Labor Day Weekend Recap
As always the amount of free time that I seem to have accumulated is always dwindling. This time mainly due to the fact that our wonderful 3day holiday is coming to a close.
We didn't do anything spectacular, but you know what? We're completely ok with that. Our weekend consisted of us weeding out the garden and some of the lawn (damn you, dandelions and your extremely long roots), grabbing a handful of paint swatches from the Home Depot and reorganizing the garage.
So the garden needed to be done, and I'm really really sore because of it. It's back to the gym tomorrow regardless of how my legs are feeling. The front garden looks so much better. The other projects however... are a start of more change to come!
And I simply mean, we're in the starting phase of getting our basement finished. We met with a designer on Tuesday and showed here around and told her what we were kind of looking for. The greatest thing about this is that there's no pre-existing structure we have to work around in the basement. It's pretty much a clean slate that'll allow us to build it out with minimal problems. We're hoping to turn it into an office/lounge type of area with one section sealed off for laundry and storage. We're basically building a mini-Nerd Cave that will suit us for the time being while we're still here in MI, but also create a nice open space for a variety of uses for potential home owners when we go to sell.
Needless to say my husband is so very excited about this household transformation. He's been looking forward to doing this project since before I was even in the picture. I'm happy for him, but it's a lot of work that I'm not really looking forward too. I'm still not over the kitchen renovation that we just started. I'm barely moved back in as it is. I'm still unpacking wedding gifts we had to store in our spare bedroom because I wasn't allowed to unpack them until after the kitchen renovation.
And that leads me to this weekend, which is a sort of pre-cleanup to the basement cleanout we have to do. So in order to have this construction happen we pretty much have to clear out the basement. I totally see where this is going and have started cleaning out the spare bedroom of all the gifts and my general items lazing about so that when it comes time to move items out of the basement into some other storage location while construction is going on, it has a place to live and I still have access to everything I need.
My husband is cleaning up the garage for such the occassion for you know workshop type items that can be stored in the garage. It's already a lot of work and we're already exhausted. We're not even on the books with the contractor yet to get this done.
Oh, did I mention that we're trying to get this done before Christmas - because we're trying to host the family Christmas party this year? I'm totally stoked about that, don't get me wrong. In fact it was part my idea. But as the house stands right now, we totally don't have enough free room for his entire family, even with the kitchen all fixed up. That's why we're hoping this basement project really comes through so that we have a second "living room" type quarter that other people can gravitate towards.
The part that I'm looking forward to hosting is the dinner. Cookies and appetizers and meatballs... Yes, meatballs are a family classic for Christmas. I'm not entirely sure why but I won't be one to break tradition, as long as they don't mind adding in some more traditions since we're hosting :)
Anyway, back to the basement and all the cleaning we have to do. We decided that we're going to try and do most of the demolition ourselves since it'll be cheaper. While at the Home Depot we picked up a Bagster as an alternative to renting a dumpster. It was only about $30 for the back and it's about $100 for pickup and we can practically throw anything in it. We're hoping that even though we're demolishing the basement ourselves having the Bagster will allow us to purge anything else we feel we need to get rid of. Like the apparent, picnic table and chair set I just found out that we had stowed in the garage - WHAT? Yeah, just found out about that, but it's not like we have a patio to put it on or anything. I say pitch it and then once we have a patio poured next year then we can shop for something that we really want and will make us comfortable.
Aside from a lot of cleaning this weekend I think the only successful thing I did in the kitchen was make Egg Drop Soup. It's so incredibly easy, and for my first shot it didn't turn out so bad. Heck, there's no right or wrong way to even drop the egg into the soup either. I think the only other thing I'm going to try to amend the recipe is get some green onion and invest in some white pepper. Sure it'll make it hotter, but I really think the soup was lacking in that area. There's always room for improvement, and since this was so incredibly easy I'm not afraid to try again. It's also a good and fast way to use up your eggs if you're looking to use them before you need to get rid of them. It's how I feel about just getting rid of ripe bananas when I feel I can turn them into banana bread or something equally delicious.
Needless to say that with everything we've done this weekend we're going to sleep well tonight. Hopefully, we'll be tired and sore tomorrow in a good way to resume our weeks at work. Unfortunately, we all know it goes when you have a 4day week - you end up trying to cram 7days worth of work into it.
I can be optimistic about it though, right? Here's hoping everyone's holiday was a good one and we'll see what adventures await until next time! :)
We didn't do anything spectacular, but you know what? We're completely ok with that. Our weekend consisted of us weeding out the garden and some of the lawn (damn you, dandelions and your extremely long roots), grabbing a handful of paint swatches from the Home Depot and reorganizing the garage.
So the garden needed to be done, and I'm really really sore because of it. It's back to the gym tomorrow regardless of how my legs are feeling. The front garden looks so much better. The other projects however... are a start of more change to come!
And I simply mean, we're in the starting phase of getting our basement finished. We met with a designer on Tuesday and showed here around and told her what we were kind of looking for. The greatest thing about this is that there's no pre-existing structure we have to work around in the basement. It's pretty much a clean slate that'll allow us to build it out with minimal problems. We're hoping to turn it into an office/lounge type of area with one section sealed off for laundry and storage. We're basically building a mini-Nerd Cave that will suit us for the time being while we're still here in MI, but also create a nice open space for a variety of uses for potential home owners when we go to sell.
Needless to say my husband is so very excited about this household transformation. He's been looking forward to doing this project since before I was even in the picture. I'm happy for him, but it's a lot of work that I'm not really looking forward too. I'm still not over the kitchen renovation that we just started. I'm barely moved back in as it is. I'm still unpacking wedding gifts we had to store in our spare bedroom because I wasn't allowed to unpack them until after the kitchen renovation.
And that leads me to this weekend, which is a sort of pre-cleanup to the basement cleanout we have to do. So in order to have this construction happen we pretty much have to clear out the basement. I totally see where this is going and have started cleaning out the spare bedroom of all the gifts and my general items lazing about so that when it comes time to move items out of the basement into some other storage location while construction is going on, it has a place to live and I still have access to everything I need.
My husband is cleaning up the garage for such the occassion for you know workshop type items that can be stored in the garage. It's already a lot of work and we're already exhausted. We're not even on the books with the contractor yet to get this done.
Oh, did I mention that we're trying to get this done before Christmas - because we're trying to host the family Christmas party this year? I'm totally stoked about that, don't get me wrong. In fact it was part my idea. But as the house stands right now, we totally don't have enough free room for his entire family, even with the kitchen all fixed up. That's why we're hoping this basement project really comes through so that we have a second "living room" type quarter that other people can gravitate towards.
The part that I'm looking forward to hosting is the dinner. Cookies and appetizers and meatballs... Yes, meatballs are a family classic for Christmas. I'm not entirely sure why but I won't be one to break tradition, as long as they don't mind adding in some more traditions since we're hosting :)
Anyway, back to the basement and all the cleaning we have to do. We decided that we're going to try and do most of the demolition ourselves since it'll be cheaper. While at the Home Depot we picked up a Bagster as an alternative to renting a dumpster. It was only about $30 for the back and it's about $100 for pickup and we can practically throw anything in it. We're hoping that even though we're demolishing the basement ourselves having the Bagster will allow us to purge anything else we feel we need to get rid of. Like the apparent, picnic table and chair set I just found out that we had stowed in the garage - WHAT? Yeah, just found out about that, but it's not like we have a patio to put it on or anything. I say pitch it and then once we have a patio poured next year then we can shop for something that we really want and will make us comfortable.
Aside from a lot of cleaning this weekend I think the only successful thing I did in the kitchen was make Egg Drop Soup. It's so incredibly easy, and for my first shot it didn't turn out so bad. Heck, there's no right or wrong way to even drop the egg into the soup either. I think the only other thing I'm going to try to amend the recipe is get some green onion and invest in some white pepper. Sure it'll make it hotter, but I really think the soup was lacking in that area. There's always room for improvement, and since this was so incredibly easy I'm not afraid to try again. It's also a good and fast way to use up your eggs if you're looking to use them before you need to get rid of them. It's how I feel about just getting rid of ripe bananas when I feel I can turn them into banana bread or something equally delicious.
Needless to say that with everything we've done this weekend we're going to sleep well tonight. Hopefully, we'll be tired and sore tomorrow in a good way to resume our weeks at work. Unfortunately, we all know it goes when you have a 4day week - you end up trying to cram 7days worth of work into it.
I can be optimistic about it though, right? Here's hoping everyone's holiday was a good one and we'll see what adventures await until next time! :)