Cough, cough

I am sitting here with a summer cold and procrastinating on putting the final touches on a LO so here I am to blog. It's been over a week and that is unacceptable bloggy behavior. Before I talk house, let me say how excited I was to finally find the Stephen Colbert Americone Dream ice cream from Ben and Jerry's at my local Kro Kro. I call that hell to the yeah. It is seriously the best flavor, it is supposed to be like a King Cone (cone, vanilla, caramel and maybe there was chocolate, I don't remember). I bought it, ate it, and floated away to a universe where angels did my hair and everything glittered. Then of course I came down and weighed five pounds more and am back to Atkins living. Summer eating, while exceptional, has to come to an end so the carbs are a bye bye.



Anne and I pushed our monthly lunch up a week and hit Cafe Red Onion yesterday. Heather, I don't know why I've never dragged you here when you are in but one day we are going. Actually, it's very kid unfriendly but maybe sans kids. Pineapple salsa. Fusion Latin food. Mmmm. Thought I'd share a pic of what I had (um, might have had carbs in the fried eggplant) but frankly when you get a chance to eat truly amazing food, you should forget about diets and enjoy. McD's, not so much. I didn't take this pic, but a guy named Crossmage on flickr did and I am also including a link to his Houston set out of courtesy for borrowing his pic (giving credit is good) and because holy crap he makes this nasty place look tremendously presentable:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/crossmage/1014435095/



House chat. Ellen and others who haven't known me long -- this is the second house we've renovated. We swore after the first never again but here we are with some very important differences. First, we will never work in a place and renovate. Our last renovation literally took a couple years and we would not live like that again. It's the difference between having the money upfront though, this time because of the proceeds from that sale we can pay for everything at the same time. Exception: converted garage and studio in the back. We can't prolly afford it now and we will live there when they are renovated, but they are separate and therefore acceptable to do that way. We also learned lessons about what work is cool to do yourself and when outsourcing is appropriate. Sheetrock and painting -- worth paying others. Most everything else -- diy. Here are some before and after pics from what we did back then so you know why we think we rock:











I am seeing now that we did a crappy job taking after pics because I don't have a single finished bath one. How tragic. Nor do I have a good one of the crowning achievement of that house, the half bath in the hall that we converted into a full bath and installed a giant faux wrought iron tub. It was gorgeous. The good news is that when we housewarm this one, I will already have a digi book ready to go to show people how far we've come. Bottle of piss not included.

So yeah, we rock and we're at it again. Nothing supercool to report this week. We had to clear out the storage unit this week which only had like the stuff we cleared out pre showing the house for sale so the bedrooms are full of boxes and not much else. The rest is still here at the in-laws. But we did mostly put Dylan's bedroom together and his playroom has begun its transformation. Got an alarm system which makes me feel better. I bought and put together my Expedit shelves from Ikea -- the scraproom has begun. BTW, Ikea still hasn't charged me for the cabinet purchase of June 20 but there is a four year statute of limitations so I expect to hear from them in June 2010. The money's in the account waiting for them when they are ready to believe me when I say they haven't charged me for the stuff. Morons. Other than that, we are running out of money after having bought a fridge, house of Levelor faux wood blinds, island vent for the kitchen, and other expensive necessities. Tragically, Jason's ER Visit ended up costing us $700 and we had $1200 service on the Blazer, so the fund for furnishing the house is going bust. What a gorgeous empty house it will be, but Heather has assured me that she will be buying a fancy decorative key for me to start my collection as a housewarming gift and I believe she will just to keep that great joke going. Some crummy pics...better ones to come this weekend. Jason said all the blinds arrived yesterday which is awesome since they weren't even supposed to ship until next week. Crummy though since I didn't even have an email to expect them and they just left them under the carport and I randomly sent him over there to see if my PB purchase had arrived (to be shared later) since I was emailed about it. So hopefully we'll get those up this weekend, yay!







Ignore the tree. Dylan's room will have an outdoor theme and I am using the tree to hang random animals in. Very theme-y, very un me but I am going for it anyway. And finally, the pic Jason got in the Home Depot urinal -- it's like a standoff between two, well anyways...