Friday, November 28, 2008

Bathroom Remodel

You know when you sit back on the couch and snuggle up under a blanket and turn on HGTV? And you know how cute those little hosts are in their designer jeans, fitted vintage T-shirts over long-sleeve white fitted T-shirts and perfectly unscratched toolbelts? Oh, and you know how they edit the program to show only the fun parts, and almost none of the homes they work on have surprise water damage, mold, leaks or termite damage? And the homeowners who are doing it all "DIY" actually have licensed contractors with them guiding them along the way? Well, move over HGTV, we're rockin' DIY the real way.

We're remodeling our master bathroom after we discovered a leak under the shower last year. Armed with Home Depot gift cards and a chunk of time thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday, we started demo on Wednesday. We discovered some rotten wood not only near the shower base but near the vanity and in the closet. We pulled out some drywall, pulled out the vanity and ripped up the vinyl floor. The smell is terrible (um...water damage plus possible cat or dog urine stains on the subfloor does makes you really question why you didn't buy new construction. Dear previous homeowner, if you are reading this, you are gross). We have the windows wide open and the bedroom and bathroom shut off from use. We have a couple of handymen coming out on Monday to give us an estimate on replacing the subfloor and pulling out the heavy shower base. Check out our most awesome demo pictures:


Our closet


Where our giant mirror use to be


View from the tub


View of the tub


Where we use to shower


Where our toilet use to be (yes, that is purple paint on the wall. Again, we seriously question the judgement of the former homeowner)


View from the closet


Inside our closet, where we discovered wet subfloor


More demo in the closet


The vanity we pulled out


Where I sleep because our bedroom is off limits (and apparently where River sleeps too)


Our guest bedroom is now our new walk in closet!


What happens to your bedroom when you are remodeling your master bathroom

Friday, November 14, 2008

A Morning Walk

Walking Sydney and River is one of my favorite activities. I jokingly refer to the dogs as my personal trainers. Last weekend my mom came to visit and we took the dogs on a walk on Sunday morning. Lake Crabtree is within walking distance of our house, and we just hop on the Cary greenway to get to the lake. The sky was clear, the air was crisp and the dogs were happy. Below are some great pictures my mom took along the way.


Just your typical walk with two 80 pound dogs


Trying to keep them out of Lake Crabtree


Walking ahead...


Beautiful sight.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

We're Doomed

Not all of the polls have closed yet, but it looks pretty clear that Barack Obama will become our nation's 44th president, and the first African-American president in our nation's history. This is quite an accomplishment, and on that fact and that fact alone, I congratulate Mr. Obama and take pride in the fact at how far our country has come in a relatively short period of time. Could anyone my parent's age imagined this 30 years ago?

However, we are doomed.

Barack Obama is a socialist. He is a brilliant politician who ran his campaign towards center political ideology in order to dupe about half of Americans in to voting for him. Don't like feeling duped? Yeah, neither do I, which is why I voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin. I, in fact, like being told the truth by my politicians.

But, let me get back to Mr. Obama. As if his questionable associations weren't enough - Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, Tony Rezko, Rashid Khalidi, ACORN and who knows what other leftist organization or radical crazed loon he chooses to spend time with - we have NO IDEA HOW HE WILL GOVERN. Let me state this again: we have no idea how he will govern.

But wait, he has been an Illinois state senator and a US state senator. We too can get an idea from his senate record on how he will govern!

Yeah, right. Mr. Obama is famous for the "present" vote as both a state and US senator. He started campaigning for the presidency, like, 115 days after he reached the US senate. He's known for being late to many senate hearings. We're not really sure how he will govern as president. All the American public has are snippets of his record as an elected official. And those snippets do not exactly fall towards moderate political ideology. They are far left, more radical than any decision most Americans would chose. But, as I mentioned earlier, Mr. Obama is a brilliant politician who obviously knows how to campaign in order to win.

Combine his questionable associations with his limited liberal voting record, and you have to wonder what the future holds. His character is questionable - he's on record saying that rural Americans cling bitterly to guns and religion. He wants to bankrupt the coal industry. He sat in the church of Reverend Wright for over 20 years. Reverent Wright married Barack and Michelle and baptized his two daughters. He straight up lied to us during the presidential debates about ACORN and Bill Ayers. There is strong evidence that he does not have Israel's best interest at heart. And we all know that he wants to spread our wealth. Um...I didn't vote for you, so could you please keep your hands out of my wallet, as I work hard for my money and at the end of the day I really don't have much left over to "spread" around to other folks.

I love this country. I question what we have just done. I worry who the American voter has chosen to be the 44th president. Just over 50% of our country is choosing a man to run our country who will most likely turn it in to a socialist society. So he gives a good speech. Big hooey. We don't elect speech writers into the Oval Office. We elect a leader, a role model, a person who will serve this country to the best of their ability, who will fight for our nation, our security against foreign threats and will protect our citizens at home and abroad.

Mmm...kind of sounds like the man I voted for.

Today, America has chosen to elect someone else. Who that someone is, we won't know until well after January 20. We can't know because we don't know what Mr. Obama will do in the White House. And with a Democratic stronghold in the Senate and House, I fear dark days lay ahead for our country.

"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country..."

Our country has chosen to elect a man who wants the government to do everything for them. How far we have wandered as a people from that shining sentiment spoken by John Kennedy some 40 years ago...

God bless America, keep it safe in the years to come.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Free Stuff on Election Day? Bring It

As if election day isn't exciting enough, I learned over the weekend that Starbucks will be handing out free tall cups of regular coffee to everyone who votes on Tuesday and that Ben & Jerry's is providing voters a free scoop of ice cream. Free coffee and ice cream? Hello? Did these companies poll me exclusively to ask what will get me to the polls? Of course I would vote anyway, but the fact that Starbucks and Ben & Jerry's want to reward me with caffeine and sweet ice creamy goodness...bonus!

And, a quick Google search of freebies on election day returns a couple more freebies! Score again!

Participating Krispy Kreme stores will offer one free star-shaped doughnut with red, white and blue sprinkles to each customer wearing an "I Voted" sticker.

Free tatoo removal! (North Texas only, darn it.)

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Eight Below



Today we bought some movies at Best Buy, including "Eight Below" which we watched tonight. This was a great movie, although if you haven't seen it yet, make sure you have a few tissues within reach. It has a happy ending, but there are definitely some tear-jerking moments as these eight huskies fight for survival in the Antarctic. If you are a dog owner, this movie will make you want to hug your dogs after the movie (which I did for several minutes with each of my dogs, both of whom gave me a "just let me go back to sleep" look. But I didn't care - I'm there momma and I can hug them whenever I want to).

But back to the movie. Paul Walker was the main actor in the movie but the huskies were the real stars. They are so cute, so amazing to watch in action. After the movie we watched the making-of-the-film on the special features and learned that each dog had two doubles so they could rotate out the dogs for wide shot scenes and scenes that involved a lot of running. How wonderful must it have been to work with dogs on a movie! The actors looked like they were having a blast, and the dogs seemed to have a lot of fun too. Definitely check out this movie or just give us a holler and we'll let you borrow our DVD.