Lily Sunday

A beautiful day with the windows open and Lily keeping an eye on the neighborhood. This is her new favorite spot in the living room.

Lily Sunday!

She's my favorite.

Bathroom Project Update

Here's where we're at right now...

The company that was contracted to do the work on our bathroom came back out (5 separate times) to fix the drywall, patch around the shower, patch all the holes and tape and mud everything. They even sanded it all down (which is terribly messy and a pain) before wrapping up their job. I probably won't go through Lowe's ever again, but I will call this company directly if I need more work done in my home.

Our blank slate

My mom and I before tackling the rest of the project. Excuse my disaster of a basement please.

More blank slate

Finally painting!

I happen to enjoy painting and was so glad this color came out the perfect shade of gray.

Holding the luan down while it dries. Very excited to tile.

Lining up the tiles. These are vinyl sticky tiles and you place them the same as regular tiles, just without grout. They rock.

You've got to weigh those down too when your basement floor isn't exactly even.

The tiles are laid out and stuck!

Once grouted, you can't even tell they aren't real tile!

So, the room is painted, the floor is down. And Sunday came very quickly so it was time for my parents to go home. Hopefully they will make it back one more time before Mr. L gets home and I'll have a finished bathroom to show him!

Thank God Spiders Can't Fly...

 Via

My day started by sleeping through my alarm. Awesome. So I hurried, got ready and left for work. I actually managed to get there at the right time and sat down at my desk to open my computer. I looked down at my hands when I put them on the keyboard AND THERE WAS A SPIDER ON THE SLEEVE OF MY SWEATER!!!!! I'm not even kidding when I say that I lost my shit...thank god no one was in the testing office. I tore my sweater off (it was a cardigan, I did not get naked at work), threw it on the floor, all the while yelling at the spider ("How dare he be on my arm! How dare he scare the living daylights out of me tat 7:30 in the morning") and then realized I didn't know where it went. So then I had to look around the desk area until I found the thing and smushed it. Needless to say, I started the testing session late...

Where in the world did I pick up a spider. I mean, I know they are all over our house (that and crickets, they are everywhere), but it's not like I was rolling around outside before I came to work. I put the sweater on, grabbed my water from the fridge and got in the car. Then I drove the 12 minutes to work WITHOUT a spider on my arm...I'm pretty sure of that considering I hold my arms in front of me when I drive like everyone else, so I would have seen the sneaky little thing. Then I got out of the car, walked into the building (without rubbing up against any spider-covered walls) and in my office. SO WHERE DID HE COME FROM? Regardless, I now feel itchy and am pretty sure his whole spider family is coming for their revenge...

Yuck.

So how are YOU doing?

Bathroom Project

I started reading blogs about two or three years ago. I can't remember why I started or which blog I read first. Many of the blogs I read now are about home improvement, interior design, and decorating. I LOVE those things, but don't know how to do much at my own home. This is probably why I like seeing other people's homes so much.

I've never done a real renovation project before...until now.

When Mr L and I purchased our current home, we were able to pick out all the specifics: counter tops, cabinets, flooring, etc. It's a three level townhouse, so we have a finished basement on the bottom level. The model home also came with a full bathroom down there. The builders wanted a large amount of money to finish that bathroom...something like $3500. We were already at the top of our budget, so we said "No thank you, we'll finish it ourselves, for much cheaper. It will be our first home project!"

Flash forward over a year later and we finally decided to start planning the room. The builders had "roughed" the room in for us. The plumbing was all there, as well as the drywall and a light fixture. We realized very quickly that the room did not have an exhaust system, shut off valves, or even an electrical outlet. After a trip to Lowe's, we decided to let the professionals handle the tub/shower, exhaust system and electrical issues.

Now flash forward about two more weeks. Mr L gets put on a deployment (that we were not expecting) and now I have to handle the scheduling and finishing of this bathroom.

I thought that by letting a big company like Lowe's handle all the main stuff, it would be a super easy transition to the "fun" stuff (paint, flooring, etc). Unfortunately, my experience with Lowe's was TERRIBLE. The person in charge of scheduling gave me a confirmed date/time for the people to show up and it turns out he just made it up...he never called the contracting company, never told them anything about us, never told them about our room. It took a bunch of last minute calls, lots of stress and some not very nice attitude from me to have the construction begin.

We did not pay for the drywall to be fixed because were were assured that they would be able to do everything without destruction to the drywall that was in place.

The tub/shower after installation.

The ceiling we were assured would be left alone.

More of the ceiling that had already been in one piece.

My parents and I decided to fix the ceiling ourselves.

Just a note - fixing drywall on a ceiling is best left to professionals.

After it was over, I made another not-so-nice call to Lowe's. I COMPLETELY understand that the work they did required them to cut around the tub and pull half the ceiling down. However, this is not what I signed the contract for and it was not the work I agreed to. If they would have explained what the process involved (like I assumed they did when we paid for the work), this would not be a problem. But they did not. We had to leave the bathroom as it was while I wait for the company to schedule a time to fix all the drywall...

The two week project just turned into a nightmare.

Oops :)

So let's just pretend that it hasn't been 11 months since I last posted. I have some pretty good excuses though: I got two jobs (something that I did not have when I started blogging), I spent a lot of time doing OTHER things to keep my mind off the fact that my hubby was on his deployment, I made a bunch of new friends, I visited my family at least once a month, we went on vacation, etc...but none of those really matter. I've thought of blogging all the time. I just didn't sit down and do it. Oh! I also spent the last 11 months reading LOTS of other blogs...tons of them! Annnnnnd I got addicted to Pinterest. So I've neglected this site. Let's see if I can remedy that :)

Mr. L left for his first deployment a few days after I wrote my last entry. It was no fun, but I started working and made new friends in the area. When he returned home 3 months later, I wasn't the only one who was happy to see him:

Below you can see our Christmas/Welcome Home gifts: my ipad and awesome seats for a Steelers game. We had an amazing time and it was a great way to spend Mr. L's first weekend home in a long time!

We spent the next few months just enjoying time in our new home and visiting friends and family. In April, we decided to go on a vacation. The last time we had been anywhere (that wasn't the beach by our house) was our honeymoon two and a half years before. We did some quick research and went with a Sandals Resort in Antigua. It was AMAZING. The resort, the food, the drinks, the people, everything was perfect. The water was so clear that I actually went in (I don't normally do open water).

This was our view during breakfast. I didn't edit this at all, it really looked like this every day.

Since then we've been working on a few projects in our home, spending time with friends and preparing for another deployment. I'm really going to try to stay on top of blogging. No promises, seeing as my last "drought" was a serious one, but I"m going to try!

May We Never Forget

It was my freshman year of college, the first time I had moved away from home. More specifically, I had been in Pittsburgh for only 2.5 weeks, long enough for me to realize I LOVED college, but short enough that I hadn't found my way completely around campus yet. Pitt was 5.5 hours from my hometown and I had been lucky enough to go to college with a few friends from high school and my high school boyfriend. I loved the city, but was still afraid to walk around alone. I loved the independence, but still had no idea how I was going to make myself do my homework. I loved the cafeterias, but knew that would get old fast. I loved my friends, my family and pretty much everything. I was a lucky girl, in a fantastic city, at a prestigious school, with wonderful friends. The world, to me, was awesome. My biggest worry was if I would get up in time for my 8am Algebra class. That was September 10, 2001.

 Around 6:00am on September 11, 2001, I was woken up by the screeching fire alarm in my dorm room. I sat straight up, looked around in the dark and said aloud "here we go again". Tower B, my freshman residence hall, had a new fire alarm system installed the summer before I arrived at Pitt, and it was triggered pretty much three times a week in the 2.5 weeks we had been there. My roommate Katie and I were constantly being woken up, called out of the shower, interrupted during homework, you name it because of the alarms. The alarms were short, and we would always head back in afterwards wondering when the alarms would finally be fixed. This morning, however, we heard loud voices from the hallway and when I fully opened my eyes swung my legs out of bed, I realized I smelled smoke. I yelled for Katie and she moved as quickly as she could out of the top bunk. We threw on shoes and sweatshirts and headed for the door. When we threw open the door we saw thin gray smoke and our floor mates quickly heading down the stairs to the lobby. We followed, automatically assuming our building was on fire and we needed to hurry. We were obviously worried, but still grumpy for being awake. Six am is extremely early for a college freshman. That morning, it was not a false alarm. Tower B sat with two other tours on top of a large lobby. Underneath that were dining halls and kitchens. One of the stoves in the kitchen had caught on fire and the smoke was using the vents in the building as an escape route. We waited for about an hour and half, outside in our pajamas, until they let us back in. As I rushed to shower and get ready, as I was due at my new work study job in the Cathedral of Learning by 8, I thought about the nice nap I was going to take when I got home from work at 1pm. I never got that nap.

The phone rang in the office around 9:00am. It was my supervisor’s daughter and she sounded upset, so I handed her the phone quickly. When she hung up, she said “a plane hit the World Trade Center, that’s so sad”. I agreed and went on with my work. Soon, the phone rang again and it was another message “a second plane hit the other tower, I’m pretty sure this is on purpose”. We sat together at the front desk, trying to figure out what this could mean. We didn’t have access to a television and couldn’t find a radio that worked. We continued to work, not really having any other information. Another phone call, another message “okay, now one flew into the Pentagon, something is really wrong”. We decided to find the director and find out what we should do, but no one was around. I walked down to the first floor to see if anyone had any information. We were all lost. I returned to the office and the phone rang again. We were almost afraid to answer it. “Okay mom,” her daughter said “the news just said a plane is down in Pittsburgh, get out of that building now”. The Cathedral of Learning is the tallest education building in the United States and we were sitting on the 12^th floor. As we worried and wondered, an announcement came over the emergency loudspeaker that we were to evacuate. I’m not sure I’ve ever moved so fast or been so concerned. As I walked to Tower B (another hugely tall building on campus), I’ll never forget the faces. Some walking with no care in the world, because they had been in class and had no idea that the world had just changed. Some looked terrified, some were crying. I’ll never forget how quiet it was…no planes in the air.

I entered the lobby, not sure what I was going to do. I saw people with bags, packed and ready to go. Our neighbors, new friends from close by, said “come with us, you’ve got to leave”, but I just couldn’t go. I saw Katie walking towards me, looking incredibly confused. She had been in a lab for the past few hours and hadn’t heard anything. I explained as quickly as I could, the little that I did know. We hurried to our room…we figured the third floor was as safe as we could be and turned on the TV. There, I saw the footage that had already aired to the horror of the country. Our room filled with our hometown friends. We left the door open to hear our floor mates leaving, talking, crying. I immediately tried to contact my parents, who I was desperate to speak to, but our cell phones weren’t working. This was pre-Facebook and before my parents really used email. All I wanted to do was talk to my family. We finally figured out that the plane was not actually in Pittsburgh, but about 80 miles away. As I talked to my mom, I cried and wished I was home. I felt vulnerable, confused and totally scared out of my mind. I can say, with totally confidence, that I have never felt that way in my entire life.

I’m not sure I ate that day. I know that I sat on a chair, watched the news and thought about how nothing would ever be the same. Classes resumed the next day and my college career continued. I constantly thought about that day...how the alarm went off, how we were late for class/work, how we thought that would be the worst part of our day. I thought about how that day was just a Tuesday, a regular, beautiful day in Pittsburgh and then it wasn't. I'm just not sure I could wrap my head around it. I'm not sure I ever did. 

For the next few years, every 9-11, I went outside, stood around the school’s memorial and thought about everyone who lost their lives and everyone who was going overseas to fight for our freedom. Though it was 10 years ago, I can remember every feeling I had that day…every nerve that tingled during those phone calls…every tear I cried watching the footage. I didn’t lose anyone personally that day, but I’m pretty sure we all lost that day.

Now, on 9-11, I have a hard time comprehending that it's been 10 years. It’s still sad, it still hurts. And I still remember exactly where I was, what I was doing and what I was feeling. Only now, I get to watch my husband fly overseas to support the war that stemmed from that day. I watch him deploy, to support the United States, to defend our freedoms. 9-11 means a lot in our house…we will never forget.