cool idea

I like to dye eggs, who doesn't, but I think next year I want to try this idea: http://www.ourbestbites.com/2008/03/silk-dyed-eggs.html

How cool? I'm going to check the local goodwill.

New Place, Old Place, Some Place

Having two homes is kind of a pain. My lease on my apartment runs out at the end of this month and I couldn't be happier. I'm in the process of cleaning the old place, continuing to purge stuff, decorate and organize the new place and sell some furniture and stuff from the old place. It would be awesome if my two houses, jokingly referred to as my "summer" and "winter" homes were closer together, but they're a 20 minute drive, one way. I left all the furniture that I wasn't going to keep at the old place because I didn't see the need to haul it down two flights of steps and back up another. I also thought it'd be better to have strangers come to my old house instead of my new one. I'm down to just needing to sell off the stupid couch from hell and then life will be good. I've also resolved that if it hasn't sold by tomorrow (Monday) I'm calling a donation place down the street from my apartment and having them come and take it. Then it's gone, I can finish cleaning, get the carpets cleaned and get my massive deposit back.

I Can Do It

I've been living in my house for a couple weeks now. I closed about five weeks ago and have been having a random problem. My garage door has been coming open on it's own. You might think that I'm crazy.  That I leave and just forget to close it, and while that might occassionally be true since I'm not used to having a garage door....this is typically not the case. I sometimes sit in the driveway after I shut the door for about five minutes, checking email, sending texts, checking work voicemail. After I'm sure that it's really shut, off I go.

I thought that I'd fixed the problem about two weeks ago, because I was no longer coming home to an open garage door. I pushed some button on my wall opener. Wahoo! And yet, just to be safe, I continued to lock the door between the garage and my house. So today, I'm sitting in my dining room, wrapping presents, when suddenly, up goes the garage door. WTF??? I run downstairs, throw open the door to the garage look out, to watch the door going up. And then 20 seconds later it's going back down again. Clearly someone else is on my frequency.

So, I decided I'm smart enough to figure this out, right? I dig out the manual, read it over a few times and head downstairs, step stool and manual in hand. Move the car out of the garage. I begin my search for the "Learn" button. The picture in the manual only showed and extreme close up of a button. Clearly, no one has ever seen a button before. Hmm...not on this side, not on that side, or that side. Why wouldn't it be inside?  I have to pry the cover off of one end, hold this button in and wait. The button looked nothing like the picture FYI, thank God it was labeled. Then reprogram the remotes. No big deal, been there, done that. And then moved the car back inside. But here's the thing. I still have no clue if this actually worked. I like to think it did. Otherwise, I have to move all the stuff in my garage inside my house before I leave for trip to Iowa.

Pack it up, Pack it in...

I've lived in my apartment for almost three years. This is the longest that I've lived anywhere since leaving home in 1997. Every semester in college, I would move to different room in the sorority house and then move out over the summer. So over time, I got to be a packing pro. And then I lived in a few apartments in Ames, did a 3 month at Elizabeth and JJ's (where I didn't unpack much) and moved in with Nikki for 18 months.
Since then, I've had an apartment for six months in West Des Moines and when it came time to leave there, professional movers packed and moved me. Really, really nice. And then when I left Lansing, just under three years ago, the professional movers came in again and packed up all my stuff and moved it again. They raced to see how fast they could pack it since there were four of them. They were done in an hour and a half. I haven't accumulated a ton of "personal stuff" since then, but I have picked up quite of bit of work related material. I have half a closet full, a filing cabinet and rolling cart. Seriously, several trees have been sacrificed on my behalf and in the name of insurance.
I feel so disorganized with this move and it's very frustrating. I typically just box my stuff up/or have it boxed up and run down my list of to do's. Then I'm off to destination B and settle in. I'm tired of having stuff at two places and just want it to move itself the 20 minutes across town. Hopefully in 24 - 36 hours I will feel much better about all of this. Or at least I'll have a box city on my hands. :)

Friday Fun

Today, I didn't really do traditional "Black Friday" activities, but I don't typically shop either. I'd rather do something like Cyber Monday. I went to Walgreens and got a bunch of free/practically free things and will probably return tomorrow to finish it off. Once I'm done working that deal, I'll take a picture, with my results, I'm guessing I should end up with about $30 - $40 worth of stuff for about $15. We'll see.
Anyway, my sister and I were emailing and decided test run a Christmas baking project: Hot Chocolate on a Stick. I'd found it via a message board that linked this blog: http://giverslog.com/?p=3290 So, we checked out the ingredients, the only thing we didn't actually have - the popsicle sticks. A month ago, they would have been everywhere. Now, I couldn't find them to save my life. I showed up at my sister's after hitting Walgreens and ended up taking Anna to Hobby Lobby. "Shopping!?" Anna asked excitedly. She ran to get her shoes and coat. We improvised with lollipop sticks as that is what we could find.
My sister didn't own a double broiler so we created a makeshift one with two pots and it worked fine. We used baking disks from Hobby Lobby that I already had on hand and brought from Omaha. Melted those and then added the dry mix. And then my sister exclaimed, "This is so not going to work! We made fudge!" This stuff is thick. I was bound and determined to make this work. I'm patient, but I'm stubborn as hell. "It'll work, put it in the ziplock bag." My sister transferred it in the bag and I cut off a corner. Have you ever tried to pipe frosting? It works fine because of it's consistancy. Have you ever tried to pipe fudge? Elizabeth was laughing to the point that she was almost rolling on the floor. Which in turn made me laugh.
And after about two cubes, I decided it would be quicker and easier to just spoon the mixture into the cubes. After I spooned a row, I smoothed it, and then added the sticks. We let them set for about an hour or so and then they popped right out. That was my biggest concern, getting them out. We microwaved some milk and then proceeded to stir. And then we ran ito Elizabeth's biggest concern - the lollipop sticks are cardboard. Milk is hot. The chocolate came off the stick, and then we needed spoons to stir.
This hot chocolate was a-maz-ing!!! Seriously!!! Way better than Swiss Miss or any other powder. Elizabeth, Walker, Cyote and I all tried it and thought it was great. I'll take a couple pics of it tomorrow, when I head over to drop off Walker's birthday present.

One Bathroom down, one almost done....

This is a picture that I took last year in Lisbon, that I plan on blowing up to either 8x10 or 5x7 and framing. It's Lisbon's twin to the Golden Gate bridge.

The bathroom pulled together with a couple towels from Target. My sister did some touchup painting on Saturday. When I was doing some packing, I found my old Tiffany's box from a vase I received from an ex-boyfriend a few years ago.

Photo print from the Des Moines Art Festival a few years ago.

Shower curtain, also from Target. Need to find a liner that fits it yet, but it'll be a good week before I'm going to use it so I should be okay. I almost bought a black one, but thought it would be too dark. I'd also like to say that I almost lost the battle with the shower rod. There were some choice words used. I'm debating if I need some type of curtain for the window. It has blinds, but I'm also pretty close to an intersection.

Splash of Color

Friday, I woke up, got dressed and headed to Home Depot to buy paint. I'd done enough research to determine what colors I wanted the bathrooms painted. I figured that I could get both bathrooms painted on Friday. I grabbed my paint chips and headed to the paint counter and talked with the woman there about what I wanted. She told me with a bathroom, I might be able to get away with a quart per bathroom. SCORE!! While she was mixing up my paint, I assembled my supplies - Killz, brushes, rollers, trays, drop cloth, tape, edgers, etc. I grabbed my paint cans picked up my ladder and left the store
I also decided that I need to not go to Home Depot looking like complete and total crap. There were hot guys everywhere and I looked homeless in my old, paint-friendly attire. Okay, I probably didn't look homeless, but I certainly didn't look cute.
So, I after a stop at Target for snacks, it was off to the new home to get to work. Um, yeah, I forgot about how long it would take to tape off the room. The amount of time to tape everything off....forever. All the stupid corners. Once I got that done, the Killz went on quickly. Next I moved on to the paint. For this bathroom, I was going to use asparugus. Hmm...things turned out less than spectacular and I've decided that I need another coat of this paint before I'll be putting pictures up. I finished around 4 and headed back to my apartment so that I could shower up and head to Urbandale.

I got started on the third floor bathroom a bit later today than anticipated. I attended a going away party last night for Kaylen. (She works on the play 101 Dalmatians - if it's coming to a city near you, go check it out.) I was moving with the speed of a sloth this morning. Once I taped off the bathroom this afternoon, I added the Killz. It was time for the paint. One big bonus of the upstairs bathroom - it has a window. I was getting such a headache on Friday from the fumes that I kept having to stop and leave the room. I cracked the window during when I was applying the Killz. For the upstairs bathroom, the paint color is called "Embellished Blue" but it's practically Tiffany Box Blue. Love this color, and can't wait to get some accents. I almost got this completed with one coat before running out of paint. Just need to finish the corners and such and behind the stupid toilet. I realize I should have removed it, but that would most likely end poorly for me. I should have some more photos in a few days. :) And I have some pics of the exterior, but my camera is in my car, and it's FA-Reeezing here, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Weird recycling

So, in the summer of 2000, I called home to chat with my parents and they told me that they were tearing down my childhood home to build a new house.  They recycled a bunch of the brick from the 100 year old house, which was used on their basement/garage, reused some ledges from the windows as thresholds for doors and kept the stained glass. Additionally, they kept three inside doors. One for them, and one for my sister and me. I don't currently have my door in my possession and I've been trying to figure out what on earth I'm going to do with it. For the longest time, I was thinking coffee table. But it would be the longest coffee table ever.
But here's the thing. The dining table I have now I'm not really a fan of, it was passed down from my sister's friend (well, mine too), Kristin. I appreciated it at the time and I love free stuff, but not really me. So I was surfing the internet and thinking. These are around 7 foot doors. And then I found this link: http://designspongeshop.com/tablediy.pdf. That doesn't look to difficult. The door shouldn't need a ton of rehab work. The hardest part is going to be getting the hundred year plus old handle off. OH and attaching the legs. Minor detail, right. But should be a fun project in the future. And then I can get some fun chairs to go with it. Woot!