You probably never even knew we left… but Heather and I just got back from a week in western Nebraska!
We have a camera full of pictures, I just haven’t gotten to them yet.
The downside of being gone for a week: Heather had over 1000 e-mails waiting in her work inbox Monday.
On the other hand, we had a really nice break!
More details to come
-Jordan
I learned soon after the post went up about being done decorating and painting furniture that we are not actually done with that.
None the less, Heather and I have had the opportunity to invite friends over on several occasions in the past few weeks. It has been really gratifying to feel that our hard work getting this place cleaned up was worth it. I should also note that Heather practically levitates around the house as she gives the tour of our final decor placement.
For a while there we were averaging just over two nights a week with three or more guests over. That pace has dropped off this past week, but we were having a lot of fun with it!
A few things we are discovering:
Cooking for more people is harder! I generally manage to scale the recipe up enough, only to be 20 minutes slow getting it done. Not the worst problem ever, but it feels like it throws the entire night off.
Letting guest bring over a salad or dessert helps out more than I ever would have guessed. It isn’t that we couldn’t make those, but in the time between getting home from work and when things start there often isn’t time.
And then the final bullet: Ticket to Ride is a great game!
Heather has deemed it her “favorite game ever” and thoroughly enjoys it every round, despite often loosing to a new player. And there have been quite a few new players… we played the game every night, and every time taught a new group of people how to play the game. Without fail, everyone picked it up quickly and was having a lot of fun by the end.
I am still looking for other games that we could perhaps move to once people have bought into the idea of boardgames being fun, but so far that search hasn’t turned up much. Perhaps as it gets colder and staying inside sounds more attractive we can devote some more time to the question 🙂
-Jordan
You remember when I was concerned that Heather was too excited about how easy the vinyl wall decals were to put up?
My fears turned out to be well founded:
The picture only shows the half of it… but I think we have finally run out of wall space 🙂
In other news, all the items in the garage are finally painted meaning there is a chance we will be able to put cars in there soon! (crazy thought I know)
-Jordan
My last post may have implied that we were taking a break from working on the new place.
While I took a week off from posting about it, we were still working. I guess you could say we are in the final phases of the project though.
We spent the past weekend decorating. My role in that consists almost entirely of hanging pictures.
A few notes from that:
First off, it seems like I have heard some disparaging remarks about people who use levels while hanging pictures as being OCD and whatnot. I can’t say as I care though, because without a level it just ends up being my eye against Heather’s and we never know if the picture is straight. Beyond that, we have a distressingly large number of items with two hooks on the back, so without a level it’s almost impossible to place the second hook in the right spot.
Second note, we picked up a rather large mirror in the craigslist campaign. I was really stressed going into the weekend with how I was going to rig some sort of board to span between two studs in order to get enough of an anchor to support this rather heavy mirror. But then I went to the hardware store, and found out that they have all kinds of options for dealing with heavy items hanging on the wall. We went with this guy, and it was about 20 times easier than the plan I had been rolling around in my head.
The other project of note was the wall decals. Heather picked a few of these up online, but we didn’t really know how to put one up. As with about everything these days, youtube was a great place to start.
The video was a far better guide than the somewhat confusing directions that came with our sticker. Speaking of the sticker, it was a bigger project than I was expecting when Heather said “hey, I got this picture to hang over our bed”
The picture shows Heather half way through the last phase of installing the first sticker, but the catch is that her plan involved two stickers. It may be worth noting that, although this was a challenging and stressful task, we worked as a great team during the installation! Perhaps all these challenging move-related tasks are paying off 🙂
The finished product looks really good:
The only problem is, now we have a new found confidence in our ability to install vinyl wall decals, and I thin Heather may have her eye on a few more blank wall spaces.
-Jordan
Actually… it isn’t that bad, after a ‘down’ weekend Heather and I are starting to feel like attacking the unfinished tasks again.
Let me catch you up on the past few weeks.
Two weekends ago, we were living in an apartment, and Saturday morning, the view was this:
As some short update posts already gave away, we had plenty of help and got things moved fairly quickly. What took more effort was unpacking and finding a home for everything that was in a box. We powered through that as fast as we could so that our house would be ready for company. Quite a bit of company as it turns out.
On the following Thursday, my grandparents stopped through on their way out to a wedding. That was the first night that we hadn’t both worked until midnight on something, but we still managed to sneak in a few minutes putting our house together. On Friday, Heather’s parents came into town, and they brought our favorite(only) nephew Holden.
He got the deluxe tour:
We took Holden and his grandparents down to the farmers market, and then later he did some fabric shopping with Heather and Pam. We quickly discovered that although the main area in our house was mostly put together, it wasn’t what you would call kid-proof. He kept us on our toes.
That crew headed home Saturday evening, leaving Heather and I a few hours to pull a few things together and grab some much needed sleep. Sunday morning, my parents, sister and brother came into town, just in time for church. We had some really ambitious plans to take them out to see the bike bridge I did a post on a while back. The triple digit heat index, combined with the fact that they had spent a considerable amount of time walking the previous day at the Omaha zoo put a pretty solid kabosh on that idea.
It turned out that a nap and breaking out our new copy of Ticket To Ride was about the perfect use for the Sunday afternoon. I can’t remember if I mentioned Ticket to ride when recapping our visit to DJ’s house out in Colorado, but it has quickly become Heather’s favorite game.
On Monday, Heather and I both worked, leaving the rest of my family free to head down to Pella for some touristing. They came back with some amazing pastries so I have to assume the trip was a wild success. That evening, Heather and I met up with them and headed just outside of Des Moines to where an annual balloon festival is held.
The weather was not ideal for hot air balloons, and we didn’t get to see the kind of numbers featured in the postcards I have seen of the event. That being said, it was really cool. I really don’t understand how they pilot the balloons, except to say they appeared to have more control than I would have expected.
After the balloons, we stopped and got pizza. This is noteworthy only because the local Cub Scout pack was busing tables as a fundraiser. It wasn’t the best table service we have ever had, but it was some of the best mealtime entertainment we have had… perhaps ever.
My family headed home the next day, leaving Heather and I finally home with no impending dates on the calendar. We haven’t been as productive this week as the past few. Today we finally got back into painting and may have a dresser ready to instal soon.
In hindsight, I don’t know if we would have really planned the past few weeks differently, as there were events outside our control driving each visit. All the same, I know we would have been better hosts had there been a few weeks between each event listed above.
On the other hand, we have proven that we can comfortably host three to four guests, and are always happy to have people visit!
… Just give us a week to wrap up this furniture painting 🙂
-Jordan
Well, a neighbor anyway…
I was ready to leave for work today, and this guy seemed to want to get in my way…
I still haven’t quite gotten used to seeing praying mantis around, as they weren’t common out in western Nebraska.
With a little prodding I was able to get him to move enough I could open my door and drive to work though.
In all fairness the human neighbors we have met so far are really nice, it’s just the insects that have been a problem 🙂
-Jordan
Heather and I survived the move.
We have probably 75% of our stuff unpacked, and at least the basic layout of our new home figured out.
I currently have my computer setup, but cannot locate the box with deodorant in it… This may become more of a problem as time goes on.
I mentioned that Heather was doing some craigslisting? It turns out looking at listings from craigslist is a great way to see a city! We spent two nights this past week driving all over the place looking at dressers, end tables, and bed frames.
We hauled a majority of those home. Being used items, they had a few dents and scratches. Heather factored this into her plan and is in the process of sanding down and repainting everything.
By Thursday night, this is what our garage looked like.
The drawers pictured are now painted, but still need another coat… this may have something to do with the fact that I haven’t unpacked my clothes yet 🙂
Back to the move, at the risk of making a number of people upset about this picture being online… some of the *AMAZING* crew that came and helped us move:
We managed 12 volunteers for Saturday, despite the extreme heat. With that many people helping, the entire hauling phase of the move was done in about two and a half hours! I should mention that my sister came down the night before and was a lifesaver in helping get all the boxes packed before the crew arrived.
All told, we are in the new place, all thanks to wonderful friends and family who were willing to give up some (or all) of their weekend to help us out.
-Jordan
Typically I take some time over the weekend to reflect and write up a blog post. This weekend I mostly focused on doors.
At this point we are done with the doors, and done with the massive cleaning project soon to be known as our home.
We did find time over the weekend to help a friend celebrate his birthday, by attending an Iowa Cubs game!
Typically we at least try to get the field in the background… you will just have to take my word for it that we were in fact at the game.
Sad fact about how the Independence Day weekend went for us… the baseball game this weekend was the first professional fireworks show we managed to take in this year. I suppose having a great new house to move into is consolation enough for this year.
So many things have happened… but there is still so much to do, so I will wrap this up and hope to have some great pictures of the moving day and perhaps the finished product soon!
-Jordan
The painting is suppose to be done today, but as you can see there will still be some work to be done.
Lucky we still have ten days before the actual moving day 🙂
In other news, we (and by we I mean Heather) have discovered that the Dave Ramsey “bargain with cash” plan is really effective when buying things off craigslist… We aren’t going to have any trouble filling the new place it would seem.
-Jordan
Ok… so I am about a week slow getting this posted. Our big end-of-June news was that we are going to move again!
The Independence Day weekend was jam packed with activities, so I didn’t manage to sit down and write up even a quick post.
Back to the move, Heather and I purchased a condo in West Des Moines. It isn’t nearly as sudden as it may seem, as we have been looking for quite some time, and trying to purchase this particular place for months.
Almost four months to be exact. You have heard of “short sale” houses? Well, don’t let the name mislead you, it’s a slow process. When people in real estate hear that we were able to close in under four months they say “well that’s a lot faster than I would have expected.”
I write this about twelve days after we closed, but it feels more like a month. The place needed only minor renovations, and yet it’s been completely exhausting to get those taken care of.
Heather and I have learned a lot during this process. The number one thing we have learned is that we cannot build a house… ever. Even the relatively minor work we are doing (and having done) to the condo has caused incredible stress at times. I think we are also learning at lot about each other, and how to work as a team… but it’s going to be 20 years before we have those lessons learned well enough to consider a project the size of building a house.
Aaand that was probably more on that tangent than I should have shared, but it’s worth noting.
The short version is that we are in the process of preparing a condo that we own such that we can move in.
(and besides, I have lived in this apartment for nearly two years! It’s overdue to move again! )
-Jordan
Nelsons 