I think my plants are just going to drown in my garden box. 

This Grand Canyon is currently being used as our temporary water feature, till we getting something cool... like a real fountain! Ha! I actually love this little run-off stream for the strangest reason with the birds always chirping and the trees swaying I start to sing Pocahontas songs! :) I might still be a little girl at heart. With all this rain comes weeds and grass... 

Lots....

And lots....

And lots of weeds & grass. 

You cant even see me its so tall! Ha just kidding I was crouching a little bit... but not much :) 

But we started to take care of it here is a before & after:

We headed out here one day after work and put in some good sweat equity! We also were out there this past sunday but this time we decided to just spray it first and let it dye. Weirdly enough the guy who is going to be doing our sod said he would stop by to kill them :) 

I have also picked out some new lights for the master bath since we had to toss out my idea of having a light fixture over the bathtub... Silly me I just dont know building codes! I did get the 'Okay' to still have a chandelier in the bathroom! yay! Its going to be so sparkly now! Hahah :) I'll save it for another posting though! We start insulation tomorrow so its another BIG day! 

*I want to just note that building a home is super stressful and I honestly wouldnt be able to do it without the men we have had working on it with us. I am truly thankful that Todd treats us like his own kids (both his sons have helped us with this house as well) we may have panic moments but he is always ready to calm us and explain what is going on when we have no clue what-so-ever. My husband always talked to Jake (Todd's son) about one day having his dad build his home and we are beyond blessed to make this a reality. Its really exciting to know that once this house is complete we will be able to celebrate with him and everyone else who has helped with this project. 

Finally.

Do you see this!!!??!!?! 

This my friends, is a whole Kitchen and Bathroom cabinet order! 

C-A-B-I-N-E-T-S 

We finalized the whole she-bang! My oh my this was such a process. I learned that I love to decorate, not design. I hope that next time we decide to "build" something ourselves we will hire someone else to make the big decisions. Ha! This is seriously the itemized recipt for this order, but I think the actual designs and demensions is a good 50 pages. So many things go into designing the cabinets. You have some restrictions (because things like a custom range hood can cost you and easy 4k) and of course where the walls are. 

Prepare for tomorrow

Oh goodness! I am absolutely exhausted after today but I feel good about it because The Hubs and I got a lot done. We didnt do it the traditional way a normal working couple would do it... we did it while stuck at Burger King. Classy.

After an early morning vet visit for our Sooks to get her allergy shot we were in go mode. Not at the office for more than an hour and we had straightened up paperwork, made some phone calls, and then headed off to get new tires on my beast of an SUV. Being in the car business I know that changing tires does not take an hour... but it did. While stuck next door we got one of Florida's famous mid-day monsoon that after 50 min was no where near to stopping, we made good on our time and got back to work. Reading over 2 days of email we learned that our front door is ready! I'm sure you just missed that so let me say it again: OUR FRONT DOOR IS READY! Yes. Ladies and gents, голем дома* now has a door that fits its name!

This beast!

 I think I pee'd a little after reading that email. So we gave them a call to find out about delivery and what-not and made our closing payment on this hunk of metal! 

We were also able to get actual work done, and get a call in to my attorneys to find out about some legal matters. Boom! I'm sure that I am leaving some of the more boring things out, like the man who I could see behind my husband who took 6 little bites of his burger and then as he chewed let it fall out of his mouth, or when he picked his nose, but I wont go on its just too gross. 

 Typical woman I sent my husband to fetch the car while giggling from the window (I'm glad he wore flip flops today because last time he wore shoes and it was raining he thought it would be a good idea to soap up cars...needless to say I had to toss the shoes out they stunk so bad) After watching The Hubs wade through knee deep water I decided to pick a different spot to cross Lake Burger King. Fail. As I glance up running to the car I see him laughing and waving at me and then I reach the deepest point, a great flash of lighting sends me knee deep into water that I cannot see the bottom and I am practically swimming to the car. I hop in and he is just laughing trying to tell me that he was going to drive around to get me and thats why he was "waving". Turns out he was wagging a finger at me (the kind that tells you no) but because he was going so fast with it it looked like he was just rubbing it in that I too had to swim to the car and he was just waving like a jerk in the dry car.

In other news...

My kitchen is framed up! 

Its seriously time to buckle down with the cabinet plans now! Oh how scary! Our kitchen island originally measured 11 feet 8 inches. We decided to bring it down to 10 feet even and frame it up completely. We also are working to shorten the amount of cabinets we have on that back wall. Thankfully we got a call from one of the cabinet places we originally ruled out and she said that she had been working and working to get it in our budget. Well she did but she missed on some major points, to give her credit she hit on a few as well. We also scheduled a meeting with Lowes to finalize our plans with them and get one set in stone number by the end of the week so we can order them up and call that a wrap! Have I mentioned how much I hate cabinets?

I was able to enjoy this sunday by having a couple of our close friends over at this new house after we had a relaxing brunch. It was fun to talk about all the meals we will be making and enjoying in a few months here!

Today we stopped by the house and with all the rooms, closets, walls, and anything else that is getting drywall they also framed out our tub.

Oh my glorious tub how I cant wait to waste hour upon hour in your beauty.

Sorry, but not sorry I am ecstatic about this tub! Okay you probably get it now everything about this house makes my heart flutter.

*голем дома or golem doma (thank you google translate) means Large Home. The Hubs family are originally from Macedonia and its a great honor to have the support of his whole family even from many many miles away! 

TS Andrea

I cant think of a better time to make a blog entry, while we sit here in the middle of our first named storm of the 2013 Hurricane season! Welcome to our lovely state Andrea! I'll give everyone a quick weather update:

We are on day 3 of rain, rain, and well more rain. The real storm rains started last night around 6 and havent stopped since. My littlest of the 3 dogs as much as he loves drinking water he refuses to go outside in the rain. We have been in a tornado warning for the past 40 min. No big deal all part of living in paradise! My garden box is holding up great so far just saved my corn crop from drowning this morning but thats my fault for not making sure it was able to drain.

A lot has happened since I last updated. I'm finally over my sick, we have a roof, we have interior walls, trimmed up our trees, and we have windows! I had to wait a bit to update since our windows came in a little early and we werent quite ready to install them so they were sitting in the bathroom. 

Here they are! Sitting pretty waiting for install day!

I'll get into the windows here in a second but lets first talk about walls!

Welcome to my closet! After almost my whole life of sharing a closet I thought that I would reward myself with this little gift. Years and years of near death fights with my two sisters over who is wearing each others clothing or what went missing and who was the last one to see it and even some times where you would find a picture on Myspace with one of them wearing something that you never gave them permission to have in the first place, I now have a place for my clothes to relax :) Mind you the closet raid still happens every now and again but now its more civil and less like a battle to the death.  

From where I am standing to where my small camera case is on the floor is the length of it. Not quite a Beverly Hills closet but still something any woman would be excited to have! Bless my husbands heart his closet isnt as big but its still bigger than what we are sharing now in the rental. 

Moving on to my next favorite place in the house....

My pantry. 

This was just put in 2 days ago so I swear I didnt change my clothes! (yes thats another orb) This is a true preppers pantry. No I dont extreme coupon and I'm not really a prepper but I do like to have everything I would ever need to whip of a batch of cupcakes at the drop of a hat! Cooking is serious business for me. This also can turn into an office if we decide our home office needs to be an extra bedroom. You are looking in from where the double ovens will be. The door is on the side so you can enter easily from the garage. My little noodle arms need the shortest distance for grocery carrying. This is where I will hopefully write a cookbook or two. I have a few in the works now but one is just for my sister and it will contain most but not all of my kitchen secrets. 

Got The Hubs to pose for a picture of our office! That great big window in there is going to be wonderful while I paint or just glue sparkly things on to non sparkly things. We have the option to add a closet to it right now and call the house a 4 bedroom but its not on the top of our list right now. The 2 guest bedrooms are enough, I know all my family up north will be down here soon enough I need one room to hide out in :) I kid I kid I cant wait to have you all come stay with us! 

This is the Kitchen/ Dining/ Living room space I didnt take a new photo from this area yet but the first bathroom and guest bedroom have been framed up along with the laundry room. We made a change for a pocket door in the laundry room which cost us a little bit but I think its going to be much better than closing myself off in that room. I have big plans for the paint colors in that room, it will be one of our darkest colored rooms in the whole house. 

This beautiful archway is looking into our bedroom from the hallway. You can see both doorways for the closets. We had back to back closets in the last house and it was crappy when I would spend some OCD time re-arranging my closet and The Hubs would be trying to talk to me it was like I was in my own little world. Now that we share a closet for some reason we tend to match. Yuck that makes us "that couple" so hopefully that fixes that issue too. Maybe I should stop buying him bright colors to wear. :/ 

When our land was cleared up the first time they didnt clean up our back trees very well. We had some iffy branches that hung over the roof and on the side yard we had a few branches that were actually on the roof. We asked our friend who has done some work for us before to come out and clean them up. He gave us a really great deal on it and it opened up the back yard. We now have about 6 years till we need to trim them again. Our neighbors have a few trees that are iffy as well so we sent him over there to talk to them and they will end up cutting a few down. 

This is The Hubs in action telling me how I should frame up a photo. Haha 

Here she is with the windows in and the roof complete! We are going to have a few of them replaced. According to PGT sometimes their impact windows have some distortion in the glass... and while a little bit might be normal our bathroom and dining room windows have too much to fall into that category and they are sending over new ones. In some places its kinda like looking through a magnifying glass from a far distance. :( The windows themselves are made up of a double pane of glass with gas in between them, it helps to really block out any outside noise and helps when it comes time to get homeowners insurance! I wont lie to you... we had a bit of a panic when we saw the distortion in the windows that eventually made us call Todd to see what we could do about it. 

The front door should be in this month so fingers crossed that it has no issues! We also will have our stucco done by the first week of July which means we need to pick our paint color! eek! We have a few colors in mind but we have to see the stone that is going on the front of the house first and play off of that. 

We also got our first quote on flooring. We got it at regular price and not at contractors price and surprisingly we didnt go over budget on it! The wood tile that we are going to do slowly is showing up in more and more places so we have some time before we need to lock in what we actually want. 

Still going back and forth on the cabinets. We have heard back from yet another cabinet company and she didnt even make a design just flat out told us that she wasnt going to be able to get us within our budget. How sweet. She did call today, possibly because we got our quote for our flooring from them as well to let us know that she is actually making a design for us. I feel like a little salt was poured into my cabinet wound so we probably wont go with them unless it actually is do-able. I'm tired of wasting my time with cabinet people. Last week we dropped off our floor plans to another cabinet design center and she said she would have something for us by the end of the day.... its now thursday and we have not seen one email. We called her yesterday and she said she was working on it "sporadically". I could seriously get more done by banging my head against the wall than what these people are doing. Obviously making money for your company is not a top priority for you. 

<angry eye roll> 

I think we have made some positive advances to more of what we want for our light fixtures. 

This cool guy here is going to go over our dining table. 

3 of these over the kitchen island.

Garage hallway light. Better than the standard builders light that may or may not resemble a boob. 

This little baby is hopefully going over my bathtub. The Hubs has a fear of it dropping it into the bath and stabbing him. I am also working on him to replace his want for a fan in the bedroom for a chandelier. 

My dreams would be a little bit sweeter if I had this glorious fixture in the middle of our room. 

This magic carpet is my dream rug for the living room. Since we are going to have the dark grey couches I wanted something thats really going to liven things up a bit. I hope they still have the larger size when we go to order it. 

Found this decorator hack website. Seriously I think the whole time I looked on this site my mouth was hanging open! Sure I know how to hang a picture but this place tells you everything. I mean everything. If you dont believe me then check it out for yourself. As I was trying to show The Hubs I think I literally blew his mind. He then told me it was too much and I needed to stop showing him. It's like one stop shopping on how to correctly decorate a room. I died. 

Click here to blow your mind

Well gotta go the winds are picking back up and I want to head home! 

Our house in the middle of our street.

Hello All! 

I am currently couch or bed bound, I didn't get though a whole day at work without feeling like absolute garbage. I seriously think that spring time in Florida is the worst time to get sick ever. Thankfully my "boss" is The Hubs so he takes it easy on me... even gave me a ride home when the migraine hit. Bless his heart he came home and got my butt up and out of my sick bed to go see the house! 

 The guys left a ladder up the other day (notice I am smiling this was obviously not today) so we decided to take some cheesy photos. haha! The Hubs got higher up than me for a two reasons:

1. He is much braver than I am

B. As I started up the ladder he called out to me "I did the math in my head and you are 80% more likely to hurt yourself than I am climbing up the ladder!" 

Thanks babe! Your lack of confidence in my coordination is a breath of fresh air. jerk. :) He is probably right. Before I get on to a few more photos I just feel like rambling for a bit.

The faster this house seems to go up the more worried I get. Sure, it does seem a little silly to say that but I have always lived in a house that has pretty much been complete and I never had to make decisions this big before. The Hubs is great for listening to my ideas but on the other hand he doesnt come up with much because he knows that this is truly what I love to do. I got the home decor bug way back starting with Kirklands, then Pier 1, I eventually got out of retail but on my weekends I would head out with my parents and go "Junk" shopping. Our home was always filled with interesting things to catch your eye or start a conversation, I am more than excited for this part! What really worries me is wall placement, is the flow of the home right, flooring, counter tops, cabinets, bedrooms, closet sizes.... pretty much everything that makes a home a home before you can decorate! I usually go into things feeling very confident that I can power though it successfully, this time I dont feel very confident. My expectations of myself for this house are very high! I want a home that people want to come over and stay for a bit. I want my home to be a pure lazy sunday home where your only plans are to get out of bed before the sun sets. I want my home to one day wish it could tell stories of parties past and echo with laughter from celebrations. I think I might just be going though Hostess withdraws :(  Who knows, things are getting more and more serious each day... 

They started measuring out where the walls go today! This is the office area here looking at it from the front door. We had to make a decision on our fridge today as well. Since the fridge is going to be counter depth Todd needed the exact measurements for it. Oh lawd! Thats huge. Thats big. wow. So we are going with the LG fridge. When we got that call from Todd today to make that decision I think thats when I really felt my nerves stand on edge! EEEP! 

Dear Bailey, stop second guessing yourself! You are doing it right!

Love, 

Your not crazy half

This was Thursday! 5-16

This was today! 5-17

All of the peel and stick is up and applied to the roof! This has a texture of the stuff on a skateboard. It comes in these huge rolls and then just like a sticker the backing is pulled off and its put down on the roof. Todd suggested this to us and we decided to go with him on that. I know from watching House Hunters and shows like that how important your roof is and the potential cost of replacing it from being poorly done. We wanted something that is really going to last. Since we also decided to go with materials that could really hold up in a storm the peel and stick was the way to go. Todd told us that if anything on the roof needs to be fixed... in about 30 years... then they would just apply more peel and stick and replace shingles. He doesnt know of any roofer who has decided to take off a layer of peel and stick... so that must mean it really holds its own... I think (pun intended) 

In the second photo you can see the shingles are here now as well. We picked this about a month ago and I honestly wasnt nervous at all about this decision! 

Found this great photo! This is also a photo of the shingle color we picked. 

We decided to go with GAF Timberline Ultra HD Shingles. Click here for more information on this product. Sure a lot of websites go into the great things about this product but they have a lot of great reviews and have a great UV rating which is perfect for our huge amount of sun here in the Sunshine state! They really hold their coloring well here in these areas and Todd just loves them. Our roofer even told us that it was a good choice, after he had some choice words for us about picking the Charcoal colored shingles! haha oops. To offset the dark colored roof we will have foam sprayed inside to really seal it up. This will reduce our energy bill in the long run. We will also have 2 Air conditioning units in the house as well. Some people may see this as being a little excessive but its not. The rental we are living in now isnt sealed up properly and is about 1/2 the size of where we were living our power bill is much higher than the last house. We have closed all the vents in the rooms we are using for storage and still come night time its hot as can be. We sleep in about 70 degrees and kicking down one unit in the master is a lot cheaper than kicking down the one to the main house. 

I think I feel my migraine coming back... off to shower and sleep for my 19th hour. <3 

The Orb Photo.

We now have shelter!!! woohoo! get your tents ready we are moving in! ha I wish we could. As much as I am enjoying my urban container garden that we recently added too I am ready for some peace and quiet.  A Few days ago one of the many children next door to us fed the dogs something through the crappy little chain link fence... which was then followed up by unspeakable things that a dog owner never wants to have to deal with.... gross. Needless to say I am very unhappy about this even though they are feeling much better I am still throwing dirty looks over the fence every chance I get. 

Pardon my lack of humor I have been on a soup diet for a sore throat which I will also blame on the neighbors (even though I know they have nothing to do with that) 

Before I get into the pictures below I will jump into updates on the cabinets... So we missed a huge discount with Lowes while looking into other people to possibly do our cabinets. We tried Home depot but decided since they didnt make much of an effort to really read my email I sent them we just didnt reply back. Sure not very professional I know but seriously?! I asked for pricing on your Martha Stewart cabinets not for you to do everything with Martha! 

Todd was contacted by another cabinet guy (who looked into our permit box <that says: DO NOT OPEN!>) But we decided to give him a chance and sent him over the floor plans and Lowes drawings for what we had already picked out... well he "had a death in the family" and only got back to us after we emailed him... a week and a half later. He originally said a a few days. I normally wouldnt let this bother me but I'm sorry I am over cabinets. I never thought I would say that but this whole thing seems like everyone just wants to waste time and drag their feet. I am annoyed. Shoot me an email and say something has come up and you will get back to us as soon as you can! DONT JUST NOT RESPOND! oh and the kicker to this guy... He said he usually beats big box stores by a a couple thousand and he came back TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS MORE! MORE! Why you ask? Because he thought we wanted all wood cabinets... way to assume guy! 

Along with this whole mess with the cabinets we still havent been able to find anyone who carries a marble like granite... till a few days ago...

We were headed home from work and saw that this granite yard was still open and we decided to pop in... THEY HAD IT!!!! They had my Super White! Oh I was so excited I almost pee'd! We gave the girl our fabricators info and she said she would get with them and send over everything they need... well... she didnt, but we called Roy over at TH Winston and let him know that we liked that. The only issue with that was they had 5 pieces of it which is perfect... except the top on had a huge fracture in it that you could feel. We asked if we could see any other pieces and she kept telling us to go to the website. <the website only has one photo> When we asked if they were getting anymore she said October would be the soonest even after we told her that we would be moved in and the house complete she said that we could wait.... back to me being annoyed. 

<DUMB> 

Thankfully Roy said he would keep on the look out for other places with Super White. We still might make a trip to Orlando to see some other quartzite.

We met with the guy who is doing our roof because he was still working at 7 pm! They were keeping long hours because he wanted to finish it before he had to make a trip north for his daughters graduation. Unfortunately they didnt get it done before he had to leave so things have been slow going. 

The majority of the roof has been covered with plywood the only thing that was left was the front door area. 

The usual back yard photo! See these vines making their way up the trees? Yea well one trip out to the house I took my gardening gloves out there with me and tore them all down. Pretty easy work since they were not all the way around the tree yet. Next time The Hubs will need to go all George of the Jungle and chop them so they dont creep up my trees again! 

We are thinking of starting some yard work out there to get thing ready for when we move in and do the most amazing things to our back yard the world has ever seen! No. Its not a joke, we are super excited to make a glorious back yard! The Hubs was just okay with my garden till we started getting veggies and now he is just as excited as I am! Get ready for some great parties! 

This photo makes me laugh because as we pulled up I am screeching (yes, screeching) at The Hubs to not get any closer to the house because of the nails laying around! Bless his heart he was so excited to just get this close with the car... as I jumped out right at my door there was a giant nail! I was so totally right! Silly man. :)  

I am over city living. Its too hot and muggy to walk downtown anymore, its just so much easier to drive 3 blocks to get to where we want to go. We recently had an outbreak of Bums (Pan handlers for those of you who want to be politically correct) No joke we had them on every single street corner. Some of the signs were so redick its not even funny... there was a guy in a suit who was holding one that said "recently divorced and need to get drunk" there was another guy who had whiter shoes than I have ever had in my life! How are you homeless and your shoes are so white?! There was this one lady who was pushing her shopping cart down my street and she was screaming at my neighbors dog saying she was going to sue them... then she got to our house where the dogs were sitting nicely watching this crazy lady through the fence and she started screaming at them... and me of course and that she was going to sue us. Great. She finally moved along to a foreclosed house down the street and tucked herself in... the cops moved her along. A few days later we were headed to dinner with some friends and I am telling them about this crazy lady when we turn the corner and I kid you not she was right there... still in her blue flannel trench coat I was describing to them! Of course we died laughing! What are the chances!!! We sat down for dinner outside and saw a cop pull up to her and move her along again... after leaving this restaurant (because you really need to be in the mood for chicken and waffles)  we brought up that lady again and as we turned another corner and saw her pounding on a dry cleaners front door. Shes everywhere! After making plans with all of our friends to head out there with our own signs (on our ipads) the city has cracked down a little bit on them... but now its some legal war going on... tisk tisk. 

I wanted to include this photo for my family... who are true believers in the orbs.... well... here are two. No way this place is haunted though, but this will make for some great stories to make up and scare each other with like when we were growing up (Ali, Blake, Mallory, Aunt Terry, and Adam, I know you remember what I am talking about!)