Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving!  We started our Thanksgiving festivities in Louisville with Chris' family.  It was a special Thanksgiving because we were blessed with a new member of the family, Caroline. She is a wonderful baby!  Chris and I really enjoyed getting to know her!

On Sunday we went to Thanksgiving at the Leiter Household.  It was a fabulous Thanksgiving.  Chris and I were able to see our families!  We cannot wait to see everyone again for Christmas!

Half Bathroom

This bathroom was my August project.  It just us a long time to get the new light put up.

The bathrooms in this house are cursed.  The old owners put up wallpaper without priming the walls.  Which if I am not mistaken is a sin according to the bible.  Unfortunately I had to paint over some of the wallpaper...... and yes the wallpaper is still on the wall.  You would not be able to tell where there is wallpaper and where it is not.  Here are the pictures of the bathroom so far.

This bathroom is not finished though.  Chris and I would eventually like to get hardwood downstairs in our house.  So when the flooring goes in, the old vanity goes out.  For our birthday this year, my parents got us a new vanity for this bathroom. Here is the picture of it below.

The color reminds me of chocolate milk.  We also put up a new light and painted the trim white!

Fall Full of Plumbing Problems

This fall we had the opportunity to use the home warranty we got when we bought the  house.  I called because we had a water spot on the ceiling in the foyer below our master bathroom shower. 

The plumber could not tell us what the problem was until we opened the ceiling.










 And voila!  We saw that we had water coming from a small crack in the shower base.  You can sort of see it in the top right corner of the drain.

This of course was not covered my our home warranty and would cost us extra to fix.

We didn't like this plumber very much so we decided we needed to call someone else.





 In the meantime, we have a bucket under the hole in our ceiling to catch the dripping water. 

Why don't you use the other shower you have?  Well......

 When the home warranty man was here, I mentioned that the handles in the hall bathroom dripped when turned on.  This was covered by our home warranty.

But when he tried to get the casing off the handles, they got stuck.  He was able to get the middle and right one off and replace the stem.  But the right one will not come off. 

Yes we have tried Lime Away and CLR to dissolve the mineral build up keeping the casing in place.  So we have to have another person get it off without breaking the pipes in the wall.

More than likely, they will have to cut into the wall and cut off the piece and add a little piece of pipe.

 One of the more successful stories was that we got a new expansion tank on our water heater.  Ours was dead.  I noticed there was a problem when large puddles of water would always be on the floor.

Another thing that went wrong was our garbage disposal died.  Yes, all of this happened in like a week or two period.

This was not a big deal as well.  But we got a new garbage disposal for free!

Our plumbing woes will (hopefully) come to an end soon.  We are going to have someone come to the house this week to fix the hall bathroom and we have hired a person to redo our master bathroom (as soon as the other shower is working).

I am Thankful For

I am not sure if a list can fully encompass all that I am thankful for.  As I sit here now, I am listing things out and thinking that people will never know how much they have touched and affected my life.

Things I Am Thankful For

My Husband
We met about two years ago.  It has been fabulous.  He is a man of God who wants to improve our relationship and treats me like a princess.  I am so lucky that we found each other.  I could not imagine my life without him!








  My Family

 I am very thankful for my family.  I have a lot of people in my life, but my true family members have always been there for me.  Family are the people who will never leave your side and are the ones that are there for you when you truly need them.

 My family has grown over the years with my cousins children and now my husbands family.   I am very blessed with all of the people  in my life that I consider to be my family.

 And if you didn't know, Chris and I are now an Aunt and Uncle! 
This is our niece Caroline Harper Rainey!







My Friends

I have some fabulous friends.  They have always been there for me no matter the time of day.  Here is one of my favorite Thanksgiving memories.  This was our Junior Year at Miami University.  We had a Thanksgiving dinner with all of our friends in our house.  Of course to come to dinner you had to dress up as a Thanksgiving character (Pilgrims and Indians were the most common).
I am truly blessed!

My Job

I am one of the very fortunate people in this world to have a job.  This is my fifth year of teaching in Mason ( I know, times flies).  I am very lucky to work in a district that cares so much about their students and teachers.  The picture you see to the left is my office.  I hope I am able to continue to teach in Mason for many more years.

My Home
Despite the countless hours of work that have been put into the house, I love  our house.  We are very fortunate to be in the position to own a home that Chris and I can grow into.  I know that all houses are money pits, but our money pit is slowly becoming our home.

My Health
I am very thankful that I am healthy.  There have been many people in my life in the past few years that have struggled through health issues.  I have not had any (beyond being sick here or there).  Chris and I have decided to become more healthy and we have both lost a considerable amount of weight.  I am happy that we are able to lose the weight and in turn become healthier.  Hopefully both of these trends will continue.

There are a lot of other things I am thankful for, but I do not have the time to write them down.

If you have not taken the time to think about what you are thankful for, stop and take a moment to see how wonderful life really is.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Leaves

Moving into this house I knew we would have a lot of leaves because of the plethora of trees we have. This fall has actually been pretty good with leaves but I can tell you a fact... I hate raking leaves. An hour of raking leaves is fine. You can jump in them and have fun. After three hours of raking today I have 15 piles and have not played on them yet.




At my two hour mark, I got a drink and sat on my deck. And I made a decision. We will be cutting down at least five trees next summer. You can see the ones I want cut down below.
 (the one all the way to the right and the ones that have multiple trunks)
















No, I am not a tree hater. I love trees...in the proper places in your yard and the right trees. The tree to the right is a locust tree. If you need a reminder of what they look like here is a picture.

The two in the middle are in a bad spot and the two to the left are horrible dirty berry trees that attract hordes of deer. Yes, you heard me, hordes!

I have a good tree guy, so I am sure he will not want my kidney to do this. Once we get all of the middle trees gone, I can start to chop down more of the locust trees. How many more of them do you have to cut down you might ask?? 7 more. Plus an acorn tree and small trees that are growing improperly. (It is like deforestation at the Boyle's)

I fully want to replant trees, but ones that are pretty, won't stab you to death while mowing and have leaves that easy to clean up! :)

Encouraging

I have been working tirelessly on school, tutoring and house projects. At times it has been very overwhelming and I have wanted to give up on my lofty, yet successful, house goals.

As I walked out of my bedroom this morning, I was reminded of why I work so hard. Our house is becoming beautiful. I loved the house when we bought it. It needed lots of cosmetic work, but I was excited to have a house project of my own.

As I walked down the dark hallway, I saw how bright and welcoming the primed trim looked.  I cannot wait to see the end result. It is slowly changing from a house into our home!

November Project

So my November project is a tedious one, but will be so wonderful to complete.  I will be painting all of the trim and doors in the house white (Du Jour to be exact)!  

The rooms I have painted recently have had the trim painted, but the rooms that I have already painted have not had the trim painted white. 

It is going to make the house look so much brighter and cleaner.  

My hope is to finish the trim and doors before our Annual Christmas party.

Here is a hit at what the difference will be in the house! 

(look at the stairs and the trim around the doors at the top of the stairs)

Bedroom #2

I finished another room!  This is the bedroom that is closest to our bedroom.  This room was crazy because it had not one, not two, not three, but four layers of wallpaper on it.

This is what the room looked like initially.







 Here you can see all fours layers in the corner.
The pink flowers were the bottom layer.

Awesome train wallpaper! 
It was really busy, but really cool!

Here is the room in the process of being painted.  It is a lighter gray color.   It looks really nice with the white trim!











And the room now!  I am still in the process of priming and painting all of the doors.