October In A Flash!!

Well, it is now the 2nd day of November and I am finding myself wondering what happened to October....or even the entire rest of 2007. It seems to have gone by in such a flash!!!! And, like some of my other family bloggers, I have not been nearly as faithful to my blogging as I had hoped I would be. But I think we all understand....and a few posts here and there are better than none. :-)

So as most of you know, we went to England/Ireland earlier in October. And in case you have not seen the pictures yet, I am including links to our online albums. There are 675 so allow yourself some time....

Days 1 - 5

Days 6 - 10

We had a wonderful time and it was so lovely being able to spend 10 days with my Chelsea!! And Jesse of course!! What long lasting memories we will have...that go far beyond all the pictures!!

There are no updates on the Room We Do Not Speak Of, because we have been too busy. Well, Matt Mott has been too busy. I have lost ALL interest in the project and have taken to the theory, if you ignore it maybe it will go away!!! It of course has not gone away, but I feel better anyway.

We had our roof replaced in October and it looks magnificent!!! We are taking small steps towards the overall look we want for our house. It will take some time as we eventually want a new color and will do that when we have the money for new siding. But we will continue to do the little things we can in the meantime.

We are getting ready for winter hibernation...well I am at least. I have been introduced to a new craft...Stampin' Up....thanks to Jessi. And I have found a rep in my area that has workshops and classes so I will hopefully get into that over the winter!! I am very excited about that. Matt Mott is just looking forward to taking it easy as work as been very busy and very tiring!!

I feel it necessary to Congratulate the World Series Champions....The Boston Red Sox. I am, and always will be, a Yankees fan....however, the Red Sox are my second team and I truly just love baseball....So kudos to a great team and the great job they did this year!! And I cannot wait until April....it is a long time until baseball starts again!!

I believe that is all to report for now. November will be spent preparing for Thanksgiving and of course BLACK FRIDAY!!! My favorite day of the year!!

And We Are Off....

OK, so I am a bit behind in my blogging. I had a mini meltdown over this bathroom project and am not going to talk about it anymore in this post. I am on vacation and will NOT be thinking about that room until we get back!!

I have some pictures of my Mammoth Sunflowers that were overwhelmingly mammoth and beautiful...However, I am a novice gardener and planted the seeds WAY TOO CLOSE together so they kind of overpowered each other and ended up a bit droopy. I did get some cool shots, nonetheless. And it could be the only time I have been happy to be near bees!!

On September 22nd we took a group trip down to Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees play the Blue Jays. The group was Wendy, my mom, Nate, his girlfriend Tisha, their friends Leo and Lana and myself. Matt Mott was nursing an inflamed nerve in his hip and could not come along. Below are several pictures from the game....and yes Jessi, I had to put Derek in there!!!

The first picture is of the group that went in my car, in our yankees gear. Yes that is my mom in a Derek Jeter shirt! The second picture is of the whole group, looking like drowned rats. (Sorry mom, it was the only group picture). The third picture is of John Turturo with Wang (Yankees Picture). It was "The Bronx is Burning" Day, which is an ESPN original series for those of you who don't know. The fourth picture needs no explanation, but just for Jessi I will say that is My Derek Jeter. The fifth picture is of Frank Thomas, Matt Mott's favorite player. The sixth picture is of Mariano Rivera. The seventh picure is Yankee Stadium and the last picture is the score board at the end of the game. Since it is a little blurry I will tell you the Yankees won 12-11 in 10 innings :-)

So that about brings us up to today...and in just a few hours we will be heading to the airport for our British Adventure (with a splash of Irish) so the next post will be about all the fun we are having there!! Cheerio!!

Sunflowers

Our Sunflowers are now in bloom and we are so very happy!! We are still waiting for the Mammoth Sunflowers to bloom, but I could not wait to take pictures as I have been looking forward to this since I planted the seeds in May!! In the second to last picture you will see the Mammoth ones in the background. As soon as they bloom I will take more pictures to post. YIPPEE!!!

We have completed the sheetrocking in the bathroom, except for one small wall in the shower...due to some bathtub complications...but everything else is done. And for those of you paying attention, yes this means we missed our 8/23 deadline with the plumber. Matt Mott is wise and has not yet told me the new date. Basically, I will just be happy if we have the bathroom portion done by the time we leave for England and the closet part mostly done. Since we are building the drawers ourselves, that might get put off until winter when we have more time and desire to work inside the house instead of outside :-)

Waffle Day!!

So I don't know if anyone else knew about Waffle Day but I hope you all had your waffles in honor! Some of you will actually be having your Belgian Waffles in Belgium (woo hoo Chelsea). Anyway, we (Wendy, Courto and myself - Kelsey doesn't like waffles?!?!) had our belgian waffles with strawberries/blueberries and ice cream in a waffle cone, so we have sufficiently celebrated Waffle Day!! And it was "waffle-tastic!!" And for those of you who missed out, it will be back next year on the same date....8/24!!!

And FYI, I actually learned about Waffle Day from my Eating Well magazine subscription...it sends me fun recipes and other interesting food tidbits :-)

First Anniversary

So Sunday was our first anniversary and it was positively wonderful. We really didn't do much of anything, which is why it was so wonderful!!! We relaxed on the deck, looked through our new guide to Ireland, and watched tv. It was very nice. Matt Mott bought me calla lillies because I was unable to press my bouquet last year. He thought I might be able to press these instead. It was a very good idea on his part, however, I took out the camera and got some really cool shots that I think will "preserve" the idea much better!!!

I want to thank all of you for your wishes, cards and gifts. It was all very thoughtful...even the 1st "Paper" Anniversary toilet paper....and thank you for NOT toilet papering the house!!!

We still have not put together our album yet, but I am putting a link in this post to the slide show that Jenifer Lyn Photography was kind enough to put together. Please check it out, if you don't already subscribe to her blog. She did an amazing job with it, which is not at all surprising!!! Thank you again, Jenny!!

http://jeniferlynphotography.com/Pages/dawn_Matt1/index.html

Landscaping

So Matt and I took a break from the bathroom on Sunday to do some yard work. Nothing out of the ordinary....mow the lawn, weed whack, trim the hedges....etc, etc. I decided that now would be a perfect time to photograph the front of the house since it actually looks decent!! For those of you who are not familiar with what we have done....there used to be bark mulch around the hedges, which we removed last fall and replaced with stone. We took out the hedges that went along the left side of the driveway (no picture of that...maybe later) We replaced the icky mailbox on the house with a nice wooden mailbox from You Know Where....and yes that is the same one we used for our cards at the reception (minus the decorations of course). We replaced the yucky house number with that very snazzy one and OH YEAH....THE FLOWER BOX....and yes those are LIVING flowers!!! That look AMAZINGLY well if you ask me!!!! I am so excited that I am succeeding at this flower thing!! (Look at the pretty flowers Chelsea!!!) Oh yeah...and our neighbors painted their house brown...for anyone who cares :-)

What we have on the ever growing to do list is to replace the roof, re-do the walkway and paint the shutters. We are debating removing the hedges and replacing them with something less tedious to maintain, but I really like the way they look with my sparkly lights at Christmas time so I am a bit torn!!! At any rate, none of this is going to be done until the dreaded bathroom is completed.....

Which, for those of you closely following the dramatic story of the bathroom renovation.....ha ha ha....we are just about done sheetrocking and taping the main areas. We have storage areas that we will be sheetrocking and taping but that is going to wait for now since we just really want to get this finished!! After we "mud" and sand I will take more pictures to post...I am sure you will hold your breath in anticipation!!!!

The Backyard

Today was such a beautiful day out that I spent the majority of it on the deck catching some rays with Wendy, while poor Matt Mott worked. And as I was laying there I was looking around at the yard and remembered that Chelsea had mentioned wanting to see pictures of the fence that we put up last year and all the other new things....so during one of my beverage breaks I took out the camera. Above you will see the backyard with the new fence and the new shed. Next is Jerry, our garden gnome. He sits amidst my sunflowers that are getting so big and I really can't wait for them to start blossoming!!! You can kind of see them in the next picture, which is of our deck furniture. Behind the chaise loungers, which are pretty close to being broken in now :-) you can see the arbor (from the wedding) and part of the sunflowers (on the very left side). In this picture you can also see our outdoor table and chair set. The last picture is of the deck area and shows the fence we had put up on the driveway side. Both sections of that open so we can fit our cars in the backyard to wash them....although we both just take them to a car wash still. I guess old habits die hard.

We have done some very minor cosmetic things on the front of the house but I need to trim the hedges before I will post any pictures of that. And I should probably try to revive my flower box plants since they are pretty dehydrated from the heat and humidity this week. That will be my next post most likely.

And I am certain I don't need to put the plug out there....but as you all know, the shed, arbor and deck furniture are all from that lovely place in Cheshire...Sheds N Stuff :-)

Closet Progress

The above pictures are of the future walk in closet. The first picture is inside the closet part looking back at the wall that will be removed and will be open to the bedroom. Along the left side of the photo is the bathroom. Along the right side of the photo will be built in drawers. The second picture is standing in the same place, only I turned to my left. This is additional closet space, most likely where the hanging clothes will be. The wall opposite me is going to have an access door to a crawl space for additional storage. The last picture is where the plexiglass window is going to be, only from the closet side since you couldn't really see it that well in the bathroom picture I posted yesterday.

Hopefully we will make much more progress this coming weekend...although August is turning out to be quite the busy month so we shall see....

Bathroom Progress as of 7/31/07

Hello Everyone!! It has been awhile since my last post but alas I have some bathroom progress to report!! The first picture is of the vanity/sink. Above this will be a mirror that will take up most of the space above the vanity with track lighting on the pitched ceiling. The second picture is of the shower/jetted tub. Above where the ladder currently is will be a plexiglass window to allow some natural light into this room (the ladder, of course, will not be a part of the bathroom :-) The last picture is where the toilet will be. It is a toilet...nothing more to say.

Our plumber has us scheduled for August 23rd to come in and hook up all the fixtures. This means we have 23 days to finish the drywall (which we are almost done with - we are waiting to do the shower wall until the last possible minute as it will prevent any of the air conditioning to get into that area...and it is too freakin hot in there to begin with!!). We also have to finish the flooring (which means we need to pick it out and purchase it...along with gathering some experienced hands to help out) and hopefully paint the walls. We shall see if we can get this all done or if we will have to reschedule with him AGAIN!!!!

I will share picutres of the closet in a different post as I am having issues uploading all the pictures and I don't have the energy to fight with it now!!

The Art of Blogging

So now that I have been introduced to the world of blogging it has started to pre-occupy most of my thoughts....and as I went through the day today, really not wanting to do any work at all, I came up with several hundred things I could post on here....and then I realized that maybe, just maybe, people would find it utterly boring and not come back....which would really defeat the purpose of the page in the first place. So I guess after some reflection, I would like to retract a statement I made in the first post which is that this isn't really like an online diary after all....since no one really cares about the nitty gritty random thoughts I have. Most of the time I don't even really care about them after they have left my head.

With that being said, I still have quite a few topics that I would like to post on here, that people will find interest in...such as the home improvement projects and things of the like. I was on the phone a couple of weeks ago with Chelsea and she reminded me that she hasn't seen any pictures of the fence we had put up in the fall...and we have also gotten a lovely shed (I am sure you can figure out from where)....and I am trying my thumbs at gardening (they are not quite green yet, but they are getting there)....so I have plenty of things to post on here....oh yeah and I got a new car...and matt mott will most likely be getting a new truck by the end of the summer....and whoa nellie....like I said....I still have quite a few topics to ramble on about....

Bathroom Progress

Most of you are aware that we are adding a second bathroom to our house, upstairs. This has become a gruelling project that is taking far longer than either of us had anticipated. I believe, from what I am hearing from other homeowners, that home improvement projects are never completed within the time frame you give yourself. At least not when you are doing it all yourself...and life continues on around you. Anyway, after a horribly wretched day of work a couple of weeks ago, I decided to take out my new camera and introduce myself to it.....or should I say, have it introduce itself to me. I spent a good 2 hours, and took close to 300 shots of 5 bathroom accessories!!! Some might think I have a problem....but not anyone who likes photography :-) Needless to say I was able to come up with 4 shots in color that I have blown up and will actually be framing to hang in the bathroom, once it indeed is completed. It has given me some encouragement to get moving again on that project. Unfortunately, I am not able to make more time in the day to allow us the opportunity to actaully get the work done, but that is another topic in itself!! I was also able to pick 3 shots in black and white that I could not leave behind, and have another bathroom that needs decorating so below are the shots I have chosen to blow up and frame for the existing, downstairs bathroom.

At some point in the future I will take pictures of the progress upstairs so I can upload to share with you. It really is moving along and I am so happy that we are doing the work ourselves. Most of it anyway....the plumbing and electircal we are leaving to the professionals. But the rest of it is all us and it will be most rewarding when completed!! Until next time....

We are really blogging now!

Well, I feel I have made another technological advancement by entering the world of blogging. I imagine this is more like an online diary than anything even mildly useful, for us anyway, so we will see how long it holds my attention span!!! I will try to keep this updated regularly (which I am realizing is a very common statement in blogs) but only time will tell how successful I will be at this.

You may now be wondering why I have even decided to venture in this direction, and I will be happy to tell you....my cousin, and very dear friend, Jenny, has had her own blog for some time now and I so look forward to her new posts!!! Her blog was initially set up to promote her business so I never even thought twice about doing something similar. However, I have a client who has a blog that I recently visited and realized that anyone can do blogging for any number of reasons, and quite frankly since most of our family and friends live "away" this might be a great way to bring us all a bit closer. And, I have always wanted to be just like Jenny!! OK, so maybe there was like 2 1/2 months where I didn't want to be like her, but that is only because I was born first :-)

So, now that I have my initial post....and I have procrastinated going to the gym long enough, I will end for now and look forward to writing my next post.

One last note....I am making all titles and what not plural to include my wonderful husband, even though most of these posts will probably be in first person since I am sure this will not interest him even a little tiny bit!!