Movie: P.S. I Love You
http://psiloveyoumovie.warnerbros.com/
A movie that will make you happy and sad all at the same time.
CookBooks:
Lots of good information and pictures. I just got this one so I haven't tried many of the recipes yet.
Easy, yummy recipes!
CD: Sugarland -Love on the Inside
Andy surprised me with this cd recently. This cd makes long car rides much more enjoyable and I love the bonus live tracks. I did not want to skip any of the songs the first time through it! Now I have favorites that I skip around to listen to.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
I am sitting on my fabulous couch enjoying my last few days before rejoining the working world. It is funny to me that before the days at home went by so slowly with me counting the hours until Andy would be home from work and now they go by so fast as I look around at all of the things that I want to get accomplished between now and then.
I will be working as a social worker at a kidney center with dialysis patients. I am excited and nervous about the new job because it is completely different than what I have been doing in the past. I have a lot of different feelings because I felt like child welfare was my calling and now I will not be involved in child welfare at all unless I am able to do some volunteer work which is my hope, but I also want to get started on LCSW supervision so I do not know how much time I will have. Although I feel on the one hand like I have abandoned my calling on the other hand I have a sense of relief, because I will not have to make such huge decision as what adoptive family should a child be paced with or does this child need to be removed or are they safe at home. As a case-manager I was constantly having to question whether or not I could trust people. I will definitely miss just hanging out with all my kids. We will see how it goes at CKC once I get started. I have to believe that was the right choice because of the way everything fell into place.
I went to my parent's house for a few days last week to visit with my great aunt from PA. It was nice to spend time with my family other than what is normally a very quick weekend visit. My aunt makes fabulous homemade bread and cinnamon rolls, which was an added bonus. As I result of the trip I now have more boxes to unpack and figure out where to put remnants of my childhood and teenage years. I don't have as much as I was hoping to bring though because my mom is somewhat reluctant to let me take things as she is concerned that I will throw every thing away. As I look over things it makes me think about parts of me I am glad that I outgrew and other parts of me that I want to work on bringing back. I guess I just want to keep striving to become the person I was put here to be and not grow complacent and lazy.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Home Depot put paint on sale over Labor Day (actually a stupid rebate thing) and we bought in. Jess had been looking at paint chips for a while and picked out Liberty for the dinning room, Colorado Springs for the master bedroom and Tate Olive for the main guest bedroom.
Just remember-- you can't spell paint without pain!
Dinning Room Before
Dinning room after
Guest before (after putty and sanding)
Guest after ... or during
Master before
Master After
No painting project has ever been perfect. Here are a few goof ups, including Jess's footprint,
Toe vs. Hammer and the Tennessee Blue-tail dog. The pictures pretty much explain themselves.
Our dads helped us with a few projects right off the bat at the house. I built this door so the crawl space wouldn't turn into a dog house. My dad hung it. The fact that any door ever closes is a miracle to me.
The fathers also wired and mounted motion-sensing lights for us.
Though the house has plenty of space we decided to put some shelving up in the top of Jess's closet. We went to the world's longest yard sale and bought some white wire shelving for 50 cents.
Then we got the anchors and hardware an
d put it u
p.
We were given this bedroom furniture by my parents. It's been around a while (I believe it has marks on it from mine and Adam's baby bottles). We decided that instead of buying new furniture we would paint it and get new hardware. We were happy with the way it turned out.
Before
During
After
The only problem is that our nightstand now smiles at us.
Wrigley and O'malley love chasing squirrels and digging.
The dogs treed a possum. Or fenced him. Whatever.
Wrigley brought this nasty thing inside and tried to eat it. I saw one outside and thought it was a humming bird. It's much bigger than my thumb. Can anyone identify it? Should I be worried about them flying off with Jess?
The house has a detached garage and out building. It is a one car garage on asphalt and two other decently sized rooms attached on wood. Plenty of room for extra stuff. Especially extra stuff with blades and power cords attached. These photos are proof that at least one time all of the tools were in the right place.
(Dad if any of the tools look familiar it is purely by coincidence).
Friday, August 29, 2008
So I am gearing up for what I hope is going to be a holiday weekend spent painting and we have discovered that in at least two rooms the house-dwellers that came before us made the decision to paint over a wallpaper border that goes around the entire room. Seriously!! I am now trying to figure out what to do to remedy the situation. Wallpaper removal is no fun when it does'nt have layers of paint over it. I am open to suggestions! I am also perplexed as to how we have lived in the house almost a month before noticing it and now every-time I enter the rooms with said wallpaper it really irritates me.
Other discoveries that I made this week:
Wrigley has random white hairs growing in the middle of her back
Andy has random hairs...just kidding
Corn pudding sounds weird, but tastes really good
Good, honest people still exist- someone returned my lost wallet to the hospital security guard and it had everything in it
Something I do not understand:
I had an interview at the hospital and I had to pay to park. I understand the purpose of paying to park at other areas around town, but is it really necessary at the hospital? I mean unless you are going to the hospital to give birth, there aren't too many other reasons that you really want to go to the hospital. I just hate to think that people who came to the hospital and the attached medical mall and already are facing whatever news the doctors had to give them or they are visiting sick friends and family and then for the icing on the cake they get to pay as they leave. It just doesn't make sense to me. They are already paying the physicians for goodness sake.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Andy and I moved into our new home the first weekend of August and we are enjoying learning about it and our new surroundings. I am in the midst of a difficult job search that I did not anticipate to take this long. I have only had two interviews despite the 15-20 jobs that I have applied for. I do not envy those who have filled out multiple school applications. I completed one for a school social work position and it took hours!
My first interview was very strange. It started off with a female who appeared about my age and who did not even tell what her title was saying to me, " I had a picture in my head of what you would look like from talking to you on the phone and you do not look anything like that." I am unsure if that was good or not. My second interview with another company went better, but I sill still have to go in for another interview, when they call me.
Things I love about Chattanooga:
Walking across the pedestrian bridge, downtown and Coolidge Park
Being surrounded by mountains
Having a grocery store minutes away
The backyard
Wrigley's new habit of collecting sticks on the back deck
Watching O'Malley and Wrigley chase each other
Clumpies Ice cream
How fast Andy can get home from work
I am looking forward to shopping once I have a job! There are so many options!
I can't wait to add more things to the list as we explore more. Right now we are sticking pretty close the the house and giving it our personal touches. I can't wait until we put some paint on the walls.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
We replaced the oven hood ... or did we. There was a cream-colored hood over the oven before. Replacement hoods were $40 to $50. Primer and appliance paint was only $8. I think it looks much better.
By the way, notice the two layers of awesome old wallpaper.
We were happy with the finished project for $8 and an hour and a half of work. 
Here are a few before after and during photos from when we changed out the door locks last weekend.
You may see a recurring theme here: Jess doesn't like gold/brass stuff.
And the finished product. All of the locks have been re-keyed.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Here's a link to a good explanation of what those numbers mean on the fertilizer bags.
I just ran across a great site for grass information. It's got pictures and great descriptions of the various types of grass.
The site is called Americanlawns.com and I will definitely be using it later on. I think that in Alabama, Georgia or S.C. Bermuda sounds good because it is drought tolerant.
St. Augustine seems to be better for the coast though, but I don't like the way it looks.
-aj
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