The House on the Hill

Hey, heeeeey! It’s Friday, I’ve got no plans this weekend, and the weather might actually be turning FINALLY…but I probably just jinxed it so here’s to another two weeks of 80-90 degree weather (probably).

1 – If you follow me on instagram, you may have noticed that Kyle and I went on vacation recently. We decided to escape the heat for more heat and went on a 7 night Caribbean cruise on one of the biggest cruise ships in the world and it was freakin’ amazing. I’ll do a full trip report soon but here are a couple of pictures until then.

2 – Before we left for vacation, we had a ton of help from Kyle’s family and were able to finish staining the fence and the deck (thanks again!)! There’s still a bit of finishing work to do on the deck with the railings and the siding and we still have no stairs but it’s coming along nicely. Eventually, the entire underside of the deck will be closed in. Eventually. Our yard is still a mess but I’m hoping to work on getting it cleaned up soon. We’re still waiting to be put on the schedule to get the fallen trees cleared out and everything else in the yard is kind of on hold until then.

3 – While we were on vacation, we celebrated our 4th anniversary. On one hand, I can’t believe it’s already been four years since our wedding but on the other it feels like we’ve been married for much longer (in a good way). Here are a couple of my favorite photos from our wedding (courtesy of the fabulous Red Apple Tree Photography).

And here’s one after dinner on the ship on our anniversary last week.We clean up pretty okay.

4 – The big trick-or-treat event that Kyle plans as part of his job is next week and I have no idea what my costume is going to be this year. I kind of want to attempt a deer costume modeled after my favorite snapchat filter but I’m having trouble finding something to use as the ears. I looked on amazon but didn’t really find much so I may have to DIY them. Thoughts? Here’s the filter I’m talking about:

5 – Now that it’s finally feeling like Fall outside there are so many things I want to do! I’m thinking maybe we’ll carve pumpkins this weekend which is something we haven’t done in years. We’re also trying to decide when to go apple picking and whether we can make it to the corn maze or not this year. I feel like the season really crept up on us this year; we’re not even finished decorating for Halloween yet!

Friday! It’s boot weather (temporarily), college football is back, and I had Chick-fil-A for breakfast so I’m off to a pretty good weekend so far. I missed last Friday’s post but I was in the middle of a site overhaul and there really wasn’t much to share anyway.

1 – If you aren’t reading this through an RSS feed, you might notice that my blog has been completely redesigned! I’ve been wanting to get a new layout for a while now and I finally decided to go ahead after finding this theme on Etsy. Kyle took care of the install and migrating everything but there are still a few things that need to be fixed/changed.

2 – The deck is pretty much done! We still have to build the temporary stairs and there’s some finishing work left to do on the railings but the deck itself is finished and we’ve been using it quite a bit. We’ll be staining the deck and the fence in a few weeks.

3 – We finally installed our front door! That means no more Barney door. I’m sure our neighbors will be very happy. There’s still a lot of clean up to do around the windows and we need to shave it or the door frame down because it’s just a tad too wide so it’s hard to close right now. I ended up not stripping the other side and I’m kind of regretting it but at least the exterior looks pretty good! I need to get some pictures with the storm door open but we didn’t finish until after 9:00 last night so I just snapped this one on my way to work.

4 – Our foster kitten Gracie has been adopted! I miss her and Otter still isn’t convinced she’s not here anymore but I’m so glad she finally has a home.

5 – The giant pine tree in our backyard finally fell! It actually fell just a few hours after my last post. It caused a huge mess with the other trees though and is going to be a little expensive to clean up but hopefully it’ll be out of here in the next couple of weeks. We’ve hired someone and now we’re just waiting to get on his schedule. The best part is, it didn’t even damage the cheap lattice fence.

I need to get an updated goal list put together since we’re in a new month. Fall is just around the corner and I am so freaking excited! I started burning the first fall scented candle of the season last night even though it’s supposed to be in the 90s next week. Of course as we creep into a new season that also means we have less time left to finish our 2016 goals so we may need to re-evaluate some of those.

It’s Fridaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! Let’s get to it.

1 – We made homemade peanut butter cups the other night and they were so freaking good! I used this recipe from Brown eyed Baker for the peanut butter mixture but we didn’t use the directions for the chocolate since it called for a microwave. No, we do not have a microwave. Yes, I know that’s weird. We haven’t had one since we moved to this house and we haven’t actually missed it but we are planning on putting one in when we renovate the kitchen (next year? 2018? I don’t know anymore). Anyway, we just used our double boiler and melted a couple of bags of milk chocolate chips (no need to add anything to them).

2 – I took this picture of Otter the other night and I cannot stop looking at it and laughing.

3 – I posted a current picture of our living room the other day on Instagram (@jmens6 if you want to follow) that makes our downstairs seem like it’s pretty put together. Spoiler alert: it’s not. Here’s the photo I posted on Instagram. If you look at the bottom left you get a little hint.

And here’s the view if I turn slightly to the left:

The only thing that’s really finished in our entry is the floor. Here’s a rough list of what else needs to be taken care of: the rug needs to be replaced because the dogs have eaten parts of it and it’s a little too small for the space, I need to build a new entry table because this one doesn’t really go with our style anymore, we need to skim coat the wall because I gave up on removing the painted over wall paper, the baseboards need to be installed/caulked/painted, I want to switch the light out, the walls need to be painted and I need to finish refinishing the old front door we bought 2 years ago so that we can switch it out with this door which by the way, is half painted purple on the front side. This would probably be a good project to tackle soon because it’s not actually that much work. I need to look at our 2016 goal list though and see where we stand on that.

4 – Even though we’re probably still several years away from doing a gut job on our master bathroom, I’ve been looking at ideas on Pinterest a lot lately. I am in completely in love with this vanity and really hope we can find someone to custom build something similar for us when the time comes.

(Photo by Ema Peter Photography)

5 – The huge, half-fallen pine tree in our backyard shifted yesterday and is now even closer to actually falling. If that little oak it’s resting on would just give way I think it would finally hit the ground. There’s not really a way for us to move the process along safely without hiring someone to come remove that whole group of trees and honestly I’m way too cheap for that. It shouldn’t cause any damage when it finally does fall (other than knocking out some of that cheap lattice) so we’re just trying to let nature take its course. We are being careful with letting the dogs out in the meantime though.

That’s it for this week! Here’s a tentative plan for this weekend:

Friday night (if it doesn’t rain): Finish installing posts for railings.

Saturday: Long run, finish deck boards, build/install stairs?

Sunday: Install railings, build/install stairs, work on front door project.

Yep, I suck. I’ve been insanely busy at work lately and once I got home Friday night I just completely forgot to post. I planned on doing a post on Saturday instead but never got around to it. I didn’t want to skip completely so I’m doing my Friday Five post today and pretending it’s not Monday.

1 – We have the most awesome friends in the world. My friend/co-worker Cha came over last weekend to help us build the deck frame and this past weekend she and her husband Nick (also a friend/co-worker) came over to help us haul the old deck lumber to the dump. Our backyard is already 300% less trashy looking thanks to them.

2 – This big guy surprised us when we got back from the dump on Saturday. Typically, I hate snakes but we leave these guys alone and let them do their job. This is only the second one we’ve seen this year and he looks like he’s eating well.

3 – We bought a new couch! In the last Friday Five post, I mentioned a new couch wasn’t really in our budget but we were able to shift some funds around and buy one that was on sale at Rooms to Go. We tried out the tufted sofa I mentioned but ultimately chose the Bonita Springs sofa because it was $300 cheaper and a little comfier. I’m a little concerned about the fabric with all of the animals but we really just need it to last a few years until we can upgrade.

4 – The couch was delivered this morning and we took the opportunity to completely rearrange the rest of our furniture. We swapped the sofa and tv walls and brought the two chairs from the study into the living room. We decided to keep the old sectional for now to fill up the other room. It’s too big for the space but it’s just temporary until we figure out what we want to put in there. We still need a rug for the living room and we’d like either a bench or a chaise to put under the window instead of the chairs but I’m just happy that it actually looks like people live here now.

5 – I was browsing Pinterest yesterday and this photo caught my eye (it wasn’t pinned properly so I have no idea who to credit. If anyone happens to know, let me know and I’ll update the post)

I would love to do something like this on both sides of our living room. I think it would look really pretty and I love how the glass keeps everything open but you can still close the room off. That’s also a lot of glass to clean dog slobber off of though so we’ll see.

It’s going to be another long and very busy work week but I’m hoping to find the motivation to give you guys an update on the deck later this week. Spoiler alert: it’s still not done but it’s getting so close! We need to install three more posts for the railings and then we can finish off the deck boards. After that it’s just installing the railings and putting in some stairs. So. Freaking. Close.

This is only my third Friday Five post and it’s already a struggle to figure out five things to talk about! There really hasn’t been much going on lately.

Let’s see…

1 – The deck is still a major work in progress. We didn’t get very far last weekend and we weren’t able to work on it during the week at all.The ledger boards are all in and the outside posts are set. Our plan is to tackle the frame and joists tomorrow and install the deck boards on Sunday. We might have a helper or two tomorrow so hopefully it will go a little faster than last weekend!

2 – I desperately want a new sofa. It’s not in the budget right now but our sectional needs some serious help. The dogs have destroyed part of it and after 4 years of being a bed and a playground to cats and dogs, it just needs to go. I would LOVE this West Elm sofa but at almost $2500 (when it’s not on sale) it’s way out of our price range and I’m afraid the dogs would scratch it.

This is my current second favorite. The price isn’t bad and I’m less worried about the dogs and their claws.

3 – I hate the new Instagram Stories feature. It’s such a trivial thing but it makes me so irritated. I already have Snapchat and the stories feature seems like the exact same idea minus the hilarious filters. Stop trying to make stories happen, Instagram!

4 – The weather has been slightly cooler lately (as in high 80s instead of 90s) and it’s making me ache for Fall. Fingers crossed the temps don’t go back up! I’ve never been much of a Summer person and I’m so over the heat and humidity. I just want to be able to open the windows without melting and wear jeans without feeling like I wrapped myself in shrink wrap.

5 – I keep waffling about our kitchen reno. We decided to do it next Summer but then decided to push it to 2018 because it gives us a little more financial freedom but now I’m leaning back toward trying to get it done next year. Every day the urge to take a sledgehammer to the cabinets gets a little bit stronger.

Here’s the plan for this weekend:

Friday night – NOTHING. Rest and watch Netflix.

Saturday – Long run in the morning (minimum of 10 miles), spend the rest of the day building the deck and possibly taking some of the old deck to the dump.

Sunday – Finish building the deck? Maybe? Hopefully?