I interrupt your dinner for a Public Service Announcement.

According to Brian Williams on NBC there has been some research that concluded cats are bird murders.....

That's all!

Can you guess the dog???

Ok, so here is a little quick afternoon fun for ya'll!!  Everybody was awfully quick to guess Ziggy last night, buuutttttttt can you guess who the little dog is???

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Hey, hey I can see you heading over to google right now to find the answer!!  Now, cheaters never prosper....so dig back into the ole wheel house and put your answers right down there in the comments section of the blog!!                    

It's hip to be square!

In case you missed my Facebook post earlier this week, I thought I would share a picture of my newest tool (sounds like a personal problem I know :P)!

Ya'll know I got this from Ryan for Christmas.....

He surprised me and brought this home for me yesterday.   My FIL was kind of enough to paint it to get rid of the dull not-so-girly silver color.

It turned out even cuter than I could have imagined!  Yeah I know, I am a nerd.  What can I say??

Hey if you look closely in the background of the first picture of the square you will see a salt shaker character.  First person that can remember his name wins......

Dog kennels....part deux!

In case any of you lost any sleep as I am sure you did last night, I just wanted to give you an update.  I sent the pictures to A at Greenstone and let her know that the issues had long been resolved.  She responded first thing this morning letting me know that the appraiser hadn't even actually been to the property yet but was looking at the survey that showed the kennels as being on our property.  We just never had that part of our survey updated to show that the kennels were moved.  She sent the pictures to the appraiser, not to mention it will be very clear when he walks the property,  so we should be all set now.......

Whew, first hurdle cleared!  And to that I say....ROCK ON!!

 ****Just another warning.  Now that I realized I can upload videos from my camera you are all going to be tortured with more of my annoying voice and field trips.  So.....sorry in advance!!

And then the bank called!!

One would think that was good news but I knew it was WAY too soon to hear from the bank.  I was riding shot gun on the way home from work tonight and I got a call from Greenstone......

Now let's rewind 3 years ago to the time when we bought the property.  One of the neighbors had dog kennels that were encroaching on our property.  Apparently in Michigan there is this fancy thing called adverse possession....blah, blah, blah go google it if you really care.  Cliff notes version, once we bought the property we had to go stake out all of our property lines and tell our neighbors to move their crap off our property line.  How is that for a welcome to the neighborhood??  Hi there nice to meet you, could you move your shizzle of our land?  Needless to say we did it within that first month and all was well.

Now back to that phone call.  Greenstone called and said that the appraiser said that we had dog kennels encroaching on our property (now mind you, 3 years ago they were probably 3 feet on our property) and was concerned that it would decrease the property value.  I told "A" our person at Greenstone that I was pretty sure all of this had been cleared up 3 years ago and we shouldn't have any problems......so I offered to go get photographic evidence

So now prepare yourself for what is coming.  I decided to take you all along on my little field trip to show that the kennels weren't on the property.

*****Caution:  You are entering annoying voice territory********

Needless to say the kennels are WAY off the property line (since 3 years ago) so I just gotta forward the pictures and hope that the pictures will clear up any questions.  Ugghhhhhhh it is NEVER easy!!

You win, you always do!

Sooooooooo do ya'll remember that slate tile I purchased a couple weeks ago??

Yeah, THAT slate tile.  I knew that I wanted gray slate for the bathroom but was just holding out for the real stuff at a good price.  Well as you will recall I got a good deal on this at The Tile Shop....however I couldn't just "pull the trigger" on my own.  I called up Ryan and said "babe, I found the stuff I really want and it is at the right price should I do it??"  To which he said, "just ask the tile guy if there is anything special or out of the ordinary that you have to do to put down slate."  I did my wifely duty (hehehe I said duty) and asked.  To which I was told nope, it is actually easier to put down than ceramic and the only thing you have to do it seal it.  No big deal!  So I did it.  I bit the bullet and bought enough for our master bathroom!!!

Fast forward to this past Sunday and it was time to pick up the tile!  Ryan and I made the trek to Ann Arbor to pick up the goods.  Let me just tell you how effing heavy slate tile is.....WOW(mental note I need to start hitting the heavy weights before we break ground!!).
Ok, ok back to my point.  As we were standing there waiting for the tile Ryan looked at the shelf behind us to find a gallon of slate tile sealer!!!  Guess how much one gallon of slate sealer is???

Keep scrolling for the answer.......










$179.99









for ONE GALLON!!  I sh*t you not!!  I about had the big one right there in the middle of The Tile Shop.  Needless to say I picked up the jug and started reading feverishly HOPING that it was supposed to be diluted with water.  Uhmmmm yeah NOT SO MUCH!!!  You use that liquid gold straight up.  I have to say that Ryan took it in stride and just laughed about it.  Whew, that was a close one!!!  But as always he was right.......

P.S. Don't tell him I said that ;)

Seems like yesterday....

It really does seem like yesterday that we were moving out of our house!  Well it certainly wasn't yesterday but it was exactly one year ago today that we officially moved in with mom and dad.

Yep see that?  That was the very last par-tay we had in the barn!  Sniffle, sniffle!!

I can't forget that night cuz it was somebody's b-day.....Yep ^ that ladies birthday!  Poor Aunt BJ had to spend her birthday packing boxes, shampooing carpets, and listening to me cry about leaving the house that "we brought our babies home to."  Bwwhahahaha!!! 

Fast forward to one year later and here we are!  We submitted all of our final paperwork to the bank last week and now we wait.  Now we wait for 3 weeks for the construction appraisal and then another 2 weeks for banking stuff.  Soooooo we could technically start building in 5 weeks.....if EVERYTHING goes perfectly.  If I've learned one thing about this process??  Nothing goes perfectly so I am not getting my hopes up. 
The biggest question of all is how much MOOLAH do we have to bring to the table???

Uhm yeah if I had turbo roles of 100 dollar bills wrapped up in my drawer I would be all set.  However, I don't!  So now we wait to see how much our property appraises for and how much the house appraises for.  Keep your fingers crossed that is appraises for LOTS :-)  Again, not getting my hopes up...but one can dream, right?

The bank will determine how much cash we have to have up front.  We have been under the impression all along that it will be 20% HOWEVER we were just informed that it could be at least 25% (bottom line it is their call).  So, as I said, now we wait......for the bank to decide our fate!!! 

(I'm a poet and didn't know it)

To perc or not to perc!

"A percolation (perc) test is a test to determine the absorption rate of soil for a septic drain field or a leach field.  The results of a perc test are required to properly design a septic system." Source

Ok so now that all that scientific crap is out of the way lets get down to the pictures.  Cuz come on, who likes books that don't have pictures?  NOT ME!!

This is how the perc test starts.  Well wait, it actually starts once you pay the fee for the perc test.  Once you do that, they send a gentleman from the County out to do the test.  Like this....

Then they do a little twist and pull out the soil.  As they keep digging down and pulling out soil samples you want your soil to look bright orange.  Well, pretty much like this....

Once they determine where the finished grade line should be they measure from the property lines

So they can get this out and and give us a guideline to show us where our finished grade level should be.

Once they determine the final measurements they marked it on our electrical pole like 'em so! 

So there ya have it.  Everything you never ever wanted to know about perc tests!  So in case you didn't come to the final conclusion our property perced with flying colors and we are GOOD TO GO!! 
We also submitted all of our final paperwork to the bank on Monday and are getting VERY close to getting this show on the road.  I will save the joys of getting construction financing for another blog....in case anybody cares!

The final reveal!!

After several weekends and several steps, here are the finished chairs!!

And, now with the new fabric seats.....

So of course I had to use my phone that day to take pictures so they aren't the best quality.  The fabric is a bluish gray color and they look AWESOME in person.  I have to give a big ole THANK YOU to my father-in-law for painting the chairs for me!

Up next is the big dining room table.  I am sure we will start that in the next few weeks.  I believe the table is going to take some elbow grease and a little TLC!

Priming and Grandma's Fabric!

So here is what the chair looked like after we sanded, filled all the imperfections with wood filler, then sanded again and finally primed.  I have all the info on how to refinish the chairs from one of my favorite blogs (I'll share that when I show you the finished product).  However,  honey biscuit and I didn't have such a great time with the primer.

The primer went on thick and clumpy and was a HOT MESS!!  Ryan and I sanded on it for an hour, followed up by Pete and Ryan sanding for another 3 hours to get it back to a smooth surface.  Needless to say, the next 4 chairs didn't get a coat of primer :-)

Now, try to control yourself, but this is the previous fabric that was on the seats!

Oh just wait til you see the finished product....you are gonna LOVE IT!!!  But until then you gotta deal with Grandma's fabric above......

Love my tile!!

I went out planning to simply get a few prices on some tile and counter tops for our master bath.  We are taking all of our final paperwork to the bank on Monday and wanted to make sure that I had all of our numbers nailed down.  Not sure if I shared this with you before, but this is the look I am going for in our master bath (with bluish/green walls):

I absolutely LOVE the tile on the wall here and plan on going with black vanities and white marble counters.  We also have a rather large walk in shower in the master bath and needed to get some quotes on tile for that as well.
I decided to hit up The Tile Shop in Ann Arbor.  If you haven't been in there before you MUST check it out!!!  I love it there.  If it wouldn't have been awkward I would have hung out even longer and looked at all of the displays again (yeah I know I have issues)!!
After I wandered aimlessly for a while I found Nate Rymarz and asked him for some help!!  It didn't take long and I stumbled upon the PERFECT slate for our bathroom!!  Here it is....

This picture makes it look a bit lighter than what it really is (the colors really are almost identical to the wall tile above) but believe me, it is BEAUTIFUL!!  So if you are in the market for some new tile there is a huge selection to choose from at The Tile Shop.  Now, I just have to find some room to store 100 sq. feet of tile ;)

How this project started....

When we first decided that we were going to build a new house, Ryan and I had this big idea that he would build us a brand new glorious dining room table.  The more we kept thinking about it, we realized it would probably cost a fortune for us to buy the wood and build it but still planned on doing so.  We also decided that we wanted to have two pedestals for the base instead of four legs.  My mama was the one who gave us the pedestal ideal so you could fit more chairs around the table and not have to fight with the legs in the four corners!  She is always thinking, I tell ya!

I knew Ryan could build the top but what was he gonna do whittle me some wooden pedestal legs?

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The answer to that is NO.  So what would any good bargain shopper do?  I took to Craigslist on a mission to find an old table that had some really cool pedestals that could serve as the base for the wonderful-ness that would be Ryan's creation.  Thennn I stumbled upon a table with 2 great pedestals and 5 chairs.  As a matter of fact, the whole set was in pretty decent condition.  Then in an instant, Ryan was off the hook!  I decided that we would just refinish the entire set and re-cover the chairs with new fabric!

So here are some of the before and and during action photos:

There you have the before product!  I have some more before pictures of the "lovely" fabric on the seats to share and will upload those later.  Next post I will show you how things looked at the next step of priming (foreshadowing:  priming = bad idea).

Until then.....

 

One year ago tonight....

One year ago tonight was the ALMOST last party in our barn!!  Yep can you believe that it has almost been a year since we shacked up with the 'rents?  I have to tell you that it has really been one of the fastest years of my life!  So instead of boring you with my usual rambling on and on, I thought I would share some pictures from that ALMOST last party.  Enjoy....

Awwww me and my BFF's <3

 

A nice group photo of the family!

 

Hmmmm this looks like Tim is dancing a jig :P

 

Uncle Paco getting one last HUG in the barn ;)

 

Annnnd my bro taking an extreme close up self portrait...hacked!

 

We even had a first time visitor to the barn at the almost last party :-)

 

Hehehhe me and Conni at what looks to be the end of the night based on my sleepy eyes!

Last but certainly not least is what appears to be a burn that resembles a hickey that I am sure I just HAD to take a picture of.  Shhhhhh whatever you do, DON'T tell Ryan I put this picture up!

So there you have it, a little flashback to last year on this night.  I am sure I was crying like a little sissy too.  Man I am as predictable as the day is long!

I gotta help....for realllllzzz???

Yep, rumor on the street has it that Ryan is REALLY going to make me help build the house.  Who woulda thunk it?  I though he was just yanking my chain.  HOWEVER, his intentions became very clear when he got me this for Christmas.

Yep a fully loaded pink tool belt.  Lucky for you I cropped out my lovely Christmas morning bed head (you're welcome).  Oh and Ryan was sure to tell me that my tool belt was NOT for shits and giggles and that it was fully functional.  I said yeah, yeah I know!  I did start getting a little nervous when he started talking about me being up on the roof.  Then I remembered we are paying somebody to do the roof.  Good try honey!!

So, this is what I got for Ryan.

 

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Annnddd some drill bits and and a couple of other things that I am way too lazy to look up on the interweb :-)  So, as you can tell there was a definite theme amongst our Christmas this year.  That theme was GET OUT ON THAT PROPERTY AND BUILD A HOUSE!!!

Door Knobs!

Yep, how is that for a title for my first post in almost 6 weeks?!?!  Sounds good and exciting huh?  Well you will probably think so once you see them!  Most of you know me and know that my grandpa Ike passed away in September.  He was the sweetest grandpa ever and lived to be 95!!!  How's that for some great genes??

Here he was when we went in September to celebrate his 95th birthday with him :-)

Anyhow my Uncle Joe was thinking of me and saved something he thought I might like to remind me of Grandma Jean and Grandpa Ike.  Let me tell ya, he was wrong.....cuz I LOVE THEM!!!

I got these glorious glass door knobs.  They are soooooooo cool!  We will have two walk in closets in our master bedroom and these door knobs are going on my closet door.  Now I am on a mission to find curtain rods that have finials to match this set :-)

I also got a little something else from Grandpa's house, huh Tommy?  However I will save that for another post!

Speaking of Tommy, how cute were we when we were little?