Random kindness fun

A couple of weeks ago, I drew two blog readers' names for the random act of kindness 'contest.'  I was able to surprise one of them last night with a wonderful cookbook. Lynnette just started her own business - the fabulous happyjack bakery - and I thought that the Sono Baking Company Cookbook would help her find some delicious treats to add to her offerings.



The recipes look scrumptious and the pictures make me drool just a little. I can't wait to taste some of them once Lynnette works her magic with the recipes. Enjoy, my friend!!

I have another fun, random gift waiting in the wings for a randomly chosen blog reader. I'll update on that next week after it is gifted.

I like to make others smile. Smiling is my favorite.

P.S. Shameless plug: Come and visit happyjack at the Whitehall Farmer's Market at Caste Village every Monday from 3:00 to 7:00 pm starting June 14, 2010!

House updates

We're still trying to get everything done at the house in order for it to feel oh so cozy, but the weekends are the only time we have since weeknights go so quickly. So, here is what we've been up to lately:

Mikey cut the grass. Yay! I love the lawn and our wonderful tree. I literally have gone out and patted the tree three or four times because I love owning our own tree.

I planted petunias and a couple of Gerber daisies in the planters out front. I hope they live. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I do it with love.

This is the area in our kitchen that was a broom closet. We (read: Mike) removed the doors from it so that we could put our great garbage can there. We can put brooms in the basement closet. No loss there. But we have some work to do in this little nook. I started off the renovation by painting the top shelf area a pretty lilac color. I went outside of my comfort zone and chose a fun color. I'm still not sure about it so if you like it, I'd love to hear it. I'm fighting the urge to paint over it with a nice, safe Barely Beige color.

What an overwhelming, awesome adventure to turn a house into a home. :)

I didn't forget...

.. the random act of kindness that I'm going to rain down upon two lucky blog readers. Well, maybe not a rain shower. More like a gift under $20. But that's sumpthin', right? A little sprinkling of kindness perhaps. I won't announce who the winners are until after I send out the gifts. Stay tuned...

Just a little bit o' lint

I wonder if the previous owners of the house ever cleaned or fixed anything. I feel like they ran the house close to the ground and then jumped off. We LOVE the house. Never think that we don't. No bad words will be spoken against the house of our dreams ever. We are in love, love, love. The previous owners though... Ugh.

The inspectors had no reason to open all of the closets and look behind paintings, etc. So when we moved in and tried to open closets and finally saw all of the walls, surprise! Half of the closet doors are broken and won't close. The owners nailed everything within eyesight to the walls and then didn't remove any of the nails when they left. If I fell backwards in the house anywhere, I'll pierce my melon on a nail head.

We are currently dealing with two doozies.

1) They must have let every single hair on their heads run down the drain in the upstairs shower. I'm pretty sure they washed the dog up there, too. It is totally clogged and smells like armpit. We tried drain opener, but no luck. We have to move on to the snake now. Scared of discovery once we do. *shudder* 

2) The dryer vent. Here is part of it now...

They must have never cleaned the dryer vent tube or the lint trap. Let those suckers just clog up with lint. The dryer vent tube goes in the drywall, into the garage, and outside through that wall. It is understandably a tough, icky job to get it cleaned out or do it yourself somehow, but ignoring the icky job just causes things like, oh, I don't know... dryer fires. We are pretty sure that tube is totally full of lint. At least the section that we saw when Mike sawed through the drywall is clogged.

Well, looky here...

I just wanna do laundry, people!


I finally got the dryer delivered (love, love, love!)...

and now can't use it until we fix their mess. We did buy an inside vent kit so we can vent in to the basement if we have to, but that will lead to us opening Sauna Petruska down there after a while due to the resultant moisture. We'll get it figured out, but when we someday build our dream house in the country and move out, we'll be making sure the buyers aren't shaking their fists in our general direction and cursing us. Karma... I'm a believer.

Progress is sloooow

We're finally out of the apartment! Sheesh, that was hard work. We didn't realize how much crap we bought and stuffed under beds and in closets and in the basement storage room. Our Feng Shui was so bad. No wonder I felt like my Qi was all wackadooish.

We haven't had much time at all to set up the house yet. We have had time to populate the 'dude room' in the basement with a ton of stuff. No dude will be hanging in that room for a while unless he feels comfortable perched on top of three plastic bins and a pile of winter coats. Although I'm sure if you gave a guy a beer and a room, he would perch anywhere.

But I don't care 'cause I can do laundry at my house. Without quarters. For free. Without dodging spiders in the basement of the apartment. I can't even... I'm so excited. We are using a loaner dryer for now until our dryer comes off of backorder and is delivered. But it works for me. I love them and want to marry them.

That is all of the news I have in terms of house stuff. We are hoping to fix up a lot this weekend. But first Mike has to mow the lawn. I saw our new, nebby neighbor Connie giving our yard the side-eye yesterday. Simmer down, Connie... We'll get to it.

Unrelated P.S. - If you haven't seen this website in my blogroll yet, please check it out. It makes me heart burst every time I look at it. http://www.kellehampton.com/

We're in!

Closing was a success! We had a minor hiccup when we discovered during the walk-through that some repairs weren't done, but their serviceman is coming to the house this week to do what he didn't finish free of charge. Remind me later to tell the story of how when we called the number on the repair invoice from the seller, the phone was answered by some guy on the street who found the phone. Yeah... After that slight issue was figured out, we signed our life away and got our keys - one green key with flowers on it and one Steelers key. Guess who got which. :P

Pan to us jumping up and down outside the house like kids on Christmas morning looking at their Barbie townhouses (ok, maybe just I was jumping..not Mike). The house is so much better than I remembered and I wasn't sure that was possible. It feels like home already. There are more projects than we thought as the sellers sure did hide things like broken switch plates and bad paint jobs with pictures and candles well, but we're up for the challenge. I already made friends with Nancy at Lowe's.

I posted pictures on Facebook. If you didn't see them there, lemme know and I'll post some here. I'm too tired to do much more right now. MAN... homeownership is already exhausting. I discovered my new diet and exercise plan: House poor-ness and forgetting things downstairs.

It is all so great and thanks for being excited with us. We'll be sure to have a housewarming party eventually. The fire pit is calling for friends and s'mores and cocktails. :)

Bee!

I had to share this story...

I started a small riot on my bus today. A bee landed on my arm and I freaked. I stood up and said "Bee!" really loudly. I'm sorry... I've never been stung by a bee and the first time won't be on a confined, moving vehicle. So, the bee then flew away and started flying frantically in to all of the other passengers. They all got up and were swinging their purses and lunch bags at it. This lady behind me was screaming (literally), "Don't kill it! I'll take it and put it in my bag!" A Catholic school girl slammed her 30 lb book bag at it and made it go splat in to the window. The lady behind me said, "Great! Kill it! Very nice. Jeez!" I swear I heard her crying behind me after that. I'm a gentle soul (don't laugh), but it. was. a bee. Never a dull moment on the East busway.