It's Halloween!

I was just thinking about how few memories I actually have of my own childhood Halloween experiences. I remember gutting pumpkins and hating the goo and strings inside. I remember one year gutting a pumpkin and then puking up curly fries from Arby's that I had eaten that night for dinner (I believe this was the last year I ever removed the insides of a pumpkin). I remember one Halloween walking around with my Dad and sister in our Michigan neighborhood with glo-sticks. And I remember one Halloween in Tennessee. That's about it.

Since then, I have dressed up from time to time, and sometimes have given out candy, but I guess Halloween isn't too special of day for me. This year, Mike and I were going to carve a pumpkin (on the basis that he was going to clean out the insides) but we didn't. I haven't carved a pumpkin in probably 18 years. And that's no exaggeration. Maybe next year I guess. I do like to eat roasted pumpkin seeds, so if for no other reason, I'd like to carve a pumpkin to get to the seeds...after someone else cleans the pumpkin out for me of course.

This is the first Halloween that Mike and I have spent together. He's always been either working in North Carolina or working in Iraq. So, I guess you could say this is a monumental occasion. But I don't think we are going to make much of it. I've made a trip to Walmart today for candy and now I'm cooking a broccoli and cheese pizza for us for dinner. There have been several groups of kids come by already and I guess as soon as they stop knocking, we'll probably call it a night.

Tomorrow morning John McCain is going to be in Springfield. Mike got tickets. I'm not going because it's going to be 40 degrees and I'm not willing to stand outside in that weather for any amount of time for even Obama so definitely not McCain. He was planning to go, but I think he's second guessing for the same reason. But I'm not influencing him either way.

Well, I will leave you with a "Happy Halloween" and sign off for the day. It's time to eat pizza.

Nothing too new

Nothing really to report. After my delicious veggie pot pie on Monday, I made homemade gnocchi with tomato sauce on Tuesday and then a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on Wednesday. I need to go to the grocery store to stock up on more vegetables because I'm pretty much out again. Plus, I still need to get candy for the kiddos tomorrow night.

Our bedroom is pretty much complete. I need finish painting the closet in there and touch up where I screwed up the ceiling in a couple places and then clean up. That's it! So, it's very possibly by tonight we may have a bed in there again. I've been enjoying sleeping on the couch the last few nights because it's more comfortable to me than the cot. But my hubby hasn't been too happy with the situation. It's not like he even knows I'm beside him at night anyways. We have two cot bars between us!!

I also got the call back on our windows today. They are in and ready to be picked up at Home Depot. The makers of the windows told me that they could install them for us, but Home Depot has told me otherwise. So I guess we are on our own trying to figure out how to remove the current windows and put the new ones in. We may wait until my dad's in town to mess with the installation since we have no place to put the old windows once they come out. Dad will be bringing his truck so at least we could take them somewhere. Does anyone know if there is a place to recycle windows? I bet there is.

OK. I smell. I think it's time for a shower.

Monday night MEALS!

I am proud of my concoction for dinner tonight. I have never had a pot pie before in my life but I found a recipe for a vegetarian pot pie on line. It was very lenient on ingredients so I decided to put broccoli, spinach, onions, peas, red bell pepper, potato, and garlic into this pot pie. I put it in a white sauce with milk, soy sauce, and some herbs and then covered it with a homemade pie shell. I think I could improve upon the taste of the pie shell (needed more salt) but the rest of the meal I found to be very impressive! I can't wait to make it again! I think it would be really good with carrots (I'm usually not a fan), fake chicken, and the rest of the stuff I already had in there. Even my omnivore husband really liked it. I think I may have to try this recipe out on my father again here in a few weeks. I'm SO glad to have my kitchen back!!!

I guess that's all for today. I just wanted to blog about my pot pie I am very impressed with. I'm sad that the Sarah Connor Chronicles was not on tonight. Instead was some stupid baseball game...what, the World Series or something?

Sunday brunch

I just finished making our extravagant Sunday brunch of scrambled eggs with sharp cheddar, mozzarella and garlic and whole wheat toast. Yup. I spent all morning cooking on that one! Now I've just set up the Wii to wireless Internet and am waiting for it to update the system. I need to create my Mii. I haven't even played this thing yet since Michael set it up early last week. All we have is one controller and the sports game that comes with the system so it's not too interesting at the moment. But I think once this Internet finishes updating and we can buy games online, we may find some we like.

Dinner out on Friday night in DC was good. I ordered a platter of vegetarian food consisting of a cheese enchilada, chile rellenos and guacamole taco. I was so full I could only finish the chile rellenos and a couple bites of the other two. Everything was good though. I'd like to go back and try to finish all of the plate. We also had some margaritas which were yummy as well. Afterwards one of Mike's coworkers took us walking around the city near Dupont Circle and that was pretty boring. I guess he was trying to find someplace we'd like to go afterwards to hang out, but it ended up just being a tramp around DC in fairly cold weather. So, after an hour or so of that Mike and I said we were going back to find our car (we ended up driving after all) and it seemed that everyone was going to call it a night then as well. Not too much excitement to report.

Yesterday we spent the day listening to the rain outside, staying under heating blankets and watching the Food Network and HGTV. Nothing was accomplished on the house but Mike did go to Home Depot to get more paint and some other things. Today he is taping more trim and I'm going to finish our Master bedroom. Stuff needs to come out of our closet too so I can paint in there as well. Mike also suggested bringing up our bed from the basement and putting it in the living room for the time being. I think we can manage a few more days on the cots. Plus, last night I slept on the couch with Stumpey and Skye and it was quite comfortable.

It's Friday!

Which means it's just like every other day of the week for me except tomorrow I will have a husband that can sleep in past 7:30am too. Yesterday I went and got my car fixed. We had to replace the rear brakes, left exhaust hanger, windshield wipers and right side light. I also threw in an oil change since it was almost 3000 miles since the last one (and the last one was 1 year ago. Yes, I didn't even drive 3000 miles last year!) Then I went and officially passed my inspection. So I am now legal to drive in the state of Virginia. We got the deal that Mike wanted on a 2009 Prius, $100 over invoice, but we just don't have the money to pay another several hundred dollar bill every month. I'm just hoping my car lasts until we do have a little extra money. Soon my car will be 11 years old! I don't think any of my family has ever had a car that long. We are the family that gets a new vehicle every other year or so. Maybe by the time I start looking for a car again the 2010 Volt's will be on the market. I don't think I would ever drive on gas! And even if I let Mike drive that one, he could go to work and come back and still have more than half of the mileage before falling into using gas. I think that car would be the best way to go for our driving. Everything is so short distance!

So a house update. Last night Mike removed the trim wallpaper from our master bedroom and painted the ceiling white. It's my job today to spackle holes, tape the ceiling and paint the walls. Things are coming together!

Tonight we are going into the city to meet some of Mike's co-workers at a Tex-Mex place. I called and they don't use anything but water and salt to cook their rice and black beans so I think I'll actually be able to eat there. We'll probably drive over to the Springfield metro and take that into the city. I'm thinking parking would be difficult on a Friday night. It will take us a long time to get there on the metro, probably an hour I'm guessing, but when you take into account time looking for a parking space, I think we'll be making up for it. This will be the first time we've been to the city since we moved into this house. It will be a nice little break, but I'm not looking forward to walking around in 50 degree weather. I need to find the box with my wool coat in it and break it out for tonight. Even if I only walk from the metro to the restaurant, I still don't want to be freezing.

OK. That's my Friday October 24, 2008 update.

Just another day

So yesterday I painted the computer room. All that is left to do in there is painting the trim. It looks a million times better than it did with the floral padded wall and greenish-gold colored paint. I still haven't taken any pictures but I will. I think we are supposed to work on our bedroom today but I haven't started anything as of yet. The trim wallpaper needs to be removed and then we can paint. No need for primer in there; the walls are already off white.

My allergies are much better today. I'm feeling like I have been in this house for the last month which isn't perfect, but it is much of an improvement over the last two days.



I just finished making baked fuselli and cheese with broccoli and spinach. I added some cajun seasoning as well so it should be a little spicy. We'll see how my creation turned out here in a little while once my hubby gets home.



I thought I would leave you with an amusing photograph taken last week when I had forgotten that the trim had just been painted. I was watching Stumpey and Skore play together and I sat on the floor and leaned backward. Have a nice day!

Miserable

The last two days I've been just miserable with horrible allergies. I didn't sleep all night on Sunday because I couldn't lay down without snot running down my throat or out my nose. So, I watched TV all night. Yesterday wasn't any better. We kept the windows open all day and it was cold outside so I was snuggled under a heating blanket all day long while trying not to allow snot to get on anything. I finally slept last night after taking some NyQuil. I think that may have been the first time in my life that I've ever taken that stuff. It tasted terrible. And I'm pretty certain it didn't make me fall asleep. Even a couple hours after taking it I was still awake. But I finally got to sleep, I'm pretty certain, on my own accord. I slept for about 12 hours. I woke up and probably could have slept longer but felt it was about time to get up and see how I was going to feel today. I dreaded sitting in a vertical position because I knew that the coughing would begin and the snot would start draining again, which it did. But, all of my symptoms are to a lesser degree today. I have the windows open again and it's still pretty chilly outside but not as cold as yesterday. I'm coughing up a lot of crap now, and still sneezing and have a runny nose, but I have confidence that it is getting better. I've taken another Claritin-D today, but it hasn't seemed to be working the last few days so I'm not sure if today will be any different. I think I'm going to tape and paint the computer room today. I didn't do anything yesterday and that makes me feel like a slacker even though I had a good excuse. I can't let my husband work all day and have me just lay around. Today I don't feel miserable enough for that. Time to eat some breakfast at 1pm. I'm actually hungry today which is a good sign I think!

A HUGE thanks to the in-laws!

So, of course we've been working on the house the last couple days. The computer room is now primered and ready to be painted. It took a day to spackle and then a day to sand and primer. Then Mike's parents came into town and brought a lot of antique furniture with them. Of course, we aren't quite ready for all of it to go into their places yet, but everything is in the basement. Mike's parents were a HUGE help on Sunday. We ripped up all the upstairs carpet and removed all the staples and tack stripes from the hardwoods underneath. Then we cleaned the hardwood floors with a floor cleaner. Afterwards, we brought a TV stand and a china cabinet upstairs, close to their prospective places, once we've finished everything. We could have NEVER gotten so much done in one day without their help. IF YOU READ THIS BLOG BECKY OR MARC, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! This place looks totally different now. With no blue carpet everywhere and with the light colored hardwood floors taking it's place, we are starting to feel more at home. I can't wait to see what another month will bring. We've come so far in this first month!

On the down side, my allergies are EXTREMELY bad right now. I'm wheezing every time I inhale and my nose is running so much that I have Kleenex stuffed up in each nostril. And this is after taking a Claritin-D last night and tonight. I'm hoping now that the carpet is up, that the dust is either mostly gone, or will settle and I can start breathing normally again without the use of medicine. I can't stand being so miserable in my own house. But I am excited for the way it looks now. Hopefully I will feel better in a couple days.

I'll take some more recent photos soon and post them so you can see the progression. It is quite amazing. And once I have final pictures, it will be even more dramatic! I can't wait!

We have stuff again!

Not that any of it is out of boxes, but at least everything is in our possession again. The movers ended up getting here at 10am. They were extremely apologetic (obviously) but put me a little behind. I just had them leave everything in the basement in boxes except for the kitchen stuff and any tools. They brought those things upstairs. By the time they had all our stuff in the house it was 12:15pm and I needed to get moving on getting my car inspected and then on to the DMV for the new title and registration by 4:00pm. So I had them leave everything in boxes upstairs too. Turns out, the emissions place and the DMV is not too crowded on Wednesday afternoon. I got in and out of both places within a half hour or so each. That is unheard of out here! Michael spent all morning the Saturday that he went from 7am until 2pm if I remember correctly. And when I went to get my license at the same place, I got there when they opened at 10am and there was a line around the building already. It took me about an hour and a half in there that day. Going in the afternoon on a weekday seems to be the way to go. So, my car passed emissions but not the inspection. I need new windshield wipers, a new muffler holder thing (a piece of rubber that keeps the muffler from moving up and down), a new light on the side and new back brakes. All these things could be fixed fairly inexpensively, but I only have 15 days to do everything. So, we've started looking harder at getting a new vehicle really soon. We went and looked at Toyota Prius' and Honda Civic Hybrids tonight. I'll keep you posted about what we end up going with if anything at all.

As for the house, we haven't done anything with it today. I was busy running around today after having to inventory everything that came into our house and then had that phone interview and then once Mike got home we went to look at cars. And now it's almost 9pm and we are about to watch the last debate...although I don't know why. They say the same things at each one and we both know who we are voting for.

I'm exhausted today and can't wait to fall asleep. Maybe I'll fall asleep during the debate again like the first one.

Waiting for the Movers

So I woke up at 7am after going to bed after 1am to be sure I was ready when the movers get here. Supposedly they were supposed to be here at 8am. Well, it's 8:30am and no movers yet. I want to go back to sleep. I have other stuff I need to be doing too like getting my emissions test done on my car and then getting the new title and registration. I guess I'm just being impatient because I'm tired and would rather still be sleeping.

The kitchen only needed one coat of paint so we lucked out. It is pretty much completed now except for some touch-up painting on the ceiling and walls and the trim still needs to be painted, but luckily there's not too much trim in there. It's so messy in there. The floor and counters need a scrubbing badly. Actually, so does the rest of the house. But what's the point when all you are going to do is mess it up again once you start that day's worth of chores. Eventually it will be done and we will be able to relax.

Last night we had a flood. It was in the utility room...AGAIN. This time it was due to the washer hose coming out of the utility sink's drain. Who knows when this happened, but I put in a load of clothes before leaving the house around 4:30pm yesterday. When I got home and went to put the clothes in the dryer, water was EVERYWHERE! I told Michael to bring down a mop...he didn't know why at the time. He said he was going to bring some paper towels! Ha ha! We are lucky we have that drain in the floor in that room because it would have been hell to clean up that mess. It still took some patience, but wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been without a drain. I think we are going to look for a hook or something to attach to the hose and sink so this doesn't happen again.

Well, I will post again later once we get our stuff if it's of any interest. Still no movers as of yet.

Taping, priming, painting and painting...

That's what has been going on in the Wilcox Clark household for the past couple days. That kitchen is definitely the most time consuming room we've had to deal with. It took forever to clean out all the cabinets and drawers, we had to carve a piece of plywood to put underneath the stove and refrigerator so that they would roll into place since the last owners didn't pull them out when they tiled the floors, and then yesterday it took me from 4pm-9:30pm to tape up that room! It's been crazy! All the cabinets and light fixtures took FOREVER to tape around. Michael painted the ceiling in there last night and that took him several hours. Today I taped the ceilings so that I could prime the walls. I started at 10am. I wasn't done until 1:45p. Now I'm waiting the allotted 4 hours to begin painting with the actual color we are going to be using. Then we'll have to wait at least another 4 hours before putting on the final coat of paint. Tomorrow the movers are coming to deliver our stuff. They were supposed to come on Thursday, but have moved it up a day. This isn't a good thing. I was planning to have completed the kitchen so that they could at least unpack those boxes and have my kitchen usable again. But I don't think we'll have the final coat of paint done by tonight in order to have everything dried and appliances pushed back in place by the time they get here in the morning. That just means more stuff for us to unpack when we get everything together. We are already going to have them leave everything in the basement which means more work for us then it should. Oh well. I don't have a job so I guess by default unpacking boxes will become my job.

On another note, I was going to go to the DMV and register my car and get a new title today. My registration from NC expires tomorrow. We've been holding off getting this done because we were hoping to get a new vehicle for me by the time my registration was up. Still no new vehicle for me so we now have to register my old car. I've run out of time to get this done today, so now, after the movers leave tomorrow, I'll have to go...on the day it expires. Talk about procrastination. But this one was a planned procrastination. Most of them are not.

OK. Shower time for me. I have paint all over me...including in my hair. I'm sure I will go through this process again later on tonight. But tonight, instead of my hair being white, it will be light blue/green.

Back in Town!

So, as most of you probably know, I've been out of town for the last ten days. First I went to Tennessee and then to Michigan. The trip went by very quickly but I'm glad to be back. Last night when I came through the front door two of the kitties were waiting at the top of the stairs. When I called for Stumpey, she came running down. And then all of them started getting excited that their momma was finally home. All of them were rubbing me and purring and you could see that they were just so happy. But Skore, she acted the least excited to see me. I guess daddy gave enough affection to her to tide her over. The others took turns laying with me last night. When I fell asleep, Sabrina was laying above my head and Stumpey was laying on top of my chest. Skye tried to lay below Mike's feet, but he kicked him accidentally so he ran away. But as soon as Mike left this morning, Stumpey, Skye and Skore slept with me. Right now, Stumpey and Skye are still laying with me. I need to get up and eat something and start taping off the ceiling in the kitchen and get to painting. The movers are coming back with all of our stuff on Thursday and I'd like to have the kitchen completed by then so at least we'll have a working kitchen again. I can't wait to get my baking utensils!!! Cookies or cake anyone? Pastry perhaps?

OK. Time to eat. Oh, and for those that haven't heard already, I didn't get the DNA job. I did, however, get a call back from a job I didn't even remember applying for 3 months ago. I don't really want it, but I'm going through the phone interview on Wednesday if nothing more than for interview practice. I qualify for this one, but I don't want to continue working in pharmaceuticals, plus this job is in Gaithersburg, MD. It's only 30 miles away, but in this traffic, it would take me an hour and a half to get there every morning and coming home every night. No thank you.

Oh, and while I was away, Mike painted the living room and dining room. It looks really nice. I can't wait to get more paint on the walls and remove the carpet. This place is going to look really good eventually.

OK...I guess it's time for more "before" pictures

So I just got back from getting my hair cut...again. It wasn't but probably 4 weeks ago that I had it cut the last time, but I was fairly unhappy with it so I tried another salon out here in Springfield. This guy David with Jon David Salon, knows what he was doing. He had 3 people getting haircuts at the same time. Of course he had his helpers, but I've never seen someone work on so many people at once. I like my hair so far. We'll see if I continue to like it when I have to fix it myself. That's always the test.

Alright, I'll post some more pictures that I took from the other day now while I'm waiting for this headache to go away. The picture to the left below is part of the "barnyard" basement. This is where we will be putting a wood burning stove, once we buy one. We are taking down all the brown wood pieces around. They are just for show. The picture on the right is also from the basement in the "bar" section. We will be knocking this down and replacing at some point.

Here's another picture of the basement from the front side (left). We plan to knock out this wall completely. Who needs two small closets in your family room? If you look through these front windows, you will see the "barnyard" in the back. The picture on the right is across from the closets in the left. All of the pictures above are part of the basement family room. As you can see, this part is on the first floor of our house. The house is built on a hill so you walk into the front door on the first floor but you walk out the back door on the second floor.

This is what you see when you walk into the front door. The floors are porcelain tile which is nice, but I hope to be able to take down this wall and closet as well to give a much more open feel. Currently, to the left is the family room, to the right is the downstairs spare bedroom and also the utility room is to the right.

Here's the downstairs spare bedroom. This will eventually be our guest bedroom. It is on the exact opposite side of the house from us. Once we finish renovating the downstairs bathroom, they will have their own little hideaway.

Here's the downstairs bathroom. It looks a lot better in this picture than it does in real life. When the water is turned on, everything leaks and the shower is disgusting. We are completely renovating this. The tile on the floor isn't too bad in here though. Right now, unusable.

Here's just a peek at our utility room. We've already replaced the washer and dryer with the washer and dryer we had back in Wilmington. This room is actually pretty big but who needs to see the rest of it. When you've seen one utility room, you've seen them all.

Here's a picture of the back of the house and the shed. We will be knocking that baby to the ground as well and putting a new one up on the top of the hill where it will be hidden. The picture to the right shows most of our backyard but not the area where we will be putting the new shed. It will be to the right.

Here's a picture of the side deck. There are so many decks/patio areas in the backyard! Underneath is where I park my car. We may eventually extend this and make it a one car garage. But that will be a plan many years from now...if we are still here.

I'll leave you with one more view of the front of the house. The things you didn't see include the two skylights (one above the staircase and one in the upstairs bathroom), the staircase and all of the backyard. You got glimpses of the "before" of everything else. I will take more pictures as the transformation occurs. As for me, I'm off to Tennessee tomorrow night, have my 10 year reunion on Saturday night, then off to Michigan next Wednesday morning. It's my Grandmother's 80th birthday on Tuesday!! Then back to Virginia on October 12th. I'm looking forward to getting away for a little while. The only thing I don't like is being away from my husband. But he'll be flying to those places on the weekends as well. So I guess it will only be 5 days away from him. But then he travels a lot when we get back so, I guess it's a never ending cycle. But I do miss him when we aren't together.