Still Here

I haven't been into the office since Thursday, February 4th. We're still looking at 2 feet of snow on the ground outside and we're expecting another 10-20 inches between noon today and 9pm tomorrow night.

That's right, I could see 4 feet of snow on the ground for the first time in my life. At which point I am packing up my husband and my hound and we're moving south.

Not really, but I had a dream about it last night and it was awesome.

Frank assures me that his camera is in the car so I'll make sure I get it out of the car before the snow starts up again and buries our car, again.

Hamilton is tiring of the snow and I am tiring of being in the house. Our road is still covered in snow/ice and is essentially a one-lane road at this point. Metro buses aren't running on side roads and the metro rail service isn't using outdoor tracks.

I used to think snow days were fun! Free vacation, an extra day to do stuff, but now after this many days cooped up and at least two more staring me in the face I'm over it.

On the plus side we have not lost power, we have plenty of food, and lots of painting and unpacking has been getting done.

I'll finish painting the bedroom today and maybe even start on the living room. Maybe I'll even have time to take "before" pictures of downstairs, too.

I hope you're day is lovely and full of sunshine and blissfully lacking in snow!

Before - upstairs edition

So we moved last weekend and spent this weekend snowed into our new home. I finally found a camera, but the battery died so I only got a few pictures.

We already painted over the lime green office/nursery (it was a nursery, now it is an office) with a grey-green/seafoam color. Frank chose the color for this room as it is mostly his office.

We aren't unpacked in there yet - we need to get the tools to anchor the bookshelves to the walls before loading them up with all of our books. Once that is finished we'll add stuff to the walls (art, diplomas, etc). Hopefully we'll find a rug for the room before loading up the bookshelves, too. The "after" pictures will have all of the final touches in place.

Next is our bedroom. The blue is called "newport blue" and is a grey-blue, a bit more subdued than our last blue bedroom. It is halfway painted (the blue is a bit darker in person than it looks in the pictures) and we're still looking for the right armoire to replace the temporary one Frank has now.

The "after" pictures will have the room entirely painted and there will be stuff on the walls. There may or may not be an armoire, depends on what we find.

The final upstairs room is the bathroom. Currently it is just an off-white color with a touch of yellow (testing the color) and a lot of spakle on the walls. When it is finished it will be yellow, which will coordinate with the shower curtain and compliment the black and white tiles.

I was hoping to have the bathroom finished this past weekend but the sanding block was in the car, and the car was under two feet of snow, so that didn't happen.

One major improvement that you cannot see is that when we moved in there was no showerhead. It was like taking a shower in a heavy mist - like the things they have at Disney World in the summer. Now we have a showerhead and I could not be happier about that!

That is all for now because the battery died on the camera as I came downstairs for more pictures.

Maybe I'll go paint more now, or unpack some more clothes, or take a nap.

Wednesday Nights

Wednesday nights are for small group. I love, love, loooove our small group. It is such a cool and random group of couples, we're all so different! And we eat dinner together each week before diving into our study. Tonight the theme is Asian.

Frank and I are bringing drinks/plates/cups/napkins. Usually Frank would see this theme as a challenge and would whip out the Wok and make something super awesome - but we can't find our stove under the mountain of stuff yet, so we're on paper product duty.

We've been with our small group for a long long time now, they are like our little family. I'm so grateful for those relationships and the trust we all have in one another. They are such a blessing to us, and I hope we are a blessing to them, too.

Two of our small group couples are the ones that swooped in and helped us unpack on Sunday evening - that is the kind of friends that they are. On a snowy, cold, Sunday night they came into our mess with smiles and open arms ready to help us get settled. You can't ask for anything better than that.

What a special bond a small group provides, something I never really understood until we became part of it.

Happy Groundhog Day

Am I the only one that thinks this should be a federal holiday? I bet Punxsutawney Phil would agree.

The DC area is celebrating Groundhog Day with rain, freezing rain, and snow...again. We're expecting anywhere from 4-6 more inches tonight and tomorrow, on top of the 1-2 inches we still have on the ground.

The good news is we're already moved into our home and we have plenty of unpacking to do should we get snowed in. Also, more good news, our dog loves snow! He's content to romp around in it, dive into banks of it, and sometimes try to eat it, and now that we have a fenced in back yard he can do all of that without one of us being outside with him!

My awesome boss just came and broke the weather news to me, but he also told me to head home early so for that I am grateful.

I hope it is more snow than ice, and I hope there is at least a 2 hour delay in the morning to make all of the worrying and driveway-salting worth while.

Happy Groundhog Day, here's hoping your 6 more weeks of winter are dryer than ours!

We Survived! (Again)

We are officially residents of Arlington, VA again. Frank is returning the keys to the old apartment today (and picking up one last thing that would not fit in the U-Haul, any of the 3 SUVs, or the 3 other cars full of our stuff).

The place is great - and our friends are AH-mazing! We had 7 people help us from 10am to 4pm, then 4 more reinforcements came in around 5pm to give us a second wind and help us get some of the furniture placed and boxes unpacked. I'm telling you, there is no way we could have done this without each and every one of them.

The first crew got all of our stuff loaded into the truck and the cars, they helped me clean the apartment, take out trash, drive it all over to the new place, unload everything, take furniture upstairs, take stuff to the basement, and maintain sanity. We bribed them with pizza, but honestly, that wasn't much of a bribe considering how much stuff we own!

Thank you so much Matt & Katie, Chaz & Holly, Dave, Zach, and Tina for all of your heavy lifting!

Then, just as we thought it was over...in came the Connallys and the Bairds! We still had Tina there, too! We got a second wind and managed to get the living room and dining room into functioning order (like, you can sit down on couches, and put away dishes and stuff). Tina and I put together the bedroom so that Frank and I could crash later with minimal effort. Thanks to the Connallys and the Bairds our apartment is livable and navigable, two things I didn't expect to happen until later this week. The Connallys even moved all of the office furniture into the middle of the room so that the room is ready to be painted! The Bairds helped to clean, unpack, and move boxes like only the Bairds can.

We are so very grateful for our friends.

No we just need to keep unpacking and get to painting! We'll be ready for visitors by May :)

I'll take pictures soon so that we can have a "Before and After" post later, but for now there are a few things stopping me:
1. I don't know where my camera is
2. I don't know where my computer is
3. We don't have internet at home yet
4. I can't upload pictures at work

So you'll just have to wait

Dear TLC

Do you think you could come to my new house in a few weeks and put me on one of your shows? I don't want to be on the show I should be on, though - the one where you decorate a room to suit my taste, match my current furniture, yadda yadda yadda. I want to be on one of the ones where you prep a house for sale. Those houses always look the best!

I want clean lines and simple colors, a chair rail with different shades of paint on either side, some creative and functional storage systems, and maybe even some bead board in the kitchen.

I don't want something personalized to me, I want something clean and simple that can be personalized with well-placed family photos. I like my art, I even like my assortment of mix-n-match picture frames - I just need help with the overall canvas.

No? What do you mean you won't come to my house because it isn't a total disaster?

Well come by on Monday then, we'll have just moved in but I'll tell you that we've been there for months living out of boxes because I just don't know how to make it all work.

Please?

I'm Excited About: Shoe Edition

It is Friday, and I'm going to try harder to keep up this "I'm excited about..." thing, so here goes!

I'm excited about two pair of shoes I just bought. A friend of mine is getting married in July and has decided that her bridesmaids should wear silver shoes - it came down to gold or silver. We're wearing awesome J Crew dresses in "fresh mint" which is a dainty green color. I think the silver will be nice, and convenient for me since most of my jewelry is silver/white gold/platinum!

Anyway, I started doing internet searches for silver shoes and had a hard time finding something that matched the image in my head. Then, I went to the Payless around the corner from my office and struck GOLD! or, SILVER!

I found a great pair of strappy heels that will do just the trick. They have enough points of contact on my foot that I think they'll be as comfy as strappy heels can be, they are the right amount of sheen without being sparkly mixed with the right amount of flat without being grey, and they are cuuuuuute.

The bonus here is that Payless has their Buy One Get One half off deal - and I found an adorable pair of silver flats for $9 - $4.50 after the discount, too! This means that if my cuuuuute shoes turn out to be painful, I have another cute pair of shoes to wear during the reception without being in my flippy-floppies! woo hoo!