Hot water heaters, and HD tv

So about three weeks ago, on a Thursday, we discovered something kinda terrible.  Our hot water heater was leaking.  Say it with me, "Oh farg!"

Let me preface.
A week or two before then we received a special offer from our television provider to upgrade to high definition tv for free! WAIT, hold the phone, FREE you say.  I'm down with free; we're like homies you know.  So being the good wife I am I called our television provider and made the appointment. 

Fast forward to three Thursdays ago, the day of our appointment.  Marty was getting everything ready for the technician, pulling out the old box, binding wires together, getting the console cabinet cleaned up and ready for that shinny new HD receiver box when he discovered the leak.  I was actually at the mall (the new wal-mart, the kids have resorted to calling it the mall because it's the biggest thing we have in our dinky little town) when I got the text.

"Guess what we get to buy?"

Was this good, was this bad, I didn't know, so I replied, "what?"

"A new hot water  heater."

Okay, it wasn't good, in-fact it was bad.    

I came home from the mall regretting the money I'd just spent.  I knew a hot water heater wouldn't be cheap.  Marty showed me the leak and while it wasn't gushing there was a definite leak.  A trip to the big box store was in the plans for that weekend.

Friday after work we headed to the box store and several hundred dollars later we were driving home with a new 80 gallon tank.  Now, I am usually a glass half full kinda gal, and determined to make lemonade out of this lemon I was pretty happy we were getting a bigger tank.  This also gave us the opportunity to relocate the tank down into the garage instead of under the stairs, something we'd been talking about for well, years.  The only down side to this was I was going to have to get under the house to help Marty.  Cue screaming.  "THERE ARE SPIDERS DOWN THERE!"

Here is the old tank, in the closet under the stairs. You can see the under house access here. Yes I had to crawl down in that little hole. Shudders. Marty actually spend more time down there than me, but still I'm kinda a baby when it comes to spiders. They really freak me out.



Here is all the lovely corrosion on the pipes of the old heater. Our house was built in 1955 and all of the plumbing in galvanized. Nice, I know. I'm actually surprised we didn't have to replace this thing sooner than we did.



Together, it only took us 4 hours to drain the old tank, move it out of the closet, re-plumb the water lines to where the new tank would go, move the electrical, hook up the old tank, check for leaks, and fill her up! Oh, and two more trips to the local hardware store for fittings and crap.

Here she is in all her glory!



Ah, glorious HOT water. I mean wow! It's been almost three weeks since we put this baby in and I have yet to run out of hot water in the shower. I LOVE THIS THING! How we lived with a 50 gallon tank and 5.5 people in our house I'll never know.

Light, gardens, and Twig

Below is Marty and I's first attempt at light painting. We got a wild hair last week after we got the camera and well this is what we got. There were a few others, but this one is our favorite. This photograph is straight out of the camera. No editing, aside from converting the file to a jpeg.

This photo is from two nights after the first. I helped Marty lock up the college on sunday night and we decided to use the theatre. All I can say is we are addicted. We are both thinking of items we can use to paint with light.

Here is my newly planted herb garden. The fencing is to keep the dog out. She thinks we planted this stuff just for her to dig up. It's great. She already pulled out the orange mint. P.S. Please ignore the green paint. That used to be the color of our house. Then it was white and pretty soon it'll be something else. I am leaning towards a nice medium grey. But we'll see.

My darling Husband built me this fancy new raised bed. I ordered some amazing heirloom seeds and can't wait to plant them. Mammoth red cabbage, leeks, beets, and these little carrots.



And finally, Twig, or Lou, or Tiny, or whatever you want to call him. I took this when messing around with the new camera and I think it turned out pretty good. And besides how can you resist the cuteness?

It's here. And other ramblings.

The new camera came. My mom was here for the weekend. Baseball season is in full swing, kicked off by the jamboree. I bought my darling Husband an orb and I bought myself a yellow vase. We tore out A LOT of ivy and planted some herbs.

Wow. What a mouthful.

Oh my. Last friday came in a whirlwind. The new camera came after what seemed like an eternity of waiting. It's very overwhelming, but I'm getting the hang of it. Seriously, the shutter is like buttah. And, I've been experimenting with different combinations of aperture and shutter speed and have NOT been using it on auto. GO me. Not to say I'm a fabulous photographer yet. Maybe, if you're lucky I'll post a photo, but it will be difficult, cause we are our own worst critics and at this point every photo I've taken is rubbish.

My mama drove up from Sandy Oregon on friday afternoon to spend the weekend with us. I can't even remember the last time I saw her, terrible isn't it. We missed Christmas and mailed gifts, and finally said enough was enough and she drove up here. We had a great time. We watched baseball, made pizza, had a bon fire, even though it was cold and did a little shopping.

The Cal Ripkin Baseball League kicked off on saturday with the annual jamboree. It's an ALL DAY thing. Baseball all day. Opening ceremony followed by two inning mini games. Burgers. Wind. Sun. Two wins and a loss. A couple of missed balls and a couple of good hits. Now regular games have begun, twice a week until the middle of June. I WILL NOT eat burgers two nights a week. I will not... I will not...

While my mom was here we did a little shopping in between games on saturday. There is this fantastic store in town which sells the coolest house wares and decorative items. The woman in the store was kind enough to let us upstairs to the secret sale section, where I scored. 50% off. It was like Christmas! I found this great tall yellow vase for my kitchen. I've really been into yellow lately. Maybe it's because I can't wear it, so I like to decorate with it! I also found Marty an orb. It's made from concrete and has a little stand. It looks great on the fireplace hearth.

Sunday before my mom left we made a trip to Airport Gardens, a huge place of weakness for me, a bought a few herb plants for the garden. My mom wanted to look at their selection of sedum and their small ornamental pines. Marty and I ended up spending more than her. Oops. See, weakness. Then after my mom left Marty and I ripped out most of the ivy in the front yard. A couple of weeks ago Marty started the project by ripping down the ivy that was engulfing the madrona tree. Now we can actually see the tree trunk and are planning a nice little flower bed around it. If you ever think about planting ivy, DON'T.

More to come on the gardening in a later post!

My Granny would be proud

Gasp! I can sew a some what straight line! I even did a blind hem. Word.

*The better part of this project is that while at Swain's getting a curtain rod I eagerly talked my Husband into the package that had two rods (we have two windows in the kitchen).

"Look honey, they're cheaper and you get two!"

Well, apparently it was a DOUBLE curtain rod set, you know for two curtains on the same window. NOT for two separate windows.

Yes, I ate a little crow on this one. Damn it for always tryin' to be cheap!

The season was good to us

As Marty and I headed to bed on Christmas Eve we took one last look at the tree and knew Santa was good to us this year. As I turned out the lights I knew the next day would be a whirlwind of excitement and torn up wrapping paper. The boys were reluctant to go to bed... one, because they wanted to stay up play guitar hero III... their gift from Santa earlier in the evening, and two, well, because it was Christmas eve and Santa was coming... but we knew they needed to lay their sweet heads down and begin their visions of sugar plum fairies.

Morning came quickly, 5 a.m. to be exact, we could hear them rush down the stairs and scurry around the tree to spy which gifts Santa had left them. They woke us up, or I should say got us out of bed at 7:30 with anticipation busting at the seams.

After a delicious breakfast and at least one cup of coffee for Marty and I the festivities began. We enjoyed the day, the smiles and the excitement of Christmas with each other.

CAUTION: A tree

We picked up our tree this weekend...

Let me begin from the BEGINNING. Last year when it came time to select the perfect tree it seems all the trees were snagged up. You know the only ones left are lop sided, or missing a bunch of branches at the top. We did end up with a pretty good tree last year that had to be positioned just right so you couldn't see the bald spot on one side.

So this year we got smart. We went to the tree farm early and tagged our tree! This way we didn't have to pick it up too early and we still got a perfect looking tree. (and I say looking, because a PERFECT tree would be one that didn't come home with spiders. AHHH! ewwwwwwwwww) Now, the gentleman whom I spoke with on the phone said you could bring your own tagging material and the better you tagged your tree the greater chance you had of it still being there. So having said that, we tagged our tree REALLY well.

Saturday afternoon we packed up the crumbs and headed to the tree farm. Let's just say after 99 atempts to take a photo of the kids all smiling at the same time, Marty and I were both ready to pull our hair out. So we found our tree (which wasn't hard, it stuck out like a sore thumb) and joyfully, while whistling the song O' Christmas tree, sawed it down.

I must tell you after getting the lights on it, a task which is never fun, it looked perfect! Nice and full... and the smell was AMAZING.

Ah, the joy of.... painting?!?

So, Marty and I are nuts. Seriously, crazy. We painted the living room yesterday. And WHOA, this was an undertaking. To put things into more perspective, Marty, unannounced to me, painted the bedroom the two days before, while I was busy shoplifting in Oregon with my Mom. (and No, we didn't actually steal anything, but we shopped till we dropped)

The living room was painted a really nice beige color on the walls and a rich chocolaty color on the ceiling. We both liked it the way it was, but decided to make the change to make the room feel bigger. We slaved, well, Marty slaved and I helped. And I still have primer in my hair to prove it!!!

This is the before picture, with the browns.

Bye, bye brown ceiling...

The boys helped for about 5 minutes... and then it got "old" really fast.

Has anyone seen my fiance'?

Viola! Finished, okay not totally finished, we still need to do the cut in work on the accent wall, but for the most part done. And it only took us ALL DAY!!! As you can see it's dark out.

All in all, we're really happy with the result, it makes the room feel much larger and brighter. However, next time we paint, if there is a next time, we will definitley give ourselves more than one day.

How does your garden grow

This is my first year trying to winter over a few flowers. I love begonias. All kinds. You could say they are my favorite. So I got my begonias ready to come in the house for the winter. I also planted a little "winter" garden in the whiskey barrel in the front. I'm lovin' the kale!