Thanksgiving

I feel like it's so easy to skip over thanksgiving this year - and head straight into Christmas. Maybe it's becasue we aren't traveling for any holidays this year, so I'm especially excited about decorating our whole house (for the first time) for Christmas.

While watching an episode of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, Johnny Cash (guest staring) sang this song, which I'd never heard before. I really enjoyed it and hope you do to! It will end up as a Facebook status soon, I'm sure.

We've come to the time in the season
When family and friends gather near
To offer a prayer of Thanksgiving
For blessings we've known through the year
To join hands and thank the creator
And now when Thanksgiving is due
This year when I count my blessings
I'm thanking the Lord He made you

I'm grateful for the laughter of children
The sun and the wind and the rain
The color of blue in your sweet eyes
The sight of a high ball and train
The moon rise over a prairie
Old love that you've made new
This year when I count my blessings
I'm thanking the Lord He made you

And when the time comes to be going
It won't be in sorrow and tear
I'll kiss you goodbye and I'll go on my way
Grateful for all of the years
I thank for all that you gave me
For teaching me what love can do
Thanksgiving day for the rest of my life
I'm thanking the Lord He made you

What's for Dinner?

Homemade Lasagna

This is the first time I've made lasagna and it got a very warm reception from Dave. We used some frozen red sauce made form his mom's recipe (his favorite), added some tomato sauce and italian sausage. Then noodles and cheese, in layers of course. 

Dave's reaction...."Mmm-mm-mmm!! Lasagna with no onions! All right, baby!" 

Win. 

Home Improvements

Three weeks ago, Dave finished sanding, staining, mounting the shelves for our library. 

Some close-ups of the finish. There's a lot of dust right now due to current home improvement project...

So they look great. Dave did a great job. :) We are waiting for some furniture to arrive to have a chest of drawers to go under the Map. And on the look out for a good comfy chair or chaise for secondary seating. And an old chest will be the coffee table. It should be very Old World... that's the goal...

Next project. laminate flooring in the living room/library. Here are some photos of the project in progress. 

Farewell carpet. 

Red plastic underlay installed. 

And right now David is busy pounding away to install the flooring. 

Hydroseeding: A pictorial summary

So some housing updates. About a month ago we had grass put in... kind of. It was going to be $2k for sod or $250 for hydroseeding. The cost benefit was what swung us. Sod is quick, (relatively) easy, and has instantaneous results. Plus no weeds. Hydroseeding is economical. That's about it. 

Hydroseeding is applied by spray. It is a mixture of newspaper product, chicken poop fertilizer, and seed. Tall Fescue is the variety we got. It's what the local nursery recommended. 

After application, we have an aqua colored carpet. It needed to be watered four times a day to keep the seed moist for it to sprout. Once it reached 1" we reduced watering to once a day. (And yes, we had our LOVELY neighbors call the Water Police on us again... But I'd already notified the city that we were restarting our lawn so we didn't get penalized. This time.)

This is Day 8 growth. 

This is day 21 growth. We probably will not be mowing our lawn until December. Which is fine. Because we don't have a lawn mower. 

Since we haven't been able to walk on the grass until this week, the inevitable weeds sprouted. The back yard is quite this weed zone... Definitely more weeds back there than in the front. A lot of nutgrass weed in the front and back, but I am choosing my battles and nutgrass is not one of them. I will be spending approximately 1-2 hours a day for the next week to try and get the weeds under control in the back yard. The back yard grew in thinner, so I want to throw out some extra seed to help fill the yard out - but not until there are "no" weeds ....  A lofty goal....

Nursery Mobile - Check!

Look what i found! 

And purchased.

I may spray paint some more color on to it, but it is awesome. 

Weekend(s) Update

Two weekends ago, tom and katie took us in their plane to Half Moon Bay for lunch. How posh, right??

Last weekend, Dave and I went to Pismo Beach to experience Splash!'s clam chowder. It was pretty good.

 Boo-san came along with us. He enjoyed walking on the boardwalk, by the ocean, and the car ride.

What's for Dinner?

I feel like we must eat pizza a lot since a lot of my What's for Dinner posts include pictures of pizzas... What makes this pizza different is its almost 100% organic ingredients. I made the tomato sauce from the tomatoes from our garden (Big Beef variety), the basil is from the garden, and the cherry tomatoes (Sunkiss Sweet variety) are also organically grown by Amy and I. The dough was homemade - Wrigley "Secret" Pizza Pi Recipe - and the cheese I bought. 

Pizza Pi!

Another organic item was homemade french fries made with potatoes from our garden. We used canola oil. They turned out to be basically exactly the same as In-and-Out fries. We refroze some fried ones and will attempt to refry them to make crispier fast-food style fries.

homemade french fries

 And once you've got the oil hot, what ELSE can you fry? We tried left over pizza dough. Basically came out like garlic knots. We sprinkled them with powdered sugar to make them dessert-like. If we fried dough again, we would try a different recipe because let's face it - pizza dough with powdered sugar isn't the best. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't wholly satisfying either.

fried pizza dough

Any suggestions for what to fry next??

Nursery Preview

Here's what we've got going for us. Nice wall art, to be framed sometime soon, warm honey crib, perfectly corresponding chevron pillow.

A nice little bookshelf, filled with Noah's library. There will be a glider under the windows, with dark blue curtains. 

Westin Lee and I. My friend had her baby yesterday, so here's me and an 18 hour old baby. I even swaddled him and he stopped crying! It was amazing. 

House Photos

Can't remember if I posted some home photos or not, but if i did, here are some added ones too...

kitchen - no changes, except we have new appliances now. 

painting the guest room.... lime green to khaki. 

finished guest room - see the tape around the window ledge? The room was the exact same color as the Frog Tape. 

Nursery room. No more black and orange stripes...

enlisting the help of some friends to paint the hallway. And we painted our initials. :)

It's a very long hallway. 

New washer and dryer! Same brand, different models = cheaper price.
They sing to me when they are done with the cycle. 

Floor project! Begone stained carpet! Welcome Pergo!

New rug. Dave says, "Why'd we put in new floors if we are just going to cover it with a rug?" Because this rug is cool! And adventurous... White rug? Pets? Kids? Life? We'll see how long it lasts. 

The Gallery. aka the hallway with our Academy prints. 

Murphy's Law

Murphy's Law states, "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Stipulation: "Most likely to occur when your husband is away."

We bought a new stove and gas dryer on Saturday, with the thought that Dave would install the gas appliances himself to save us $300.  I know nothing about installing gas appliances but Dave thought we'd get them delivered on Sunday so he could do it... obviously that didn't happen since Dave was on a plane Monday morning at 8am. So here I am, on my fourth trip to Lowe's to figure it all out. I did install it all, but then I felt like I was smelling gas, so I uninstalled the gas lines, just for peace of mind. I bought an electric gas leak detector and sure enough, it came up with a leak. I am glad I was cautious and trusted my instincts, but i am really ready just to be able to use the stove! 

The washer/dryer is a separate story. The gas line looked too short to reach the gas input on the dryer in order for the appliances to be installed so the doors wouldn't open towards each other. So they tried to do me a favor by putting them in a more user friendly layout. The issue arose when I tried to connect the gas line. I couldn't pull out the washer enough to connect the line, and then the end that connected to the dryer was too far away. I went back to Lowe's (after sitting on hold with the store operator and being transferred unsuccessfully five times) and arranged for the delivery guys to come back out and switch the units so that the hose could be connected. The guys who delivered the washer/dryer took pity on me and installed the gas line for me, which they aren't legally supposed to do. So at last/at least I got caught up on laundry and had clean sheets to sleep in. 

The stove is still sitting askew. But I am realllllly tired of moving to stove in and out, which isn't easy 5mo pregnant! However, I do not want to be inhaling gas... Another trip to Lowe's is in the future today, after my cold shower, to load up on supplies and attempt again. If I can't get a secure connection I am going to live without a stove until Friday at 11pm at which point Dave will return home and be forced immediately into manual labor. 

And then the water heater just randomly stopped working..... !?!?! baahhhhh. The home warranty hasn't been paid for with escrow yet, and can take up to 30 days, so I couldn't use any of the automated prompts to schedule the repair. And then when I finally had a customer service rep schedule it, the company they scheduled me for doesn't work on tankless systems. So then, again can't schedule through automated systems, so I have to do the whole waiting-on-hold-screaming-account-numbers-into-the-phone game to get them to reschedule with another company. 


But at least the painting is done.


Almost. 

The STAR WARS Nursery - Art

Welp. Dave and I decided to do it - to go with a Star Wars themed nursery. But we didn't want any of that new-era Star Wars stuff in it - No clones, no Boba Fett, and certainly no Anikin. We also don't want it to be scary, so there's no Darth Vader and no Jawa or aliens. We also didn't want it to be trite. So there's no Star Wars logo. That's rather a lot of limitations. Thank the Lord for Etsy! Here's the art work we've picked out. And seeing it all together like this makes me very excited for it. 

C3P0

Retro artistic movie posters for the three original films

R2D2

And for added nerdiness, I am planning on a TARDIS to make an appearance as well, to pull out that blue from R2. 

The baby liked what we've picked out, too - he was literally doing kick-flips while we browsed. He even gave Dave a high-five/foot-pound. I think he likes it already.

Poor Boo

Slider lost a toe nail sometime Saturday. It was still attached but fully severed all the way up to his paw. OUCH. He went to the vet, and $300 later, he is infection free and has a boot.

Dave is now calling him Boot-san. Or Slider-Boot. Haha. 

Sarah's Wedding

Dave and I were able to attend Sarah's wedding in June. It's the first wedding in three years that we've a) been able to attend b) been able to attend together c) that dave's worn a suit instead of a uniform. I was lucky to spend some time with some friends from college while we were there. So happy for Sarah and Brad!! 

Audra and I

Dave and I. Doesn't he look spiffy in a tie?

Audra, the bride, Sarsar, Whitney, and I. 

Sarsar and I. So beautiful!

What's for Dinner?

Lemon pasta with fresh cherry tomatoes and asparagus. With cheese.

Beaucoup veggies. Farm-stand-fresh sweet corn, steamed broccoli and a salad.

beef kebabs sooo good

Dave's favorite: Cluck-U Chicken. 

Hearst Castle

Hearst Castle was built in the 1920s-1930s by a man who sought to create Europe in rural California. This "house" was actually lived in and used. The amount and type of antiquities Hearst used to furnish his house is baffling.

Original Baroque ceiling panels

Authentic Roman mosaic floor.

the swimming pool, modeled after Greek bath houses