Tie It All Together

Have you noticed that I like to drop little bombs of information without much explanation and then come back and do a separate post about it? Because I just noticed that I do that and I had no idea. I just write and then when I re-read to edit I'm like, "oh, you mentioned purchases you are saving for and how you'd like to have get new seating for the living room. You should post about it!"

And yes, I did use the examples that I wrote about yesterday and am going to explain to you today and Monday. Because then, it becomes a full circle. I know you are just sitting on the edge of your seat thinking, "Oh, is she going to tell us about what she wants to save money for?" Because it's edge of the seat information! ...Okay, okay. Maybe not. But it is good to put it out there to try to hold yourself accountable. Which doesn't always work for me. (Like with my weekly goals.) 

The few major things that I want to purchase this year are the following:

1. A New Kitchen

2. Living Room Furniture

3. A Like-New Black Fridge

4. An Equipped Office For The Hubs

5. Bryan's Truck

6. Painting the House

A New Kitchen -

Bryan probably does not read this blog but if he is reading it now I assure you he is laughing at me. And shaking his head, thinking "Ain't gonna happen." I want to completely gut and redo our kitchen more than Lindsay Lohan needs to stay sober. Poor girl. I've been thinking and dreaming about what I want to do for the kitchen and I've been staying away from the Home Depot/Lowe's credit cards because if I have to, I'll use their 10% off and no interest for my kitchen and then make HUGE PAYMENTS (like we did on my wedding ring) to pay it off before the interest kicks in. Which is what I call "making the credit companies work for you instead of you working for them" I'm working on getting a shorter title. Regardless, it's the truth. Credit can be a good tool for people that utilize it the right way. Before we charge anything, Bryan and I think about what the monthly payment will be and how fast we can pay it off. We just refuse to be enslaved in credit. It's not worth it. 

Getting a new kitchen in 2011 is a pipe dream because if I invest in my kitchen, I'm not going to settle or go cheap. I'm going to be reasonable, but I'm also going to get an awesome kitchen that will be used as a major resell tool in ten years. I may have to wait until 2012, which is alright with me. 

Living Room Furniture -

Here is the deal. My sister, Alison and her husband Mark got married in 2003. Shortly after that (I honestly have no idea when) they purchased living room furniture, and had it until they moved to San Diego in like... 2007 or somewhere near there. I have a horrible memory. Then, they gave it to my sister Kari and her husband Adam in 2008 or 2009. Again, memory! Jeez. Well then Kari and Adam gave it to Bryan and I in 2009. It's been love, love loved. But, its old. And the pillows are starting to tear, and its a white couch and boy does it look dirty. DIRTAAAAY. (Which reminds me, I need to call that guy about cleaning it. Or do it myself since I don't, at the moment, have $150 bones to drop...) It's also just a couch and a chair, and with our really large living room, it doesn't "fit." All the Christmas cash I got is going to this purchase. This will be the next thing I buy. Unless I find a new-to-me black fridge first.

A Like-New Black Fridge -

Let's call a spade, a spade. If I can find a brand spanking new fridge at a good deal, I will snatch it up. The likelihood of that happening, however is slim to none. I want to spend no more than $350 on a fridge. And I really don't want anything fancy. I'd really just like either a normal refrigerator with an ice maker in the freezer or one of those spiffy nifty upside down fridges with the freezer on the bottom, but it still needs to have an ice maker. Obviously, if I'm able to purchase my kitchen, I'll buy a new fridge through that, but if not, I am so down with the respectfully used appliances. 

A Fully-Equipped Office for the Hubs -

You may be thinking that I want this for him. Let's remember that I am human and selfish and honestly, I need to hear some new music. I want Bryan to put out a new CD with some NEW SONGS so that I can groove to them. In order to do that though, he needs to have a working office where he can shut himself away for hours on end writing material and recording. Hours-on-end. Just enough time for me to get in some cheesey reality TV in. Love me some Kendra. Although I do like Hank more than Kendra. Hank is sweet and hot. She scored on that one. You like how I stay on point, huh? Bryan needs to get cracking on his music and I want him to have the tools to do so. This is a MUST this year. 

Bryan's Truck -

I can honestly say that Bryan and I have absolutely no other debt other than our house, his truck and my car. Actually, I'm lying, Bryan has a student loan but that loan was used to get the skills he has in Photoshop and those skills landed him his full time gig at a local credit union. So, it's the good kind of debt. Back to the bad debt we have, I don't want the bank to own our house and cars. And you have to start somewhere, right? I want to own his truck. By December 2011 I will have the pretty pink title in my hand and we'll be down to a car and a house. 2012, I will add to my pink pile with my car's title. I want to OWN our vehicles. Not the credit union. So it shall be. Just watch. :)

Painting Our House -

I have no recollection of posting about the horror we went through with this dude we hired and he jacked us over. But it happened. We paid him $1000 and all we got was an almost finished wood floor and some second-rate tools. Oh, and a really tall ladder. Which is handy for us short people... When we really wanted our house painted. Freaking jerk. Oh well. We were gracious and he'll have to answer for his decisions someday just like I will, and I'm going to take the high road. Now, Bryan and I still need to get the house painted and I'm hoping that Bryan will change his mind and he'll say that we should just do it. We have enough Vickers boys that can come over and help. We'll bribe them with pizza and beer. (Stop shaking your head "no" Bryan! It'll be cheaper!) Right now, our house is yellow, with white trim and red shutters. Except for the parts that we painted white because of our appraisal for the loan. Basically the house looks janky. And we're shooting to paint it in the early spring-time.

So, those are the big-money items I want to invest in this year. Obviously, lots of things can happen between now and then, but hopefully 2011 is a smooth year and we're able to knock all of this out! What a blessing that would be! 

Rug Rules

I don't think I have ever purchased a rug that wasn't for the kitchen or bathrooms... And maybe one or two mat's for guests to wipe their feet before they come into the house. Needless to say, I am not an expert when it comes to rugs. 

When you walk into the front door of our house, there is an entry way that leads to what I can only call a "great room". Even though it is not huge, it encompasses three different living areas. A sitting area, the living room and the dining area (which is on a raised foundation). 

Now, this great room is weird. It was weird when we first bought the house and we have been trying to, well, un-weird it. The house was built in the late 70s, and it used to have something called a conversation pit. The only reason I know this is because Denise was explaining our house to her coworkers and apparently one of them had been to our house way back in the day and called it a conversation pit. Small world, right? 

Still wondering what in the heck a conversation pit is? Here are a few I found.


This one is actually from some Museum of Art. Come to see our very colorful, artistic piano? Or how about our artistic bookcases? What kind of stinkin' art museum is this?

(Source: LA Times Blog)

This one is from the 80s. I bet ours looked a lot like this one.

(Source: Ugly House)

This one reminds me of the pit that was in Get Him to the Greek.  Except it had a bright green couch.

(Source: Flickriver)

Ours is basically concrete steps leading down to an area with a concrete bench that surrounds the perimeter. Super comfortable, right? I know. Maybe it had carpet on it at one time or another. The previous owners were obviously not conversationalists and they built a wood sub-floor to level the room and create a crawl space/storage area. Along with this genius idea they decided it would be prudent to put a trap door in the middle of this wood floor... which is so easy to hide when you glue wood flooring squares to the wood sub-flooring. Plus the large metal handle gave it away... Like I said, genius. 

Bryan and I (mainly Bryan) ripped up the wood flooring, down came the wall that separated the sitting area to the living room, and we carpeted the whole ding dang thing, and here is a picture of the trap door.

I'm thinking of submitting that picture to that Kodak photography contest this year. It's art, people. ART. Are you wondering what the heck rugs have to do with any of this? Why I went off on some wild tangent of conversation pits? 

WE HAVE TO HIDE THE TRAP DOOR. Duh. If you didn't make that leap, I don't think I can help you. Who cares if you didn't ASK for help. I can't help you. 

Now, that is our first problem. The second problem is that we bought engineered flooring from Lumber Liquidators that is a deep, darkish, not-red-in-any-way color and our dining room table is that light oak color. They clash. It looks awesome. So, another rug is needed. 

And of course, Bryan, love of my life that he is, insists on having a rug in the entryway. Because his sole purpose in life is to complicate mine. This super reasonable and not hard at all request now requires me to find three rugs that will all be in the same space. 

So, I've been pursuing different websites and stores and I really had no idea what I was doing. I mean, how do you LIKE a rug? It's just a...rug! Basically, I would go to a website, and control-click on the rugs I liked so that it would bring up a separate tab. Then, I would look at all the different tabs and I started to find that a lot of the rugs had defined similarities. The colors were often cool tones, the patterns not busy... I could definitely see a pattern. The other pattern I saw was that most of them were in the $250-$300 range, which was not in the budget. Especially since I needed three rugs. 


Now, armed with a defined preference in rugs and a budget in mind, I had to decide what I was going to do about three rugs in the same room. 

Three of the same rug? No. That sounds like a bad idea, even to me. Pretend that each room is separate and buy a rug that fits that particular room? Eh... That didn't sound good either. I was talking to Kari about it and she reminded me that I could ask Stacie. Stacie is Alison's sister-in-law and went to school for interior design. So I text messaged her and she said three different rugs, that coordinate. Whew. Done and done. 

A few weeks ago at Lowes, I fell in love with this rug, the price, and the fact that it matches the vibe I want my house to project.We went last night after dinner and Bryan approved of it. We bought a 5x8 for $129. Such a great price!

I'd been thinking all day about what type of rug to get for the dining area. I felt that a natural fiber, soft rug that had dark and light wood tones with cushion the blow of the two opposite woods being next to each other. We looked, and found one that had different tones of brown and a black border. The rug we bought was a 8x10 and it was $139, I think... I couldn't find it on Lowes.com but I'll post an update later. 


***Updated to conclude picture of Rug***


Our rug looks a lot more... Brown than this... Oh well. 

Once everything is in I'll take pictures. Hopefully, I won't hate it and have to buy and return a million rugs. :)

Can it be true?

Oh... Hello, there. 


I'm sure you have been waiting on pins and needles for my return. Yes? Yes. Or maybe you have been as busy as I have been. That could possibly be true. Well, I'm back. Eight months later. We'll see if it was worth the wait. 


I think the best way to get everyone (all five people that read this blog) caught up is to give a really quick rundown of what the heck has been going on. 


Here is the recap!


In January, this happened:

 Aww, poor little Skeeter. Breaks my heart to see her like this... Although, that looks kind of like blood right there in the right part of the picture huh? It's not. It's engine fluid of some sort. The fire department came and sprinkled some stuff on it, so it must have been flammable.


So, also, as well, this happened in February:

Heeeellllooo, 2007 Vue. Sorry for the poor quality, but I took this on my phone. Well, my old phone. More on that later. 

To prove just how insane Bryan and I are, we also got this in February.

Yeah. Two cars, one month. Luckily, our pocketbook survived. 

March came around and... I don't really remember March. All I remember is that I cooked a lot... and it was Kari's birthday. Except that I never bought her a present, because I promised her that I could make her a Shutterfly book of her wedding pictures, but we haven't gotten around to doing that. (HI, KARI!)

April rolled around, and we were ready to look for a house. So, while Bryan worked, I looked at house, after house, after house, and I found one. And we put in an offer. Then it was accepted. And then we were in escrow, and then it was ours. It closed on May 7 and we received the key on May 8. There was a whole lot of running around during this part, but I'm going to write a separate post about it. 

May was our 6-month anniversary. So, we went to Carmel-by-the-Sea and enjoyed a few blissfully quiet days. 

We spent one night in Carmel, and then we took the road above, named Old Coast Road, to Big Sur and spent the night there. It was really a great vacation. Honestly, any vacation that allows me to have lobster is a good vacation. :)

Once we got back to work and to reality, we waited and waited for some paperwork to go through. Finally, at the end of June we moved into my father-in-laws' house which was all kinds of stressful, but soon a little bit of this started happening...

Yep! We got a bunch of construction done on the house. We took down a few walls, put in a new garage door, and put in some brand new carpet. The construction went on from the end of June to the middle of September. It was a ridiculously long process and we think that it was part contractor laziness and part city inspector laziness.

While the construction was going on, however, Bryan got bit by the technological bug, and we bought two of these:

...Which would be why the picture clarity changes so much in-betwixt the photos above. How much do I love that I worked in-betwixt into this post? Lots.

July and August we busy months but I can't really remember anything that happened because well, I have a horrible memory. Have I mentioned that before? Probably. OH. Big news. In July, Bryan and I went to San Diego so we could visit Alison and family, and so Bryan could play at a wedding that Alison's company, One & Only Events was coordinating. (You can also read up on their blog.) When we returned from said trip, my other sister, Kari and her husband Adam had HUGE news. 

That is right! Kari is pregnant. In this picture she was 16 weeks. :) She is due in February and I'm SO EXCITED to have another niece or nephew. I think it's a nephew but we shall see!

On September 18, we finally moved into our house on Birch. Our wonderful, crazy, project house. Now its October and we have a ridiculous month ahead of us. Let's highlight... 

-October 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 - We're having our wood flooring installed in the kitchen, dining area, entryway and hall way. We're also having our house painted!

-October 8 - My 23rd Birthday. Woo-hoo!! 

-October 9 - Birthday get-together at my place and the unveiling of our house. Hopefully I get everything I can organized and straightened! 


-October 10 - Kari and Adam's Gender party. We're all going to find out what they are bringing into this world at the same time! So cool!


-October 25 - Anniversary.... ONE whole year. I honestly can't believe a year has passed. It's unbelievable. We're taking off on a BIG TRIP. More on that later. :)


That is the end of our catching up journey. I'm sure there is a lot that I forgot, but I'll be adding things in and updating after my husband reminds me of all the stuff I forgot. Did I mention I have a horrible memory?