Crossing Stuff Off!

Alright! I FINALLY just sat down to take care of some long overdue items. The first... sending in my form to our electric and gas company to get our rates lowered. When we bought our house (ummm....ELEVEN months ago) we were given this form and told that if we filled it out and had the builder fill out their portion, we would qualify for a lower rate on our utilities. The builder was offering a free "green" upgrade package on our house at the time we purchased, and that included a more efficient HVAC system, blown in insulation, radiant barrier on the roof, etc. I have absolutely no excuse for WHY it has taken me almost a year to request a lower rate on our largest monthly utility bill... but, there you have it! I'm excited now to see how much of a difference it makes on our bills!

Next, I contacted Time Warner Cable (my favorite people to call... note that is dripping with sarcasm) to get a price quote on having an additional phone and cable jack installed in the house. Apparently, in order to hook up our modem for the cable and the phone, they needed to have both jacks next to each other. This information might have been something helpful for the people working in the design center for our builder to know AND pass along when we were picking out locations for these things...but... I digress. So, the only room that had both jacks is our bedroom, but they aren't next to each other. So, our modem is sitting on the floor, and we have a super long phone cord running across the floor from the other side of the room. Very well thought out and planned on our part. Today I found out it will cost $85 to have the new jacks installed next to each other in our office. That actually isn't as expensive as I thought it would be. I'll be calling them back next month to get that taken care of so that we can get our office set up!

And finally, I submitted my first claim to the warranty office. We have one small issue and one possibly larger issue with the house. The first is that the veneer on the front of one of our kitchen cabinet doors is bubbling, so they need to replace that. The second is that we have MAJOR floor squeaks under the shower in our master bathroom and on the floor right in front of the shower. The project manager told me to have warranty look at it, but they might have to rip out all of the bathroom tile to fix it. This is most likely not an option I'm in favor of, BUT... I want to make sure that there isn't water getting down in there somehow and it's causing the floors to start to squeak. That's been going on for a while, but I guess I've just been putting off calling because in comparison to the myriad of issues we have at our rental house (which was built in 1920), this doesn't seem like as big of a deal!

I'm also really happy to be back home from North Carolina. I had a wonderful time, but am happy to be home and glad it's Friday so Matt doesn't have to go to work tomorrow! I'm going to spend my weekend picking out plants for the front of our house because according to our home owners association, I have to get them all APPROVED first! Sigh. I'm all for H.O.A.'s because I know they help keep the neighborhood nice and maintain home values, blah, blah, blah, but give me a break! They planted the crappiest plants EVER in front of our house, but I have to submit two copies of plans for what I want to plant where along with the size and color and have it approved?! Whatever. I will play by the rules. I guess the upside to this is that it will make me have a well thought out landscaping plan!

Guest Room Closet # 2

Okay, first let me start out by saying that in order to get this post done I am sitting in a Starbucks using the free Wi-fi... BUT... I only ordered a bottled water. I did NOT cheat on my goal of giving up Starbucks for the month (although it was very hard!)

I'm in North Carolina visiting my Dad and working on a few projects over at our rental house. I couldn't get the Internet to work at my Dad's house last night, despite spending an hour and a half sitting on the floor and hiding behind the side of the bed with the laptop and trying not to wake up Andy, who was asleep in the same room. My Dad doesn't have a wireless router, so I could only sit where I could plug my computer into the cable. It was very frustrating, so finally I gave up and went to bed! I'm here until Friday, so I've brought things with me to finish up from my list, but before I left, I tackled the closet in the second spare room (that will eventually become Andy's "big boy" room).

This project was way more than just the closet. This is what the whole room looked like when I started

Ugggh! It was terrible. This room had become the dumping ground for EVERYTHING while I was cleaning out our bedroom and the other spare room. It took me a few hours, but now it looks like this

The photo albums on the bed stand will eventually be moved to the office (whenever we tackle that!) and the bin on the floor in the closet is FILLED with unorganized craft supplies. Organizing that will be on May's list.

Mostly I'm just glad I don't feel a sense of shame when opening that door! Everything now has a home, and that makes me VERY happy!

Bench Cushion

Today I took the easy way out and made the lazy person's version of a cushion. I bought a piece of foam and then wrapped fabric around it. We have this built-in bench on the landing of our stairs...




It's just kind of a boring and random space that tends to collect clutter. I haven't done any kind of decorating on the walls of our stairs... no pictures... nothing. Everything just looks very bare. I really like having the bench there, but it's purely decorative. It doesn't open for storage or anything like that (although I guess we could make it open and use the space for storage if we were ever so inclined).

I thought that if I made a cushion for it, that it would spruce things up a bit. So, I bought a piece of foam today at Hancock Fabrics while it was on sale for 50% off (because it turns out that foam is expensive!) and found two and a half yards of this blue striped fabric in the clearance section. Tonight I cut the foam to fit with a serrated knife and wrapped the fabric around it. Here is the final result...

It looks cute... but desperately needs some pillows! Eventually, it will be on my list to turn this into a proper cushion cover, but not this month! I'd like to sew some piping around the top and bottom edges and make the cushion removable in case it ever needs to be washed. Maybe with the pillows and a few pictures on the walls the space will look a little more finished. I've never had a space like this to decorate before, so I'm not quite sure what to do with it. We also have two small windows, one above the other, above the bench. They are too small to put blinds up, but also just look very bare right now. I am at a loss for what to do on those. I can't even reach the top one without a ladder. Guess it's time to go to Barnes & Noble and start flipping through some decorating books and magazines for some ideas!

Metformin Study In The News

One of the benefits of this new habit of getting up at 5:00 a.m. every morning to go to the gym is that I catch up on my news. There is literally nothing else on that early other than infomercials! I NEVER used to get up and watch the news in the morning at home, but now it passes the time on the treadmill pretty quickly!

This morning, I saw a story on MSNBC about a Metformin study that shows a correlation between type II diabetics who have used the drug for five years and an OVER 50% less chance of developing breast cancer. It does not talk about women with PCOS who take the drug, and more studies are being conducted, but it was still encouraging news!

I have read that women with PCOS have in increased risk of developing breast cancer because they typically have higher insulin levels (even if not diabetic) and since high insulin levels promote abnormal cell growth, PCOS patients are at an increased risk for several types of cancer.

The thing I found most interesting about this article is that in addition to the reduced cancer rates, most likely attributed to lower insulin levels, some studies are suggesting that the Metformin actually inhibits tumor growth in patients already diagnosed with breast cancer. A study is being conducted now to see if Metformin helps lower the rate of recurrance of breast cancer after standard treatment in early breast cancer patients.

Personally, knowing all of this information is going to make my Metformin pills a little easier to swallow every day!

The Powder Room

Today I touched up the paint in the powder room and hung two prints that I had previously hanging in the bathroom at our rental house. When we moved in, this bathroom was pretty much your standard builder half bath. It had a so-so white pedestal sink, an oval mirror with no frame and a cheap looking silver light fixture. And OF COURSE it was painted with the same beige flat paint as the rest of the house.

Since we had to pull out the pedestal sink to install the hardwood floors, we decided to do a little upgrade. We figured we lived in a neighborhood where everyone's half bath looked exactly the same, so why not do something a little different.

Of course, I painted. The kitchen and the powder room are both this grayish green color called Dusty Miller from Home Depot.

I fell in love with this mirror from Lowes. I know it's more of the type of mirror you would put in an entry way, and not a typical bathroom mirror, but I LOVE it in here!

We found this cute vanity at Home Depot. We loved it because it has two drawers (so we can store toilet paper!) but it's still open. We didn't want something with a cabinet, but then a pedestal sink doesn't give any storage options. This was the perfect solution!

These two prints came from Target. I got them almost two years ago (although I still see them in stock when I'm there) to hang in the bathroom at the house we were renting. They look really cute in here and give the bathroom a touch of the coast. Other than the family room, I've been trying to give our house a coastal feel without being overly beachy. The only thing left to do in this room is to find a bath mat to give the floor a little more warmth, and then I'm all done!

Web Cam

I know this probably doesn't deserve it's own post, but today I got the web cam set up on our computer. We've probably had the web cam for a full year now. My Mom keeps asking when we are going to get it set up so that she can "talk" to Andy... so, okay, Mom! Mine is set up... now you have to set yours up! We got my Mom a web cam for her birthday last April and she's been waiting to set hers up until after we got ours set up. ANYWAY... today I also created a Skype account so now, I am ready to go!

The reason I took care of this today is because my (almost) 81 year old grandfather called me on Tuesday and asked "when are you going to get your camera set up so that we can Skype?" Apparently he got a web cam and has been Skyping with other family members. When I gave him my excuse he told me "Well, it only takes 5 minutes to set up, you know!" So, I figured if my grandfather is Skyping, that I'd better get on the ball! Now, I know that my high school age cousin is visiting right now and I'm sure he set up the web cam for my grandfather, but STILL! Sometimes it just cracks me up how technologically "savvy" my grandfather is, and other times it drives me crazy when I'm trying to explain over the phone how to do something in Excel and I have to specify whether to left click or right click... but mostly it just amazes me. When I was visiting for a week in January he was instant messaging with my cousins in Vermont. It was cracking me up how they would use all kinds of "chat" shorthand and lingo and he, of course, would have no clue what things stood for. Overall, though, it just made me happy that he will try any new technology so that he can stay in touch with his grandchildren and I know it will make him and my grandmother happy to talk to and see Andy on the web cam!

The Family Room

Well, the family room is PAINTED! and the blinds are hung! Hooray! I have actually had the blinds for several months now. I bought them from JC Penny on clearance for $15 a piece! I didn't want to hang them up, though, until after I had painted. Less of a hassle. So, I'm glad I painted the bedroom before this room, because it made this one feel like a piece of cake! I started it on Saturday night and finished on Sunday afternoon. Our family room is also the play room. It's upstairs, and it's the only room in the house with a TV. We decided to make it kind of fun and make it half New England Patriots (for me) and half Tampa Bay Bucs (for Matt). So, I picked gray for the color, because it was the only overlapping color for both teams (yes, I know the Bucs colors are red, black and pewter... but that was just too dark!) Anyway, I'm really happy with how the color turned out. I also think it looks great with the red roman blinds. I'm going to buy some Bucs fabric and some Patriot's fabric and make curtains... two windows on one wall will be one team, and the two windows on the other wall will be the other team!

Okay, so here is the "Before" (Oh,and I finally figured out how to put pictures in the middle of my post! Ya, I know I'm slow. Those of you who use blogger are going to think I'm an idiot!)

And, here are the "After!"

I moved the toy box against the back wall under the window to make more room for Andy's car mat. Also, since the toy box used to be to the side immediately after you walked through the door, it seemed to collect a lot of clutter. I'm hoping to avoid that by putting it a little more out of the way.

I made some space on the other side of the room for Andy's little table and chair. This is where he colors. I had those additional block mats stored in a closet, so now they are being put to good use!

Eventually I would like to do some kind of toy storage on this wall on either side and paint a big chalkboard square in the middle. Right now, it's just kind of blank. We don't really need any kind of organized toy system yet, but I can see the need for that in the future if we have more than one child!

This is Matt's vintage Bucs lamp. Personally, I think it's really cool and I'm excited to buy a shade for it and have it functional in the room. The only issue I have with it, is that I can NOT find a matching Patriots one! Right now, this sits to the left of the TV. The poor little empty spot on the right side is just screaming for a matching lamp! I found ONE website that sells these. They didn't have any Patriot's ones and the ones they did have were well OVER $200. Sigh. I suppose if I could just find a vintage helmet, I could make my own lamp. That is a definite possibility!


Otherwise, as far as decorations go, Matt had a vintage Bucs pennant, so I bought a "matching" vintage Patriot's pennant off of Ebay for $5 and we are going to frame those and hang them on our respective team's walls. I'll probably also make some pillows for the sofa. I can't even tell you how relieved I am to finally have this done! I told Matt that I honestly feel like I've been painting for 4 years straight. He told me that is because I pretty much have been! Between renovating the two NC houses (including the whole exterior of one of them!), repainting our entire rental house because I was "nesting" when I was pregnant with Andy, and tackling this house one room at a time... I will be soooooooo glad when I'm done here. It is fun though, trying to turn this house into a home, one room at a time!