Sunday, numerous things

update to the saturday list progress..
We did go venture at Home Depot in one of the trips we made there to look at side entry doors.. and today after church and lunch, we headed to Ganahl lumber and looked at what they had, and picked up some brochures.  I might just circle what I want, call "our guy" who does doors and with the dimensions, have him pick it up and install... we also have a new bathroom door for our master bath to find that is SOLID wood in order to buffer the noise of shower/ hair dryer in my early mornings from Greg having to be "in the bathroom with me" kind of noise level.. having it better fit tighter to the carpet will also be needed.

Gregs projects that he worked on and thankfully are resolved are; one master sink has a drain that comes unlatched when shutting the drain and you can't bring it up to drain water... he finally replaced the bent something something,. fixed.  Then, into the boys/guest bathroom where the sink drips incessantly and the drain cover has since rusted.. we ventured to get a new faucet, and drain cover... eventually after an extra trip to the store for an extension piece, fixed..  Yay!

Greg and I went to a place on Saturday that is a yard for roofing supplies, but they also carry some house improvements & basic stuff for landscaping (or can make due).. I think that his amount of stuff we'd need vs. what I envision it needing in bulk might account for his low price.. so the process is still ongoing, as many places are closed on Sunday and are also closed for the holiday... hard for those of us trying to work, get it done..

In this same area and on the way home.. We stopped at a new store locally WINCO for groceries that is now Gregs new favorite store, it's like bigger than a Smart and Final store without membership needed, but they have bulk items in drums that come with a bag and scoop to get how much you desire. There is a recipe card for how to use it, make it, or to hydrate it... but Greg was like a kid in a candy store checking it all out and talking to the older guy who worked there.  I got a few scoops of Blueberry muffin mix, a pie crust mix, and some dehydrated hash brown potatoes.. The muffin mix was good, although it needed more water than it said, easy fix.  Gregs dad is going to love walking this "amusement" park when they visit..

Today we went to church and heard an excellent sermon on prayer from our intern Klarc Korver... the kid can bring it... He asked using the analogy and the prop of a door.. are we praying "doggy door" kind of prayers for safety, as in, our favorite team to win a championship, our kids and the world to be well.. or are we walking through the door expectantly anticipating our prayers for Gods kingdom causes to be advanced.  Yep, I can often be the doggy door pray'er..   We then went to lunch at Super Mex just the two of us.

After church we went to Ganahl Lumber in Los Alamitos which is a larger store than the one closer to our house.  We were looking at door ideas, options, and picked up some catalogs that gave deeper options than what we were seeing on display. I think they have more custom stuff available than the Home Depot type.

Came home and knew there was a "closet" project that could no longer be put off.. Don't you just hate to start something that has all the potential for being a can of worms. Well I had received three large boxes of medical supplies and knew that the shelf in the closet in the entrance of our master bath closet needed to be organized, cleared out of some debri's... after a vacuuming, and laying it all out on the bed.. There was more room on those two top shelves for storage of such items than it appeared. Alot of stuff was tossed out, put into a better place and even was able to reorganize the cabinet above the toilet where some items were mixed up and more of a mess than should have been.. hour later, it was all done.. always so much better afterward than you wish.

Well, back to relaxing and bbq'ing again.

Saturday of prospects

It's only 7:30 am and we've been up for awhile already.. Strange that a Saturday wasn't spent sleeping in, but what do you do if your awake early.. I was also trying to update my iPad software last night nd it didn't work out so took another stab at it this morning, and it worked. Theres a list of things to do;

Which includes finding a new door, contacting the guy that will install it. Our side door is less than secure at the moment due to a latch that is broken down.. The door "pops"out of the frame when shutting it, so several slams are required to secure the lock.. This morning I woke up and walked downstair to the kitchen through the laundry hallway, basically without the deadbolt it just pulls open.. Greg has been saying yes eventually I'll get to it... Today that will end and progress will be made.

We have been clearing the 62' x 7'3" along our driveway of plants, bark that was 3 inches deep in order to put down new weed blocker and some kind of rocky gravel that doesn't degrade or change colors.. We will then decorate in pots with the color rather than planting in ground... Maintenance free! Got a quote from one location, now to find another resource yard to compare. The yard work needs to be done and Shane is gone today after his volunteer shift to a charity 5 or 10 mile mud run in Temecula, so sleep is all he is going to want to do when he gets back. So off I go before I lay down and take a nap.

vacation relaxation...

Monday I started a vacation where I am staying at home, and just relaxing with simple things to do until returning next Tuesday to the office.

I started last Friday by running up north a few hours to Porterville to watch Brook and the Chowchilla High School team compete in the qualifying on Friday and the Championships on Saturday.  When a couple weeks earlier I had found out from Brook when the next meet was, I immediately got out my AAA book and made a reservation.  The girls team qualified for the 200 Medley and the 200 Relay for Saturday. Bryan and Stacy live about 1-1/2 hours north of Porterville and so I was able to save the 3 hour round trip in a short amount of time that they had to make. The Saturday events started at 11am, Don and Albertha brought an umbrella and that saved us from a second day of the sunburns.  I ran into Krystal DeLeeuw whose son Trevor is also a sophomore competing for Tulare HS that was a special treat, as they used to live down by us and attend the same church we did. I headed home after the last event that Brook competed in.

Monday, I did some yard work before the trash truck took the green can, a few hours of yard work with lawn mowing and weeding.. and than just enjoyed a quiet day at home..

Tuesday, got up early, walked some on the treadmill and then I headed to the beach with my chair and a towel.. unfortunately I neglected to spray on the sunscreen and so I did receive quite a "red" coloring especially in the white areas of the body often hidden by shorts and tshirts.. so a couple of days staying out of the sun with a long sleeve shirt as I worked outside should help to simmer down the burn.. Greg put the bike rack on my car this morning, and I'm heading to the beach with the bike on the rack Thursday, a long sleeve shirt will be needed as well.   

Wednesday, I thoroughly enjoyed sleeping in late rolling out of bed at about 9:30.. and ran a couple of errands. We are working on a project alongside of our driveway, where for 30 years we have tended to alot of plantings of flowers, and our fair share of weeds.  In the last decade we have tried to abate the weeds by putting down bark n a thick layer surrounding the plants and pots.. Well, it has been very tough to keep the bottom under the bark from emerging on the top as you tended to the plants. So we decided to get rid of all the bark, and go for some kind of pea gravel. I pulled all of the lillies, birds of paradise plants out of the ground only leaving me undecided about the large sage which attracts hummingbirds as to whether I'll leave it in or pull it out. It expands pretty wide and trimming it would be a pain over the gravel..
      I scheduled a concrete guy to come by at 7:30 Thursday morning to give an estimate on our driveway which is perhaps 150' long and for a patio slab.. We had an estimate when we had our remodel done, but construction was good back then and the price was unreasonably high. Gregs not all on board, but he agreed to get an estimate in order to know.. but our driveway is pretty chewed up with cracks and so I'm pushing it to get done. Before we commit to the gravel in the large bedding area, knowing how wide we'd do the driveway would help if it can be done..  Wish me luck for a good price, or we keep going with the crackpot drive we have.

Well, time for a movie.. good night.

working hard...

I've probably framed 20 pictures in the last couple of weeks and been digging through photos for the ongoing photo wall for months... the project of the bathroom is done, but now Greg says it needs a coat of paint.. well, hey knock yourself out I say!  But the 9 pictures are on the wall. And I'm happy with them, which they all came from the fall trip to MN last fall. As Greg says, airline tickets $325., Hotel rooms/fuel $600, Shopping $250, memories Priceless! haha.. But it's my creation from my hobby....

Now it wasn't just any old hanging of a picture, which Greg is usually pretty anal about "perfection" in, but place 4 on the left and 4 on the right of this clock... and it turned into a geometry equation of major confusion from my point of view... I had a secondary plan but... if I wanted help, I had to compromise the control and really just hand the hammer and a nail when appropiate.. Shane did the marking on the wall as he called out the data.. cuz well, he's taller than I am, NOT because he was into the project! haha

 once the process was completed, this is what it looked like

there you have it, the bathroom has been progressing on the blog with new showerhead, shower curtain instead of closterphobic door enclosure, picture/clock hanging, and eventually a paint job.

Today I decided on the way home while dropping off some contracts at a vendors office that it was time for some spring planting.  So I stopped at Armstrong Nursery and took advantage of their 79 cent Petunia's which I picked up about 15 of them in purple, white, and a few pink and magenta.. I fell in love with this plant that was placed in a pot at the entrance and it only gets about 4 foot tall.. for being in a pot on our back porch it is perfect and the bonus is that it attracts hummingbirds..

Mandevilla plants that bloom year round

this is the space that is under construction.. we had 2 inches of bark before, it changes color and as plants needed to be trimmed back it would mix with the dirt underneath.. so I decided to scrape it all off, which was about 20 trash cans full over months of getting it done. And of course the weeds the bark originally would keep so hot they wouldn't come up, now are populating out of control.. so they have been dug up and or sprayed this past weekend.. and the plan is to lay down thick black paper after it's leveled and then do some kind of nickel size gravel/rock.. Most all of the plants in ground were removed, and it will be all potted plants except for a few we kept in ground.. but less high maintenance for sure.  And as you can see, the driveway is a huge need of demo and re doing, but it is also a bank vault of moola.. so we live with the rustic cracks as Shane calls them..

costco is a family sample fest...

Costco has been a numerous stops location for me this week. Cry-men-ee if the Friday Saturday crowd isn't triple the need to be amount of people, Reason being is that samples are abundant and the entire family structure comes to eat for free.. Now I myself am not a sampler, strange I know, but just not.. and so these family tree groups that walk four wide in the parking lot and two to three wide inside the store with their carts they ditch in the aisle as they mosey over to the sampler line to wait... Holy cow, some of us just want to get their stuff and check out before they celebrate another birthday... and by check out I mean the beautiful express self checkout line at the Lakewood Mall Costco... Yes once and awhile I do meet the $100 club while shopping at Costco and we have been known to buy some big ticket items here.. but usually I am the express line only have a few things.

In terms of my post yesterday, today I found those 9 frames at a specialty frame store, definitely think they are perfect for the space and look good with the large clock they will have between the four frames on the left and four frames on the right...  I have them laying spaced out on my living room floor and made a butcher paper template to test the spacing on the wall before we have to do any measuring.  For now they are laying on the floor as I want to hang them on the wall and that is going to be Sunday's job according to my master easuring man, Greg. So pictures are sure to be posted.   And then I will breathe a sigh of relief that it's done.. I would like to add that today I took along two pictures that are being hung to actually put them into frames of different coloring to test whether it worked or not..One of the employees at Aaron Brothers Art and Framing store walks over and asks if I need any help.. so I hold up the two framed photos and ask if they have a preference for the type of frame color with the pictures... He asks me "did you take those photos", "yes I did, from a fall color vacation", he says, "maam those are great photos", "why thank you".    Yes, I was pleased to hear his comment! 

Two shows that I really like to watch.. I'm not into alot of drama that can come with so many of them, and these two I tape and watch them minus commercials.
TLC: The Little Couple with Jen and Bill Klein. They are both funny, intelligent and adventurous people for living in a big people world. He is an entrepenuer and she is an NICU Pediatric Dr..  I truly love the way they are with each other, and can laugh at just about everything between them and are a perfect fit together as a couple.  He is a true prince looking after his princess.
STYLE: Bill & Guiliana.  He was the first winner on the Apprentice and she is an E! cable host. It's about their life together, some of their job scenario's, moving here and there, infertility, breast cancer. And they are a good fit together, he is the brains of the duo and she is the money spender and big time talker, but they are funny and I'm hooked on it. I am drawn to the kind of man that he is, as a husband in a take charge and yet calm demeanor with a huge sense of humor. She, I am drawn to because she is just a funny intelligent style ditz most of the time, but sincere and loves being Bills wife.  they make each other a huge priority.  He too is a true prince looking after his princess..  See a pattern here with the shows (?)

have a great Mothers Day to all of those moms that read this blog.

this week is productive..

This week was a mellow week of just what seemed like regular speed of days, nothing rushed or stuck in slow motion. You know how sometimes you feel like time is just dragging along and it's always "Monday" and the events aren't very interesting. Work wasn't anything out of the ordinary, even though it had a busy sense in that one of the major computer programs had a looming deadline of Thursday for shutting down for a week for upgrades. The getting ready for this was laid back and well planned out in my somewhat OCD organizing for it. No worries.. It was also a normaly difficulty to sleep much more than 4-5 hours and up feeling wiped out before even starting.

I attended a few baseball / softball games this week of the DeJong kids. Without doing Alpha at church this spring session, it has cleared the calendar for a couple of nights a week of meeting with people and it was just kind of what I needed.

A project I've been working on and am nearly done with is getting pictures printed and framing them of the siblings families. My family had recently been together for the intention of Shanes graduation but made sure that we did what we a complete family picture taken and of each family and then alot of random pictures. Getting the Symens side of the family has been pulling in the help of family and then waiting for the response. I was able to get a couple of the parents and his sister Kim from the reunion in OR last summer. So they are printed as 5x7 pictures in wooden rustic or colored frames in the den on tables.

We've done a makeover in the downstairs "guest" bathroom, also known as the boys bathroom. I'm now finishing it up after the boys did the work. Theres lots of earthy warm colors and one wall that was just blank. So I found a large clock at Target, and looked quite a view places for art work to put up. Home Goods, Target, TJ Maxx, Kirklands and yet nothing struck me as the coloring or type of framed picture I was looking for.  So the thought comes to me that I have alot of pictures from numerous trips of late that would compliment the new colors. I decided on the Fall trip that I took with Marlys last year, and for the whopping cost of $4.20 I have the Art..   And so I just got the (8) 5x7 and one 8x10 photos back and laid them out on the kitchen table, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out in the layout of the type of pictures and the coloring of them all . Now they all need frames and so tomorrow will be the hunt for them. I will wait to post a picture till there hung on the wall.. Not sure how long that will take.

Tonight I made Talapia and homemade mac n cheese,, it smelled yummy and it was.  but Shane gave it a try only to find out that the "eggs" don't get diluted enough in this to bake out and so he had a reaction to it and had no fun after a few bites... poor guy with his egg allergy which has gotten worse as he's gotten older just has such a small diet of options with variety.. His future someday wife will only need to know a few meals and no desserts ever for him.. and keep a good supply of benadryl on hand for his symptoms,   but wow it was good stuff and could only afford a few spoons full... Greg asked why and I told him it would clog his arteries.

Well, it's my bedtime.. goodnight

Sunday comes to an end..

I truly spent a lot of time this weekend motivated by a Costco coupon for 9cent pictures of 4x6, and also making 5x7 photos of Greg and my siblings.. My family has come together twice recently to do this and so I've been working with Greg side of the family to scrounge up a file to send via email. I then also had decided to print our feb Maui and the July family reunion pictures, some online, and others copied onto a flash drive to do at the store.. I ended up with other peoples pictures in my packet, or a missing 5x7, so quite thankful that today I worked 1100 reunion pictures down to printing 256.. Maui was well let's just say a lot more than that, but beautiful shots.. Next project is to book them to enjoy. We were invited to a birthday party today for Aunt Elsie who will soon turn 80 years old. She looks really well. It was good to her and see the women who from Leisure World are involved in each others lives with Aunt Elsie. Many of these women I know from past church, or neighbors of ours. Good to have a few moments to catch up with them... Many widows.. And then there were some family conversations with some catchup on life and kids..brothers Scott, Chad, friend Don Perris, and my cousin Randy.. It was a nice party and then we said our good byes. Well, ambien was taken early and it's kicked in... Another week lies close at hand...good night