Little Moments - Lakeside refresher

The building I work in has beautiful surroundings. Weather permitting, I enjoy by breaks and lunches outside. It was a particularly beautiful morning and I enjoyed a peaceful moment with some ice tea and sunshine before heading back inside to the corporate world.

5 Years

My boyfriend and I don't have an anniversary per say. We were friends for years. To my surprise, he tracked down the date of when we first met in person. Five years ago, I flew out to Iowa to meet a group of friends I had gotten to know. I had no idea, at the time, where we would be today. We've been friends for probably seven years now, and dating for almost four.

He planned a wonderful evening downtown at one of our favorite restaurants, The Melting Pot.  It was wonderful and unexpected. Drinks, the most amazing pear gorgonzola salad, melt in your mouth filet mignon, and an assortment of delectables to dip into flambéed chocolate candied pecan sauce. Amazing.
 

Summer Tie Dye

I had been collecting fun projects we could do throughout the summer. I hate the idea of my kids being parked in front of a screen all summer long. It was a great summer evening and actually not too hot. We had a delicious BBQ dinner and followed it up with some old fashion tie-dye.

I had bought a kit with a bunch of colors in squeeze bottles. It's soooo much better than mixing up big  buckets of individual colors!! There's more colors to play with and clean up is a breeze.

 We let everything sit over night, then rinsed with the garden hose. There were some great results!!

Garden

I sure do miss my big beautiful garden from my old house.  I'm happy to have some great things growing in the new one, even if it's a little sad looking. I'm thinking a bigger garden is certainly in order for next year.

Little Moments - Me time

To run a household, work, and take care of my family while remaining sane... it's nessessary to take 'me time'. I have to first take care of myself if I'm going to have the energy to take care of others. A lesson that  took me a long time to learn and something I am still working on.

Little Moments - Garden

The first ripe tomatoes of the year!

House Edition - Roof

It started on a rainy day. I heard dripping coming from the living room. I followed the sound to realizes the dripping was coming from inside the wall between the front door and living room window. Dang it.

I had three reputable companies, with great reviews, come out and give me an estimate.  All three told me the same thing.  I need a whole new roof. Dang it again. I was just about to start remodeling my kitchen but unfortunately a new roof jumps to the top of the 'to do' list.

My house has concrete tile shingles. Some people like the look of them, I didn't really care for the style or the current color. As much as I hated the idea of forking out at least seven grand for a new roof, I was looking forward to being able to chose the look I wanted.

Originally, we were planning on taking off the old roof ourselves to save some money.  Come to find out, concrete tiles are notorious for housing wasps. Each roofing company looked under the tiles to check the condition of the decking. Each company looked at different area, and every time there were wasps nests. Between the wasps, the weight of the tile, and the weather reaching 100 degrees... we opted to pay the extra money and let the roofing company take care of it.

After the old roof was off, it was clear why it was leaking. This roof had been leaking for a while and there was a lot of rot and damage. Look at the two huge holes! The entire surface needed new plywood. I'm so glad I didn't put it off after seeing what bad shape it was in.

I was so happy with the end results, it looks much better than the old style. The company gave me a great price and even took a thousand dollars off the cost of all the plywood and additional installation.   Next, I will need to tackle new gutters. I'm looking forward to painting the outside of the house so it's no longer the ugly duckling that is currently is.

Birthday & Backyard Campout

My work schedule has been relentless. I have had to work the last 8 out of 9 weekends. Unfortunately, my boyfriend also works weekends and we never seem to have the same weekend off. Sadly that means we haven't been able to go out of town and no camping.

I love to go camping and we usually go for my Birthday. I've missed going this year so we decided to campout in the backyard. I was worried the kids would think it was dumb and boring but it was actually really fun.  We had tinfoil packets for dinner, then s'mores and sparklers.

Russ had to work in the morning so he headed inside after smores. The kids and I looked for the cheesiest movie we could possible find on Netflix and watched it on the iPad along with our favorite camping snacks.

 It was wonderful to wake up on my birthday to fresh air, sunshine and birds chirping.  We enjoyed tinfoil breakfasts with hash browns & sausage over the campfire.

 I was surprised to get Edible Arrangements delivered from my Mom and a package showed up on the porch from Russ' parents. Russ brought home flowers and cake after work in addition to getting me a NEW COMPUTER! I am a proud owner of a Macbook Pro and therefore catching up on 8 months of blogging after my laptop crashed on me. I felt very spoiled.

4th of July

The kids spent the evening with their Dad on the 4th of July so we enjoyed some daytime fireworks.  We stopped at a firework stand and got one of each parachute firework they had..and smoke bombs of course.

 Our neighborhood went crazy with fireworks at night. It was a perfect summer night, Russ and I enjoyed walking through the neighborhood and taking in the evening.