Painting again!

Hey again!

Today was a productive (ish) day around here! The contractor came to look at the flooring, which he says will have to be replaced/fixed in the guest room as well as Thomas' music room. We ripped back some of the carpet to discover laminate in both rooms. In the guest room, the laminate appears to be covering dark hardwood. Why anyone would cover hardwood like that with cheap laminate, we're not sure...but we're hoping that it can be somehow restored or at least worked with. We both agree that either way, laminate is better than cheap carpet. The 'music room' has had previous water damage, so the laminate appears to be in worse condition there. Either way, they'll end up fixing it, which is great news.

The roof and ceilings will also be completely redone. When we moved into this house, we knew the roof was in really bad condition. We laugh about the fact that it might end up being a positive thing that the tree fell on our house, since it'll mean a completely new roof, new ceilings, and new flooring.

The most exciting development from today is that our landlady's insurance will actually cover repainting the two back rooms. I am BEYOND excited. If you recall, the guest room is currently purple. I like purple ok...but not for a bedroom. Thomas hates it, so we're excited to paint. It's also nice that someone else will actually be doing the painting, and it'll be free!

Here's a reminder of the color of the guest room. Not our favorite. Also, excuse the huge creepy hole in the ceiling.

The back room is painted blue, but we think it's a shade or two too dark for the space. The navy carpet also contributes to the darkness, making it pretty cave like. We're looking forward to making it a lot airier.

Again, the holes will soon be gone. We're also hoping for a new ceiling fan since that one sounds like it's going to bring the whole house down when we turn it on.

The insurance covers a primer and two coats of paint in whatever color of whatever finish we want! For FREEEE. Yeah, I'm excited. Here's what we're thinking:

The guest bedroom is a small room already, so we want to paint it a lighter color to open it up a bit. The background of this blog is actually the quilt that will be in our guest room, a gift from our old roommate Lauren. I loved it when it was in her dorm room, so when we both moved she gave it to us. It's very fun and bright, so it will help give the room some fun color. We're still working on getting a headboard and box spring for Thomas' fouton mattress. For the color, we're considering using a neutral, sandy brown, perhaps like this one. 

Benjamin Moore's Ashen Tan

As far as the back room goes, Thomas will eventually be setting up his mixing stuff there. We want to paint the room a light color, probably a really pale blue or grey. We were originally planning on doing a neutral in there and a blue in the guest room, but I don't want to overpower the guest room with color since the quilt is the main focus. While looking at some of my design blogs earlier, I discovered a free software called Floorplanner. It's really easy and fun to use and Thomas and I will be making a layout of the house for you (and for fun; we're nerdy like that) later tonight and posting about it soon.

The beginnings of tonight's dinner, stir fry! I'm excited:]

We'll wrap up with a picture of me cheezing in my new glasses (real Raybans! since they were on sale) for those of you interested (aka my mom). It's great to actually be able to see with my glasses on.

These lenses are about as thick as it gets.

Hope you all have a great Friday (and that you aren't as blind as I am)!

-T, K, & J

Explorar El Mundo (that means exploring the world-I'm so multicultural!)

HELLO EVERYBODY,

Today we discovered and used Scoutmob for the first time. For those of you who don't know what Scoutmob is (we didn't until yesterday), it's basically a mobile discount app that has tons of awesome coupons for great local restaurants and businesses that you can easily access via your phone. It's more prominent in cities, so we're hoping to get lots of use out of it.

When we moved here, I was worried that we wouldn't be able to find authentic Mexican food in the area. I was so concerned that I actually ate at my favorite place in Lubbock, Taqueria Jalisco, two times the week before we left. I was pleasantly surprised however, that the the area where we live is a really cool melting pot of all kinds of cultures called the Buford Highway. It's full of awesome Vietnamese, Cuban, Hispanic, Korean, and Chinese shops and restaurants. Today while looking at Scoutmob for the first time, I discovered that there was a 50% off coupon for an authentic Mexican restaurant called Alvarado's Taqueria that's only 3 miles away from us. It's in an old Taco Bell building and the food comes out really fast, but it's delicious, very inexpensive, and--most importantly--authentic! We got both of our combo meals and two drinks for less than $9. Quite the bargain!

This was my meal, which came with a chicken burrito, a beef enchilada, beans, and rice. It was all great! I'm picky about my rice, and I absolutely loved this. It was way more food than I expected, and about half of it is currently waiting for Thomas in the fridge.

This is what Thomas got, a torta adobada and a carnitas taco. He loved it so much that there isn't any left over!

After lunch, we went to explore the nearby Fiesta Farmer's Market. It's really huge, and it's actually part grocery store part farmer's market. The grocery store side was about as expensive as a regular grocery, but the fruit, vegetables, meats, and fish were amazingly cheap and good looking. Thomas is excited to get some cheap meat there--they had ribeye steak for $4 a pound! Needless to say, he was in heaven. We plan to go back on our next shopping excursion.

My favorite thing there, real Mexican Coke. Way better than regular Coke!

This little treasure was in on the same aisle as the commercial pots and pans. One pot was so big, 3 Jacks could fit inside!

Being that we don't have paying jobs yet, we've been cooking at home for almost every meal. Today was the first time we've gone out to a restaurant just the two of us, and we're pretty proud of our thriftiness. We also wanted to share with you a recipe we discovered a few months ago that I absolutely LOVE. It's an easy Quiche Lorraine that would be perfect for breakfast or lunch, but we typically have it for dinner. It takes a while to bake, but it's sooo worth it!

Betty Crocker Quiche Lorraine 

Ingredients:

1 store bought pie crust

8 slices bacon, crumbled

1 cup (4 oz) shredded swiss cheese

1/3 cup finely chopped onion

4 large eggs

2 cups heavy whipping cream

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper (optional)

Directions:

Heat oven to 425°F. Roll pastry into a 9-inch pie plate and cover with foil. Bake 10 minutes. Carefully remove foil and bake 2-4 minutes longer until pastry begins to brown and set. 

Reduce oven temperature to 325°F. Sprinkle bacon, cheese, and onion into bottom of pie crust. In a medium bowl, beat eggs slightly; beat in remaining filling ingredients. Pour into quiche dish. 

Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until knife inserted into center comes out clean. Let stand 10 minutes before serving. 

If you make it, let us know how it turns out! Tomorrow the contractors are coming to appraise the amount of work they have to do on the house (a lot), so hopefully that will start by the end of the week. Then we can actually start using the whole house again!

-T, K, & J

Land of the free, home of the braves!

Happy (late) 4th everyone!

We had a great time yesterday at Lake Lanier with Jeanie, Wayne, Mari, Holly, Holly's sister Christy, her partner Patty, and Patty's daughter and her boyfriend. Before I go into deets on the 4th, I wanted to show you pictures from the Braves game last Friday, which was my mom's last night in town. There were even fireworks after the game, which we didn't see on the 4th of July, so I have a video for those of you who missed out on fireworks.

 Before the game, we stopped to take some necessary photos (along with lots of other people).

 Turner Field is really huge. We had fun looking at everything on the way to our seats.

 Mari and Holly were able to get us excellent seats on row 24 behind home plate. This was our view.

 I have to say, this is one of the only successful iPhone photos we've ever taken of ourselves.

 We took this of the scoreboard when Chipper Jones was up to bat. He's my brother's favorite player (maybe not, but he did name a hamster after him when we were little).

 Right before the game was over, we moved down to row 10ish to sit with Holly.

Finally, fireworks! The Braves beat the Orioles 2 to 0.

On Saturday and Sunday, Thomas and I made preparations for the 4th by mowing the lawn, shopping, and cooking. It was fun, mostly because it kept our minds off of home. Here are pictures of some of our adventures:

This lovely hat was on sale at Marshalls for $40. 

I bought this beauty for the 4th. I needed a big floppy hat and it fit the bill for only $12!

Thomas cooked this delicious pork loin with sauteed onion and saffron rice on Saturday.

Sunday morning, Thomas woke up early to mow the lawn. The neighbors now surely know we're from Texas.

 While we did weekend chores, Jack slept in a blanket ball with only his toes sticking out.

Sunday night, we decided to make a picnic and go to Piedmont park. This was our view for dinner.

 We packed homemade chicken salad, toasted bread triangles, and black and white cupcakes for dessert.

After dinner we walked over to the dog park, where Jack played nicely with the other dogs. Here's a short video of how we tire him out by throwing his ball down a hill. Note: The pooping at the end was urgent and unplanned. Sorry!

Finally for the 4th! Yesterday we woke up early, I iced my cupcakes, and Thomas made his bruschetta. Mari and Holly picked us up and we headed to Lake Lanier. It's about an hour and 15 minutes away, and there was beautiful weather when we got there. We headed out on the boat where we parked and swam for a couple of hours. The water was perfect and Jack even got kind of used to it. He floated on a blue floaty and wore a patriotic bandanna. After a while we headed back to the neighborhood pool, where Thomas and I swam. Then we headed back to Jeanie and Wayne's house where we ate a delicious Italian dinner.

I have to say, though, the most exciting part of the day was finding out that the woman who did the voice of Ariel in the Little Mermaid as well as Barbie in Toy Story 1-3 and lots of other stuff lives in Jeanie and Wayne's neighborhood. She was a few feet away from us at the pool! I didn't want to disturb her (even though I'm a HUGE fan), so I just watched from a far. I knew I had to blog about that piece of awesome! Now pictures:

Black and white cupcakes with buttercream icing. Basically an excuse for me to use my cute sprinkles.

Jack and I on the ride to the lake.

He was tired before we got there. Sleeping on my floppy hat.

The boys on the boat.

Family photo:D

Jack loves the boat! He just chilled the whole time.

This is Louis, Christy and Patty's papillon. I didn't get a picture of their other dog Isabella, but she was super cute too!

 Jack even got really brave and looked over the edge of the boat while we were moving!

These were some of the mansions on the cliff that overlook the lake.

Here's dinner! It was awesome. Lasagne, spaghetti, Italian beef, French bread, and caprese salad.

So that's our 4th. Hopefully you all had a great one. We'll be updating later this week with some other 4th pictures, a few delicious recipes we've discovered, as well as (hopefully) more info on fixing the house. We did get some leakage last night during a storm, but nothing bad. 

We heard a loud sound this morning at about 7, and Thomas rushed to check because it sounded like another tree falling. Sure enough, our across the street neighbor's had a huge tree split in half, ripping down power lines and possibly doing some damage as it grazed the corner of their house. It wasn't even storming...but the tree had apparently been weakened. Everyone is ok, but we hope all of us can get the necessary work done to fix any damage soon.

This is the house before. The tree that fell is the big one on the left. The house is on the market, but $215,000 is a little out of our price range ;)

Here was our view of the house this morning, completely covered by the tree.

 Here you can see the tree split, the right half on the grey house and the left half fell into their neighbor's backyard.

After the tree was removed, the damage to their roof.

Just now we got to watch the tree get pulled down. It was crazy to watch a huge oak tree almost 100 years old fall. Fortunately there was no one hurt in the fall, and everything should be back to normal soon.

The lesson here: beware of trees!

Check back for more soon!

-T, K, & J

Recapping the Move

After yesterday's forever long picture post, today will be a lot shorter. I just wanted to show you all some pictures of moving and miscellaneous things we've done while in Atlanta so far. 

Tonight Thomas' Aunt Mari and her partner Holly took us to a Braves game for my mom's last night in town. It was exciting to do something new and my mom loves baseball, so it was a great time full of American-ish behavior, just in time for the 4th of July. Woo! We'll post pictures of the game soon.

 Isn't Jack just beautiful?  We think so.

At our old house, Jack always watched out the front window from his favorite couch. Now he can see out from his new spot on our bed.

 I'm getting back into baking again now that I have more time. These snickerdoodles are the result.

 My mom likes to take lots of pictures. This was one she insisted on at a McDonald's in Mississippi during an early morning of travel on the way to Atlanta, and I'm glad to have it now.

 Jack in his super comfy (and safe) car seat. It was a wedding gift from Mari and Holly and we LOVE it!

My mom and Mari.

Thomas and I on the Sunday we moved in, super sweaty from the humidity.

This little fire hazard was discovered in our laundry room, but was replaced by Thomas and his dad.

 It looks way less dangerous from the front.

Francis the cat in his new home guarding the front door.

Our awesome landlady Jeanie and her sweet husband Wayne.

Thomas and I at one of our favorite restaurants so far, Taqueria Del Sol.

This was taken Fat Matt's Rib Shack--so delicious.

Out little family walking in the neighborhood.

I think we're caught up with the move now! More adventure photos to come:]

-T, K, & J