Get Yourself To The Butterfly Lounge

  As I sit here, listening to podcasts I just heard someone say that you don't need a pool to have a pool party. Interesting. On to business! Today class, we will be talking about the past month or so (pictures may not be included), plans for the future (like what's going down in August) and some other stuff. Let's do this!

  Bad clichés aside, we've had a pretty busy month. Let's start with what's helped us get through a good portion of it. ---> That's right. We now subscribe to Netflix (for the third time). We watched all available seasons of Dexter (and ended up renting seasons 3 and 4 from Blockbuster), and now Cait has moved on to Dr. Who. It's also great because there are a ton of kid's shows on there. Savannah (and I) watched all of the Phineas and Ferb, Backyardigans and a slew of VeggieTales. The only downside is that it is interfering with my latest video game obsession.

Portal 2 (and the Orange Box for that matter). Thanks to the wonder of instant gratification (aka the Internet) I was able to download the demos to both Portal and Portal 2. Needless to say I was hooked. And so was Cait.  So now we trade off on who gets to play (and when) or what we're going to watch. I do question Cait's logic though. Either that or her video game awesomeness leads her to go to places in video games that the user was not meant to go. The portal games are logic / thinking / puzzle games. It involves using your portal gun to allow objects / people to move in unique ways to solve a series of puzzles before progressing to the next level. It is highly addictive. If you're in the neighborhood and want a demonstration, feel free to stop by and either Cait or myself will be glad to show you the virtues of the games. :) 

  To kick off our summer work list, we decided to tackle a couple of big projects. First was to redo our front garden. Most of the plants were dead and it was overrun with weeds. So the picture is what it now looks like. Well. mostly. There are some plants that need to be replaced already and the black anti-weed matting that we put down isn't working as well as we hoped. So, we still need to weed, but not nearly as much as before. On the plus side, the bumblebees LOVE this garden. Everyday I usually see two or three bumblebees going about their business. We also replaced our dead magnolia tree with a 7 year old tree. Same species as before, although we paid considerably less for this one. It was purchased at a local nursery whereas the previous one was purchased at Lowes. We've been talking about what to do with the large patch of weeds in front of the rest of... the front... of the house. I think we're pretty much in agreement of what we want to do and continue with the theme and colors of what's pictured here. In addition to this, we're trying to figure out what we want to do for the patio that we're going to be putting in this summer. What we're looking for is a cement mold that is flat on top allowing us to place chairs and a table on top with out too much rocking or loss of footing. We did purchase an outdoor dining set and place settings as well. Our house is going to be the place to be by the end of summer. Of course that's around November out here.

  If you happen to drive by our house now, you will notice something quite different. Our house is now green. I know what you're thinking, "A green house? Have you gone blind?" The answer is no. The photo to the left represents a couple of things. First is that we don't actually have a picture of the new house color. That will be corrected soon. Second is that we're not completely done. I need to replace a board on the back of the house and then paint. Plus I need to get all 12 shutters primed and painted. That will be done before this weekend. So, I'm not to concerned there. But once we've completed everything, I will share it on facebook, all 3 of my twitter accounts and here. No need to deprive you of the pictures. And my Picasa Web Albums too. Can't forget those. 

  Another change we've made is that we now use TruGreen for our lawn care (weed killer, fertilizer and lawn nuisance control). The results so far have been amazing. At the start of the year, most of the color in my front yard was from weeds. Needless to say, I wasn't a fan of that. Thankfully we found a coupon and got a discount on our first application. That was about 6 weeks ago (which means that it's time for our next application) and the results have been amazing. Almost all of the weeds in our yard are dead and my front lawn is pretty. Except for the dead spots that need to be reseeded. But that shouldn't be to hard to do. In addition to that, the lawn gets watered with well water which is full of good nutrients for the plants and yard. By the end of the summer, I'm looking to have a nice full lawn with little or no dead spots.

  Let's talk about my current personal project. I am currently working my way through the bible a few chapters at a time. All of my notes, thought, questions and summaries are posted on one of my other blogs, On Fire For The Lord. This blog is a way for me to keep on track of my reading and to try and look deeper into the bible. So far, I've got a few posts up and will post as I read the sections I've got laid out. Please stop by and take a look.

  My new audio interest is the podcast of my favorite baking blog! Joy the Baker teamed up with a group of her friends and made homefries.com. The podcast mentioned at the beginning of this post? Got it from homefries. It's pretty fun to listen to the various people talk about this and that and everything else in between. This picture is courtesy of Joy the Baker and homefries. You should head on over and take a look. You can subscribe to the podcasts (for free!) or share it with your friends!

  And now onto future plans! And my apparent love of the exclamation mark! But this August, we will be going to Disney World!!! In case me in a Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey hat didn't give that away. We've been planning this for a few months now and I got word a couple of days ago that my leave had been approved. Now, Disney does not have the same offer as a couple of years ago (Active Duty Military got a free 5 day pass with park hopper and water park access). But we are able to purchase tickets at ridiculously low prices through MWR. We anticipate visiting three of the four parks and one of the water parks. Or maybe both water parks. Who knows?!? Once we told Savannah where we were going, that's all she would talk about! Every day she asks when we're going to go see Mickey Mouse. If it was up to her, I'm not sure we would ever leave Disney. I know that this is going to be a much needed break and hopefully, the August time frame will allow us to beat the worst of the summer crowds. Hopefully. We did learn some things from our last visit concerning Savannah and hopefully the heat won't be too bad for her. We did get her a little personal mister from Target and she loves to play with that. All we need for her now is a battery operated clip on fan. Well, I know the Disney trip will warrant their own posts but we've still got some time left before I have to worry about those. I will also be tweeting from Disney, so be sure to follow any one of my 3 accounts. I'll provide them when the time draws nearer. That's concludes today's post. As promised, here is the Portal picture:

- Brent

There's a Party in My Bedroom!

That's right! Nothing say's a good time like a party in the bedroom. Or...redecorating the bathroom. Which is what this blog is about. I mean, nothing says "sad" like this bathroom from the 80s. If you could see the light fixture, I'm pretty sure the tears would be flowin'. But rest assured! The Wonder Woman who is Cait has saved us from outdated this outdated bathroom! In order for such a transformation to be completed, 1 vital thing had to occur. I had to get underway. I know! It was difficult, but I was able to do it. When I left, the bathroom looked like this. And when I got back...

The bathroom looked like this ---> Cait is a miracle worker. All I had to do was take care of electrical. Easier said than done. Not to long ago, I replaced the dimmer switch with a new fancy $23 one from Lowes. Works great. Except with CFL bulbs. Of course. However, that wasn't the biggest problem. The major electrical problem that I had was the fact that the wonderfully intelligent builders of my house put a stud right behind the middle of the sink. Exactly where the new electrical box was supposed to go. Imagine my surprise when I saw that.

Time to MacGyver it! I took a fairly thick piece of trim and matched up where the screws were on the mount for the light. After drilling out all of the holes, I screwed the trim onto the 2X6 with 2 long wood screws. That thing isn't going anywhere for a while. After that, It was fairly straight forward. Connect Hot to Hot, Neutral to Neutral and Ground to Ground (which then attached to the bracket). After all of the wiring was done just simply attach the light fixture to the bracket, turn power back on and voilà! Easy as pie. But a fairly easy update. Just add new curtains, paint, shelving and light fixture and you have a whole new bathroom. That's it for this update. And now I leave you with the song that's been running through my head this entire post:




 - Brent

Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

Well, as mentioned in my post here, we re-decorated our kitchen. In this post, we will discuss what was done. Mainly, I will discuss and you will listen. Of course, if you leave a comment, then you will be part of the discussion...but I digress. On to...Green! Or...Cavern Moss in Semi-Gloss from Olympic. We went from white / wall paper to green. I think it turned out pretty well. Green walls were only a small part of the overall plan. As you can also see, all of our cabinet doors (and the drawers that you can't see) were removed.

And here is Savannah helping Grandma paint the cabinet doors. It took a lot of white paint to cover those doors and drawers. But in the end, they look great. Especially when we added the brushed nickle fixtures. I'm glad that Cait is able to see all of this in her head prior to the start of these projects. There is no way that I could have done this the way she did. But let's move onto the part that I'm most excited about. Tile.

First, I would like to give my dad a huge "Thank You" for all of the work that he did in helping me with the tile. He presented some ideas that worked out for the best. However, none of us took into consideration the fact that when we offset the smaller tiles into the medallion, it wouldn't be center when we put the stove back. Oh well, I like it. But due to this experience, I feel confident enough to do more tile work around the house. Mainly in the bathroom. But after all was said and done, the kitchen looked like a brand new kitchen! We're looking to possibly paint the counter tops to look like granite. Of course, it won't be real granite, but it will look like it. Well, that's it for this post. And now, I leave you with this, How to brush your teeth like a Spartan!

 - Brent

Ho Hum

Wow. That's all I'm going to say about my time away from here. Things have been pretty busy lately. Let's do a quick rush through the past 6 months (in no particular order).
 - Savannah turned 2.
 - Cait had emergency surgery that resulted in altered Thanksgiving plans.
 - I discovered that I am capable of cooking a Thanksgiving meal.
 - We celebrated Christmas twice (with both of our parents).
 - We re-decorated the kitchen.
 - I learned how to put up a tile backsplash.
 - That makes me want to tackle re-tiling the bath in our bathroom.
 - Cait painted our bathroom.
 - I put up the light.
 - I discovered that the people who built our house were idiots.
 - I also replaced all of the electrical outlets and light switches in the house (excluding the garage).
 - Learned how to replace the S-Drive belt in my car.
 - Discovered I have 2 alter egos (on Twitter).
And yesterday, my dad helped me replace some (more) siding on the house in preparation of pressure washing.  Following the pressure washing will be painting the house O_O. Can't say that I'm looking forward to that.

My parents are in town for the next couple of weeks. They ventured our way to look for a new trailer, which they found. It's looking like they will pick it up on Wednesday. I'm looking forward to seeing it. You can follow their escapades here: The Idaho Nomads. Their blog is updated more frequently than mine. After here, they're looking to start their journey to the west.

Work continues on the house. As I mentioned, I've replaced all of the outlets and switches in the house. During this "adventure in home ownership," I have discovered that who ever did the wiring when the house was built, didn't have a clue as to what they were doing. For example, the outlets in the dining room and hallway are on the circuit labeled "kitchen light." Really? I thought they would have been on the circuit labeled "living room, dining room, hallway." I guess not. Next step is re-labeling the breaker box. That should be fun. Cait also painted the bathroom a nice blue and replace the shelving along with hanging a picture that matches. I got to replace the light fixture. A normally simple process, but not with my house. Let's just leave it at I'm getting more creative in how I go about mounting lights. I"ll post pictures later. Needless to say, the bathroom looks phenomenal.

We also painted the kitchen green! I know what you're thinking..."Green? Really?: Yes really. I thought that it wouldn't work, but it does. Add to that the slate tile backsplash that my dad and I hung up behind the stove and the repainted cabinetry and you have an amazing looking kitchen. I think I need to post a blog showing just updates completed in the past 6 months.

I think this will be it for my late night / early morning ramblings. Until next time!

 - Brent

99 Luftballons

On July 29, Cait celebrated her birthday (as some of you know). For her birthday, Savannah got her a nice ring and I planed out and entire day away from the baby. A couple of things to note. First, I spent a good two weeks planning the whole thing. It's hard and pretty stressful to organize a day of events and a party without Cait finding out. There were so many things that could have gone wrong. Second, for her day away, I put a group of items that represented different activities to do through out the day. With that in mind, let's get this day started! We started the day with some breakfast. That's usually a good thing to start the day with. After breakfast, I went and got the babysitter (which was also important to have). Once I got home and made sure that everything was ready for our departure, I collected the birthday girl and we set off. First stop, the jewelry store to pick up Cait's gift. Can you guess what I got her? Here's a hint: it's in the picture above this writing... on the right...did you figure it out? No...it's not a new ear...but rather the ear rings! Yay for me! It's even better because they have become her go-to ear rings.

After the jewelery, she wanted to go to the beach. You can see how well that worked out... On the recommendation of a friend, we went to Historic America Beach on Amelia Island. What I forget, was that she told us to go to the parking lot down the street. The road itself literally stopped at the beach. And as you can see, the HHR isn't for driving on the sandy beach. After I pushed while Cait backed it out back on to the pavement, we found the parking lot and walkway down to the water.

And this is what we were rewarded with. Sadly, this did not set it self up. That would have been nice. But it was worth it. Unlike Fernandina Beach, America Beach has facilities for changing and showers so that you can rinse off. It was nice being able to rinse off the sandy feet before getting into the car. During the time at the beach, we walked along the surf, sat and soaked up some humidity, and passed around the bottle of sparkling lemonade. All-in-all a good time.

The next stop that Cait selected from the bag of stops was Doing Dishes. It's a paint you own pottery studio. I've been wanting to take Cait to one for some time now and it seemed like this was a good time to do it. Only a couple of problems with this. First, this place is in the ghetto. I mean it. There was a shoot out across the street from them a couple of months ago. So, yeah. Ghetto. The second problem was that there was too much pottery to choose from. I think we spent a good 20 minuted just trying to figure out what we wanted to paint. I settled on a pen/pencil holder and a spoon rest. Cait went with a plate to hang on the wall. Once we decided what to paint, now we had to figure out what paint to use and how to paint our pieces. It was a pretty fun time. I'll post completed pics later. After all was said and done, the day was starting to wind down. Time to catch a movie and relax (as if we weren't relaxed to start with...). We headed over to an AMC theater and saw the Sorcerers Apprentice. It was OK. If you haven't see it, wait until its out on HBO or Redbox. I don't think it was worth the $20 that we spent on it. But once that was done, time to head home. Now, I'm not too good at keeping secrets, so it was almost impossible to keep my mouth shut and my excitement in check as we headed to Cait's surprise party.

I'm still not too sure how I pulled this off. With as many people as I told, Cait didn't even know what was going to happen when we got home. All she wanted to do was relax and play the Sims 3. Not today. There were a few friends waiting for us and a cake large enough to feed 40 people. Needless to say, we had plenty of leftovers. And although I didn't mention anything about gifts (I think I even said to not worry about it), she got a gift certificate to Game Stop, Michaels, and a smell good box from Bath & Body Works. She definitely had a good time. Well, that's it for this post. I leave you with this: Old Spice Guy being remixed!!!!

Time is...no longer...of the essence

Wow. It has been a while since I've posted. For that, I'm sorry. I'm not doing to well on my promise to post at least once a week. I don know that for the next little bit, I will be posting on a daily basis. On to what we've accomplished these past couple of weeks. As you can see from the picture to the left, Savannah likes her new room. The primary wall color is... I'll get back to you on what colors we used. But needless to say, that Savannah's room loos good. And she loves it! She likes to walk around and point out the flowers and the butterflies. We picked up a butterfly night light and this Umbra Papillon Butterfly Wall Art Set at Target. And...Savannah loves them. The butterfly night light gives the whole room a nice purplish glow and has a 15 minute timer.

Another thing that was accomplished was the removal of the wood trim around the cabinets in the kitchen along with their hardware. Then they were sanded down. Or, I guess it would be more accurate to say that the grease was sanded off... Cait says that it was pretty nasty. While continuing in the kitchen, my dad and I removed the old non-working microwave. It was a little tricky, but after much grunting, huffing, and finagling we were able to take the microwave and its holder out. Of course nothing can be quite that easy. After we got the microwave out, we found that there was a fairly large hole in the wall. Good thing we're no planning to attach anything to that wall... I was able to repair it with a neat little patch from Lowes and some mud. Not like dirt and sand mud...

Other repairs that were completed are the attachment of down spout extensions for our gutters. These allow water to flow AWAY from the cement pad that our house sits on and into the grass. No more lakes next to the house! Yay! Thank you dad for that. My dad also got up on the roof and plugged a hole that was created by one of the roofing nails no longer being where it should be. He also sealed the edges around the chimney. Hopefully this will help keep water out until we can get everything replaced. *Fingers crossed.* Once my parents left for the north, Cait and I worked on getting the house cleaned up for our trip. We're going to Idaho to visit my Grandparents so that they can see their Great Granddaughter. And Kyle. Savannah will finally be able to meet her other Uncle. Well, that's it for now. I'll be posting on our travel blog for the next little bit. You can follow it here: The Occasional World Travel.

Mmmm...turtle soup.

Imagine coming home to help your wife out because she's not feeling well and almost hitting this. This snapping turtle was making his way down our driveway from the forest going to who knows where. That was pretty neat. Another thing that is neat is when your wife says "Honey, the paint is peeling off" while looking at our newly painted front door. That's a lot of fun. There are going to be a lot of pictures in this post. Most of the work...okay...ALL of the work we did was painting. And in order to appreciate the work, we need pictures!

On to the work done around the house. As I mentioned before, we painted the front door red. As you can see from the picture, there is a devilish handsome man in the process of transforming a plain, dull, ordinarily boring black door to a brilliant, beautiful, lustrous cranberry. Of course, the handsome man did have help from a wonderful lady who wasn't feeling to well. I should mention that the paint is an oil based paint made for front doors. That was some really sticky paint. It was nothing like painting with a latex based paint. Just some food for thought if anyone is planning on painting their front door or using an oil based paint. And the smell was really, really strong. Good thing it was the outside of the front door and we were able to close it once the edges had dried some. But in the end, the door looks great! Next slide.

The big project of the past week has been Savannah's room. For those of you who don't know what her room looked like, it was a fugly mintish color with PEPTO ® Pink accents peeking through. And let's not forget the fact that the previous owners let their kid(s) do the painting. I'm fine with kids helping painting, but the parents need to tape off the areas that shouldn't be painted. Things such as...electrical outlets, light switches, TV jacks...things like those. Grrrr... I really don't like the previous owners. Oh... I almost forgot to mention that there was also TV stand mounted to the wall. That was a pain to remove as well. I should mention that we're watching recorded "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and we just saw Xzibit start to pimp out a tractor. We'll have to see how that goes. As you can see from the picture above, Savannah's room has come a long way. But in order to get this nice blue color, we had to prime the whole room. That was a lot of white paint, and it was really hard to tell a difference after the primer had dried. I need to thank my mom for helping us with priming the room. Because of her, the room was completed a lot faster that Cait and I would have. Although you can't see it, the trim around the doors, the crown molding and the baseboards were all repainted with a nice semi-gloss white. It really stands out against the blue. Cait has done so much for Savannah's room. Although fairly indecisive about the colors to use (I think I helped to finalize those..) Cait came up with the concept of the room, she drew out the designs, brought them to life on the walls, and I am now in the process of helping add color to those designs (well, not right NOW. I'm typing up this blog...). I've been working on the vines while she paints the flowers and fuses the colors together to create a nice blend.

I need to stop watching this show while typing. I know have the urge to shop at CVS. They payed off a family's medical bills, provided a state of the art air filtration system, and started a fund for a heart transplant. Way to go them. And now X to the Z is driving a renovated tractor that looks brand new. I wish I had an unlimited budget to work on the house...

Back on track. This is the room after the primer. You can still see the mintish color through the thick white primer. *shudders* I wasn't too keen on the colors. Well, our show's over, Cait is falling asleep on me and I need to work in the morning. I'm off to bed y'all. Plans for the week include the removing of trees from our yard with power tools, some gardening and more work. See you next time!
- Brent

All work and No Play

More work to get done. I was able to leave earlier than normal yesterday (liberty is normally granted at noon on Fridays). It was actually more like I was ordered to go home around 1000ish. I'm not going to fight that order... Once I got home, I helped Cait tape off the hall and I primed the wallpaper with some lovely white primer. Now all that need to be done is to put some color on the walls.

While I was doing this, Cait had managed to paint the dining area. The top color is "Timeless Taupe" and the bottom is "Almond Fudge." You can find both at Lowes.With the amount that we shop there and as much as I mention them, I should get them to sponsor this blog... We both agree that the colors look really good. We're going to be putting the Timeless Taupe in the hall as well. I started to do some yard work, but was interrupted by one of our neighbors who took most of the river rock that was left. He should be coming back today to collect the rest of it. We also rearranged some of the pictures in the house and now have an American Flag that flew over Pearl Harbor hanging on the wall behind the TV. It looks really good. Good call Cait. After I put Savannah down, we settled down to watch "Secrets of the Mountain." For as much as Wal-Mart was hyping that up, it was pretty disappointing. I thin Wal-Mart needs to not be involved in any part of the movie making process. After that, it was off to bed. That's it for this post!
- Brent