Holy Goodness!

Where in the WORLD (is Carmen San Diego!) has the past month+ gone?? Oh my word, I never intended to take that kind of a blog-slacker-"vacation", but it happened.

I'm officially a bad blogger (not that I was all that fantastic to begin with, if I'm being honest... but hey - it's my blog, so we'll just go with it, mmkay?). Really, though - what happened to me??

Oh THAT's right. Work got completely nuts, on me... as did my schedule outside of work... and then there's that marriage of mine that I'm trying to maintain... and a house to at least attempt to keep up with (which I'm not all that fantastic with due to the other bazillions of things). Mix it all up, and what do we have? A pretty good excuse for skipping out on the not-so-necessary stuff, like blogging.

Well, needless to say - a lot has been going on. Unfortunately, I can't write about a lot of it because, even though this is my blog and it's for my personal babbling, it's not really all that personal. And as much as I love being honest and up front, I'm not really one of those people that can put something out there, knowing it could hurt some one's feelings if they read it. So we'll be keeping a whole lot of stuff off the blog, BUT I will give you some good stuff to hopefully make up for it.

So where have we been - Ah yes. Christmas vacation happened - it was fabulous! But of course was over way too quickly. There was some confusion in our return date and we ended up staying a day longer than we all originally thought, but ah well. It was much needed (we were already packed up and got to purely relax the next day... ha ha!) and much enjoyed. I really enjoy getting to spend time with McStudly's family and look forward to his mother hopefully coming to visit us again sometime soon (woot woot!). :-)

Then there was New Years. The FIRST New Years Eve that McStudly and I could finally spend together... and we didn't. :-/ I was bummed, but ah well. I guess I'll get over it. He went to a party with our Young Adults group at church, and I helped out with the Youth event (which was awesome, btw) at church. I was POOPED afterwards... ask any of the other leaders. It was nothing but evident on my face. I am SO glad our Youth pastor doesn't do lock-ins or all-nighters. (Plus, I just realized that I may officially be an "old fogey", now, with that statement... Nice!)

Birthdays! Mine wasn't super fantastic, but it wasn't horrible. I actually had a great time going out to dinner with some ladies from church. It was nice! Just a couple ladies that I enjoy being around and some food that I love Love LOVE! So, good times. McStudly's birthday was pretty uneventful... well, there was a football game and some guy time while I hung out with a pal, and then we went out the next day (thanks to a nice and needed holiday from work) to celebrate together, just the two of us. Good times, again!

Let's see... what else is there...

Ah yes - the Clinic! Remember way back in THESE posts when I said I was going to train to be a volunteer counselor for a Pregnancy Clinic? Well, I did. And I am. It's a pretty long process, but I am LOVING it!! I'm not almost up to week 5 of my internship. There's SO much to learn, but thankfully I have an amazing Senior Counselor that I'm shadowing. She really is great. I'm learning SO much and with every session that I observe and even the ones we just discuss, I get more and more excited about the work we're doing. And I'm seriously amazed with how much information I'm picking up and absorbing. *sigh* It's really great.

Well, I can't think of much else to catch you up on, currently. Wait - that was a lie. I have plenty, but to be honest, I'm tired and have quite the headache. Not a fun combination, especially when you and your husband have an agreement to go to bed together and he's in the middle of a very intense (as opposed to...??) video game online. I do have some things I'd like to think out and type up to clarify, but I don't think it's going to happen right now. Perhaps being snowed in will give me the chance to do a bit more of that?

...then again I have a LOT that I could be getting done around the house...

...nah!

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:

MHR Friday RETURNS!

I've been SUCH a blog slacker, as of late... heck, I've been a slacker PERIOD as of late. But what's a girl to do with as much going on in her life as I've had lately?

That's where McStudly comes in...

You see, McStudly is preparing to separate from the military, so he's been home on terminal leave for a while, now. Why does that make him awesome? Because he's been taking care of like EVERYthing around the house for me!!

Seriously, though - he's been doing dishes, taking out trash, cleaning up dog dookie (my neighbor is very grateful). He even cooked dinner last night! How amazing is he? I love him to pieces. And he's been SO great with everything.

It makes things SO much less stressful for me when I can come home to an empty sink and having the house as neat as it can be, right now. Have you seen the pictures? My house STILL looks a royal mess. And there's not quite an end in sight, at the moment. But he's doing what he can to help keep it as put together as possible while I'm working and he's at home.

*sigh*. He's so dreamy. I love you, baby!! And thank you soo soo much!!

XOXO

Making Some Progress

Not much, but some progress has been made on the bathroom project.



The walls have been completely rid of wallpaper, and as much residue as we can muster has been scraped off the walls, as well. We've washed, spackled, sanded, and are now ready to prime the walls.



That means: We're SO CLOSE!!





We did make an executive decision and decided to replace the toilet altogether. That thing was just NASTAY!!! The majority of the nastiness was NOT from us. There's not way we could have accomplished that much in the 6 short months we've lived in this house. And seeing as how the toilet has probably been there since the house was built, it was just time.





So we pulled out the old toilet, and took it to the landfill about 15 minutes away (thank the LORD we have an SUV!). We took the long windy drive up the "landfill mountain", dropped that sucker off, then wound our way back down to normalsville for a trip to Lowe's.



We seriously spent about 45 minutes debating on which toilet to buy. And I must say - the one that said "Able to flush an entire bucket of golf balls" was just SCREAMING for me to call it's bluff. But alas, we decided on a nice new throne and loaded it up for the trip home. It's not sitting in it's box on the middle of our bathroom floor, waiting for us to finish painting, etc. I just wish we could do everything now... not just painting. It would be SOO nice to tile and replace the molding now, too, but one step at a time, right?



*sigh*





We'll get there. But this will be a VERY nice change, that's for sure!! A new toilet, a nice paint job, a new light, and a new mirror... I'm pretty sure it'll chance the look of the room drastically, and that's what we're looking forward to, for now. At least his grandparents, when they come to visit, will have a decent bathroom instead of the poor excuse for one we've had thus far.





So there you have it. We've made as much progress as we could make before priming and painting. so hopefully, it's all downhill from here. Wish us luck!! I'll take and post a few pictures soon. I'll try to get some mid-way pics and then some after pics... then eventually you'll see it through the whole process. But right now, I can't find the pictures.


:-(









Seriously, though... you'll get to see just how fabulous that wallpaper job really was. Trust me - you'll see why we were so eager to fix it.


Toodles for now!

Progress

Okie Doke-

In my first blog, I challenged myself to improving a lot of things about... well... myself. I got a lot of great comments from it, both online and in person, and have tried to really "apply" the advice I've been given. So let's take a look back and see how I've been doing, shall we?

I'll mark Green on the things that I feel I have improved, and Red on the things I can't say that about without lying... hopefully there won't be much red. Let's see:

#1 - Housekeeping
Okay. So I started off really strong, and then slacked off a bit again, BUT I'm back in high gear. The house looks great (AND this is AFTER I had a "party" at my house this weekend. GO ME!!). The only bad thing right now is more dishes (it's amazing how how you can't fit NEARLY as much as you thought you could into a single dishwasher load! And I've done two since Saturday night!). BUT since McStudly is at home today, he's supposed to be catching up on that (since this is a marriage and a partnership - it REALLY comes in handy for these kinds of things!!). As for Laundry, I have done LOTS of loads, lately, Kyle has thrown in a few, too, and just last night, I finished all but ONE basket of folding. :-) So... we're well on our way. Now, in all honesty we're probably only HALFWAY done everything (we've got TONS of clothes!), but that's still improvement, right? So... as we're going through things, we're setting aside things we don't wear or that don't fit, so we can finally get rid of them and have a normal sized wardrobe (and so that I have an excuse to go shopping again. It's been SOOO long and I miss it!). The house doesn't smell like I have a dog - I mean... you can't tell. :-D That's FANTASTIC to me!! The bookshelf is finally organized. The kitchen looks great (minus the dishes, that is). The bathroom is nice and neat (as long as McStudly keeps wiping up his lil' stubbles off the sink in the morning - great job, Sweety!). The spare bedroom could use a little more work... maybe a lotta more, BUT it's still pretty organized. :-)

#2 - Quiet Time
This is embarrassing. :-( I'm not very good at balancing my time. I have done better, so I suppose I COULD put it in green, but I haven't gotten to where I NEED to be with it. I've gotten great at praying more, for the most part, and I do more research on the Bible, etc, BUT I don't really sit down and just focus on God and read the Bible and meditate on it. And THAT'S where I need to be. It's like I skip the whole relational part of it. I've got the research, and the talking down, now I need to get better at the focusing and the sit-down-and-shut-up part of it. But that's SOOOO hard for me!! (No peanut gallery comments, please). It's just not something others can teach you - you have to figure out that kind of thing on your own. And it's not easy. But BOY am I glad that my God so patient. And BTW - I'm a FIRM believer in the fact that God has a sense of humor - Lord knows I provide him with PLENTY of entertainment. ;-) I'm a good laugh, for him, and I'm okay with that... but he wants more than a laugh and a big mouth who doesn't listen. And that's where I'm not doing so hot.

#3 - Money
We're doing WAY better!! We've started doing a "cash allowance" type of thing. We each get the same set amount of money for a two week period. That's it. Now, we didn't do so hot with our Memorial Day weekend, but in my opinion - Holiday weekends are more expensive, so it's all good. We were both okay with that. So... all is well. We're a little tight this week, because of it. But we'll probably take out a bit more to cover for the fact that it WAS a Holiday weekend last weekend. So... no worries. Next weekend means we get our new allowance! WOOHOO!! Just FYI - the allowance is for eating out, etc. Not as much other things. Neither one of us go shopping, really. And if we do, we run it by each other before we buy anything, really. The rule is really only for anything over $100, BUT we kind've do it anyways. We keep each other in the loop on money, so neither one of us can blame the other! ha ha - it's worked so far! Also - we've started a Credit Check Monitoring Program with our bank (because USAA rocks my socks!) and we're learning a LOT about what effects what. I've ALSO learned that you have to track things down to have them removed, even if the allotted time has passed for them already (which some people didn't know - check your credit!! But it's SO important to know this kind of stuff, and I'm glad we're figuring everything out. :-) Also - we're saving up to buy a house this summer (hopefully)!! No more "new car" talk. If I get a car, it'll be a "New-to-me" car, and it won't be this year, most likely. Probably next year or so... But to sum up - our debt is REALLY lowering (still waiting on that economic stimulus check, Dubbya!) and our savings will soon be piling up, as well. :-) So it looks to me like we're on our way!

and FINALLY... (drumroll please)

#4 - Exercise
Woohoo!! So I'm not like running 12 miles a day or anything crazy, BUT I'm doing better. Austin is getting good walks, most days, and I sometimes even run with him a bit. He's also getting walks with McStudly, when he's not working, and he's LOVING life! I plan on pulling out the pilates again, now that the house is pretty clean (though I was HOPING to wait on that new carpet... it may take a little longer for that than we thought) and manageable. I would LOVE to get a Wii and Wii fitness, but I'm not seeing that happening anytime soon - especially with the progress we've made and are making in the Moola Arena. But... I'm slowly feeling better about myself, and I KNOW the dog is happier than he was!! ha ha ha. I've also been trying to balance out my eating. If I DO eat something not-so-good for me, I try not to eat as MUCH. And I've been throwing in some salads before the other food, to help fill myself with something healthier before the bad stuff, and then not stuff myself until full, but eat until just past satisfied (I'm not disciplined enough, yet, to stop AT satisfied). So... I think all is going well.


Alrighty - so that's my update. How have YOU been doing in these areas?! Let's be honest, people. It feels good - I promise!!