Five years ago we bought our house. We haven’t done a lot cosmetically to the house itself (functionally is a whole different story), but the yard has certainly changed drastically. For the last five years, we’ve been amusing and annoying the neighbors with our landscaping attempts. We’ve slowly been making progress and this year we had another big push as the five year anniversary of our home purchase loomed. As much as I hate to admit it, the tree our neighbor…
The day my parents came to visit, I noticed a smell in the basement when I was exercising. At first I couldn’t figure out what was causing the smell. The carpet didn’t feel wet so I opened windows and sprinkled baking soda over the carpet hoping it was just normal basement funk. Later that evening after vacuuming, it still smelled and I asked Noel for a second opinion. He agreed it smelled weird, but also couldn’t detect any wetness in the…
This last month has been a time of almost constant rain. A desert girl at heart, I generally love rain. Growing up rain was novel and needed; any time it happened was a time to rejoice. At first I did just that. I reveled in the smell of rain and introduced my children to the beautiful sport of puddle jumping. As the weeks went on though, the skies grew darker, the sunny days turned into moments, the basement flooded, my four-year-old Target…
I know this is incredibly disappointing, but this post isn’t actually about a monumental disco hit. Rather, it has to do with the state of our basement when we returned from our trip to Utah. When we left Colorado the 100 year flood had just begun. We didn’t think much of it. Some of us even thought it was pretty awesome. But when Noel got 18 flood alerts the day of my Grandma’s funeral, we started to worry a…
You know that formula for the minimum age you can date someone (Age/2 +7)? Well, at our house we have a formula for home improvement projects. (time it took someone on internet to do the task) X 10 +2 hours = time it will take us It’s proving to be fairly accurate. We could blame the fact that we are still learning how to fix some things or that we almost always forget to buy some critical part at Home…
Despite what has been said about our yard, we are really excited about it. The progress isn’t as fast as if we’d emptied our savings account and hired an expensive landscaping crew, but the hard work is good for us and has given us the opportunity to really appreciate each small improvement. I often find myself gravitating toward the front windows where I’ll just mesmerizingly admire the results of our labor until Noel notices I’ve disappeared and asks me if…
You know that scene from A Christmas Story where the father descends into the basement to battle the furnace and a cloud of gray smoke mingled with garbled obscenities seeps through the floor vent? Things have been a little like that at our house lately, but with the plumbing. We’ve plunged, snaked, and even resorted to calling in an “expert” (who showed up with the exact same equipment we had and scratched his head about what to do). Every time…
Remember how we killed our front lawn last summer? Well, we certainly didn’t forget. And Google certainly won’t let us forget either. They really should give you warning before they send out those Google cars that take pictures for street view . . . but I digress. After harnessing the power of the sun to kill everything in the front yard we rented a rototiller. It did it’s best to take Noel for a ride and at the end of…
“Everyday Use” is a short story by Alice Walker that you probably read in a high school or college English class. A story you probably hated because you read it in an English class. I’ve always liked the story though, because like good literature should it always gets me thinking. In case you didn’t do your homework, I’ll give a painfully oversimplified rundown of the plot. (My apologies Alice Walker! Surely it can’t be worse than Spark Notes.) The story…
Maybe you haven’t heard, but Colorado is on fire. We are lucky to be out of harm’s way at the moment, but it definitely feels like the entire state is on fire. We had five straight days of record highs and today is the first day we stayed in the 90s. We don’t have air conditioning or a swamp cooler, so regulating the temperature in our house to keep it from spontaneously combusting has pretty much monopolized all of our…