The Great Floor Remodel of 2011

We have been fairly busy with home improvement since April. It first started off with turning our boring backyard into something you may want to look at. We had two bushes and that was all. We had to rip out a lot of grass and put new plants in. It is still a work in progress but has come a long way!

We next moved onto the biggest project ever, the floors. It started in the laundry room where we somehow had linoleum. The glue was horrible to scrape BY HAND!



This was the first room G ever tiled. I think it turned out very well. But this picture was before the grout.


We ventured out into the rest of the house after the laundry room. It took an entire weekend to bust out all the old, nasty, ugly tile. It was an orange-ish color. The dust got EVERYWHERE! When you blew your nose, it came out brown from all the dust we were inhaling. That turned out to be not so smart as the dust mixed with the end of school stress got me sick. It was the worst sickness I have had in years. I had to quickly recover since we weren't done yet. As we were ripping out baseboards, the wonderful tile broke off with them.

We lived without the majority of our flooring for some time as we carefully went about laying tile.

The kitchen and breakfast nook turned out wonderfully! Keep in mind we are replacing all the trim with this project as well. And the table won't live in the corner like that forever.

After we finished all of the tile, we had wood guys come in to lay wood. That was the day that the tornadoes were ripping through the area. There was one spotted just west of us and the dog and I were freaking with workmen in the house. Herman and I ended up in the closet. We fell asleep. When we woke up at 10 pm, the wood was laid.


Last weekend we took it easy and had some guys come in and install the crown molding. We had to paint it ourselves first before it was put up. The next day, painters came out to caulk and paint it for looks.


We are still not done yet folks. As I write this, we have the floor guys here again scraping and staining the floors. Then it's on to the new carpet! I can't wait for new carpet that hasn't had the last guy's toe nail clippings in it. The carpet is really why this whole thing came about. Our carpet was the original and stained with holes. After the carpet goes in, it's on with the trim work. It's been over a month of work and we're nearing done. I will have to post more pictures of the finished project.

We are boring people

We really are. We haven't done anything interesting in awhile. It's just been life. We have been slowly doing some things around the house. G put in can lights and in ceiling speakers in the family room. They are great for late night crafting. Which I realize that I'm an old lady already with my crafting. When G was doing the lighting project he had a huge light out. The dog was sitting two feet from it and he looked kind of cool. I had to take his picture with my stupid old camera. I want a new pretty expensive one but that's another story.


It's my attempt at being creative. Speaking of creative, I have been crafting on my Spring Break. I finished a project for a friend having a baby. Can't post pictures yet. I pieced a hopeful baby gift. :) And I finished a table runner for my mother. It was fall themed and something different from my usual baby things. I know quite a few people with babies.

I have plans for one with a fish theme. I just need to make the trek over to the quilt store. It's not near as close since we moved.

Maybe we will be more interesting one day. We do have a trip to Vegas to go on.

Disney World- Magic Kingdom & Animal Kingdom

We started out Monday fresh and excited. Everyone had told me over and over that Magic Kingdom is so MAGICAL! Magical and full of everyone and their three screaming children. A picture of me looking happy because we hadn't actually tried to get on any rides yet.

After waiting over an hour to ride Pirates of the Caribbean being touched by the children in line behind us the entire time, we decided it was better to leave and go to Animal Kingdom. We had to take the ferry over and then get on a bus. It took forever and I was grumpy and upset. Not the highlight of our trip but G decided to document the ferry ride.

We had our picture taken in front of Animal Kingdom. I had to fake happy.

The Christmas tree at Animal Kingdom.

We rode the Kilimanjaro ride. It was pretty awesome and surprising.

A picture of me with the tree in Animal Kingdom.

After a few hours in Animal Kingdom, we decided it might be safe to head back to Magic Kingdom. We got there just in time to see Cinderella's castle lit up for Christmas. We headed to Space Mountain to use our Fast Pass. Then we went for the teacups.


Our dinner was a character dinner and we didn't have reservations until 10:00. Thankfully, the park was open for extra magic hours until 3 am. We dined with Pooh and his friends.

Here is a late night photo of the castle. So so so so pretty.

We were able to ride a bunch of rides between 12 and 2 am. We rode Space Mountain two more times and a few others.

We left and got to the hotel after 2. We decided to go back to Magic Kingdom our last day because I never got my picture with Cinderella. We waited for maybe 20 minutes and got my picture with three princesses. My Cinderella photo is blurry. We need to order the one from Disney.

Belle was very pretty!

Sleeping Beauty was great too!

We then ventured out to find Mickey one more time and we saw Minnie too!

It was a great trip with many good memories! Now on to Vegas??

Disney World- Disney's Hollywood Studios

Sunday we got up and headed out to Disney's Hollywood Studios. We headed to the Rockin' Rollercoaster for a fast pass then on to the Tower of Terror. It was AWESOME! I loved everything about it. I took G's picture on the way out of Tower of Terror and, of course, his eyes are closed. It wasn't even sunny!

I liked the 1930's vibe of the place.

We wandered around after Tower of Terror and happened across The Big Movie Ride. It was fairly entertaining and provided some time for sitting and getting warm. It was awfully cold in Florida!

We wandered around some more and came across Muppets 3D. I love the Muppets and had to pose with Miss Piggy!

As we were walking around, we came across Handy Manny. I forced G into taking a picture with him. I thought it would be amusing as he is a home builder.

Then we went to have our picture taken with Mickey. Of course, G has his eyes closed. While in line a ton of kids grabbed all over us and one even thought G was his dad.

We rode the Rockin' Roller coaster three times that day. It was tons of fun.


We had dinner at a diner time place and then moved on along to see one of the real reasons we went to Disney World at Christmas... the lights!



G loved it all! And the even sprayed snow down on us.

There were tons and tons of lights. We rode Tower of Terror again and then called it a day because it was cold and we were still super tired.

Disney World- Epcot

We went to Disney World last Saturday morning. After a mix up in the Orlando airport (worst layout ever), we were on our way to see Mickey! G thought we should start with the "boring" parks so to not disappoint me. We headed to Epcot the first afternoon. It was a very pretty park. That ball is way prettier in person.

It was a kind of gross day out. It had rained then it got warm and muggy. One of the first rides we did was Mission Space. We were told to do the orange team because it is more fun BUT I was worried that my motion sickness would take over. After a lot of worry (my goodness they warn you a lot) we got on the ride. I maintained the vomit and G took this wonderful picture of me after. I look horrid and we forgot our sunglasses at the resort.

G felt kind of yucky that afternoon. Most of the pictures he took that day were grumpy. We found some beer in England. It was good.

There were some cool looking phone booths in England too.

We walked on to France and decided to sit down and drink our beers. While we were sitting there, a French Santa was entertaining the crowds. He looked awesome. I would have gotten my picture with him if G felt better.

I did get my picture with my first Princess of the trip, Sleeping Beauty. My hair looks awful. Keep in mind it rained and we were up at 3:45 to catch the plane.

Here's one of G looking oh so happy. Darn headache!

Everything was so beautiful decorated for Christmas.


We ate dinner in Mexico at a sit down restaurant.

We were both SO tired from our long day of travel we crashed early and got up ready to do our next day at Hollywood Studios!

Christmas Lights 2010

Our first full Christmas season in our house meant Gary putting up his Christmas lights. We started in November just before Thanksgiving. Chris was over to help Gary the first day of putting out the lights.

When he got on the roof, he scared the poop out of me. I was thankful Matt was at the house in case he did fall off the roof.


Anyone who knows my husband knows that he LOVES Autocad and makes diagrams. This one was color coded and he had done the math to calculate the amps to each socket.

The finished product took several weeks of tinkering. We had to wait and wait on the A&M sticker from College Station to complete the star atop the tree. It is painted maroon with the A&M logo. I believe there are about 17,000 lights outside. The tree inside has a crazy amount as well. Just this weekend we had someone steal a candy cane from the front yard but other than that no big problems.

Merry Christmas!