Alaska 2010

Alaskan Cruise on Holland America's Rotterdam, August 28 - September 4, 2010 out of Seattle, WA. Ports of call were Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan, AK, and Victoria, BC. We saw humpback whales, grey whales, dolphins, sea lions, sea otters, seals, one deer, bald eagles, seagulls, and black bears. An amazing trip!

curb appeal

let's see .... i moved into this house in september and about that time is when the big tree in the front yard was removed. since then there's been a big mound of mulch in the yard which some joked as being my compost pile.

months later i finally got an idea. i took the rocks that bordered the two flowerbeds previously and made a new flowerbed out of the tree mound. now if i can just keep the colorful flowers alive for a little while, my efforts will be worth it. :-)

greener pastures, maybe?

i was offered a position with the county last week. my friend, Dot, works as the tax collector assessor and needed another helper in her office so i applied. about a month later she offered me the job and i accepted. so last monday i turned in my two-week notice to a mostly un-curious boss. friday is my last day, thank goodness. i tell you what, to work in a place where no one cares about your doings, it's all very strange and i still haven't gotten used to it even after nearly 2 years.

next week i'll be in the northwest with my mom for vacation. we've had that planned for a while now. and the day after i return from vacation i'll drive to San Antonio with my new coworkers for a 2-day seminar. June 10 will be my first day in my new office.

so what will i be doing? well, i'll be working with the public nearly all day, every day, with three other ladies. i'll help the people register their vehicles with the state, give them license plates, handicap permits, process titles, and many other things i have no clue about yet. it'll be completely different than anything i've done before. kind of a mix between office and fast food cultures.

i'm a bit nervous about the learning curve, but i'm a fast learner so i should be alright. i hope. wish me luck! :-)

let there be light and functionality!

check it out. i finally have a new kitchen! i started this project about a month ago. the cabinets arrived and sat in my garage. i emptied the kitchen of all the dishes and food and then hired a contractor to come in and tear it up. it took about 10 days and a lot of work, but it's finally finished and now re-organized. yay! click on the pictures to enlarge and get a good look. :-)

shutters

here's a small update. basically January was a fast and non-productive month. not only did i need a rest from remodeling, but i also got sick twice. but now that February is almost over, i best get busy.

here's the house without the shutters mom and i put up last sunday...

after the shutters...

and then after i cleaned up the flowerbeds and Andy the lawn guy mowed the yard for me...


the plan is to put a couple of raised flowerbeds with retaining wall blocks on either side of the porch. i think that'll be prettier than just in the ground beds, and it'll help improve the rain sliding into the house because of the slope of the yard.

AND, notice the new front door! here was the old one...

i actually LIKED the front door that was there, as for the color, but the large window allowed even the shortest of people to peek in on me at any time. and the door itself didn't exactly fit the frame, so there were gaps that allowed air and bugs to roam freely.

Merry Christmas to me!

and to you, by the way. and Happy New Year, too! i hope you and yours had blessed holidays.

but really this post is dedicated to bathrooms. one in particular, of course. over Christmas i remodeled the bathroom with the help of a motivated Colorado friend. here, let me introduce you to my bathroom on the day i received the keys...

at first glance it's not so bad. but when you're sitting on the toilet looking around for more than one minute, you notice things. that's what i did, every day, for the last 4 months. i looked around as i was taking care of business and noticed things. old things. new things. ugly things. and hated it.

and even though i tried to dress it up temporarily with a new sink and vanity and previously owned accessories, i still hated it. it was just ugly. and boring. and needed something. ANYthing!

and here was the closet on the first day. GROSS! i hated that too, so i immediately tore it all out with mom's help. which turns out was a bit of a hasty mistake, seeing as how i NEEDED a closet to store stuff, but the boxes that stuff had lived in for the last two years continued to work just fine.

but then my friend came for Christmas. not only did she bring delicious cookies, she brought love, motivation, and encouragement. first we re-built the closet shelves (because i'd recently finished drywalling and painting the closet). then we tackled the bathroom ugliness with texture and paint and new furnishings i'd recently picked out. and voila! i now have a new old bathroom. yay! :-)

and to boot, as a house-warming present my aunt & uncle bought me a new toilet! yes, i believe the original was still in the house. it had a stamp of 1942 in the tank and was sealed with rusted bolts, so i'm fairly certain it was time to replace the old throne. this new one comes highly recommended and adorns this blog recommended as well. Toto makes a fab toilet, water conservative and all. i think from the second i push the handle to the second it stops filling is about 20 seconds total. that's pretty fast! and it really does use very little water to do it all. that'll help in the summer when i'm using extra water for the yard!

thank you, Gae. and thank you Mom. and thank you Aunt Donna & Uncle Bob. you've all blessed my Christmas and New Year's greatly. :-)

snow? in Brenham?

yep, that's what they call this white stuff falling from the sky...

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

when mom and i were putting up the Christmas tree in my newly finished front room/office/sunroom/Christmas room, we were humming songs like "O Christmas Tree", "Santa Clause is Coming to Town" and "Let it Snow". little did we know the very next day it would ACTUALLY snow. in Brenham, Texas. where it maybe snows once every ten years (that might be an exaggeration, but in my lifetime of living in Brenham, it snowed twice when i was a kid, that i can remember, and once as an adult).

check it out. this is the back of the house when i got home from work. after i took these pictures it snowed a lot more before ceasing.

front of the house. hey, notice the two newly built windows! :-) and that mound that some say looks like a compost pile, that used to be a very large tree.

after it turned dark. pretty, huh? see my Christmas tree all lit up?

Here was my closet. Actually, this is the closet in the second bedroom, but my closet looked just like it, except the wood was brown and covered with old canvas wallpaper stuff. But basically it consisted of a hole in the wall with one closet rod and a shelf above that and wood and nails and a yucky musty smell.

and this is my closet NOW, after drywall and a "closet system" i bought at Lowes. It consists of a shelf thing and three rods.

it's still small, mind you, but at least it's finished and clean and organized and doesn't smell like old wood. :-)

to plumb or not to plumb

THAT is the question i've been asking myself since i moved in. i finally decided "to plumb" was the answer. Monday night after work i got started right away on taking out the old wall sink that i hated from the moment i first looked at the house. not only was it ugly, it wasn't even level! because this was the first time i'd done anything like it, the whole project ended up taking three hours and two trips to the hardware store. but now i know how to do it and what to measure for the next time i ever decide to take on such a project. AND i'm proud of myself for having done it all on my own. and yes, in case you're wondering, it works wonderfully and no, it doesn't leak at all. :-)

BEFORE:

AFTER:

that's a glass sink sitting on a granite top, sitting on top of an espresso finish cabinet with one door that now opens to reveal the plumbing instead of the various items of personal hygiene i originally envisioned. the faucet is glass and brushed nickel and is called a waterfall faucet. it's cool. my grandmother may not like it, but i think it's cool and different and even a bit classy.

see the wall behind it? that's what the wall sink left behind for me to clean up/fix later. now that i know how to disconnect the plumbing, i can do that whenever i get ready to fix the drywall. considering the bathroom has several things i don't like about it regarding the walls, the whole thing will probably become a weekend project with me brushing my teeth in the kitchen, but that's ok. it'll be totally worth it in the end.

sweet little Harriet

is it a dog, a cat, or a baby??? seriously, sometimes i think this dog of mine is really a cat or a baby. look at her sleeping on the couch! she climbed up to the top of the cushion, but fell through a little. i guess she decided it was comfy enough, so she went to sleep. but as she slept, she fell through more and more until finally she was sleeping upside down! :-) she's a bugger to get to go to sleep sometimes, but once she does you can move her in any direction and she won't care. just like a baby!




and then there are the times when she decides she'll crawl all over you, no matter where her strong little paws land. she climbs up and over everything and jumps higher than i've ever seen any dog jump. she never moves away from your feet when you're walking. if anything she's right under foot and you better be aware of her otherwise YELP! and she even does that rubbing past your leg thing that cats do. i've even seen her stalk Ozzy, then take off running to pounce him to the ground in playfulness. and you should see her run! oh my goodness, just like a little greyhound or something. she's so fast! the other day the dogs got to running in the yard after each other. Harriet was making big circles, Ozzy running smaller ones, both running fast and furious and barking all the way. it was SUPER cute!

but what a little sweetheart she can be. she hugs your leg with her little "hands" and then looks at you with those little eyes. and she knows to get a treat she has to sit down, so as soon as ANY bag opens, her little butt hits the ground whether a treat is in store or not.

anyway.... it's been fun so far getting to know little Harriet. she has her issues, like possession aggression, or stealing, or running away. but still, she's a joy to have around, and i think Ozzy likes her enough. he's got company during the day now and is getting a little more exercise in the process. :-)

ramblings by Jenny

life continues here in Brenham. mom and i tore out the rest of the paneling in the front bedroom to reveal the extent of the termite damage. UGH! it's not pretty. pictures can't even capture the ugliness, but i'll post some later so you can sympathize with me. :-) saturday we moved my bedroom items to the other room so work can begin on fixing the front room. the plan is to drywall it, but the wood to which it would get nailed is pretty bad, so some of that might need to be replaced first. needless to say, it's a real mess, but i have some very nice manly friends from church who are going to come over on wednesday to help with that.

work continues on rotten windows, the garage, and laundry room. my part being nail hole filling, priming, painting, and hanging shelves. oh, i built a table, too, which sits between the washer and dryer to fold & sort clothes on. when i remember to take a picture of it, i'll post it. so many things!

the dogs are doing fine. Harriet got spayed and got both her rabies and city tags. she's feeling better and jingling all around. at night i take their collars off because when they move, the jingling wakes me up, and since i'm awake enough as it is, i don't need the extra help. this morning when i got out of the shower i could hear jingling. usually that's fine, but in this case not so much because i hadn't put their collars back on them yet. which means Harriet has at least one collar in her mouth. great. so i call her to come into the bathroom, which she does. when i finally made it to the bedroom, i found both collars in her bed. oh Harriet! in putting hers around her neck, i noticed part of the plastic of the clasp had been chewed off. *sigh* it still closed, but it'll need to be replaced far sooner than i had anticipated. oh well. next time the collars go UP to safety. darn puppy!

work is work. boring, but a job. the economy being what it is doesn't help the industry excel in sales. i think a lot of businesses are hurting. nothing is being talked about, at least not around me, but hopefully sales aren't TOO down. the Christmas party is coming up, which if you know me i'm super excited about (not!). nonetheless, i have a job, and i'm thankful.

in case you haven't noticed, Christmas is coming early this year. i think it'll be taking place this month instead of next. seriously! ok, if it's still in December, then WHY in the WORLD have all the stores already put their stock out by the middle of OCTOBER??? absolutely ridiculous! i tell you what, if i wasn't already a bah-humbug kinda gal, having Christmas in October would make me one! why should i even put a tree up at my house? all i have to do is go to ANY store every couple of days, and get my fill of decorations there! dragging that stuff out at home only to have to put it away a month later, please! why even bother? i wonder when the music is going to start this year? i'm so glad i've grown out of the stage of HAVING to have music on in the car or at home. Jingle Bells and Silent Night are going to drive me nuts this year. i can already tell. (for the record, i actually LIKE Christmas, i just don't like the MATERIALISM of Christmas.)

and what is with the gas prices??? one station here in town has it for $1.99 if you use a Valero card. wow! what a RELIEF, don't get me wrong! but man, why all of a sudden? because no one has any money left in their retirement funds? so now the fuel people feel sorry for us and are lowering the prices to a REASONABLE amount that people can HOPEFULLY afford? i don't know. i don't get why, i just hope it continues to decrease. we can use all the help we can get.

and now for the touchy subject, the election. though i voted for McCain, i strongly believe Obama will win and i'm ok with it. the more this country continues to stray away from the godly foundation it was built on, the sooner the end of the world will come. and like it or not, i'm ready. i'm so ready for our time on this earth to be over. i wait with eager anticipation and a blessed hope for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. hurry and remove us from this yucky cursed place and take us to our eternal home of perfection!!!

modern conveniences

i really do tend to take a lot of things for granted. one of which is doing laundry in the confines of a clean, indoors area. call me spoiled, that's ok. but i like what i like. :-)

when i decided to buy this house, the thought of doing laundry in my garage with my new washer & dryer sitting on blocks of wood to be level and me standing with bugs and dirt at my feet was immediately tossed out of my mind as i began imagining and planning the addition of two walls and a door to make an actual laundry room. that was over a month ago.

finally, my vision has been fulfilled...

from this:

to this:

to this:


between the washer and dryer is a nicely painted window frame (no longer yellow!) and a long space to put a shelf so i can sort and fold my clothes on it. above the washer i'll put a cabinet for the detergent and other cleaning necessities, and maybe another cabinet over the dryer with a rod below it for hanging stuff up. on the long wall opposite the appliances i'll probably hang up my broom and mop and other items of that nature. the floor is now level and tiled nicely, there's a new window that actually opens, and there's a light fixture on the ceiling. it's wonderful to have modern conveniences, and it's even better to be able to use them comfortably.

awww....

last night when i went to bed, this is what i found. this is Ozzy's bed, mind you. but Harriet has curled up to sleep there, too.



when the camera flashed, she looked up to see what was going on. who could resist this sweet little face?!


but where IS Ozzy? oh, THERE he is! under his blanket, of course. "if only this other dog would be still, i could get some sleep!"



and there she found comfort and peace, and off to dreamland we went.



but this morning it was back to playing. it sounds ferocious, but looks so loving...

it's hard to tell from the angle, but they really are the same size, only she's just got longer legs and so can move a lot faster. little Ozzy has been really patient with her, despite the fact he can't get away from her. :-) i think they're going to get along just fine.