Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
No Longer A Pile of Toothpicks
The drywall is one of the steps that I thought would take a long time. It looks like a lot of work.
The rooms seem so much smaller now that you can't see through the walls!
It's also a lot brighter in there, which is kind of nice.
We thought we might see some brick up by now, especially since the pallets of bricks have been sitting on site for several days. Instead, we got garage doors!
I'm excited to take my mom over to the new house later this week when she's here for a visit. Hopefully she's as enthralled with garage doors and sheet rock as I have been!
My back hurts just looking at those guys. It makes me grateful for my office job.
It actually only took about two days to do the entire house. Well, the first step of it, anyhow. It was pretty amazing to walk through the house for the first time without it looking like this:
The rooms seem so much smaller now that you can't see through the walls!
It's also a lot brighter in there, which is kind of nice.
We thought we might see some brick up by now, especially since the pallets of bricks have been sitting on site for several days. Instead, we got garage doors!
I'm excited to take my mom over to the new house later this week when she's here for a visit. Hopefully she's as enthralled with garage doors and sheet rock as I have been!
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Vegas!
About a month ago, Don and I took off for a few days and escaped to Las Vegas. I had a conference for work there, and my company is gracious enough to allow Don to travel with me. We extended the trip for a couple of days and were able to catch a show ('O' at the Bellagio - highly recommended) and enjoy some downtime.
The conference that I attended puts on a nice event, and it gave us the opportunity to experience some of the nightclubs and pool venues that we'd normally never pay to experience. After dinner with my boss and his wife at Valentino, we went to a cocktail party at Blush, inside the Wynn casino.
The conference that I attended puts on a nice event, and it gave us the opportunity to experience some of the nightclubs and pool venues that we'd normally never pay to experience. After dinner with my boss and his wife at Valentino, we went to a cocktail party at Blush, inside the Wynn casino.
The next night, we went to Surrender, the poolside nightclub at the Encore casino. This place was s.w.a.n.k.y. The photos are all from the professional photographer that the wandered around taking photos throughout the entire conference.
We had a great trip, won a little bit of money, ate some fantastic food, and wish we could've stayed another couple days!
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The Deck is Up!
It's been up for a couple of weeks now, but I'm just getting around to sharing pictures of the deck on the new house. Since we have a walk-out basement lot, the deck is actually on the second story on the rear of the house, off of the kitchen.
Our original home design called for a 12' by 12' deck. When we started thinking about our deck furniture, grill, my lounge chair, and everything else that seems to end up on the deck, we determined that 144 square feet was simply not big enough. And building a second-story deck on our own just didn't seem practical. So, we shelled out a little extra money to have it enlarged to 12' by 24' and moved the steps to the side of the deck. Now that's it's up, we're glad that we made the changes.
These pictures were taken over the course of three days.
From the kitchen door
From the basement door
Our original home design called for a 12' by 12' deck. When we started thinking about our deck furniture, grill, my lounge chair, and everything else that seems to end up on the deck, we determined that 144 square feet was simply not big enough. And building a second-story deck on our own just didn't seem practical. So, we shelled out a little extra money to have it enlarged to 12' by 24' and moved the steps to the side of the deck. Now that's it's up, we're glad that we made the changes.
These pictures were taken over the course of three days.
From the kitchen door
From the basement door
We're still deciding on a stain color, and if that's something we want to tackle ourselves. Something about staining all those spindles from a second story doesn't appeal to me, but we'll see.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Drobi Day
As much as we'd like to just sit around and daydream about life in our new house, we've been occupying our time with other things lately. A few weekends ago, we spent a Saturday at Don's parents' house making drobi (pronounced drubby).
The closest thing I've been able to find online is this recipe, which is a little different (and spelled differently) than what we made. Either way, it's a Slovak recipe that has been a tradition in Don's family for a long time.
We spent the first part of the morning peeling potatoes. I don't remember how many pounds we peeled exactly, but it was at least 50.
This is just one bowl of many. It was a lot of potatoes. And then we added some onions.
A secret mixture of herbs and spices was added to each bowl, and then they brought out the casings.
Each pot was to boil for 15 minutes. It was my job to watch the pots and make sure nothing went wrong. I didn't do very well. Almost every time, at the 8 or 9-minute mark the sausages exploded. We adjusted the temperature. We left more room for expansion. And they still exploded. So, I fished out the sausage innards with a slotted spoon, and took it back out to the garage to be put through the grinders again and into a new casing.
The closest thing I've been able to find online is this recipe, which is a little different (and spelled differently) than what we made. Either way, it's a Slovak recipe that has been a tradition in Don's family for a long time.
We spent the first part of the morning peeling potatoes. I don't remember how many pounds we peeled exactly, but it was at least 50.
That's the very first potato of the day. I'm not sure why I thought that needed to be documented.
At that point, we moved out to the garage where there two grinders ready and waiting.
Then, little by little, Don and his brother put the potatoes, onions, bacon and ground beef through the grinders.
This next photo exists to prove that I was there, and that I helped.
Also, that's my purse hanging up in the background. It came home with a coating of drobi. Lesson learned.
Once everything was put through the grinders, we ended up with several containers of this:
A secret mixture of herbs and spices was added to each bowl, and then they brought out the casings.
The casings were too much for me to handle, and I went to the kitchen where I stood at my post at the stove for the rest of the day.
The potato/onion/bacon/beef mixture was put back through the grinder again, and fed into the casing.
That's Don demonstrating the well-stuffed casing.
Each one was tied off, and then brought in to be boiled.
Each pot was to boil for 15 minutes. It was my job to watch the pots and make sure nothing went wrong. I didn't do very well. Almost every time, at the 8 or 9-minute mark the sausages exploded. We adjusted the temperature. We left more room for expansion. And they still exploded. So, I fished out the sausage innards with a slotted spoon, and took it back out to the garage to be put through the grinders again and into a new casing.
I'd really like to end this post with a great shot of the perfectly-formed sausages, or of Don's family enjoying the final product. Unfortunately, I have neither (though they did enjoy the final product the next day at our Easter meal). Some of them did turn out great, and the others were deemed acceptable as single-serving sizes. And now there are multiple freezers stocked with delicious drobi, ready for future family gatherings!
I'm aware that this post is a mess, complete with multiple paragraph alignment styles and pictures rotated where they shouldn't be rotated. Sorry about that. My HTML skills are a little rusty, and Blogger is hardly cooperative.
I Gave Up the Blog for Lent
Okay, I didn't really give up blogging for Lent. It just kind of worked out that way. My lack of posting doesn't mean there hasn't been progress - there absolutely has. Look at this!
Big progress! And that photo is from last week. It looks even more 'finished' now. Those photos are coming. I mean it this time.
We're also thrilled that we *think* we've worked out a compromise on the buy-out situation with Don's house that will be a win-win from both us and Estridge. There are still a few things that need to happen, but we're confident that we're on the right track now. Despite several weeks of bad news, Estridge has still been good to work with overall, and that's saying something.
While we'd hoped that the projected completion timeframe of mid-May would be accurate, that's not the case. We're now looking more at late June or early July. And that's okay. In the meantime, we're socking away every penny we can and looking forward to the day the house is ours.
Big progress! And that photo is from last week. It looks even more 'finished' now. Those photos are coming. I mean it this time.
We're also thrilled that we *think* we've worked out a compromise on the buy-out situation with Don's house that will be a win-win from both us and Estridge. There are still a few things that need to happen, but we're confident that we're on the right track now. Despite several weeks of bad news, Estridge has still been good to work with overall, and that's saying something.
While we'd hoped that the projected completion timeframe of mid-May would be accurate, that's not the case. We're now looking more at late June or early July. And that's okay. In the meantime, we're socking away every penny we can and looking forward to the day the house is ours.
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