Gimme Pizza Slow

Hello everybody!

Update for everyone not on Facebook, Jack got enough votes to make it into the top 26 of the Red Bandanna contest, which means he qualified for a mini-photoshoot! He's really excited, and we'll be going in for the session on August 13. After the photos are taken, people will vote again on who should be on the cover. Either way, it seems like he'll be in the calendar. I'll be posting a link when the time comes so everyone can buy one that's interested.

This afternoon we (I) decided that we couldn't stand looking at the dingy doors in the laundry room anymore, so I painted them! Now they're a crisp, clean white that matches the trim. There will be pictures tomorrow after I do final touch ups.

While I was painting the doors, Thomas got motivated and stained the bed frame. It looks awesome! Pictures tomorrow on that as well. He got stain all over his hands, and since it was the kind with polyurethane already mixed in, he can't get it off. Haha. 

Sorry I don't have any other exciting news today. Tomorrow we're going to look at flooring options with our landlady. She is SO awesome, she's letting us pick or at least have major input on literally everything. It's really great. So we'll let you know what goes on there. 

Here's a funny video because I have nothing else awesome to discuss. When Thomas and I first found it, we watched it every day. There are endless funny references in this one short clip. Thanks MaryKate and Ashley!

Also, Jack and Charlotte say hi!

I'm telling you, they do this on their own!

-T, K, J, & C

I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T do you know what that means?!

Today I became an independent woman. Basically, Thomas went to work. This is the longest we've been apart since we got married I think, which is kind of ridiculous but also kind of awesome. So, he left for work this morning at like 8:30. While I stayed asleep:] Except that at around 9:30, someone started profusely banging on the door. It was the paint guy! Who apparently didn't realize that for the last week, we've been leaving the back door open for them in the morning so they can get in without bothering us. But hey, I was awake.

So I began the day (aka sat down on the couch to surf the Interweb) and immediately noticed that the AC was again not working. Gah. I was fully prepared to sit there with two fans pointing at me allll day long, but Thomas decided he should call and explain to me how to fix it. Shocker: I actually fixed it by myself. It was pretty easy, and it was the classic "ants in the contactor" once again. Those crazy ants.

After doing some little household chores, I decided to make a trip to the post office to pick up a registered letter from my parents that I missed the delivery on yesterday. We have a post office like a quarter mile from our house, so I was all "oh how convenient it's right on the way to Walmart!" Sike. I waited in line for 15 minutes only to discover that it was the wrong post office. My actual post office is of course about 5 miles away. How it makes sense that my post office isn't the one nearest me I still don't know, but alas. I headed towards the 'right' post office, and realized that Walmart was on the way to IT. So, I stopped in and did my shopping. 

Now, I know this might seem ridiculous, but I pretty much never ever shop alone. I've always either been with Thomas, my mom, or a friend. Today I stepped into the big girl world and did it all by myself! I made good time and then booked it over to the post office where I waited around 20 minutes for them to fetch my package. The climactic part is that my parents sent me tickets to see Death Cab for Cutie, one of my favorite bands since forever! I haven't seen any bands I know/liked live, so we're both SUPER excited to see them in August! Thanks mom and dad:]

And finally, today the back room got a lovely coat of Sage Bud. It looks so much better. It's pretty unbelievable. When I took these pictures, the paint was still wet, so you can see some of the long roller strokes. It already looks awesome though!

As a refresher, here's the color before.

And here's that same corner/window after.

 The light in this room is really bad, partially because of the time of day but mostly because it's at the back of the house. Tomorrow we're having a ceiling fan installed and we're going to add a lamp or two.

Here's the weird leaky ceiling before.

Rotten, nasty closet.

 Here's the nice new ceiling (leak free!)

 And now it's like a magical fairy land. The floor is still gross, but it'll be fixed soon!

Jack and Charlotte are the laziest. While I did all the work, they did this:

-T, K, J, & C

Craigslist hunting 24/7 pays off again!

Hey everybody!

Hopefully you all had a lovely weekend. We did lots of the usual hanging out at the house, but we also did a few productive/fun things! First of all, Friday and early Saturday, the construction crew worked on and finished the laundry room. We love the color and we think it looks SO much better to say the least. Here's the updating that went down:

This is what we were working with before. Granted, there's a huge hole in the ceiling and tree all over the floor, but you get it. 

 The paint color was sort of an almond originally. It was peeling really bad in lots of places, and generally looked dingy and old.

 Here it is now. We chose a pale blue to freshen the room. It's more soothing to do laundry now (relatively).

 Again, white trim really makes everything look so much prettier. We're also going to be repainting the ugly door soon. I guess that wasn't in their contract...

The dryer hose is still a little sketch, but it works. And the room looks way better now! 

 

Here's our cute entry mat. I know you were wondering about it! (NOT)

Tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. the crew will be returning to finish the back room. We're really excited to see everything done in there. It will definitely be the biggest transformation. After they finish, they'll be calling the flooring guys and hopefully they can come work on that soon.

On Saturday night, we went to Mari and Holly's to try out their new grill with some delicious steaks. We met more of their friends and had a great time. We took a key lime pie that I made for dessert, and it was pretty good, if I may say so. I forgot to take a picture though, so just trust me. I also made a big batch of Strawberry Jam while making the pie, because multi-tasking makes me happy. Now that Thomas knows jam is easy for me to home-make, I suspect we'll never buy it again.

Yesterday, we were discussing buying a bed from IKEA for the guest room (aka the Mother-in-Law room, according to my mom) and found one online for $50. We immediately drove to our IKEA, where we spent $50 on the bed + $30 on bed slats, and we felt good about our [Visa giftcard] purchase. There was some finagling to get the large-ish package in the car, but we handled it. We did however still need to get a mattress, which can be expensive.

After we got home, I happened to be perusing craigslist for a mattress when I came across the exact same bed we had just purchased, mattress and bed slats included, for a mere $100. Of course we decided to take back the one we had just bought, and today we made the trek over to Fulton (about 45 minutes away) where we had a quick and easy transaction and ended up coming home with this beauty:

It's really simple looking and we weren't super into the light color of the wood, so we bought a cheap stain and we'll be DIY-ing it to make it more 'us'. IKEA even left the wood unsealed for us to make it easy!

Tomorrow is Thomas' first day of interning at Eclipse, so I'll be home alone alll day. I'm sure I'll find things to do--some of which may include watching TV and napping:]

Now for the cuteness of the day: Jack wasn't feeling well, so he was napping on the couch. I happened to catch this awesome video of Charlotte jumping up to groom and comfort him.

 

-T, K, J, & C

Fridayyyy!

We now have two painted rooms! The laundry room has only one coat, so we're not going to show you that until Monday. The guest room is finished paint wise though, which is awesome news. Now we just have to get the flooring situation figured out in there, and it'll be done! Here's what it looks like so far (it was already getting darker outside when I took these, so forgive the bad lighting).

We're really happy with how the color turned out. 

The ceiling and clean white trim also look awesome!

Sorry that I don't have anything exciting to talk about today. You can only talk so much about house construction/trying to get a job. Haha. Hope you all have a great weekend. Here's Charlotte sleeping after a hard day painting.

-T, K, J, & C

The ceiling gods have smiled upon us.

Today we got new ceilings! As sad as we were to see all those holes go, it's much nicer to look at now.  Even though they're unpainted, they're structurally sound and well on their way to awesome-ness. Here's what they rooms are looking like today:

Here's the ol' purple guest room. We're hoping to install a ceiling fan as well.

Here's the back room where one of the biggest leaks happened.

Finally, the laundry room. This was the most noticeable hole, and since the room is technically an outdoor area, the ceiling is basically just a big piece of wood. It'll look much nicer painted!

Tomorrow the guys will be getting here again at 8:00 a.m. to work on the trim, and they're also going to paint the ceilings and walls. We're really excited to see our paint colors in action! Here are our FINAL pics (they've already been purchased, so there's no turning back now).

 Here's the color we chose for the guest room, called Silver Threads by Olympic. It's a light-ish grey color that has an airy feel that we think will open up the little room.

This is Sage Bud by Valspar, the color we chose for the back room. The color looks somewhat more green in person.

Finally, for the laundry room we chose By the Sea by Olympic. It's a breezy blue that we couldn't resist after seeing it in the awesome natural light of the laundry room.

As a refresher, here's the paint we already used in the rest of the house:

This is the color of our bedroom, Valspar's Meadow Mist. It's more blue than green in person.

This is what we used in the bathroom, Valspar's Summer Rapture. It also looks more light green than yellow in person. 

If you look at all of them together, I feel like they have a really nice flow. If we paint any of the other rooms (the hallway, the front room, the living room, the kitchen, or the dining room) we'll probably do some repeating for added 'flow'. I feel like paint colors are really distorted on monitors, so hopefully you'll get a better idea of the colors once they're in the actual rooms.

As I've mentioned before, I get lots of inspiration from one of my favorite blogs, Young House Love. We have similar taste to the couple that writes the blog, and we've discovered that the colors we like the most (typically blues and greens) are also their favorites. They talk a lot about creating a feeling of continuity throughout your home, so we tried to keep our paint color choices in the same color family and roughly the same saturation. We're looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

As a side note (but an important one!) I made this amazing Lemon Pound Cake for fun yesterday. It's really dense and delicious. I had a piece for breakfast and I would definitely recommend it if you're into citrus.

It's also covered in a lemon glaze.

Finally, for the animal picture of the day:

Here's Jack smiling and tired after a long day playing with his sister!

-T, K, J, & C

Poppy Paloozaaaa!

The recipe that I'm going to share with you today is absolutely amazing. I can't truly convey how delicious these Poppy Seed Sandwiches are, so I'm going to rely on Thomas' quote that "If we ever opened a restaurant, I'd want to serve these." He loves them. And we all know he has high standards. I even had to set a limit on how many he could eat, because I want to have some left over for dinner. Here's what you do:

These are the ingredients you'll need.

 First, slice the rolls in half. I cut them all with a bread knife while they were still stuck together, which made it easier than doing it individually.

 Then add a layer of cheese, a layer of ham/turkey, and another layer of cheese. All the cheese will ooze together to form a perfectly sealed little package.

 Next, put the tops of the rolls back on.

 Mix up the sauce and spoon it over the sandwiches. There's plenty of sauce, so don't be skimpy. You want it to run down the sides, get into the sandwich, and pool around the bottom.

 Now cover those babies up with foil and put them to sleep in the fridge over night. It's hard to resist cooking them up and devouring them right away, but you'll be glad you did.

 The next day, stick them in the oven with the foil still on at 350F for 15 minutes. Then remove the foil and cook another 15 minutes. This is the finished product.

Here you can see them in all their hot, flavorful, melty glory. Words can't describe the awesome. These are perfect for parties, showers, or even just a regular lunch!

Poppy Seed Sandwiches

Ingredients:

1 package Hawaiian Dinner Rolls

10-16 oz. shaved deli meat (ham or turkey, we used both)

8-10 oz. sliced baby Swiss cheese

8-10 oz. sliced Pepper Jack cheese

Sauce:

1 stick butter, melted

2 1/2 tablespoons yellow mustard

2 1/2 tablespoons Worcestershire

2 1/2 tablespoons poppy seed

2 tablespoons minced onion

Directions:

Slice rolls in half. Put the bottom halves in a 9x13 pan. Top with deli meat, then cheese. Put top half of rolls back on. Melt butter and add rest of sauce ingredients. Mix well and spoon sauce over the top of the rolls. Cover sandwiches with foil and refrigerate over night. Bake at 350F for 15 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 15 minutes until hot and bubbly throughout.

In other news, construction continued on the house today. The rooms officially have no ceilings. It rained on our new roof this afternoon, and it held up perfectly! I've always loved rain, but during the last 3 weeks I've felt guilty saying that I wanted it, since that meant buckets of water pouring into the back half of our house. Now I'm hoping it will pour for a while...as long as that doesn't bring another tree down! Haha..ha. But seriously. Here's the progress:

 Here's the back room minus a ceiling plus some now exposed shady wiring.

 Here's the guest room (and Thomas' head) and its holy insulation.

And this, my friends, is a pair of stilts. Awesome yet ridiculous. Apparently that's how they reach the ceiling. Thomas couldn't understand why I was surprised to discover this.

Finally, and most importantly, Thomas will be starting his internship next week. We were originally thinking it would start in August/September, but they had an opening and e-mailed him right away! He'll be working all day Tuesday/Friday and half-days Wednesday. The internship will be unpaid, but it's great experience. At the end, they'll either choose to hire him, or he'll just be able to put the experience on his resume. Either way, it works out great. We're excited to finally have a tangible reason to be in Atlanta--I mean, this is literally the reason we moved here--and he's looking forward to getting started. I'm nervous about being left alone at home all day, but I know I'll find things to do! Hopefully I'll get a job soon so we'll actually be making some money:]

Charlotte and I had a mini photo shoot this afternoon. Here are the results:

Here she is in her sunny couch spot.

 She has the prettiest green eyes!

Tomorrow we'll be updating on the official paint colors we chose. I changed my mind on all of them, so it'll be a surprise!

-T, K, J, & C

It's new roof Tuesday...

There was lots of banging starting at 8:30 this morning, and less than 12 hours later, we've got a new roof! You can't tell much about a roof from pictures, but this is what we're working with now:

 Here's the view from the front.

 Like I said, you can't tell much of a difference--but I know we'll be able to when it rains and the house doesn't leak!

 

Now instead of looking at this smashed shed...

We can see...THE GROUND! Haha. It's a definite improvement, and depending on what insurance says the shed is worth, we might get to build a small fence for Jack with the cash!

While the roofers were pounding away on our house and sounding like they were going to fall through the ceiling, we decided to run some errands. We go through so many more groceries now that we don't eat with our parents 2-4 times a week! This makes for lots more trips to the store and today we paid a visit to the dreaded Walmart and the (slightly) less terrible farmer's market.

Beforehand we had a delicious lunch at Taqueria Del Sol. I think it's probably my favorite place in Atlanta so far. The whole menu is amazing, and it's really tempting to over-order. This time we were really good though, each getting only two tacos and sharing their famously delicious queso. We've decided (at my Dad's suggestion, shockingly) that we're going to eat out once per week to relieve us from the monotony of cooking every single meal at home. We plan to blog about each restaurant and take pictures of our food, so look forward to that! Here's what we had today:

Homemade chips and queso.

I had a BLT taco, and a fried chicken taco. Thomas got two fried chicken because they're his favorite! The food is always fresh and delicious.

As much as I love to bake, lots of you probably know that Thomas cooks dinner pretty much every single night. I know ladies, you're jealous/I'm spoiled. I do love it, but sometimes I want to get in the kitchen, too, mostly because I miss my mom's cooking and Thomas is more into new/made up dishes. Tonight I pushed him out of there and made not one, but TWO meals! For dinner tonight, we had ham and cheese hotpockets (the semi-homemade version). My mom always made them for me, and we both think they're pretty tasty. The other dish, Poppy Seed Sandwiches, will be featured on the blog tomorrow! This was basically an excuse to use my fancy camera, but we've also been craving these sandwiches and I can't wait to share the recipe with you. 

Here's the obligatory animal picture of the day:

The babes eating. Most dogs try to steal the cat food, but wouldn't you know Charlotte is all about stealing Jack's food. He lets her push him out of the way and everything. 

-T, K, J, & C