Winter Blues

This winter has been crazy here in Iowa (and many other parts of the country!). Since the middle of November, I think there has only been one week where I made it to work every day and didn't spend a day or two at home because of bad weather. I don't mind working from home a day a week, but there have been weeks where I spent 3 days in a row snowed in! This week we had ice. It built up on everything, and all the tree branches are coming down and knocking out power. We lost power for about an hour yesterday, but have been ok since then. Yesterday all the schools in the area were closed because of the ice. Today, some were closed because they did not have power. I decided to walk the two blocks to the post office today (I figured it would take longer to get the ice off my car), and took some pictures.

Here is a close-up of some berries on a bush down the road:And here is what that same bush looks like above the sidewalk. Generally, you can actually walk down the sidewalk.
These are the bushes between our yard and the road.

Here is our house and all the trees. You can see a pile of limbs already in the yard:

And here is where we park our cars. Yesterday I moved the cars to the church lot behind us, where there aren't trees. I'm glad I did, because all the branches in the picture below fell directly on to the spot where my car was parked. Someone moved them off to the side of the road before I had a chance to get out there.

Fresh Bathroom!

Yesterday after I finished the second coat of paint, I decided I wanted to put down the new floor, because it was a shame to have that ugly floor with such beautiful walls! Because we only have the one bathroom, and we had to take out the toilet, we were stuck either holding it or walking down the block to Casey's...I didn't have to take a walk, but I was thisclose!

In this picture you can see the old, yellow stained floor next to the new, clean floor.

And here I am after the floor was in, and the toilet was put back in. I was installing the edging between the tub and the floor.

And finally, some shots of the (pretty much) finished bathroom. We still have to put back in the shelves behind the toilet, but that's about it. It is very difficult to take good pictures in such a small room, but these aren't too bad!

Bathroom Part 2

We borrowed a saw from a friends, and used out "outdoor work station" to trim some paneling to fix the side of the cabinet facing the tub. All the laminate was coming off, so we had to attach this to it to make a nice surface to paint.We used construction glue to attach the laminate back on...only it was coming loose before the glue dried. So of course we turned to a worker's best friend to hold it in place while the glue dried---duct tape! In the end, that didn't work so well either, so I ended up using wood screws to keep it in place.
Saturday night we got the first coat of green on the wall, and the first coat of white on all the trim and on the cupboards.

We bought drawer pulls, and since the drawers and fully painted and dry, we put them on, and that part is done!

This is our living room work station.

Renovationg would be a lot more convenient if we had a garage, or a nicer basement.

Bathroom Update

This weekend Scott and I are doing some updating on the bathroom. We're going to paint it a nice color, and paint the cupboards, and then put down flooring (peel and stick tile). We don't want to do major renovation, just cosmetic updates.

Last night we were prepping by cleaning, filling in holes, etc. There was 4 inch plastic edging on the floor, and we decided to take that off to paint. In this picture, you'll notice that a couple of the walls are laminate--i think that is where the chimney used to be in the house. As I was taking off the floor edging, we discovered that the laminate was glued on, and the glue is very old and no longer sticky, so the whole laminate piece was coming loose! So this morning before we start painting, we are going to glue the laminate back on. Scott put in a new drain and put new handles on the sink last night also:

This morning Scott went to a men's breakfast at church, and I primed all the cupboard doors and drawers.

Now we're fixing some laminate on the side of the cupboard, and we're going to fix the laminate, and then we can finally start to primer everything, and maybe we'll even get to paint today!

Falling behind...

I see that I am falling behind in my blog. We have been doing some fun things, and there are pictures to prove it...but my camera finally bit the dust a few months ago, and all the pictures are now on Scott's camera. It's harder to steal his camera away for a while to update the blog, so I just haven't gotten around to it.

Here are a couple Christmas pictures. On Christmas Eve, Travis and Jacob came over and we played Wii and Karaoke until about 3am. Travis ended up sleeping in our spare room. On Christmas morning we laughed that it was our first Christmas together as a couple, and we were so happy Trav was there to share it with us! So we took this picture:

After getting ready, we took a more serious Christmas picture. We then went to my parents house for lunch--it was a smaller crowd, as the Cutlers and the Klinges were visiting the other sides of their families. We had a good time with them.

This past weekend, Scott and I went to Iowa City for the weekend to celebrate our 1 year Anniversary! We did some shopping, watched the Iowa Hawkeye's men's basketball team get creamated by Michigan State, attended Parkview Church (where I went during grad school) on Sunday, and even ate at some of my favorite restaurants. I also had my first HuHot's eating experience, which was wonderful, but in hindsight, one time through the line would have sufficed. :)

This coming weekend we are planning to start re-doing the bathroom. Before and after pictures will be coming!