Stressy Bessie Weekend

I swear swear swear I will be better about posts once life calms down a little bit! I have all kinds of things I want to do and accomplish and share but right now life is just a little too crazy.

It's good crazy though - whenever I notice I'm complaining about things I should probably be grateful for, I'm like I know I know, yuppie problems. I mean, deciding which new appliances and floor, etc. to get for our new home? Comon Leibel, things could be worse!

Anyway, we destroyed our credit rating this weekend taking advantage of Memorial Day sales (don't worry, Mom & Dad, we are fine - it's just funny to not spend, like, any money for 3 years then within one month just start being ballers and make a few several thousand dollar purchases all in a row)

Friday we were able to get 0.9% financing (and other deals) on A BRAND NEW CAR (to be read aloud in a Bob Barker voice)

Meet Urban Titanium (there is a voice for that too, natch):

  

Urban Titanium is actually Honda's color name for this car, which in real life is closer to the top picture, but, I mean, honestly, once I heard that there was pretty much no other option for her given name.

Then on Saturday we did a ton of work to the house, my brother Dan came over to help with some heavy lifting (yay Dan!) and we had some fun knocking out part of the kitchen wall to the dining room and more (pics to follow) and we got a quote from the flooring company to replace the floors in our kitchen and den (no turning back as Dan and Mike ripped them up...) and I was able to go out for a super fun girl's night with my college roomies (vodka + dancing + gossip + merciless sarcasm = my idea of a great time)

Sunday we went out furniture shopping buying - we had already done the research and knew what we wanted, but waited until the sales started to take advantage.  We don't need too much furniture, but knew we wanted a new couch, and a few other things for the living room (we decided on a chair and ottoman) as well as a new king size (!!!) mattress (I would say bed but we aren't ready to commit to one yet, we want to see how this monster looks with what we already have.)  

The new couch

The new chair - obviously in a different pattern

The ottoman - ditto on the pattern

We ended up meeting our friends in Old City for dinner and drinks outside - JP's condo has an AMAZING deck with beautiful views of the Ben Franklin Bridge and Center City, it was so nice, and of course it made Scotch Mike™ quite sentimental about leaving the city.  However, our arrival back at the apartment quickly reminded us why we're moving (used charcoal all over our steps will do that to ya)

And then yesterday came the appliances.  We did get good deals, but wow, I never EVER want to be in a big box store on a holiday weekend again. There were "giveaways" being shouted over the loudspeaker every five minutes, there was a real-life infomercial set up with seizure-inducing strobe lights (why one needs lighting and a damn fake waterfall to sell glorified mops is beyond me) and we had to wait about 30 minutes just to get a computer to check out on!  Mike and I both said later we felt like the walls were closing in on us and I may have made a horrifying comment about not wanting to be "among the people" like I was the Queen or something. But seriously Sears on a holiday known for sales = some pretty gross characters. I wish I had taken pictures of THAT!

Included were 

1. A man who looked very much like a cartoon gorilla who kept trying to access the regular internet on a computer only set up for local price comparison

2. Innumerable fat men in tank tops (suns out guns out?)

3. Couples who couldn't just look at items together but would yell across the section "HEY! THIS ONE HAS AN ICEMAKER!", etc.

4. People yelling at the poor salespeople to "Give them a better deal!" for no reason at all

Again, we had kind of done all of our pre-shopping and Consumer Report checking, so we knew just what we wanted - there was some negotiation involved since Sears does do price matching, and of course the yokels to get past, then an absurdly long and complicated check-out. But once we did some quick calculations and realized how much money we saved it was worth it (almost). 

Here are some pictures of  our appliances(probably - I was too lazy to make sure these were the exact model, but they look right). Just to keep things fun, the fridge was the only thing not in stock, so it can't be delivered until June 12th (we move in June 7th...) - more on that plan later...

Should be interesting to build a mount for this bad boy

5 burners! And that bottom isn't just a drawer but a 2nd oven

I am insanely excited to be able to wash more than 3 towels at once.. it's the little things

So there you have it, we are singlehandedly keeping the American economy going -  what's more patriotic than that? - Ronald Regan 

(PS, not really, but it seemed like something a famous Republican would say) 

Sunday Funday

Well, "fun"day

We'll begin with a shout-out to the two most important purchases of the weekend, a trusty cooler to keep those waters, green tea, and diet coke chilled & refreshing ($13 at Walgreens thankyouverymuch!):

 and possibly the best investment we've made since closing on the house, a new shop vac:

I don't know what we were thinking using a swiffer and paper towels, our newest little addition on wheels has been a godsend, especially since we attacked THE ROOM WHERE TIME STOOD STILL

I have been referring to what will be our main guest room as TRWTSS since we saw the place - even though the house has been generally well-maintained and updated, this one random room still had ancient gross carpet, oddly easy-to-rip-off wallpaper, and let's not forget the sa-weet old fashioned TV mount...

You know when you're doing one thing for a long time and you haven't eaten and suddenly everything is hilarious? No? Just me?

Anyway, this room also seemed wired to be, like, a bunker in the early 90's. Every sort of landline operation available was running through those walls. Need to plug in your fax/ phone/ internet/ cable/ spaceship/ Russian spy equipment? No problem, TRWTSS has you covered...

 

 

So all afternoon I just kept saying ridiculous things and then going "Mike! Be quiet! The Russians are listening! We are bugged!" And yelling "take that, Ruskies!" when we cut wires. Poor Mike. And also poor me when I realized the windows were open and the "they" that could actually hear me were our new neighbors. Oh.

So anyway, we completed our mission and finally got to rip up the carpet! 

Mike conquering the carpet

Then I got to work on the staples from the pad, it was awful, but at least Lemon helped (by sitting in my lap, obvs):

Note: I met neighbors looking like that. My suburban rep is probably not great at this point

Here are some pics of the room now, we bought a curing paint that is supposed to leave the walls textured but ready for normal paint (who wants to scrape spy glue off the walls? Not this lady) so hopefully I'll have an update on that next week.

 

Mike was also able to finish the master bedroom (a nice gray-blue shade) too!

PROGRESS. We made it.

Guess Who's Back

Shady's back, back ag -- just kidding I'm back. On the blog. With lots of house updates!

Hopefully everyone understands we've been crazy busy, and I'm not yet very disciplined about taking pics at every step of the way!

BUT after a weekend starting with prom (yay Matty!) and ending with getting a Delaware driver's lisence (which may be the comically worst picture ever taken of me. No, like, ever. I almost cried) with about 7 trips to Home Depot (or the H-deep as I like to call it), we got TONS done!

To begin at the beginning, let's just say the weekend had a rough start. We arrived at the house to a jungle of a yard. A week of rain on a lawn that needed to be cut anyway made for some epically tall grass and weeds, and we're in like a real neighborhood - I mean all we needed was a broken down car on the lawn and our sure-to-be-rumored rep as hillbillies or something would be sealed.  Thankfully I found a lawn service (google on my phone - what did I ever do without it?!) and had someone come out right away. And apologized to every new neighbor I met.

While the green outside was offensive, unfortunately the green inside was even worse! That "lovely leafy green" from my last post actually looked like Kermit the Frog (could not be more excited for this btw) had been used as a color matching tool at the H-deep. Ooops. So my trusty consultant Beth and I headed out to find a suitable replacement after looking at some chips we had on hand.

Here is the new color:

We did encounter a couple things, and I might have gotten a bit punchy as the day went on, as demonstrated here when I couldn't get a plate off the wall (bald screw I think):

 Between getting some prep work done and some oh-so-welcome visitors (Paul and Beth) and it being Lemon's first trip to the house, we didn't get as much done Saturday as anticipated... but we definitely had fun:

Trusty Home Depot companion Beth!

Lemon found a discarded curtain to sleep in, though we brought her bed...

and Beth brought our first piece of art!

Sunday was much more productive - next post!

PS - How cute is our little Matty?! PROM!

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

House Tour...

...slash Photo To-Do List

Ok so here is the big low-down! Sorry for the poor picture quality, as Mike was running out the door I tossed the camera to him and didn't fix the settings! But you get the gist, these are pretty self explanatory :)

 

I left out the hallway bath, it's blue...very blue... and there wasn't a great picture of it! I'll be posting more as we dig in!!!