peachykeen0419

My house is coming together. We're getting things organized slowly but surely. I'm eager to see what The Boy has gotten done today.

We finally found a bookshelf that is suitable for Greg's gaming books. You would not believe what a nightmare that has been. It's hard finding something that is sturday enough to support those heavy books - regular inexpensive, particle-board, assemble-yourselves bookshelves bow under the weight. It's also been hard finding something with 12-inch shelves. Absolutely ridiculous how many bookshelves do not give clearance for this common book size. But we finally found one at Manards. A little more expenseive than we were hoping, but probably worth it in the end of just get it all organized. And it's a nice shelf. I'm kind of jealous, actually, that the gaming books get this very nice shelf made of real wood that isn't likely to tip over while my books get the less-nice shelves. Oh well.

Dustin took me to Sam's Club last night to buy supplies for the housewarming party. I haven't been to Sam's since I was about 5 years old. It was amazing. So much stuff! I probably had way too much fun there. Most exciting of all was in the liquor department where we found this:



It's a rifle. Filled with tequila. It was amazing. I did not purchase it as it was $50 and I was already spending a small fortune on party supplies, but...wow. Covet.

I'm getting super excited about the housewarming party. I'm so excited to have people over! Not that people haven't been to the house, but somehow the party makes everything official. And I'm anxious to have the house clean. I don't expect every little thing to be unpacked and organized, but it will definiely be in better shape. That's actually one of the reasons why I wanted to have the party and why we set it up so quickly: To give me a deadline to get some of this done.

Speaking of housewarming, my parents got us a super-awesome housewarming present: A TV! For the record, this is waaaaay more present than I was expecing from anyone (not that I expect people to bring presents, because I don't - gifts are always optional - but you get where I'm going with this). But my dad does work in the industry and probably got it for a steal. And I'm super excited about it! It means that we finally have a flat-screen and if we want we can get high-def. Huzzah!

Have I mentioned that I'm super eager to go furniture shopping?

In other news, I get to help hire our new person in the children's department. I sat in on interviews and get to give input. I feel very important now.

It's been another eventful weekend. :)

Ashley's baby shower was on Saturday. That was fun. Yay for cute baby things. It was also the first time that I'd seen their new house, so that was exciting. And I thought it was so smart to have the shower at home so that they didn't have to transport the gifts.

Sunday The Boy and I were busy, productive homeowners. Greg mowed the lawn and then we got cracking on some work in the bathroom. The sliding shower doors have been removed and we hung new towel bars/rings on the walls. I was super excited about using the drill. :) We also installed one of those tension rods with baskets to hold soap and shampoo and such in the shower. Just need to get the wrinkles out of the shower curtin so we can hang it and put the curtins up on the window. And eventually I'll cash in my birthday present and we'll redo the floors.

Unfortunately, all of the bathroom work meant that I wasn't able to go to Sunday knitting. Boo hiss. I'd been looking forward to that. But there was a lot of work to do, and honestly I don't have a project to work on right now anyway.

We stumbled upon a garage sale on one of our trips to Menards and spent $15 on a recliner for the family rooms. So now people can sit in there and have a real conversation. And the chair is clearly old and used, but only has one tiny rip and seems fairly clean. Score. It'll do until we can afford new furniture.

I'm getting super excited about out housewarming party next weekend. I'm thrilled at the idea of having the house clean and having people over. Yay!

On occasion my husband is a fucking idiot. And that's all I have to say about that.

Had a lovely weekend. Unfortunately it was over too quickly.

On Saturday we finally got the kitchen walls finished! After color #1 was too yellow and color #2 was too white we decided that we had nothing to loose and mixed a bit of color #1 with all of color #2 and threw in a bit of the living room color to create something that we could work with. Greg got the color up on the walls while I was a work on Saturday - go him! It's stippled on two walls in the kitchen (the ones without cabinets) and I think it looks nice. Just need to get some artwork on the walls to complete the room.

Saturday evening after I got off of work I realized that I still needed a Mother's Day gift for my mom, so it was off to the mall. As we were wandering around Williams-Sonoma and lusting after mini muffin trays (for me, not for my mom), The Boy spotted something amazing: A tin Star Wars lunch box complete with Millenium Falcon and Tie Fighter sandwich cutters. Score! Happy Not-Yet-A-Mother's Day to me!

Sunday was Mother's Day and to celebrate the entire Bierbaum clan got tickets to the Brewers' game. We tailgated for several hours before heading in for the game. We lost, unfortunately, but we had fun anyway. And me, my sister, and the little girls made it up on the scoreboard between innings, so that was kind of awesome. Excellent good times.

Greg has been working his way through all of the Marvel movies, and the two of us watched Thor when we came home. That was nice. Chris Hemsworth is so pretty. Made for a very plasant movie-watching experience. *swoon* Hot actors aside, I actually liked the movie. I didn't know that Thor was a comic book thing until very recently so it was interesting to see this take on things.

In other news, I'm currently working my way through the Fullmetal Alchemist manga. Really enjoying it so far. Would eventually like to get my hands on the anime. It's nice because as I'm reading the manga I can really visualize it on the TV screen. Can't do that with all manga; sometimes the flow is too awkward to really picture where episode breaks would be and such. But I'm really likeing this one. Trying to remember who it was who said that they didn't like it in college. Was it Gretchen? Or Kirsten? Both, perhaps? Neither? I can't recall.

1) Finish the Famous Racing Sausages 5K
2) Find another 5K to sign up for. Sign up for and complete it.
3) Visit and/or be visited by Alaina.
4) Get new furniture for the living/family room - sofa, loveseat, chairs.
5) Get some money into savings. I have a number in mind.
6) Loose some weight. I have a number in mind.
7) Visit Cafe Vino.
8) Visit O'Brady's Irish Pub.
9) Go to a concert.
10) Put up some curtins in all rooms
11) Connect my Wii to the Internet so I can download stuff, etc.
12) Download Ocarina of Time. Play and beat the game.
13) Go for a walk or bike ride down the Bugline Trail.
14) Complete my Crafty Christmas project before December - no last-minute scrambling.
15) Go to the zoo.
16) Go to the art museum - either the one in Milwaukee or the one in Chicago.
17) Acquire a khaki skirt.
18) Acquire a non-ugly, non-transparent white blouse.
19) Pay off my credit card.
20) Get dressed up for a "fancy" night out.
21) Make a fancy fruit tart.
22) Sort through photos. Get them into albums.
23) Go to State Fair.
24) Find a way to prepare oatmeal that I enjoy. Preferably one that is quick and easy.
25) Discover a local yarn shop (LYS).

Greg tried to mow the lawn last night (because, you know, we have to do that now) and couldn't get the mower to start. He hadn't been able to get it to start over the weekend either. I, who have never in my life mowed a lawn, watched him try to do it once and was able to tell him what he was doing wrong. He was able to start it just fine after I showed him how. Go me!

Also, I went for a run last night. Twice around my block, which is a little over a mile in total. Felt okay while I was doing it, but my quads are very stiff today. Clearly my body is out of practice. But with some stretching and a little conditoning my body should be ready to really run soon.

Last year I once again made a list of goals to accomplish before my birthday. Let's see how I did:

( Goals! )

I think I did pretty well this year! I feel pretty pleased with myself. New set of goals will be coming soon.

Greg and I have ambitions to strip wallpaper and paint the kitchen this weekend. We'll see how that goes. I have a feeling that it's going to be a long, exhausting process. I'm also a bit anxious about what colors to use in the kitchen. I had a color scheme more or less planned out before the move, but then when we got paint on the living room walls the main color turned out a lot more yellow than expected. I love the color, don't get me wrong. But it makes me a bit anxious about putting more yellow up in the kitchen. Not sure what to do. My best idea involves a base in a lighter off-white color (it's got hints of yellow) and accents in a yellow (my original thought for the base) and the darker color we used in the living room. The idea with this is that the white would lighten up the room quite a bit and help it stand out from the darker living/dining room, but the yellow accents would give the room the punch it needs.

I'm also desperate to go shopping for new furniture. Too bad I don't have any money for such things. :(

Three big firsts at the house last night:

1) We ate our first meal at the table in the dining room. We hadn't set the table up yet because we'd been working in that room with paint, etc., but we finally got it set up yesterday. It looks so nice! You have no idea how grown-up I felt eating dinner in a space specifically designated for such purposes.

2) We sarted our first fire in the fireplace. Greg still doesn't like that it's gas instead of wood-burning, but c'est la vie. We'll add retrofitting the fireplace back to wood-burning (it was originally wood-burning, but was converted to gas) to the list of home improvements to tackle down the road.

3) We had a neighbor visit us! Technically Greg has also met a couple of other neighbors at random, but this is the first one that I have met. Also, they were very nice and even brought us cookies. Chocolate chip cookies with oats and (we think) corn flakes. It's a fascinating texture symphony.

Meanwhile the house is slowly coming together. I'm starting to get books on the shelves and such. It's almost overwhelming just how much space we have in the house - therefore we have a million options for storage. We have plans to strip the wallpaper and paint the kitchen this weekend.

Plans are also in the works for a housewarming party. The big debate is if we should have one big party (90 invited guests!) or two smaller (but still large!) parties. I didn't think that the invite list would be so big, but it turns out that we have a lot of friends and family. And shoot, now that I think about it I think we forgot a branch of the family so now the list is going to get bigger! It's practically like our wedding guest list all over again. Ridiculous. But at the same time, I really do want to throw a big party and show off the house...

A strange thing: Last year I trained for a half-marathon. I went from almost no exercise to fairly regular strenuous exercise, from barely being able to jog for 10 minutes to running 13.1 miles. I gained lots of muscle tone and stamina, but didn't loose a single pound. This year I bought a house and sat on my butt in a car for 3 hours a day. I lost about 8 pounds. Go figure.

I have yet to unpack the scale, so I haven't weighed myself since the move. I'm afraid that I'll have regained all of that weight in that time. Not that I'm super excited about the fact that stress took so much of a toll on my body (I'm not), but still...