Some Randoms...

Here are my finished shelves and decorations in the dining room. My husband is awesome and made very nice little shelves for me, from scrap wood we had lying around, and he routed the edges and everything. I painted them black with acrylic paint and then put a clear varnish on them. I love them.

Goofy cat in the cupboard:

This cat sleeps in the WEIRDEST positions. This is not the weirdest I've seen, but the only one I've managed to get a picture of.

So, we wanted to get our backyard in at least decent shape before winter, because it's sort of turning to just dirt and we're afraid if we don't do anything, it'll be a big mud pit next spring and we'll have to really re-do everything. So we put a sprinkler out. Oops...left it on all night (that's gonna be expensive). This is our backyard now.

We've been working a LOT outside in the front yard this week. We planted four bushes, dug everything up for our garden (easier said than done, because it's kind of heavy soil with quite a bit of clay and a few rocks...also, extremely dry). We also made this awesome little corner in our yard. Isn't it great? I'm so happy with it. We planted dwarf daffodils around it as well, so we'll have some color next spring.

That's all for now!! Things are getting better and better every day.

House pictures: One month

One month later we have made so much progress. Everything is going great and I'm so happy with it all. Out of all the rooms, the kitchen and dining room have had the most attention.

We put in a new chandelier, filled in all the stucco walls, painted and added wainscoting to the dining room. Will helped me make the cute little shelf next to the picture on the wall, and there will be a matching one on the other side (hopefully tonight).

In the kitchen, we replaced the window and sill (now we just need to tear out the little addition so LIGHT comes through the new window), installed new countertops, changed the faucet, put in a tile backsplash, and fixed the gross hole underneath the sink. We still need to work on trim and edges, as well as a bit of paint touching up, but it's looking pretty good so far!

 I did the tiling almost all by myself. This corner was a bugger - I had to cut a LOT of tiles to make it work. It doesn't look so great in this picture because it was not grouted yet.

We pulled out that huge ceder bush in the front of our house, cut the rosebushes down to size, planted a little cherry tree (not in this picture) and started planning out our garden/landscaping for the front yard. And we lost one number on our house...well, I accidentally pulled it off and never put it back on. We didn't really lose it.

The living room. It's not even close to how I want it yet, but it's functional and not too bad!

I would post pictures of the two bedrooms upstairs, but the only real difference there is that they're painted. They're pretty boring, so I'll post those when we get a little farther along.

Lots more exciting changes coming up. :)

"We are Siamese if you please...we are Siamese if you don't please!"

One of the first things we wanted to do when we bought a house was get a kitten! ...Or two. About three weeks after we got the house, we went to the shelter to see what they had. We went in the evening, and it was too late to actually adopt a cat, but we found two that we really liked, so we decided to get them. The next morning, we went in again to get them, and there was a lady there with two tiny Siamese mix kittens. She saw us walk in and asked what we were looking for. We told her we wanted two kittens, and the ones she had happened to be her foster kittens - they had never lived in the shelter. They were found alone somewhere, biting and hissing, just a couple of weeks old. The foster "mother" took them in for the Humane Society and nursed them back to health. She said within 2 days of taking care of them they stopped any signs of aggression and became very friendly, cuddly cats.
We love them so much! One is a boy and one is a girl. Their names are Mia and Moe, but usually we call them Boy Kitty and Girl Kitty. I have no idea why. Kaylee loves them too, but they're not completely sure about her yet.

This is Moe. He's hard to get a good picture of, because he's very jumpy.

And here is Mia. She decided a mudding pan would be a great bed.

Yippee!!

The washer is hooked up!!!

...the dryer is not.

When we moved in, the laundry room (or what we were planning on using as the laundry room) was a kitchen, with no laundry hookups. We tore out the kitchen right away, but didn't get to hooking things up until later on. Will was able to turn the old sink connection into a washer connection. It took him a while and two trips to Lowe's because nothing would fit right, but he got it and it's great! There were washer and dryer hookups outside in a little addition on the side of the house. (They sure did a lot of weird things with this house.) The addition is right in front of the kitchen window, so we're going to tear that out as well, as soon as we get to it. Problem is, when they put the hookups out there, they also tore a big old hole in the brick wall. So not only do we have to get all the electrical lines back down to the basement, but we also have to patch the brick, which hopefully won't be too hard, but who knows.

Sneak peak:

This is the wainscoting that we're putting in our kitchen. I LOVE it! It's going to be so pretty when it's done.

Our "new" house pictures: Before

Will and I are officially homeowners as of three weeks ago. We bought a fixer-upper in the South-West Salt Lake area. I am SO excited about it! Sorry for taking so long to put pictures up - I just haven't been able to until today. Honestly, I have always wanted a fixer-upper. I love home projects, and turning something old and ugly into something beautiful. If you've ever seen any shows like "Flip that House", that is my favorite type of TV show. Our house is around 2200 square feet, with 6 bedrooms. (Yes, that is a ton of bedrooms for 3 people. BUT...there will be more people eventually, and I've always wanted a place for sewing!) Unfortunately there are a few things that have to wait to be fixed (such as the flooring) because we have a limited budget. Here are some pictures of the house:

This is the front of the house. Notice the 7 or 8-foot-tall rosebush.

 Here is the backyard. Nothing too special. Of course it needs work, just like everything else. There is, however, an apple tree that I am very excited about! I hope the apples are good for some pie making this fall.

This is *going* to be the master bedroom. They obviously didn't use it as one, but we've got some big plans for it!! (Tractors not included)

This is the bedroom right across from the master, and it will be Kaylee's room.

This is the living room. Lovely black marble flooring...in the living room, dining room, kitchen, hallway and bathroom. What were they thinking?!?

The kitchen left a little bit LOT to be desired. Greasy DISASTER. I don't know what these people did, but it was a mess. Everything was covered in grease. The countertops were falling off from rotting wood underneath.

Water damage? That's what I thought it was at first. Nope...grease stains.

This is...a chili pepper. Stuck to the ceiling.

The kitchen window - half broken out, covered with a piece of drywall, the other half covered in cardboard and spray paint.

This is the cupboard underneath the sink. There was a drip, and it certainly caused a little problem down there - tons of rotten wood, mold and mildew, and cockroaches. Gross!

The dining room. Should I keep that chandelier? The walls in the kitchen and dining room are all a lovely green stucco. Don't know why they wanted stucco inside their house, but whatever.

You know those little buckets of spackle? This was one BIG bucket of spackle - or at least what we used AS spackle, sort of. We used two of these buckets (5 gallon buckets) plus a box of top coat to fill in the stucco kitchen and dining room walls. That was a lot of work.

The ceiling in the living room was like a cave. Not because it was dark, but because it had hundreds and hundreds of stalactites.

 Here I am sanding them down!!

Will and me after an exhausting 3 hours of scraping and sanding.

This is a stain on the wall after 2 coats of primer and 1 coat of paint. It was fascinating - I would paint over it, and it would be gone. Then it would slowly reappear right before my eyes. Finally a coat of oil-based primer did the trick!

And of course..can't forget my little helper here. She watched me scrub the floors and then she decided to take a shot at it.

These last three weeks have been great! We have gotten so much done. No more pictures for now though, you will have to be patient to see the "one-month" pictures, then in a few months (maybe years...) the "after" pictures.

We love the neighborhood here. People are so friendly and nice. We're the worst house on the block and everyone is so excited to have us move in and start fixing it up. The ward on Sunday was especially welcoming - I have literally never felt so "wanted" before in my life! It's kind of an older community, but plenty of babies and kids as well. I think it's a good mixture. I really think this will be a great place for us to live! Stay tuned for more updates...

New Blog!!

My old blog (lizardg90.blogspot.com) is now retired. I decided it was time for a new URL, so here it is. I'll be updating soon, and overlapping a bit with my old blog. Thanks for reading!