Make My Wish Come Trueeee….

…All I want for Christmas is we’re back! Our last post was in September, but since many of you wrote in to Santa for Christmas specifically requesting we return to the blogosphere, well, let’s just say we were genuinely touched! We are very happy and the pets are doing well. Our weekends have been busy as of recently, and that trend will continue into the new year as we focus on friends and family in and around the great state of Texas.

We’ve made quite a few additions to Starling, some through bargain purchases or sales, and others inherited from our dear family members, which add a special reminder of family to our home. We are thankful for it all.

In our master bedroom, ever since we moved in, it was always Izzie’s request to have a separate vanity table to do her makeup and other womanly things (before she was sitting on the floor in front of the mirror). We finally managed to find a nice ensemble (Overstock, World Market, Kirkland’s) that played well with the style she was going for. So we set that up, and hung our full-length mirror on the opposite wall right next to the bathroom door. More projects down the road for the master bedroom include painting it a deep gray-purple to set the mood for sleeping and other things, and also painting the master bathroom and closet.

This angle hides the untidiness quite nicely!

In our garage, we welcomed the addition of five five-tier shelving units on the side wall to afford us the much needed space to store additional lawn care items and tools (for now) and off-season supplies (we are still looking to the Corpus garage for inspiration–wow!) We were able to purchase these shelves for $50 a pop during Black Friday Weekend (a comparable shelving unit was $80), and since the local Lowe’s didn’t stock them, we reserved one of Saturday morning for a quick, picturesque drive up to Conroe to a Lowe’s there. Lake Conroe is really something! But it was definitely worth the drive to save the $65 truck delivery fee. More projects for the garage including hanging up a pegboard for tools, hooks in the ceiling for bikes to leave more room on the back wall for storage, and possible a work bench.

Organization Station

And in the kitchen, yes we finally finally put the doors, drawers, knobs and pulls on! Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray! We had the hardware for awhile, but didn’t get around to actually putting them on until this past week (our friends coming from Houston was a great motivator!). After we put them up, it was a little awkward, like being in another dimension. We asked ourselves, “How do we know where things go now?” “Wait, so I have to actually open the door to get something?” After the confusion subsided we rejoiced in how great they looked! Mind the gaps on some, and some touchup spots here and there, our kitchen has doors again! We also replaced the gold pantry knob with a nickel-finish one to match the main interior/exterior doors.

Doors galore!

Adoorable!

In one of the spare bedrooms, we also added a bed we received from our parents (thank you for bringing it). It’s a nice sturdy wooden frame, and fits very snugly in the corner of the bedroom! Izzie gladly purchased a bedding set for the bed with plenty of color and character.

The bed is partially made; don’t judge!

In the office area, there was a space in front of the bookcase that needed to be filled out, so we solved that problem and also the issue of having our shoes by the front door. So we purchased a bench at a great price from Overstock that doubled as a shoe rack. The more things off the floor the better! And of course we couldn’t resist the chimpanzee print from Fab; he stares deep into your human soul.

Sit down and put on your shoes with me.

In the living room we were very fortunate to be receive some our family’s furniture, which turned out to be a great fit for our living room. Here’s a great recliner for reclining into ‘Launch Position’ [in its most horizontal configuration].

I Have A Reclination

We also were able to elevate our TV height [from the lower Ikea unit] with this great wooden entertainment unit. It does a great job of hiding the cables, with room in the drawers on the side and middle to store components and a good amount of DVDs. We put up a shelf above the TV for all the little things and even put those great wicker baskets we got from Mom to work…yes! (sorry for the dark pic)

The News.

And it certainly wouldn’t feel like Christmas if there weren’t stockings hung by the chimney with care. We will be hanging one of Lala’s paintings above the fireplace—it will look really nice!

HOHOHO!

Continuing the Christmas cheer, we put up a Christmas tree we got from Sam’s (really easy to put up and has lights integrated in, not like the old school attach each tree branch separately), along with some red candles and new tree skirt. There are a few presents under there—don’t you dare peek!

HOHOHO part 2

And to close out the Christmas cheer, we have a festive wreath and doormat for the front door to let everyone one how much we LOVE Christmas. Whoa! (If you see a little white rat in this picture, you win a candy cane)

Well, come on in now!

And this past weekend, we were tickled to the core and delighted to have some of our beloved friends from Houston visit us. Kenn and Jenn will be expecting their first child sometime in late December/early January, and this weekend trip would be their last in CS to relax and be in good company (we have a pic from our other camera, we’ll add that here). We also celebrated Jenn’s birthday while she was here with a very moist chocolate cake and a harmonized rendition of the classic Happy Birthday song!  Keith & Janet, John and Alex also came by for a day trip to see the crib for the first time, and to also help out with a very special task: Getting Dirty Outside!

Our flowerbeds don’t have any flowers in them yet, but they were looking a little sad because there wasn’t enough dirt in them. In the spirit of Tim Allen, we needed more dirt! Here’s a before pic of the front beds:

Sad flowerbeds

And here is roughly 4-5 yards of dirt delivered to the driveway! It was exactly enough to do what we needed and more…amazing estimate by Keith, math DOES work!

A pile of soil/mulch. Yep.

After about 1.5-2 hours of hard work…

Much better!

More dirt!

Getting dirty in the corner!

Soo dirty!

Dirty!

Even the trees got some love! Still need some stones or something around them, stay tuned..

Dirty Birds ft. Moonraker

Thanks for the help, guys! It was great to have you at the house and to also put in some good exercise! What a great step to beautifying the front and back lawns. We will work to maintain the setup we have now, and also plan out what kind of plants and foliage we want to add in.

That’s it for now until 3 months next time! Happy NESTING!!!!

Halloween came early—We’re back from the dead!

Well, hi! It’s good to see you back here in College Station, we are doing great!

We’ve been dedicating a significant amount of fixing-up time to the outside, front and back, and have been making great strides in improving different areas. We’ll cover the backyard and then mosey on over to the front.

The Back

Bloomingdales

Just recently we had our crape myrtles sprayed for infectious aphids, but they are looking much better, and have been blooming nicely (two in the back, two in the front). We are also treating our lawn for brown patches and chinch bugs, but this is going to take a little more time to correct. We are hopeful though!

Bricks be gone!

The previous owner had a cache of bricks stored in one of the corners of the backyard that had to go. What to do with a ton of bricks…hmm. Let’s build a temporary fire pit for those brisk winter nights!

Let it burn!

Opposite Angle

We didn’t use mortar, so don’t bump into it! Poured two bags of pea gravel for a nice base for some logs and presto! We can’t wait for the temps to drop. This was a $10 project (for the gravel, the bricks were free!) so it felt good to have a cost-effective solution to an old pile of bricks. We still have some left over and will offload these within the coming weeks.

Penny’s in the lime light!

To add to our trifecta of pots (our first pot has succulents), we have installed a crafty, little lime tree in the second installation. We have been nursing it to life, and are expecting many fruit babies!

Please lettuce grow!

Izzie wanted to have a plant project of her own, so yes, that is a pot and potting soil! But beneath the surface lies organic spring mix that we can put to good use in all our kitchen greenery.

Flowerbed One

Flowerbed Two

Our flowerbeds in the backyard are works in progress, but we trimmed them down for now. On the left side there are a few rosebushes (which will come out later, we’re just not liking the rose bushes at all anymore), and on the right are a few generic shrubs looking quite confused. We want more color in all the flowerbeds, maybe some bright yellow bulbous mums.

Hose it!

The hose in the back was like a snake in the flowerbed. So we bought a hose stand to get it off the ground. Not very glamorous but does a fantastic job!

The good stuff!

Inspired by our favorite current show, Breaking Bad, we got with the program and went with that Red Stuff. The hummingbirds are craving this soo bad! Our neighbor directly opposite from us in the backyard has about three or four of these with the wimpy white stuff, but we moved into her territory and took all her customers. WE WIN.

The Front

We freakin’ did it!

Opposite Angle

We finally got a good layer of garden soil into one of our front flowerbeds. After pulling out the weeds, we put down a layer of newspaper (Izzie saw this on Pinterest, a cost-effective alternative to weed mat), got that wet, and then put twelve bags of garden soil on top of that. Once we figure out our plant schematics, we’ll just dig a hole, insert and then finish it off with some mulch on top. We are going to be working on the second flowerbed in the front, so by the end of the week we can put more garden soil on that bad boy!

That’s pretty much the front. In about a week and a half we will actually be installing 80% solar screens on the front facade of the house to help with the light and heat coming through. It gets a little warm in the office area and also in the guest room, since these rooms are the most exposed to morning/midday sunlight. We opted to leave the back windows in the living room open and also the kitchen windows, just because we like the view of the backyard so much, and there’s not a crazy amount of sunlight coming through (only when the sun sets, but it’s not bad). We will do Phase Two of Operation Solar Screen, which involves a couple side windows here and there, about a month from now. We did get some nice sheer white curtains for the office, and once we have those solar screen windows installed, you won’t be able to see in so easily during the day or night (we don’t want anyone jacking our iMac!).

Sheer Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain..

That’s it for now, enjoy your Sunday and we will see you soon!

Kiss From a Rose…RIP

We are still concentrating on the front outside and have moved to the rosebush. Many people like roses, us included. But we would like to admire them off of our property. This particular rosebush was a beast of a bush, needed extensive pruning and just wasn’t doing it for us. We called an emergency family meeting and issued an immediate excavation.

Pulverized!

You shall not GROW!!! (notice our one new window)

Look at those chompers!

After carefully tiptoeing through the removal process (the picture tells it all!), we set out to remove the stumps still left in the ground. Well, everything was going as planned until maybe the sixth stump out of ten or so. Matt hit this really tough root! So he proceeded to repeatedly stab the root many times with the shovel, thinking that it would break any second now! After the shovel method proved unsuccessful, the fail-proof option was to saw it off with a handsaw. A closer look revealed that it was not a white root—it was a PVC pipe!

Oops!!

Fast forward to the repair, Matt dented one of the sprinkler PVC pipes, which had a small leak and since we didn’t want that dent to cause any pressure issues because of flow restriction, we decided it was best to just replace it. We consulted with our neighbor and Austin, and they let us know the best way to approach it. We sawed out the dented piece, grabbed two joints and new pipe, along with PVC primer and cement, and put in a fresh new piece.

Removed the dented pipe with a leak

Bridges of Madison County (that root is below the pipe)

Much better!

It was getting dark by the time we finished the repair so we decided to let it cure for the night and we’ll test it sometime later today. For the remainder of the stumps we will use extra, extra caution in making sure that there are no innocent bystanders nearby!

On another note, we had our lawn checked out by some lawn people, and we have chinch bugs, weeds, and need some help! So we are going to sign on with them (locally-owned) and revive our lawn. It’s going to take some time!

Happy Nesting!

Swinging Hoes…You Knows?

Hello friends, welcome to the first day of the rest of your life! We are back in action with another post, blogging straight from the heart of it all, College Station, Texas!

We have been fretting over our toasty lawn, which because of records highs and not enough watering, has become the Captain Crunch of neighborhood grass worldwide. Our sprinkler head unit was defective, so per Austin’s advice, we ordered the exact same one off of eBay for about $40. We installed that and programmed the sprinklers to run two times a day, 5:00 AM and 8:00 PM. We have five total zones, and each one runs for different times depending on priority (the main lawn gets forty minutes, the flowerbeds ten minutes). We need to nurse this grass back to life, even if we are expecting triple digit highs in the coming week and not a drop of rain in sight. We would like to avoid reseeding, and are looking forward to rolling around in lush greenery!

Anyways, we are concentrating on the front flower beds right now, because they have been overgrown and ugly for long enough. We’d like to tidy it up and add a little bit of color splash. We concentrated on the one closest to the front door, hoeing down the weeds, and taking out five or six shrubs that had alien-like root brains (Izzie was not amused by the shrub’s undercarriage tentacles when Matt showed her up close). We left the small tree and an adjacent, medium-size shrub that we shaped earlier with some shears (we were going for round, but ended up closer to “egg”, which is fine).

It’s an old fashioned hoedown!

A regular Paul Bunyan!

So we still have to level it out, clean up the soil, and throw down a weed mat and go from there. But here are some pics of the cleared flower bed and beheaded shrubs thrown in for good measure (we forgot to take them out of the picture).

Ahh! Much better!

Those bushes have to go!

All in all a good weekend that yielded a sweaty workout and less weeds—score! We will be tackling the rose bush flowerbed during the week and will let you know how that goes. As always…

Happy Nesting!

Knock Knock!

My, oh my, where has the time gone! It looks like July 3 was our last post, so we have been gone for more than a month! That has to be some kind of record. Well, as the dinosaurs clearly state, we are definitely back in action on the blogosphere. We’ve been here and there, doing this and that, so we are going to give an update on what’s been going on on our end.

One of the biggest distractions upon moving in was the paint color that was applied to the entirety of the interior walls. It was a brown, a sad brown and not the most inspiring of choices, especially a twenty-something married couple looking to spice things up! Here’s a reminder if you need reminding of what the paint color used to be in the common area:

We wanted to go with something lighter, so we initially went with a paint-and-primer-in-one from Olympic, Thin Ice!

Fortunately our good friends Kenn and Jenn from Houston were in town that weekend, and Kenn offered to lend a hand in putting the paint to the wall. We also borrowed a 6-foot step ladder from Austin, so thank you, Austin (don’t worry, we will return it)! Izzie was definitely a little hesitant when we did a test spot, but for good reason: it was a looking a little blue! We chose to keep painting and did as much as we could until the weekend ended. When the work week started up again, we resumed painting and finished what we set out to paint: the living room, office area, and hallways. So then it was decision time. Since we were going to have to put a second coat on anyways (since one coat wasn’t enough to cover up that darker brown color), we had the option of refining our color choice if need be. Well…it need be. This was a slightly different method than selecting the kitchen color, but we were in mutual agreement that with this current paint color, we really were…(wait for it) on thin ice.

So we went back to Lowe’s and decided to go with a different color that  1.) was slightly darker and 2.) had less blue in it and more of a gray tone. We’re happy to report that after application, we are quite pleased with the outcome of this color and will not be flirting with a third coat! HA

So many fit Olympians mmm…

Temporary!

For now we have Lala’s very colorful painting on the mantle right now, as we still have to unpack our elusive peacock painting that we bought on our anniversary cruise. It’s bigger so it’ll fit the space quite nicely. We were planning on painting the mantle a nice bright white, but we have changed directions and want to keep the black as it is. We’d like to add some gloss to it though, since the walls are a softer satin finish (as opposed to a semi-gloss, which was way too shiny). And also the tile isn’t very attractive and will be replaced with a nice mosaic tile down the road.

Don’t look at me, I’m hideous

We had to take down the blinds on the two windows in the front of the office area and the two windows that lead to the backyard, and had a bit of a revelation in doing so. We decided not to put them back up. For security reasons we don’t feel comfortable not having anything there, so we tacked up a bed sheet to hide our cache of techno-paraphernalia. This weekend we will be in Houston and plan on stopping by Ikea and picking up some nice sheer curtains to put up. Couple that with some solar screens and there is no looking in! But this will have to do for this week.

We also managed to score a nice iron patio table and four chairs from Craigslist for under $100. It was a really worn black color, so we bought some Rustoleum spray paint (Hammered black) and refreshed it. You can’t really tell in this shot, but it turned out well. We will get some seat cushions, but that’s lower priority for now.

See?

Hey little friend!

Obligatory Creeper shot featuring Izzie

And finally, we were experiencing some less than stellar pressure from our shower head (did you think of that Seinfeld episode? I did.) so we decided to channel the skies and the clouds from above and bring a rain shower right into our master bath.

Rain rain on my face. It hasn’t stopped, rainin’ for days..

We used the existing elbow hardware so all we had to do was whip out the elbow grease and attach the new one. Presto change-o! We were bathing in delight.

Well, that’s it for tonight. We are definitely not professional bloggers, but will make a more vigilant effort to maintain the consistency of our posts. Bear with us and…

Happy Nesting!

Wash Me, Dry Me, Say That You’ll Buy Me

The time has come, nesters and nesterettes. We have been using our local business to do the dirty laundry for a couple of weeks now, but we must part ways. It is time to welcome a washer and dryer into the utility room, come this Saturday.

We had a two prerequisites in place for the washer: (1)top-loading and (2)no agitator. For the dryer, we wanted it to be gas, instead of electric. The gas dryer would be a little more up front (in our case, $100 more than the electric of the same dryer), but we figured that over the long run of owning the dryer, we would surely be getting a return in operating savings of more than $100 over the course of xx amount of years, come on! We’ve been utilizing natural gas already with the gas stove and gas water heater, so we said, let’s ‘go gas’ with the dryer as well! There are definitely pro’s and con’s in the great debate of gas/electric, but as always, to each their own with their spreadsheets! We have to look out for The Nest!

Home Depot got our business due to some ridiculously low prices on the units (Maytag Bravos X set) that satisfied our requirements. Even with our coveted ’10% off’ Lowe’s coupons it was still in the Depot’s favor.

We have the set scheduled to be delivered for this Saturday morning, so we are good to go! We will probably have to make one last trip to the laundromat for a few loads, but it will be a trip of remembrance.

Happy Nesting!

We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Program To Bring You…

Penny! Dogs love to run, this is, in fact, a fact. Dogs are territorial too. Especially when it comes to birds patrolling the backyard fences.

Izzie managed to capture Penny in one of her most focused, super-uncoordinated pursuits of justice set to the rousing sounds of twangy pursuit music. The low quality is due to Penny’s blistering speed, so do not attempt to adjust this setting.

The Great Outdoors!

Hello Nesters! We are back in action, hitting up the blogosphere with an incredible tenacity the world has yet to experience! Just as we mentioned at the end of our previous post, this post will be all about the outside and nothing about the inside. We’ve also updated the ‘About Our House’ section, so be sure to hit the top link.

House Got Back

Using the Photosynth iPhone app, we managed to capture a few panoramas that will assist in “stitching” together a visual story for those that aren’t physically here to see for themselves. If you don’t have the latest Microsoft Siverlight plug-in installed for your browser, you might want to make a quick stop and do that first since the Photosynth website uses it. Surprisingly if you’re viewing on the iPad/iPhone, it works without plug-ins because it doesn’t need them! When you’re ready, feel free to click here and here to see two different vantage points in the backyard.

We are fortunate that the house already came with a sizable concrete slab to dress up later with perhaps a pergola down the line, and also a small covered patio area for a grilling area (which we’ve already outfitted with The Beast!). There’s also a outside fan above the patio, which is a nice touch to keep the air circulating on those spicy summer days.

This holds a TON of hot dog wieners!

The only major thing we have invested in in the backyard is our revered succulent collection, made possible by the fine folks at Lowe’s. We will probably be moving this guy up to the front of the house, as we found out from our recent trip to Laredo that there are inexpensive options for some really nice Terra cotta pots. We would need a trifecta of pots, one for each free side of the concrete slab (with the remaining side being connected to the porch). We’ve had less success in the past growing and maintaining plants (herb garden)—they kept on dying for no apparent reason, ha! These succulents do not need to be babysat in Texan climate, and they are continually bearing new appendages, which is good!

You succ

We thought this hummingbird feeder would be an probable lure, but we have not seen one feeding since we got it. It might be too hot, who knows. There was a sparrow that landed on it momentarily for a quick sip, but soon left, leaving us once more with too much sugar water. We still have some sugar mix left, but after that is gone, we will probably be letting this guy off the hook.

Attracting hummingbirds is harding than we thought!

We don’t have any huge mature trees to provide massive amounts of shade, but we are fortunate enough to have two crape myrtle trees, one having white flowers and the other, pink. This type of trees is fairly common in neighborhood-type settings, and it does a good job of bringing some color into the backyard without being overbearing.

This one is located in the back right corner.

This one is in the middle of the right side of the backyard. Penny agrees.

The previous resident left us a lot of leftover bricks, which she used to plug all the holes under the fence (she had four dogs). We will need to move this somewhere out of the way, probably in the garage. Also on the agenda is removing those bricks along the fence and filling them in with dirt. There are also some uneven pits in the lawn (deep enough that if you ran around and you’re not careful, you could twist an ankle) that need to be remedied too.

She’s a brick…pile.

There are two flower beds in the backyard that could use some TLC, but we haven’t really decided what to do with them yet, but have talked about adding a major color splash in the form of flowers! One has a rosebush and the other has some random shrubbery, so it’s pretty open-ended. That hose needs to be tamed.

Extreme Flower Bed Makeover: College Station Edition

The roof is not charred, that is a finger shadow

It’s a great backyard: clean rectangular shape, two medium size trees, two flower beds, and a concrete slab that is begging for lounge material. The fence needs to be replaced but that’s not a high priority for us, especially when it involves neighbors going half in and contributing to the cause.

And lastly, we love seeing Penny running around chasing and barking at the birds and blade bounding around the yard. Our previous residence, a townhouse we were leasing, had a small backyard, and is easily an eighth of what we have now!

It’s too damn hot! Let’s go inside, bro

Stop Front-in’

Here’s the link to the Photosynth panorama for the front of the house. It’s not as good as the backyard panoramas.

Two weekends ago we did some weed-pulling to get the front back on track as far as yard maintenance goes. We like the fact that the house already had landscaping stones in place, since those can run quite a bit on their own(maybe around $3 each?). We still have some weed-pulling to do (and also weed killing on the walkway and driveway), but after that we’d like to do a complete overhaul on the stones, dismantling and washing them, and then straightening them back out. Then we can work on the inside of the bed and trim the shrubs, prune the tree, and get some color splash in there!

Mold me, use me, plant me, spruce me

Matt wasn’t too crazy about these Knock Out Roses in the beginning, but once they bloomed he changed his mind. We need to trim this guy and prune all the dead buds that are there, and there are a lot of them.

Overgrownery

At one point in his life, Matt used to play basketball. But those days are over and this thing has got to go. It doesn’t even have a bankboard!

The end is near, my friend. You are destined for the Great Claw that comes weekly on Thursday.

Here’s the left side of the house, with a place for our trash can, an ancient 17-year-old AC unit that is still chugging along, and access to the backyard. We might end up putting a mini-fence around the AC unit, and painting the trash can a brick pattern so it blends in more with the wall (Izzie’s idea).

To the left… everything I own in the can to the left

And here the right side, the utility side, with the gas meter and breaker box. There used to be a small oak tree that was growing in the flower bed near the gas meter, but it was strongly suggested that we take a saw to that guy and cut him down, just because those things can cause problems later being close to the house. Our brother (and brother-in-law) Austin actually mentioned an option for us to do down the line, which is to move the backyard fence up to the front of the house, giving us more backyard space on the side. We would have to finagle the flower bed and make that end a little earlier than it is now, but with our neighbor’s fence already up in the front, it wouldn’t look out of whack and would allow us to have something like a storage shed on the side in the backyard. It’s a great idea and quite possibly could happen in the future!

Hey this is crazy…

That’s the outdoor rundown! We look forward to making changes and really curbing that appeal!

Come back, okay?

Happy Nesting!

Odds and Ends!

Put down the phone, we are here! Hello fellow Nesters and Nesterettes. Yes, it has been a while, wow! We have been doing great, keeping busy and enjoying the fantastically spicy weather. We have done a couple of mini-updates to The Nest, but nothing major. Remember—this takes time [and money]!

We paid our last rent check for our place on Blackhawk, so that is done and over! It was a great place for about two years, and we moved in practically a week after it was built when the neighborhood was a lil’ baby. Now they have tons and tons of surrounding units and a swimming pool, and the college kids have definitely found out about it. We won’t miss the loud trucks whizzing by randomly, but we will miss the niceties that came with being in a new place.

But back to the house, one of the major things that we wanted to do was change the locks. Since the hardware was gold, we decided to update that and get with that nickel finish. We are all about that nickel, please…no more gold. Schlage is a great German brand when it comes to lockin’ it down, but Kwikset was comparable in quality and slightly more inexpensive, so we went with that.

Front Door

Back Door – wait, which one is upside down?! We don’t know!

Garage Door – is this upside down too? Or maybe right side up?

Since there was a hole from the existing deadbolt on the garage door, we bought a plate to cover the hole for less than $3. Since we have the garage door, we weren’t convinced that we needed to have a deadbolt there.

We also put in a new nickel finish kick plate to replace the gold one. It was about $25, so not too bad and it looks great next to that doormat!

When you’re kickin’ in the door, you have to look good!

Hey, come on—it’s The Nest!

Man needs tool. Introducing a real cordless drill! HAHA! MORE POWER!!!

Skilz

We have a pretty dinky Ryobi which is good for screwing around the house, but the new drill is beefier, has variable speed, and MORE POWER!!! We are looking forward to using this in more DIY projects, like a doghouse!

And this past weekend we had a chance to go to a Habitat for Humanity Resale Store, and they had a bunch of furniture, odds and ends, etc. for great prices. We picked up some fancy items. Matt couldn’t pass up General Robert E. Lee!

Swag

We did a good deal of yardwork this past weekend, removing a ton of weeds from the front. Our next post will definitely be about yard business. So stay tuned! Until then…

Happy Nesting!

We’ve Got Gas Problems

Last night we had big plans. BIG PLANS for dinner. We wanted pasta and meatballs.

But for some reason, the stove wasn’t quite cooperating with us. All five of the burners didn’t want to…burn. The ignitors were functioning just fine, but there was no gas to be found. We moved the range up and it appeared that the gas valve/line seemed to be in working order. What was strange though was we just used the stove for lunch that same day, utilizing three at a time to heat up soup and other fancy things. Maybe we overdid it, we thought. Maybe three burners at one time was just too much for our range, and this was the end. We were hungry and delirious, and after finding some bath salt granules to munch on, we were soon imagining Penny as a giant Thanksgiving turkey…yikes!

So this morning we gave a call to the energy company in our area, Atmos. It turns out we forgot to get the gas set up! HA! The previous owners had scheduled the gas to be until May 31, and after that we had been using residual gas still left in the pipes! Apparently that can last up to a week after shutoff, and our three-burner lunch yesterday probably helped a great deal in getting in all out. We have a gas man coming out tomorrow morning to make sure we have major gas.

So we did not get a lemon of a range, we were just being silly.

Happy Nesting!