Monday, March 31, 2014

March Photo Dump

Sheetrock is hung in our basement
Duncan - 8ish weeks old Golden Retriever - visiting for the night
We got new snow boots & were chipping away at the ice

Learning the joys of icicles

While she has gotten huge sometimes
she still looks so small
So this picture is totally posed, but I think it is hilarious
I was noting that the insulation was set up for a perfect lounger
so I laid down and Marc snapped the picture. I think it is funny
Love this sweet nose & the golden retriever it belongs to
How can you not just laugh at this photo
Dakota was getting the snow off her face
Doggy bribery at it's finest
It only took me 3 years to get these hung in my office
INSULATING 
Marc's face makes me laugh on this one
Puppy whiskers (how many years can I get away calling her a puppy)
Dakota is not impressed with my photo taking of my blanket
sort of like the way this one looks in black and white


Saturday, March 29, 2014

Golden Retriever A Palooza

One of our dear friends recently got a couple of golden retrievers, Duncan (the smallest golden retriever pictured below is 8ish weeks) and Echo (the middle sized golden retriever pictured below is 4ish months). One night she had meetings all night and so we got the opportunity to be on puppy patrol and it was MARVELOUS. Seriously, we snuggled the puppies and laughed as Dakota, Duncan, and Echo played together. Here are some of the pictures from our night with three golden retrievers in our house.



Who doesn't try to sit in the food bowl?!

3 sleeping golden retrievers = victory


How can you not just sit and snuggle them all?!


Do you have dogs?
Do you have a favorite breed?

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Winter crochet project

      This winter I have FINALLY been working on a blanket for myself, I have made lots of other folks blankets, but I finally got to the point that I wanted to make mysefl one. SOOO this blanket was born, I semi adapted a pattern from some things I had seen  and the hours of crocheting began. I began just after Christmas and finished a couple of nights ago. It always takes me a couple days to get pictures and uploaded. The blanket measures roughly 83 inches long and 52 inches wide. It is obnoxiously big and I seriously lost track of how many skeins of yarn it took. I used Hobby Lobby's "I Love This Yarn," which I love and went to town. I actually only had one skein of each of the colors but then the grey is where I lost track of how many skeins I used. I do still have a pretty good ball left of each other colors, which is perfect by me because they will be transformed into other things (hats, mittens, baby booties, ear warmers, the list is endless). 
     My pictures aren't amazing of the blanket, but I have a hard time photographing crocheted blankets. The one picture is while I was laying on the floor attempting to get some pictures of the blanket and Dakota laid down right in front of me and it felt like she was almost rolling her eyes at me and telling me enough is enough, move on and come snuggle me or something other than take photos of this blanket. I love it though. I suppose the size is a little large, but I wanted to be able to tuck it under my toes (I am just shy of 6 foot tall) while laying down and be able to pull it up to my chin without having to stretch it out. It is plenty wide enough that I can either sit in my favorite chair at our house or curl up on the couch and nap in it.
     While I loved this project was fun and mindless (I watched countless movies this winter while working on this blanket) I am happy to be moving onto another project. What's next in my crochet world? Great question, traditionally in the spring/summer my crocheting slows WAY down due to my love of the outdoors, but I a dear friend of mine just had a little girl who clearly NEEDS some crocheted goodness, a blanket for my mother (she wants a big one as well, so that will take some time) and a few other things up my sleeve. I also want to try out a couple of new things. Keep your eyes peeled, there will be more crocheted wonderfulness coming down the pipe.
    Given the weather this Spring winter my guess is we won't be hanging out too much outside for a bit. BLAH craptastic weather, bring on spring.




Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Sheetrock is HUNG!

Our sheetrock has now been hung up in the basement! REJOICE!
Now we are onto the waiting for the guys to tape and texture the rest. It looks sooooo different down there with the sheetrock up, now we can tell what the rooms will look like. Our basement has: one closet under the stairs, two bedrooms each with a closet (one with a huge closet), a full bathroom, and a utility room/laundry room. I seriously cannot believe that they got this all hung in a day!

I believe I was told the taping/texturing will take just about a week to do. So we'll see how it goes. I now need to mop downstairs because of the sheetrock dust that is EVERYWHERE. Also now watching at Home Depot and Menards (our options in town for building type stuff) for primer to go on sale so I can just buy a 5 gallon bucket of it. Hopefully 5 gallons is enough to cover it all.









Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Coast 2 Coast - runDisney


Part of my favorite thing after returning from a trip (yes, yes I know this one got WAYYYYY delayed) is creating the photobook. Here is from my runDisney Coast 2 Coast challenge. I ran the Tinkerbell Half Marathon in Disneyland and the Wine and Dine Half Marathon in Walt Disney World! LOVED IT!

Now to anxiously await the arrival of my photobook.

What do you do with your pictures after a trip?
Do you make a yearly photobook?

Monday, March 24, 2014

PINTREST SUCCESS


This weekend we had what I am calling a Pinterest success. I am weird and we sort our laundry as we throw it in the baskets, the whites in one load and the darks in the other load and then things like: cloth kitchen napkins, towels, dish towels, wash rags, etc go in a third pile (of which we never had a basket or anything for) then I don't have to sort the laundry, but can just throw in a load of laundry whenever I have time or when a basket gets fullish. Before this weekend and in the first picture you can see how our laundry baskets were, we stacked, two mis-matched baskets on top of one another and you had to lift up the second basket any time you had something to go in the bottom one. Yes, I know it wasn't that much work but it was a little annoying none the less. I found on pinterest, somewhere and I apparently didn't repin it (oops) but they essentially hung up baskets in their closet, which we have the PERFECT space for.

So this weekend we stopped in at Menards and bought two sets of bracket hanging things, mounted them, and bought two matching laundry baskets at Target (which happened to match one of our other baskets we already owned) and we have a great hanging system. SERIOUSLY WONDERFUL, I now can pull off the wall whichever I want to wash (the bottom basket just sits on the floor) and wash and we can throw our clothes in without having to pick up baskets. {Top Basket: towels and kitchen laundry Middle Basket: whites Bottom Basket: darks}

Total Project Cost:
Brackets and pieces from Menards: $11.23 {plus it is the 11% sale so we will get a little back from it}
2 laundry baskets from Target: $18.01

WONDERFUL project. I am in love.
Took us less than 30 minutes, the hardest part (which really wasn't that hard) was to make sure the two sets of brackets were level to each other and spacing them out as we wanted.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Insulating Weekend

It was an insulating weekend around the Marshall house. We spent our weekend insulating our basement, walls and ceilings (yes, we know that insulating the ceiling wasn't necessary, however, we wanted to sound protect the basement from upstairs and vice versa - so we insulated with R-30 which is roughly 10 or so inches of beauty.). The walls got r-13 except for a couple walls which got R-19 for extra insulation due to the space that they allowed. It was crazy and took quite a while, but we are happy that we did it and are jazzed for the plumbers to be coming in tomorrow to rough in our bathroom. Dakota was a champ. We bribed her with a 99% empty peanut butter jar and every couple hours we bundled up and took her for a walk around the neighborhood. Yesterday, was MUCH nicer out that today, today when I left for work my car read -4 degrees. BRING ON SPRING PLEASE!
BEFORE
Bribery at it's finest
Our truck full of insulation, sheetrock, and a bathtub/shower
He humors me and allows me to take pictures
Taking the plastic off these bundles is like opening one of those
Pillsbury dough cans where it just explodes out of the can
It was fun - seriously we enjoyed it every time
Note how far it expanded compared to Marc

Progress at it's finest


Now we can cross that off the to-do list and next up is roughing in our bathroom and then the sheetrockers will come to hang the sheetrock and then another crew comes to tape and texture the walls. THEN WE CAN PAINT! (oh beloved Mother, who is a rockstar at painting, pack your painting clothes and come on up.) Whoop Whoop. Oh and I suppose at some point we need to figure out what we are doing for doors and flooring. I think both bedrooms downstairs are getting carpet. The bathroom some type of tile or laminate (oh beloved brother, want to come tile a floor for me?! You know you want to....). And then in the main room and the hallway I am hoping for some type of a fake wood type of deal (brother don't you want to also try to do this?!). AND THEN... we can finally move all of our stuff out of the guest bedroom upstairs as well as move our stuff we have crammed into the closet under the stairs (we didn't sheetrock that part for about 12,000 reasons.). IT IS GETTING CLOSER.

Or at least we are making progress.

How was your weekend?
Did you do anything fun?

  • Friday we had friends over and it was AMAZING, so much fun with friends. Shepherd's pie and pie for dessert it seriously doesn't get any better than that
  • We did watch the Hurt Locker on Saturday evening which was an interesting movie for sure.
  • Also my blanket I am crocheting for myself is 90% done and I AM JAZZED and already picking out my next project



           

Friday, March 14, 2014

Pie Day!





  • Today was a wonderful day here.

  • We found out we are getting a tax return. Taxes make me nervous, I am always nervous that we have to pay in (which would SUCK) - but we do get a return, not huge but a return none the less.

  • The weather is above freezing. REJOICE.

  • Our basement is coming along. REJOICE.


    • today our sheetrock, tub/shower, and insulation were delivered.


  • This afternoon I actually got quite a bit done, I needed to do some work for the camp I work for (parttime) and some work for my actual job (proof my sermon for Sunday and make sure that I am ready for a burial tomorrow).

  • IT is PI day! Whoop Whoop. 


    • We have a group of friends who we frequently get together with for St. Patty's day, however, with one the ladies due on Monday with her second baby we didn't want to risk not getting together. So we gathered and had Shepherd's pie, had pie for dessert, and played some games. Friends are indeed good.










This was a ridiculously random post, but it works.
Hope y'all had a great pi day!