Time Is a-FLYin'

It's like I blinked and all of a sudden it's friggin October! Where HAS the time gone?!

So it's like I don't even know what I have and haven't told you guys. I guess I'll have to read back a few posts and then ponder on what all has happened that isn't included.

BUT until then... this is what I'll leave you with:

Studly got his official orders from the US Air Force - medical retirement it is! He's already on permissive/terminal leave and has been offered a GrrrrEAT job from an amazing company. He'll kind've be doing what he HAS been doing, but they'll also be training him with a new skill set to make it a bit different... hopefully more exciting for him.

We've decided that we're done here... in this house, that is. We'll be fixing up the kitchen, the one real thing we have left to do, and then putting the finishing touches on the rest of the house. Oddly enough, we're not relatively sure what we'll be doing once we reach that point. You see - with the market the way that it is, anything could happen. We'd love to sell it, but that would only work if we got at least what we paid for it originally, thanks to closing costs, listing fees, etc. Then there's always the option to rent our place out and get some good tenants to help pay the mortgage, but then we're worried we wouldn't be able to rent the place for what we currently pay monthly.

Either way, we'll be needing a new home. Since Studly just got his new job, we'll definitely be staying in the area. However, whether or not we rent a place or buy a new home will depend on which way we go with the current home. *sigh So many choices... so many possibilities. Whichever we end up choosing, there's a new wish list that will be forming. Aren't you excited?!

I've decided that I'll be chronicling the process here - with you guys. AND... that means that I'll actually be BLOGGING again! WOO! ha ha

**Crazy Neighbor Update** We went to court about the dog poop issue. (See? It even sounds ridiculous in a blog... how sad is that?!) They decided to postpone 3 months. It was actually for our benefit, but it's still silly. They wanted to be sure the outcome would include the judge saying "This is nuts. Drop it. Don't waste my time." It was actually kind've funny having the prosecuting attorney and Health Department giving us advice outside of the court room. ha ha... They just asked us to take pictures each time we clean up the back yard. So at least twice a week. We'll have TONS of photos come 7 December, but if it'll end this, then so be it. And I'm sure planning to move because of all this will certainly help our case. So stressed and harassed that we can't live peacefully in our own home. Sounds like a case to me, but who knows. I just hope the judge is a dog-lover. :-D

And while we're talking about crazy neighbors, I should tell you that I had another encounter... with the redneck, that is. She's a whack-job. Not that I doubted this fact before, but good GRACIOUS she just nailed it in a few more times. *sheesh

Other than that, i think I'm kind've out of some ideas, right now. Not to mention it's like quarter to midnight and I'm struggling to keep my eyes open as it is. GOSH I'm getting old!

Anywho - that'll update you for now. I know there's PLENTY more, but it'll come in due time. Until then, remember that even though I'm not making new blog posts a priority, I'm still all over y'alls. Seriously, though... and I LOVE it! You guys are the best.

Well, Toodles for now, my Sweets! I'm signing out.

Much love!!

A Love Letter

Dear Snobby-Old-Lonely-British-Neighbor-With-Nothing-Better-To-Do-Than-Worry-About-Other-People:

If you don't like it, then DON'T LOOK! Forgive ME for going out of down for a family funeral and not stopping to worry about taking my freaking trash to the dump before I left. I'll try to plan the family deaths around the trash schedule and your preferences next time.

And if you're going to report me to the HOA, don't LIE and tell them that the trash has been outside for 2 weeks, when it'd only actually been out there for 2 DAYS!! Let's face it: You'd either report me for putting it at the curb too early, or apparently you'd report for not putting it out soon enough. Good GRIEF!

Have you stopped to consider that the REASON you're so lonely is because you're so stinking NASTY to anyone and everyone around you that doesn't live to your personal letter of the law?

This is America. A land of freedom. A land where we know we're not perfect, and we don't pretend to be.

So please - dismount and park your high horse somewhere else, because I don't give a rat's vomit about what you think of me. And clearly that feeling is mutual.

If you (and your new redneck friend downstairs) had taken just a moment or two to get to know my husband and I, then you'd know that we'd do anything we can to help you, should you need it. Lord help you if anything should happen and you can't maintain your home (especially if the HOA came-a-knockin'). Or should you get hurt and not be able to do more than yell for help, we're the ones that would hear you.

Have you stopped to think about that? Have you considered that maybe we'd would be better allies than we are the enemies you're making for yourself? No. Of course you haven't. Because that would require you to think about someone other than yourself.

You're an angry old lonely woman, and that won't change until you do. And unfortunately for us all, that will probably never happen.

My suggestion? You don't like it here, then leave. You do like it here? Act like it and quit making everyone around you so miserable. Then... tell your face. Your angry wrinkles are giving you away.

Signed,

Your annoyed and already wanting to move as far as possible neighbors next door. You know - the ones with the dog that poops. *GASP!

The Plan: Laundry Nook

I mentioned before that we're planning to renovate the Laundry Nook downstairs. I worked with my sister, April, to create a mood board, and I'm super excited about it!

We'll start with the layout of the laundry/mudroom area:

That's a basic idea of the layout of our laundry room (just imagine a window in that door - it leads to the outside). While looking at this (we'll call it a rough before picture), imagine ugly green marble-ish vinyl tile, and really old dated appliances. Now add a few cob-webs (we avoid this space if at all possible) and some yellowing on the ceiling and door. That should do it!

Moving on.

Remember how I mentioned that my sister helped make a mood-board for me? Well, I tend to enjoy drawing things out for dramatic effect, but I think I've done that enough for one day... or have I?

Okay okay, without further ado - here she is!

(If you click the pictures, you should be able to see them enlarged.)

Isn't this exciting?! I can't WAIT for the finished product. Should only be a few weeks (depending on availability and free time, that is).

Alright - that's enough excitement for one day. I would LOVE to hear what you all think of the plans (and I'm sure April wouldn't mind hearing what you think of her awesome mood board).

PS: If you have any advice or recommendations, BRING 'EM ON!!

Provision

It's been a great year... and I've been blog-M.I.A. for most of it (yeah. Sorry about that!), but it's been great, nonetheless.

With so much that's happened this year, I can't help but see God's hand and provision in our lives. Even through that crazy chaotic man-made house flood of ours, we received new carpet throughout the house, tiling in the bathroom (which we would've had to pay for ourselves), fresh new paint in various rooms... we couldn't have PLANNED that!

When McStudly was diagnosed with Crohns' disease, even after several hospital stays and medical appointments... countless pills and medicine trials... we hardly payed a dime for any of it (I actually don't think that we payed anything for any of it). We had amazing medical coverage through the military, fabulous doctors and facilities in our local area, understanding bosses and co-workers that covered for us, supportive family that checked in on us, and fabulous friends that helped make sure we felt loved and were taken care of. We couldn't have ASKED for anything better!

Even in our finances I can see him working. When bills came in higher than planned for (like when the electric company WAY overestimated our charges: think 8 months worth of bill credits) and life just... happened - cracked windshields, a sick dog, and home makeover mishaps (plenty of those in this house) - we were covered.

Just this month, Austin had quite a few dollars spent on vet bills... and by quite a few I mean the total is now over $1.2k on something as simple as ringworm (PS: much more serious on dogs, than humans, fyi). Somehow we were able to pay for (not charge) his vet bills the first time around... don't ask me how! But I thought for sure that there would be no way we could do it again. And I was right - we could not. But with God, all things are possible - and we are able to do it again. The vet said he needs one more round of meds to be sure it doesn't come back, and "somehow" we have the extra money to pay for that and his boarding expenses. I noticed last week, after doing some quick budget math (am I the only one that keeps a spreadsheet for each month that details how much goes to which bills for each paycheck, how much into savings, how much for spending, etc? Okay... call me precise and just shy of obsessive, but it works.) that we had about an extra $1k in savings that I couldn't really account for. Every bill is payed and already pulled up to date. There are no pending checks, and no pending withdrawals. We had planned to use the extra money to pay off our credit card, but when Austin needed vet visits, I knew it would be going towards that instead. But here's the cool part: we somehow didn't spend much (hardly any) of our allotted spending money over vacation... That's about $150 that we didn't use. And $269 just came in the mail as a reimbursement from our first round of vet bills (have I mentioned that I absolutely LOVE having pet insurance? Cause I do.) which I had totally forgotten about.

That's a total of: $419.00 that I had no way of accounting for beforehand. It was like surprise money... bonus cash.

So when I went to pick up Austin this morning from the vet's office, where he was boarding and had been re-checked by the vet, guess how much I had to pay?!


*drumroll please*


That would be a total of $406.68!



Isn't that amazing?! Not only are the vet bills covered out of pocket without even remotely affecting our regular monthly budget and bills, but we can also afford to pay off our credit card, now, with the extra money I "found" in savings.

Because we have been faithful to him in our finances and tithing, God has blessed us more than we could even IMAGINE through our finances.




As 2009 comes to a close, this evening, I look back and can see how God has blessed us way beyond what we could ever have planned, asked or imagined.




With this kind of provision from a truly wonderful, loving God that cares enough about me to even notice and cover the "little" things in life, I can't help but feel a peaceful confidence over whatever will be thrown our way in 2010.

May God continue to bless and care for you and yours, and may you be able to someday look back and see his hand in everything.





Happy New Year!

Blurred Vision

Between training class, homework, painting, visiting family, and just pure exhaustion I have been quite the blog slacker.

My bad!

I don't ever mean to slack off this much, but one day turns into 3, which becomes 5 and then before I know it, it's been a week and a half with no blogging!! Holy goodness!

This week, McStudly and I vowed to do absolutely nothing beyond what was absolutely necessary. Needless to say, we've only been doing dishes in the Puhl household. We worked so stinking hard the last couple of weeks that we are pooped! So this week has been relaxing, catching up on our backlog of tv shows (our poor DVR was at 96%, which I didn't think was possible), eating yummy meals at home again (after eating out so much due to our rush), and just enjoying each other's company.

It's been so nice. It's already Thursday and I am SO glad we've spent most of the week relaxing. We didn't get everything done that we wanted to before his mom got into town, but we were close! I know I'll be forgetting something, but here's a quick version of what we did in just 2 weeks:

- prime everything

- paint living room

- paint kitchen

- paint spare bedroom

- catch up on laundry that's WAY overdue

- new faceplates on all outlets and switches (except in the master bedroom)

- fresh paint on window sills and doorways in the kitchen and living room

- switch up a bit of the decor for fall (and to go with the new orange wall)

- dust EVERYthing (also long overdue)

- vacuum everywhere

- BIG bathroom clean downstairs

- TOTAL bathroom wipe-down upstairs (again - long overdue, but our toilet is kept clean, I'm not that gross!)

- dressers de-cluttered

- kitchen table de-cluttered (it collected quite the random mix while we were getting all of this work down around the house)

And, as is with any Puhl House remodelling project, we ran into a few setbacks along the way (thankfully, there was no need to call the Home Owners Insurance this time around):

- primer was spilled on the carpet (have I mentioned how clumsy I am?!). We had to stop everything we were doing to clean that junk up... scrub. Rent a rug doctor from the local grocery store (thank goodness someone had thought of that) and steam the rest of that mess outta there. Luckily, we acted fast and furious and you can't tell ANYthing was spilled, now - SCORE!

- Austin, our McPup, was spending one of our paint days over at my parents' house with Luke, their Labrador, frolicking through the backyard care free. Well, apparently something either bit him or somehow infected him, because he came home with a bump on his side. We checked him for ticks, and found nothing. Then, a week later, the hair feel off on that spot. Eek! Then it seemed like it was getting a little bigger. I took him to the vets immediately and they thought it may be something as simple as ringworm and gave me some ointment to put on his boo boo twice daily. It seems to be helping a little, and I think the hair is finally starting to grow back, BUT the samples they took turned out negative for ringworm. Who knows what it was! He never really reacted to us touching it or anything, but I'm glad he's finally getting better. My poor little puppy!

- I bought some white touch-up paint for the ceiling and trim and such. Well, I didn't pay a ton of attention and accidentally bought sating finish, instead of flat. Needless to say, the ceiling now has a few shiny spots. It's a little weird, but it's only temporary. I finally bought some flat paint and we'll be fixing that oopsie pretty soon. Nice, huh?!

- I bought the wrong size blinds for our windows. :-( My bad. Luckily Lowes is awesome and I just returned them for the right ones, but it was still a bummer, for sure!

- We didn't even think to check for the studs in the wall when putting up the curtain rods. Let's just say it ended up not happening, and we now have 4 new holes to patch and paint over. Awesome, right? yeah... we didn't think so either. And we're way tired of our nosy neighbor looking into our house through our deck door. Creeper!!

We still have a little bit of work to do, like painting the trim and window sills in the spare bedroom, and replacing all of the outlets and switches (we ended up just putting the faceplates on the old ugly ones to save time last week). And the blinds and curtains need to be hung, too, so we'll have to get that taken care of sometime, too, I guess.

Basically, a TON has been done, but there'e still a lot left to do. I will leave you, today with pictures of our yucky old green kitchen. It looks like green threw up in there because it was EVERYwhere! Way too much green, and not the nice pretty green, either. Check it:

The Task at Hand

Your job... should you choose to accept it... is to help me find affordable tables like these for my living room.

Coffee Table:

End Tables:

I LOVE them! They are exactly what I'm looking for and would go PERFECT with the theme I'm headed towards. And just to get your minds a bubbling, I'm getting ready to paint an orange accent wall.

*GASP* Did she say orange?!

Yes. Yes she did - er I did. BUT it's not the primary school sun painting orange that you're probably thinking of, it's more of a faded clay or a burnt, softened orange. It's going to be AWESOME with my pale green accents and our new living room furniture. I'm SO loving the idea! Some of you are really scratching your head at my intentions, but I promise you that you'll like the end result. And if you don't?! Ah, well you don't live here, so you can rest easy, right?! :-P

Here are some of the inspiration pieces that led me to this point:

The Rug - KMart, $68:

The Pillows - Bed, Bath & Beyond, "Make Your Own Pillow" covers:

The future Kitchen accent colors (Wal-Mart and Target finds):

As you'll soon see in our walk through my home, our kitchen and living room and dining room are all opened up to each other. So we'll need to incorporate the colors into each room to keep it more fluid. These colors, my friend, are the key. It's going to be amazing, and I cannot wait!

My dream is to paint the accent wall, the wall that runs from the dining room through the living room, in this faded clay color (Valspar's Faded Clay, WV37013 - warning, it looks horrible on computer but amazing in person) and then the remaining walls in this Almond Oil color (also Valspad, but don't have the code with me). Then along with a few added corresponding orange accents, there will be a few green accents (think Valspar's Sag Harbor, WV36011) as well. All of this is building up to the Contemporary Country Casual style that I adore. I think I made up that name, but it's SO me (uh... and McStudly?)!!

Tonight, I'll be buying samples and painting a bit of the wall to make sure everything is kosher. Then we'll hopefully be painting one upcoming weekend in the near future (anyone want to dog-sit my over sized cuddle-bug? He's got loads of personality, and tons of spunk!). I'm so excited! Little by little I feel like our house is really becoming our Home. (for those of you that saw the bathroom in the previous post, you know that this place is in some serious need of help in that area).

Anywho, that's your task, if you have a chance. Maybe you've seen something similar while window shopping, or have a comparable piece in your own living room? These pieces are out of our price range (about $150 per end table, and $250 for the coffee table!), for now, so we're hoping to find something less expensive, if possible, or we'll just have to hold on until we can save up and get a few other things done around the house.

So, what do you think - am I nuts for painting ANYthing in my house orange? Can you find/Have you found anything like these for less than those unreachable prices? Are these tables too simple and look like you could make them yourself (I'd be willing to pay!)? Will our house EVER become a home? Stay tuned and I guess we'll all find out.

I would post pictures of tonight's effort tomorrow, but my camera's battery charger is still missing. Speaking of, if you happen to see her, would please tell her that she's in BIIIIG trouble?! Kthnks.

Home - Pt. 1

It's where we live. Where we're making memories. Where we fight. Where we make up. Where we laugh. Where we cry. Where we learn. Where we build our life.

It's home.

And I've been saying for SUCH a long time, now, that I would take you on a tour of our home, but I've been slacking. Well, I FINALLY remembered to get the "before" pictures from my Big Sister and I can FINALLY show you! I know you're just tingling with excitement, so here we go.

Reminder: this is what the house looked like the day we moved in, so there's nothing... no furniture, not nothing and that HIDEOUS wallpaper got pulled down OH so fast!! So - feel free to comment on how tacky everything looks, okay? I will not be offended in the least. And then later on at some point, I'll show you some of the little progress we've made. :-)

So today we'll start with the hideous main full bathroom. Oh. Em. Gee. It's horrendous. Are you sure you're ready for this?

This is the view from our bedroom entrance. *shivers*

From the hallway entrance.

You see that lovely splash of color sitting on the back of the toilet? Yep - that's the wallpaper's MATCHING shower curtain. *gag*

SO that's that. Home not-so-sweet home. It's MUCH sweeter now, of course, but... we'll get to that later. I'll be showing more of our home over the next few days, so stay tuned!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And guess what - I WON!!! Mrs. Stethoscope's giveaway, that is. Free food! I like never win giveaways. I am SO stoked, you have NO idea. Go check it out so you can be jealous of me and my awesome cookies. Yumm-O!!