50 Shades of Manatee

Remember when I said I was going to slack less and blog more? Yeah, I lied. Life has been a crazy ride the last few weeks (the blog on the biggest change is yet to come), so blogging hasn't been on the forefront.

We've been hella busy. Pretty much every weekend for the last 6 weeks has been filled to the brim. A few weeks ago, we celebrated Derek's grandmother's 90th birthday party.

It was a great time! We went to Pt. St Lucie and met up with all the family, who either flew or drove in from all over the country. I did, however, have a moment of mortification when I saw this on my 90 year old grandmother-in-law's doily covered coffee table.

The next weekend we HAD to do something to get that out of our head, so we decided to go kayaking with manatees.

We didn't get too far from 50 Shades though because we ended up seeing 50 Shades of Manatee Mating season. Yeeeeah, awkward.

On the home front, Derek has been a busy bee! He installed a snazzy new water filter...

And he got the new toilet in, which means we now have 2 places to pee in the house-fancy!

WARNING! If you don't want multiple pictures of your butt put in each blog,
don't get married to me. (I wonder if he read THAT fine print in our vows! lol)

And he did it just in the nick of time because that very night I had an awesome girls night Pinterest party!

My party even had a few extra special guests...

These buggers were caught within minutes of each other. We really don't know how they're getting in (although we have our suspicions), but we're catching them on a regular basis. I even caught one while sitting on the toilet because I'm that badass.

In other home improvement news, the summer heat has been killing our AC, and with our attic getting to 120 degrees plus, Derek decided to "ghetto rig," a little something. He knew we needed something to cool the attic off until we get an attic fan, so he decided to rig up a fan of his own for now. This is no ordinary "ghetto rigging," job though because my husband is no ordinary homeowner.

I later had to inform him that even though the wood isn't laminated and has unfinished edges, that this is no "ghetto rigging," job because it doesn't involve duct tape or things hanging precariously, and he used a saw. I told him that if most homeowners were to rig something for this problem, they would most likely take the fan, lean it sideways in the corner of the hole and then put the original door/cover thing over the hole. He was quite disgusted by this idea, and you could tell that he genuinely hadn't even thought of such a thing. Yup, my man is his own kind of breed. The manly fix-it kind.

As for me and my runs, well I've been slacking. Can you blame me?!? It's a bajillion degrees out there. Plus I did this...

Fortunately though it was just tendonitis, and it healed in time for me to do this...

So now I'm back on track (she said for the billionth time). But for real, I'm actually typing this in my running clothes, and I'm not going to count watching Real Housewives while wearing running clothes as a workout today (but maybe tomorrow). I'm planning on actually getting these clothes sweaty. (Was that convincing enough?)

In other news, I can't figure out how to wrap up this post, so I googled "funny house ecards," and decided this is how I'll go out...

Pottys, Chain-Smoking Babies, and Trenches

For once my lack of blogging is not because of a lack of things to blog about, it's actually due to being so darn busy being blog-worthy. The temperature is up, and, as backwards as it seems, so is our productivity! Unfortunately, there is another thing that's up... the water level around our house.

How to keep your cat from wandering around the neighborhood

You might remember this moat from last summer, and how it prompted us to look into a pet alligator as a method of home security. Last summer, Derek put in a French drain, and some drain grates in the front yard. But alas, the summer, and therefore the insane daily rains, ended, and so did the motivation to dig a 150 foot trench in the back yard to give all that water some place to go. But with the summer upon us, the motivation has arrived! So Derek began the crazy feat that is digging a 150 foot trench, placing a pipe in it, and burring it in the dead of summer.

Lucy Photobomb

I've been keeping busy this summer too. As I do every summer, I have been doing swim lessons. I've also been doing lots of running and crafting.

But I can't let Derek do all the work this summer, so I decided to finally tackle the wallpaper in the chain-smoking baby room. Yup, you read that right- chain-smoking baby room. No. We haven't decided to have a baby, and no, neither of us have taken up smoking. This room got it's name because of this...

and the delightful smoke stench that accompanied it. Why baby you ask? Because of the delightful wallpaper of polka dotted elephants carrying balloons...

This wallpaper poses more of a problem than the wallpaper in our master bathroom that I removed with ease while brushing my teeth every morning, and  than the wallpaper border in the master bedroom that required all kinds of chemicals and grunting to remove. Why? Because there are not one, but two layers of painted over wallpaper. I've gotten quite a bit done though, and am about 2/3 around the room.

But alas, as much forward momentum that we've gained this summer, we somehow managed to repeat history...

Yup, that's a toilet in the shower. You may remember when the guest room toilet was our only useable toilet because our master toilet was in the shower...

Apparently our toilets like a good warm shower before making their final exit from our home. We've got a lot more ahead of us, and we're back down to one toilet, unless that is you like pottying in the yard...

Riding in Style

The summer is off to a hot and sweaty start, and with the summer temperature rising and the rains coming down daily, it was time for a change... in how Derek mows the lawn. FINALLY!! His Christmas present is up and running, and now Derek is mowing in style!

I even gave it a whirl!

And with the added time Derek now has added to his weekends thanks to his mower cutting the lawn in a fraction of the time, we decided it was time that my sister pay us a visit, and we all pay our favorite redneck swimmin' hole a visit- Wekiva Island!

Enjoying the sun, the booze, and the water

Kayaking!

We also decided to pay a visit to the cutest baby on the PLANET, our niece, Aliyah...

But really, since the last update Derek has been working, working, working...

and in his minimal time at home, he's crazy enough to continue to work on this house...

I've been working like crazy too, but my spare time has been dominated by one thing in particular... RUNNING!

Superhero Scramble!

I've got my first marathon coming up in less than 6 months...

Unfortunately, I picked this race because of it's overall bad assness, not because it has a good time of year to train in. In fact, the thought that I would have to train in the summer never occurred to me. Yup, I'm a genius. The best part about the summer though? Hands down...

Hallelujah!!
ps- what is this dude wearing? Underwear and loafers?

So, with the summer having just begun, expect big changes in the house! My goal is to finally remove the double layer, painted over wall paper border in the room formerly belonging to a chain smoking baby , and to organize (maybe even paint and, dare I say it, finish) the office.

Have fun sweating, see you next post!

Our House-aversary, Slacking, and a Change for the Blog

We recently celebrated our first ever House-aversary, and we may or may not have celebrated with the champs (or is bubbly pink moscato considered wine?) that our fab realtor, Erica, gave us as a closing present... yeah. We kinda forgot about that until we were close enough to use it for our house-aversary...

 
Now I know I promised a special edition house-aversary update, but... my computer crashed. LAME! And now that it's up and running, I'm ready to show the world our progress... except there hasn't been any. Derek has been working 60+ hours a week/6 days a week since October, and because he is the primary source of our progress (ok, the only source of our progress), not much has progressed. So, the majority of my house-aversary update will require you to read the 6 month house-aversary post, and just replace all mentions of 6 months with 1 year...

6 month House-aversary Post 

Now that you've got the majority of our "progress" covered, let's see what has actually been done in the last 6 months (in no particular order because I can't remember when anything happened anymore).

After a through cleaning of the walls (I had no idea walls could be so dirty)... 

 ..and with the help of the ever fabulous Brodie and Sara...

We painted the main living area and kitchen!

We kept warm during the cold winter with our fireplace...

I also turned our messy junk room/storage facility/OMGhowdidIletthishappen room...

 
...into a pretty darned organized office with enough floor space to make carpet angels!

Then, we got the idea (and this is just in the last few weeks) to get started on the closet, so that the office could be fully organized. But so far it hasn't had the desired effect...

But I guess it has to get ugly before it could get pretty, and it will be pretty. I mean, check this out...

HEY! Stop looking at my husband's butt! I wanted you to check out the shelves!

In other news, Derek got a riding lawn mower...

Photo bomb courtesy of Lucy

...but it doesn't work yet.

So that's all folks! Not too much around here, which is why we've decided to make a little change to the blog. You see, blogging solely about the house makes it difficult to come up with things to write about during the weeks (or months!) when nothing happens. And while we've found it hard to get stuff done around the house in the last 6 months, we surely have found time to keep life interesting...

I became an Aunt, and Derek became an Uncle!!

So, we've decided that while we love our home and want to continue the never-ending quest to improve it, we don't have the time to get enough done to be worth writing about on a regular basis. With that in mind, the blog will now be about our LIFE including, (but no longer limited to) our house! Get ready for regular posts again!

Until next time...