Pictures

Frosted Roofline

Frosted Roses

Frosted Trees

Just thought I would share our wonderful fortune from yesterday morning.  It's still been a little cold here - lows in the mid 20's, but the rain moved on and no more "frosted" roads, trees, etc.

Frosted

Yep, that's what it feels like.  We've been frosted, like as in sugar coated, dipped, iced, you name it, but it wasn't with sweet sugar, or chocolate icing, but with frozen rain.  It started yesterday afternoon.  Newscasters claiming everyone should stay home, frozen bridges, car accidents galore, Gloom and Doom.

So Princess says to me "Should we park your car in the garage tonight"? And I said, "Why?"   So we went outside and sure enough, O'le blue had a half inch thick layer of ice on her.  We warmed her up for about twenty minutes, let the defrosters work, took off a bunch of ice and she stayed nice and warm in the garage all night.

Princess is on her way to Portland, OR for work {maybe I should say trying to get there, their flights are delayed out of Dallas}.  I worked from home today, may do it all week as I tend to get more done here than at the office.  I took some photos of the roof line, rose bushes, and the trees so you can see our "frosting" we got last night.  No rain tonight, but it's gonna be a cold one again, so bundle up.

Fun Times

Last night we had our Texas family (the Blackhursts) over for dinner.  It was a lovely spread.  Princess grilled London Broil, made potato casserole, country bread, vegetable medley, and for dessert, butter pecan bundt cake.  The Lovely KJ babysat the Blackhursts' girls while we had an adult night.  It was fun.

We played settlers of Zarahemla - kinda like settlers of Cataan.  Princess won - even after Todd was evil with his resource cards andt STOlE all the wheat and the stone cards from all players.  Alas, all evil deeds do not go unpunished, and Princess won.

   Lindsey toasting with Mormon Champagne (sparkling apple cider)

 missing the toast the first time

 Cute Couple

  Enjoying out dinner

  FUN TIMES!

Complete

Well, the priming of the walls that is.  Again, the color did not turn out the way I had hoped for in the priming, but we're still negotiating the wall colors.

Here you can see the wall between the living room and the kitchen, with some trim and the cabinets.  The primer color is just too much lime sherbet for me.  Princess says the color is growing on her.  Here is the wall above the cupboards.

Dining room with the hutch

More dining room with the hutch 

Trying to Finish

Well this past week, we have waited for the contractors to come and repair the ceiling cracks so that we can continue on our Kitchen redo. Of course, Mother nature did not help us any. Sunday was beautiful, and that's where the good weather ended. It progressively got colder and colder until the contractors showed up yesterday.

They came, repaired the cracks, then we had to use a hair dryer to dry the "mud" so they could then texture the repairs. It was comical watching them, but they did it, finished the job, and I began priming the walls. We picked this color for the upper walls, so we decided to tint the primer that color for both the upper and lower walls. The lower walls are going to be this color for the wall under the chair rail. I'm not quite sold on the two colors. The celery is coming out too much neon or lime color green and I'm not liking it too much. We'll see, it is only paint after all. It can be changed much easier than WALLPAPER! Especially wallpaper that had no primer coat on the drywall before it was put up!

We're going to work some more on it today, buy the paint for the ceiling and trim (same colors as we have now, just going to give it a new coat to freshen things up. We're also going to Devin's 29th birthday party at Shogun. Princess is making the cake, so we'll see how much they like it.

Have fun!
Jim

Progress

I spent this past week in Beaumont, TX for work. For those of you unfamiliar with Beaumont, it is a city right in the heart of Hurricane alley. They got hit with Katrina. They got slammed with Rita. Now three years later they get hit by Ike. Those little towns around Beaumont and Beaumont itself just can't catch a break. I wasn't there for rebuilding purposes, but for work, inspecting purposes. Everywhere I looked, roofs were covered in blue plastic, signs down, businesses rebuilding walls that had collapsed. It is just sad. Makes me wonder if the benefit of living along the Gulf Coast is worth all the sacrifice and hassle that one has to go through to live there.

While I was gone, Princess continued putting the house back together from Christmas. Even doing a reduced Christmas, we have quite a bit to put away. Now we are on the search for some pictures that go on the mantel. Pictures of Princess, her sister, and her parents when all of them were much younger. Missing, I can't remember where they are. Princess can't remember where they were put, and I'm dreading going back up into the attic to search through bins to find them. Princess keeps saying "they'll turn up", to which I mutter under my breath, "yeah, next Christmas cause I'm not searching through all those bins". We'll see when they turn up - my money's on Fall 2009!

The Kitchen Walls have been textured. The job was so great, that I didn't notice a couple of cracks along the ceiling! Now our plans to paint the ceiling tomorrow have been put on hold. The drywall guys will be back next Friday to fix those, and I'm going to throw a couple in the Master Bedroom their way too. So tomorrow, we're going to get a tinted primer and give a first coat in the Kitchen so the drywall mud has something to soak up before we paint the walls the selected color. Keeps the project moving along, although, not completed. Oh well, the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. I'll have some pictures once we have the primer coat on.

Jim

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Hope you had a safe and Happy New Year's Eve!

Jim