10 minutes and $92 later.....

It was less than 4 hours ago that I was telling Derek I really had nothing to blog about lately. Other than our 4-legged children and house projects, life up here in Cleveland is pretty boring. We get up, go to work, eat dinner, run, maybe make a trip to Lowes or Target and then it's bedtime.

Then 8:30pm came along tonight as we pulled up to the house .... after our traditional Lowe's excursion of course. We unloaded the trunk full of new chandeliers, flowers and garden supplies only to walk to the back door and realize we were locked out.

Yep, 100% locked out. Of our OWN house.

See, at our old house, the garage was attached, so we entered with the keypad code on the garage. Rarely did we have front or back door keys and enter through one of those. Up here, any time you leave the house for anything, you have to remember a key. This didn't pop into Derek's head tonight as he grabbed the spare keys to the car. (I'll give him a bit of credit as the spare keys WERE lying right there where the normal keys usually are). If you read my blog regularly, you'll see the pattern forming here with Derek and keys. They seem to be like oil and water lately.

So about 10 minutes and $92 later, a locksmith arrived, literally stuck two pins in the door and popped it open. Kinda scary when you think about how easy it was for him.

Good thing we have two killer dogs that would lick him to death if he tried that when we weren't home.

Florida Fun

So we decided to meet our good friends from Orlando down on the Ft. Lauderdale beach this past week for some fun in the sun (and to relieve some stress after this move)! We originally met Melissa and Kevin when we lived in Jacksonville about 7 years ago. We even now have a mutual friend of someone they went to college with in Florida. Crazy huh?! I ended up working at Melissa's fathers company and we soon found we lived in the same complex. Several trolley rides and two financial husbands later we were officially SFAM. (Sisters From Another Mister as we call it). We try to get together when we can, and although that usually entails us going down to Florida, we wouldn't change a thing!

We found a GREAT hotel and although it rained some while we were there, we still enjoyed our time together. From disgustingly fit, women body builders wearing thongs, to a yummy cotton candy dessert at Tatu, to casino gambling, to crazy 30 million dollar yachts, we enjoyed every minute! It was "people watching heaven" last week and we soaked up every second. Overall, it was a nice, relaxing, fun vacation.

MISS YOU GUYS ALREADY!! (and we are SOOOOO going to Aruba next year!)

(You can click on the images to make them a bit bigger)

Book Review - Dear John

Channing Tatum is SEXY! (Ok sorry... had to get that out). But really, that's what made me want to read this book; the nonstop commercials for the Dear John movie out right now with him as the star. I definitely enjoyed reading this page-turner even more as I was able to visualize Channing the whole time!

I'm very aware that Nicholas Sparks is catching a lot of flack right now for his predictable story lines, but hey - if it sells, why not continue with it right? I love sappy books with a happy ending involving love stories so obviously he'll probably be one of my favorite authors! I doubt I need a book summary here as you can probably guess what happens (or have seen the previews) - two people unexpectedly fall in love and have to go through many "life challenges" together. I'd give this book an A (of course - just like I always do) for its unusual, captivating characters. Well that, and the fact that they cast Channing for the main character role!

This is a light read suitable for anyone. Enjoy!

New Kitchen Floors!

The hideous, vinyl kitchen floors are finally gone! We officially have replaced the kitchen, hallway, guest bathroom and closet floors with porcelain tile that we are in love with!

After four contractor quotes, we went with the company that we felt had a strong corporate backing and good pictures/references from previous jobs. It took four business days and a TON of loud hammering and sawing, but the black and white checkered floors are gone and we have beautiful tumbled tile floors now!

We are very pleased with how much this has updated the look of our house!

Below is a quick video of some of the before, during and after pictures for your viewing pleasure! Also, you can see our new appliances a bit more as well as our new toilet. (Who knew a toilet could be so exciting?!)

Also, here's a closer look at both the old main floor and guest bathroom floors as well as the pink, 1950's tile that was under the guest bathroom vinyl flooring!

New Dog Bed

Guess who now officially has a huge, plush dog bed large enough to hold two labs (one that is even a bit chunky)? That's right! The girls do and they LOVE it. It's actually quite hard to find one this plump and quality made, but we found the perfect bed from Petco!

Looks like the girls love it too -

Love Grows Here

Derek and I take much pride in yard work and our landscaping. We're far from professionals, but we consider ourselves strong at making a yard look good! We were pleasantly surprised when some daffodils sprung up out front and we can't wait to see what else blooms throughout the summer on our property.

We laid 30 bags of mulch this past weekend as well as some grass seed and weed killer. In a few weeks, both the front and back yard should look great! We still need to lay some sod out front where the grass is dead by the curb. Apparently, per our neighbors, the snow trucks don't care where the road ends and our yards begin.

I also learned about my new favorite tree, the Weeping Cherry Tree. On Sunday we noticed this sucker was beginning to bud and were taking bets on how many weeks until it was fully bloomed. Then we woke up Monday morning to this amazingly bloomed, beautiful tree! (Close-up below). They seem to be very common around here and I love them!

Shelf Transformation

One thing we LOVED about our new home is the three sets of 'nook shelves' (as we call them) that we have. Kind of like built-in shelves, there is a big set in the office and two smaller sets in the guest room. Unfortunately, they had been painted black by the previous owner meaning we had to completely re-do them all! Thankfully I have my father's steady hand and actually like doing intricate work like this. The taping was definitely a slow process and required a lot of time but in the end it was worth it.

Below is our "before, during and after picture" of one set of these shelves from the guest room. You'll notice the glossy, sterling silver, textured walls that were there before us. Again, they REALLY liked the colors black and silver but we are slowly but surely fazing them out.... that is, except for the black, jetted bathtub which might have to stay.  Anyhow, now the room is a really nice light greenish, Sherwin Williams color called Ancient Marble and the shelves are a thick, glossy white.

The whole room looks nice and bright now with the softer coloring. More pics to come soon!

**Tip for anyone using high gloss oil-based paint - take the tape off after only a couple minutes of painting the shelves, otherwise it can pull up the paint!

New Stovetop Oven

Anyone need an old 1970's stove? Nope... didn't think so.

Neither did we and our second stainless appliance is officially in! Next is the dishwasher coming in a couple of weeks after the floors get tiled.

The left is our sweet, white old baby and to the right is our flat-top stainless new one!