Frustrations

I don't dislike winter, I really don't. I just kind of start to get tired of being cold and the constant static electricity shocks and being inside. I like snow, and ice skating, sledding, and skiing... unfortunately, I can't do that everyday.

Anyways... some what of a frustrating time of year for me.... And then we went and looked at a house yesterday and cleaned where R and S will be renting and I'm so glad I had something to scrub because I was so frustrated. *getting up on soapbox* Why are there so many old houses in such bad shape!?!? Seriously. It makes me angry. I'm not talking about old houses with green bathtubs and pink kitchen counters and peeling wallpaper. Structural stuff. And awful "remuddling" jobs.

The house we looked at was an old farmhouse, good location, exterior's in decent shape, good size rooms and decent layout, big garage. And the kitchen cabinets were falling apart, the soffit was poorly stained-to-match plywood boards, the peel and stick laminate wasn't sticking anymore all the way up the stairs, the bathroom has obvious plumbing issues, and the drywall. O man, the drywall. They screwed it on right over the lathe and plaster without bothering to take off any trim. Instead of doing it right and taking it down to the studs and saving money on heating/cooling and insulating before drywalling correctly... deep breath. The trim work they did do was bad (it's called a miter saw...the corners are supposed to match). Yeah. I'm not super knowledgeable about carpentry and stuff so when I can tell it's bad... it would be a great house if (and only if) you had enough cash on hand to gut the place and do it right. (I know, you could work on it slowly while you lived there, but seriously, all those gaps would drive me crazy. I'm a scientist. I can't help it. And it would take a lot of money that we don't have.) So that was disappointing.

We spent the evening helping clean at the old farm house that Rustin and Sharon are going to rent for awhile. It's in much better shape than the house we looked at, but still. It could be beautiful. But it's been rented/ empty/ bachelor pad for years. So instead, it's starting to crumble. (hooray for entropy!) *sigh* Like I said, it felt good to attack the rust in the tub. Work out all of my latent aggression and righteous anger towards those that let houses moulder and die. (dramatic, I know)

It just makes me mad... I would love an old house, preferably in the country. They have character. And style. Most newer houses are ranches which have no aesthetic value, or are "look-at-my-garage" houses. I wouldn't mind a bathroom with harvest gold tub/toilet/sink. Or a kitchen with blond wood cabinets. Or shag carpet. That's pretty easy to live with. But having to gut a place to make it comfortable to live in? Ridiculous. Why wouldn't you protect your investment by updating as you go? Both of the houses we were at last night would be worth well over 200k if they were well maintained. Instead, neither is worth much over 100k, and you'd spend a fortune fixing them up. Why!? Such a total waste.

I grew up in an old house. My great-grandparents built it during the depression. Great-grandma put in the insulation and sanded all the hardwood floors herself (and grandma subsequently covered them all with shag carpet- ah, the 60's and 70's). But it's in great shape. They've patched plaster when it needed it, and replaced windows and siding, and every room has been redone at least twice (sometimes more as evidenced by the layers of paint that come off with old wall paper. It's still not new, and definitely not up to code, but it's been cared for. Same with the house my mom grew up in. *sigh*

Anyway. I'll get off my soapbox now. Bob tells me I can't rescue every old house. haha. Poor guy. His eyes get really big when I start talking about fixing up houses. *grin* We're not really seriously looking for houses right now, we have plenty of space still... we've just gone to look a few times in the last year when interesting ones come on the market. However, if anybody wants to sell me a mouldering house with lots of potential for dirt cheap, I wouldn't say no! Or a few acres of your back pasture. That'd work too.

Blessings.

Thin ice

I was kind of a panz on Friday... short weeks just feel so much longer than regular weeks. I wanted to go to sewing club Thursday night, we hosted potluck Friday night, and I really didn't want to stay up super late to get ready after sewing club. So I took half the day off on Friday. Hooray for eating lunch at home and leisurely making the meat and setting the table. We had pork loin. I made two recipes, a really basic butter and onions in the crock pot and one Bob picked with cumin and cinnamon and brown sugar in the oven. They both turned out really good, the spicy one tasted almost Indian. I was just glad I didn't burn them and they weren't dry. It's been since before Christmas since we've had potluck so it was really good to be with them all again.

Saturday was a very lazy day... our house was clean, our fridge is full of leftovers.... no work for me! haha. Shelly and some of her friends went ice skating at Ron and Kary's so we joined them for a little bit. It was great. I love skating.


They didn't tell us it was just girls... poor Bob... all alone. Well, other than Ron who was clearing the ice off. :)

Something was funny... last year Shelly asked for "warm clothes" for Christmas so we got her a very useful reversible camo/ blaze orange neck gaiter. And Wendi-with-an-i looks cute as always.

Shelly tried to take our picture... we look funny....


I got a different shade for my lamp. I like it much better.

The geranium that we're keeping for Grandpa and Grandma Beutel is still going strong! Parts of it are looking a little scraggly, I should probably trim it a little bit. Hooray for fresh blooms in sub-zero temps! I love it!

COLD

... so cold that the synthetic fibers in my coat are below their glass transition temperature....

it crinkles.

You light up my life

Sooooo.... my lamp. I love it. It turned out pretty good, not perfect, but I don't mind a little "character." Actually, it probably turned out as good as it did because Bob helped me a lot. :)

Anyway, we built a tripod lamp, which is kind of non-traditional. But not super crazy... I've seen them in the Pottery Barn catalog a few times:

There are a bunch of different styles if you google "tripod lamp." They're all super expensive- like over $200 each. Maybe I'm just cheap, but that seems a little excessive for a lamp. :) And then I saw this lamp and really fell in love.... haha.I've found a few tutorials online with instructions on how to wire lamps and how to turn old tripods into lamps; between them, Bob's help, and my vague memories of 4-H woodworking projects, we built a one ourselves. Oh, and 6 trips to 4 different hardware stores. It was too much fun. The stain and varnish job isn't perfect.... our porch has been freezing the last few days so it was no fun at all. And I bought gel stain, which I've never used before and it didn't go on very evenly. Oh well, it makes it look less brand new and maybe a little bit more vintage. :)

Anyway, the final product:

Its new home in our living room.

I'm not entirely sure that I like that shade. I can't decide if it's too small, or doesn't hang down far enough, or the wrong shape entirely. What do you think??

Lunch Call

We had a kinda busy weekend. Friday night we went to sing at the nursing home... and got lost in the maze of hallways, again. We're good at that. :)

Saturday morning I got up and went to quilt club in Morton. I really like the color options they have for this year's blocks. I'm excited. And then I went to two hardware stores and cleaned and got food ready and tried to keep from freaking out because my family was coming on Sunday. But then after supper instead of getting ready, I decided to make a big mess in the kitchen and put together my lamp.

A few weeks ago I emailed my family and invited them to T-town for the day, fully expecting at least some of them to have plans.... but they all came. Which was great! We had to get up super early though, to be at church before they all got there. :) After church all 27 of them came back to our house for a light snack (plus us, 29 people in our little house!). Which ended up being a lot of food because Grandma insisted on bringing something, Mom brought brownies, and Lori brought fruit.

All seats were taken...

Even upstairs. They were playing Donkey Kong on the Nintendo. Our upstairs smelled of deer salami and deer sticks for a few hours... haha.

It was great fun and I'm glad it worked out. And it was sooooo quiet when everybody left. *Grin*

Blessings.

Soup and Quilting

It's been pretty quiet this week, which I love.

I made this recipe for Chicken cordon bleu bread bowls Sunday night because I was slightly bored and I had time. It was pretty easy and they taste amazing... I didn't put in quite as much broccoli as the recipe called for. (And Bob still said, "What is this green stuff?" *grin* Boys.) The bread turned out really good too... we ate the leftover 'bowls' stuffed with pizza sauce and toppings last night. Yum.

Monday night I went to all day quilting... it took me a few inches before my stitches started to look decent... o well. :) It was fun.

Otherwise, it's quiet. And white again. Which I love, now that the slush is off the roads.
Blessings.

Grey and white and winter all around

"Nothing on the calendar" is fast turning into lots of stuff going on. :) Ah well, such is life.

So last Thursday Bob and I and Sprout met Amber, Kaleigh, Nic and Amanda in B-ton for supper at Avanti's. It was so good to see them all, and actually spend a little bit more time with them than just saying hi at church. We laughed a lot about all sorts of things. It made my heart happy.

I dragged Bob to ACE and Menards on Saturday, poor guy. I want to attempt to build a lamp base. The kind I've fallen in love with start at about $200, which is ridiculous for a lamp. So far the supplies have been cheap, and if I totally screw it up it's not that much of a waste. I had lots of fun wandering the aisles both places. And Bob got to deal with "I need at least 7.25 linear feet of thicker-ish wood." We sort of conned one of the employees into cutting it all for us for "transportation purposes." It wouldn't have fit in the car, so he was going to cut it once for us anyway, and hey, while you have the miter box and the saw out, you mind cutting off another 30 inch piece? hehe.

Matt and Jake came over Saturday night for pizza... fun times, but I couldn't work on my lamp. We went over to Bob's parents for a little bit tonight and used the band saw and drill press, so now I just need to sand and stain the wood.... I think it's all going to fit together... we shall see how it turns out.

Weekends go way to fast.
Blessings.

Weddings and wei-

I mean, family. Hehe. Sorry Mom. Anyway.

Sunday was a pretty busy and long day... and a really good day. We got up super early and went to Champaign for Hannah and Grant's wedding. Church was very full of all kinds of people I never see anymore, and we got to meet little Grey... :) The wedding was beautiful... I can't really put my finger on why, but I felt so very blessed to be there. Hannah's a super cool girl, I met her when I was at U of I and she was still in High School, and it's been great to watch her grow... I have a lot of respect for her. The reception was beautiful and we got to see more people, which I love.

So then we headed home. I made the mistake of lying down for a few minutes... and fell asleep. Thankfully I woke up right at 5, when we needed to be leaving for my parents'. And I was once again reminded why I generally avoid naps at all costs. I wake up woozy. As in borderline nausea and fuzzy head woozy. Not refreshing at all. Bob was laughing at me because I was slightly out of it until I drank some pop to clear my head. :)

My parents invited the Roemersbergers over for supper and they are always late so we made it in plenty of time. Uncle Bill is the only one of Grandma's siblings left... they were there and some of mom's cousins and a few of my second cousins. Always an interesting time. Mom's cousin and his wife were visiting from Alaska- they got married in the 70's, bought a school bus and turned it into a camper, drove it to Alaska, and lived in it while they built a house up there. They have some great stories to tell and it was fun listening to them.

And then we had to go to work on Monday... it was rough... haha.
Blessings.

Seriously?

Ok, so I ordered part of my Mom's Christmas present from B and N.... and it was a few dollars shy of getting free shipping. So I found a cheap 'filler item' so I wouldn't have to pay twice that for shipping. And I waited and waited. And then one day, this huge box came in the mail. Yay!

And then I opened the box....

No present that I was impatiently waiting for because it was only two days before Christmas. Just a lot of empty space and a ball of holly.

Which is cute, but I was annoyed. How much space could they have saved in their trucks!? And then the rest of it came on Christmas eve in a package that was small enough to fit in our mailbox.

I just don't understand.

Happy New Year!

So I really only was at work 14hrs last week... it was so nice...

Jakey came over to play computer games with Bob on Wednesday and he stayed for supper. Actually, I have no idea how late he stayed... I was tired at midnight-ish and I went to bed.... crazy boys. :)

Thursday we were dismissed early, and Bob had some guys over to play board games. So they played Risk and I avoided playing Risk. I'm terrible at it. Matt and Kevin stayed for supper, which was fun.

I took down most of our Christmas decorations. mur. It's so sad when Christmas is over. And we got rid of the tree today. I'm ready for it to be spring now. Specially after taking a walk in the warmth yesterday!

We didn't do anything special for New Years.... went to church and then came home and ate food and played Nintendo. Bob ordered a game that he was going to give me for Christmas except it didn't get delivered until yesterday. It was fun and I still stink at Nintendo. O well. There are worse things, I suppose.

Blessings.

Christmas

We survived. :) And it was a good time. Christmas eve we went to Grandpa and Grandma Koch's. Christmas Day we went to church in Tremont, and then ate lunch at home and opened our gifts from each other. And then we went to Bob's parents' for the evening.

Grace still likes to hug Bob and say, "my Bob." Funny girl.

Baby Eden... she was enjoying rolling around on the floor.


On Boxing day we went to Washington at noon because Brent and Beth and their girls were going to be there. And then we went to the farm for Christmas. My siblings are being corrupted... aaahhh. haha...

We had cornish hens and all manner of good things for supper... on Grandma's dishes... with sparkling cider. And then we finally let Shelly open her gifts. Everyone got sharp things for Christmas (I apparently got mine early for my birthday). And Dad got a holster for his PQA "euthanasia plan." Jakey got Shelly an umbrella... that is also a sword... "why bother with a can of mace if you've got 10 inches of cold steel?" haha. Bob and I and Matt got Jakey a KA BAR knife. It's rather scary looking. Matt got a fillet knife, and Bob got a pocket knife. So funny.

I came home with lots of great things, like an Anthropology apron, some books, new U of I tees (mine are starting to look like I've had them since college), CD's, and Thermarests. I love presents... *grin*

Monday Bob wasn't feeling good, he had a fever most of the night, so I went to the Wyss Christmas by myself. *sigh* woe is me. We ate much good food. Much. Starting with breakfast casseroles in the morning, and gondolas in the afternoon and chicken crepes for supper with homemade ice cream and cookies.

It took the usual 4ish hours to open all the presents... I saw a lot of this... haha.

Bob and I got very boring presents... folding chairs and (more) hotdog sticks. woot. Since we can fit all the hotdogs we eat on one stick and now have 8.... Not the most exciting Christmas presents ever... ah well, it was still really fun! I've decided that next year we're in the drawing separately like everybody else, it's way to hard to come up with a gift that's for both of us.

Grandpa and Grandma got a laptop.... Matt's setting it up for them so they'll soon have email and be able to read our blogs... o dear... I shall have to be careful what I say! haha.

I was supposed to be back to work on Tuesday... but.... I just really didn't feel like it so I didn't go. Instead I got lots of random things done and relaxed. It was nice. Anyway.

Blessings.