as.the.mercury.falls[part.one]

well first let me apologize for how long its been since i last posted and for getting some of you worried about us. i assure you karen and i are fine, we've just been extra busy as of late and then i got sick for a bit on top of that, so i've gotten a bit behind on telling our little stories. so please, do forgive me. 

the.weekend.of.december.13|14

well its been a while and i'll admit im rather fuzzy on all the exact details of what happened over a week ago, but i can definitely relay the to you all the major milestones of the weekend. 

[the.roof]

well as of this weekend[dec13-14], the roof had finally made some progress! on friday the guys had come out and worked on shingles some more and we were really coming along! byt he time saturday rolled around we had shingles on the entire front of the house on the mansard roof, and then the entire back as well. the only part on the mansard roof that didnt have shingles was a strip on the side of the house about 20ft long. and since it was the weekend, we certainly didnt expect to see any roofers out, so we were celebrating in what had been accomplished for the rest of the weekend. 

[moving|remodeling]

so when i last updated you we had moved a large part of the storage unit out and we were pretty pleased with ourselves. well over this weekend[dec13-14] we were able to officially move out of the storage unit. and with good timing too, haha, it was pretty much a necessity considering we would have had to pay rent again on the 15th. but after 2 more trips we were able to get every last scrap out of the storage unit and move all but the empty boxes to the house, the empty boxes went to the apartment to be used at a future time for packing that up. also, while moving everything out of storage, we were able to get the majority of it onto the second and third floors and into the rooms that the things will be living in either temporarily or permanently[well, as permanent as we can imagine this far in advance anyway].

additionally, we made some strides in the remodeling sector of things over this weekend[dec13-14] as well. no, we didnt actually get around to any projects, but we did get out to the depot for our weekly meeting [it feels like remodeling-anonymous at this point, i swear it...], and we're able to get some much needed advice and a few accessories as well. for starters paint - we discussed the issues we've been having with the paint-pro at home depot and he tried to help us figure out what changes we could make to fix our problems. first of all the application, when painting with this shade of paint [its a red of sorts] its a good idea to never "roll out" or "dry roll" your roller before re-wetting it. the best way to do it is to always "roll wet" and use very light pressure - good to know. secondly was the product, we were pretty unhappy with the thin-ness of the paint and with the sheen, even though its only a satin sheen, it was still showing every little bump and "character flaw" in our hundred year old plaster walls. when we mentioned the sheen the first thing he asked was if we were painting plaster, and when we nodded dumbfounded, he chuckled and suggested we switch to a flat enamel instead of the satin latex we were using. so hopefully with these changes in our panting schematics, we can successfully finish this entryway with under 3 coats.[keep your fingers crossed anyway...]

the next major thing on our depot agenda was the attic bathroom. if we were planning to move into this house any time soon we were going to want that bathroom fully functional - which meant fixing or replacing the busted toilet currently residing within. well considering the professional plumber attempted to fix it to no avail and i have no experience with plumbing of any kind we opted for the replacing option and decided to look at pricing toilets... just what were we getting into? well it turned out that they had 2 options within our price range and after discussing at length with the toilet-pro we decided on the higher priced of the two options and got all of the necessary accessories for installation - new wax ring, caulk, caulk gun, etc. again, we didnt actually install the toilet, but we bought it and got it in the house so that was a big step! the majority of the weekend was spent moving everything in what was the coldest weather yet at that point, somewhere around 19degrees out. it was bitter cold and mixed in with moving we were trying to do some cleaning in the kitchen and other rooms as well as we went along. 

[christmas]

well over this weekend[dec13-14] we had two christmas-related events take place. first was that we finally decided to go and buy a christmas tree and ornaments and start the decorating process at the house, and second was karen and my christmas parties for work. karens party was pretty fun i guess. it was fairly small maybe 15 people from her work, i think it was just the section she works in - retail - and a few other people who were there. they played a little white elephant with a craps twist and in the end it was actually fun. i met a co-worker of karens, cassandra, who was pretty funny and i liked her, so thats always a plus. 

my christmas party was a polar opposite to karens. first of all it was huge. everyone from my office was there - roughly 35 people total - plus all of their spouses and kids. it was pretty insane, i wont lie. there must have been at least 30 kids running around ranging in age from newborns up to i think 12yrs old. it was the first real christmas party id ever been to for work and the only one id ever heard of with kids invited. but my boss is a real softy apparently, he went all out for the kids. first the party was held at the cincinnati fire fighters museum so there were tons of displays and fire-fighter memorabilia for the kidos to run around playing with. and second, he must have spent a fortune on gifts for the little rug-rats. ever single kid got a 10 dollar gift card to the museum gift shop and then they each got a pretty nice present from him as well. i mean like high quality laser-tag gear kind of presents. i was a little jealous, lol!

lastly, the decorating. well we'd been discussing getting a tree for a while and while we werent wanting to spend a lot of money on one, we definitely did want one. so karen had done a lot of looking on craigslist for a while and hadnt really come up with much. there were a lot of options but they were all going really fast. every time shed call they'd already be gone or they wouldnt return her calls, so we kind of gave up on the craigslist thing. my thought was biglots. i know that id seen stuff like that there before for really cheap, so i figured it was our best bet. places like walmart and target that wed already looked at were in the 60+ range for a small tree and we were definitely not looking to spend that before ornaments and stuff - of which we had nothing. well luckily there was a biglots nearby and even more luckily we were able to find a tree for 20 bucks! its nothing spectacular, just a little 6ft pre-lit tree and honestly, after we put it up we laughed at how sparse and pathetic the poor thing really was. we'd fluffed our hearts out on this poor tree for only god knows how long trying to make it look fuller, but there was just no hope, lol! well after the tree at biglots our next stop was the dollar-tree. haha, yeah, we're cheap, and yeah we're broke. but 30bucks later we had a ton of ornaments, tinsel, and other decor and it really didnt look like ghetto crap. the only other stop we made was at burlington coat factory because when we'd been there the time before id noticed a big container of ornaments for fairly cheap - luckily they still had one and it had 50 ornaments for only 9 bucks! thats a bargain in my book for sure, and these were definitely a few rungs up from the dollar-store stuff in terms of quality.

well after decorating and adding some christmas light that i had in storage and that we'd gotten over halloween the tree honestly did look amazing. you cant tell for a single second that that little tree is a piece of crap because it is hiding in the emperors clothes, i assure you. we are honestly astonished at the transformation and what we were able to pull off with just those really cheap decorations from the dollar store, lol!

well friends and family, thats all for now. i know i only just barely started, but ive gotta get back to work now. 

i promise to update more soon and add pictures!

love and miss you all!