Pickin'...

I did a very quintessentially country-girl thing this morning...I picked blackberries and wildflowers (both from my backyard!).

(well, those orange berries are from the tree in the front yard...)

The blackberries were a pleasant surprise. I was taking Luna for a walk into the backyard yesterday and found a blackberry bush on the fringe of the woods. I thought there was just one, but when I went back out later with a bowl to pick them, I found another. And then this morning when I went out, I found at least two more. It seems like every time I went out, I find more bushes!

Mmmm...blackberries. Thank you Lord for giving me something sweet to snack on!

Closing Day!

As of a few minutes ago, the hubby and I are officially home-owners!

We are packing up what I've packed so far into the truck and my Dad's trailer and taking it out to the house today.

I'll be staying out there during the week to unpack, while CJ works on packing up the rest of the apartment. It's going to be a nice, gradual moving process. There's no rush to get out of our apartment...we have the rest of August to get everything out.

We're also being given a couch, a lazyboy recliner, a rocking chair, and an upright freezer from various friends. And my grandma is letting me have a table that was salvaged from the house in the Adirondacks (I just need to take the 2 hour drive to go pick it up). So I'll have a little bit of furniture while CJ works on getting the rest of our stuff out there.

We own a house! YAY!

Just Keep Packing...

Here's a glimpse into my world lately...the reason my posts have been less frequent...

I've been PACKING.

Our closing date for the new house is in less than a week (next Thursday). So I've been doing almost nothing but packing lately (except for when my lovely hubby forces me to take a break for the sake of my own sanity). My creativity has been very limited due to the fact that I'm focusing on packing up my craft room...henceforth I'm packing up my craft supplies.

The picture above shows a box I just packed, and that weird "Free Your Mind" collage thing on the top is my high school sketch book (I'm such a sentimental PACK RAT!). Too bad I just taped up the box or else I could take some pictures of some of the pages for some blog fodder. Oh well. Be patient with me. I will be making monsters again as soon as we get moved in. I really miss making my monsters.

Next weekend we will take what I've packed so far out to the house (kitchen, bathroom and craft room), and then during the week I will be staying at the new house with Luna, doing some unpacking while CJ packs up the remaining stuff at the apartment.

Ever get that feeling when you've been doing something for awhile...feeling that although you seem to have spent SO much time on this task, you've really not made much progress? I kind of feel that way right now. Although I've made a signifigant dent in the craft room and am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I think once we actually get some of the furniture out of the apartment it will feel like we're really moving.

I should stop procrastinating and go back to packing.

~sings like Dory the fish from "Finding Nemo"~ "Just keep packing...just keep packing...just keep packing packing packing...

House Progress...

CJ's progress today at the new house...
(yay for camera phones and Facebook mobile uploads!)

He built the railing last week and painted it (and the steps) today. The front gutters were done this week...we passed the electric inspection today (which is seperate from the house inspection)...and CJ's working there today and thinks all the work that needs to be done in order to get it re-inspected may be done after today! Yaaaaay! I may get my birthday wish of having a closing date after all!

I would be there working too, but CJ didn't want me to overdo it after being sick, so I'm at home packing and doing laundry.

More House Work

Awwww! Luna looks like she wants to help us stir the paint...

Um...

I guess not. She just wanted to chew the stick.

She loves going to the new house. There's lots of space for her to chase her ball. That's her favorite thing to do when we go there. Unfortunately, I can't play with her the whole time...I have work to get done!

A sign of squirrel...

Can you make out the little pawprint? This was on one of the upstairs windowsills. The little bugger left black marks like this everywhere!

CJ and our friend Brian ended up determining that the squirrel got in through the chimney and into where there used to be a coal-burning furnace (hence all the little black tracks). So after also determining the squirrel was gone for good (nothing in the traps), CJ fixed that by screwing a cheap cake pan over the hole. So...no more squirrel! Yay!

We may be able to get all the work done by the end of June! YAY!

Sorry there hasn't been a whole lot of "crafty" lately. There's been a whole lot of "life" with working on the house and everything. Hopefully soon I will be able to bring you some crafty.

Sanding and Squirrels

So, I made my weekly Thursday pilgrimage to Lyndonville to work on the new house. Usually, I'll drive up on Thursday, work on the house all day, spend Thursday night at our friends' house (since I'm not allowed to sleep at the house before we close), then work more on Friday, then go home Friday afternoon. But today was just a one-day thing since CJ and I worked there on Monday, we're going back on Saturday, and I have a prior commitment on Friday.

Some friends of mine were requesting to see some pictures of me workin' the safety goggles...

Today I worked on sanding/painting the door and windows in the bathroom. I was going to move on to the second floor windows after that, but I had an inturruption.

While I was moving my sanding/painting supplies upstairs I heard a SQUIRREL in our WALLS! AHHHHH!!! SQUIRREL!!!

I banged on the wall with a pole, and just heard more skittering. I didn't know how to flush it out, and I wasn't quite sure what to do, so I called CJ, and he said to just pack up and come home early and he'd drive up when he got out of work to set a trap. It was mostly for Luna's sake that he wanted me to come home early. Although I'm confident that Luna could probably take a squirrel (dachshunds were originally bred to hunt badgers! "Dachshund" actually means "badger-hound" in German), we didn't want her to get hurt or bitten on the off chance the squirrel has rabies or something.

We're pretty sure it's the squirrel we saw when we walked in the house on Monday. We thought it got scared off and made it out of the house...but I think we were wrong. The going theory is that it never did get out of the house, but simply found refuge in the walls. We're hoping that when we go back on Saturday, there will be a trapped squirrel.

I'm kind of bummed that I didn't get to stay as long as I was planning today. I as planning on getting a lot more done. Stupid squirrel.

Painting At the New House

We got a lot done at the house Thursday and Friday.
All the windows on the first floor (except for the bathroom) have at least a first coat of paint (painting brown over white requires 2 coats). The kitchen window, door and baseboards have 2 coats, and the living room windows have 2 coats on the windows. We're switching to white paint for the bathroom and for upstairs so we will only need to do one coat instead of two.

I worked diligently doing the first coat on the windows on Thursday and on the front door and second coat for some of the windows on Friday.

CJ did a second coat on the kitchen cabinets and first/second coat on the baseboards.
And here's how Luna spent her time while we were painting...

(Ugh...that wallpaper SO needs to go.)

Painting At the New House Tomorrow

Well, off to the "new" house tomorrow to do some more painting! Oh...did I tell all of you on the blogosphere that the hubby and I are buying our first house? (anyone who knows me in real life knows already) It's about an hour from where I live now, and it's out in the country. I'm excited! The estimated closing date isn't until the end of July though. But we have an agreement to have us work on the house before then (for reasons of inspection and an agreement we have with the owners...we deal with the work that needs to be done in order for us to close since we're getting the hosue for a really low price).

One of the things we have to do to pass inspection is to sand and re-paint any chipping, peeling, or cracked paint...which is almost everywhere. So we are just repainting all the trim, windows, and doors. Basically all the woodwork. This is the progress I made last week.

I was going to post a "before" picture, but realized all the pics I took of the kitchen were from the other angle! Just imagine that all the white (the trim, and the doors) is brown now. And the cabinets are a khaki color. I'll have to take some pics tomorrow while I'm there to post later.

*EDIT* Here's how the kitchen looks now...