MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! I hope everyone had a a wonderful day! We spent a fantastic week in Farmington, and, as usual, it went by way too fast.
We made the long drive back to McKinney on Christmas Day and will spend a few days here before heading out to Alabama to visit our friends Brian & Stacey and their new baby girl, Shelby. We can't wait to ring in 2007 with them!
Hope you all are enjoying your holiday. Kitchen pictures are coming soon!
Steph & Tim
Just wanted to stop in and say hello! Thank you for all the great feedback on our Christmas card and letter! We are so glad y'all enjoyed it.
Tim and I just finished painting our kitchen (hooray!) and are set to drive to Farmington tomorrow! I am excited to be home for Christmas and to see my family and my friends. I can't believe Christmas is only a week away. The weather has been so nice here in Dallas that it hasn't even felt like December. But I am almost completely done with our shopping (notice I say "OUR" shopping) and it feels great to not have to rush around at the last minute for gifts.
I will post pictures of our kitchen once we get back from New Mexico, because I want to have all of the outlet covers and such on before I show everyone!
I hope everyone is enjoying the season! Take care of yourselves and your loved ones. We'd love to hear from everyone, so if you get a chance give us a call or send us an email stephandtim@hotmail.com.
Happy Holidays!
Steph & Tim
TaDa! Introducing our first painted room - The Blue Bathroom! We finally got the light fixture back up and my wonderful husband cleaned it up and set out our accessories! I love it! In case you love it too and are inspired to paint a room of your own the same color it is Palace Silver by Ralph Lauren, purchased at the Home Depot. It's difficult to see from the photo but it is a metallic paint. Tres chic!
Hopefully we will paint some more rooms before too long. We'll keep you posted!
P.S. Go Gators! Tim is super excited that they are in the BCS Game!
Yesterday was a chilly day here in Texas! It seemed to come out of nowhere, but it was fun to see snow on the ground!
We hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving! We have so much to be thankful for this year and we were really happy to be able to spend the holiday in Farmington with family. I can't believe it's already December! Just a few more weeks until Christmas...
On that note, I better get going to do some Christmas shopping! Thanks for reading our blog. I'm having a great time writing it and would love to know who has been visiting. Leave a comment or send us an email!
Take care and stay warm!
Mrs. O
P.S. Pictures of our newly painted bathroom are coming SOON! We just need to put up the light fixture and I will snap a few photos. Stay tuned!
After a long week of repairs, we were fortunate enough to have our dear friend Megan come to town since her boyfriend's soccer team was playing in the MLS Cup in Frisco! It was so good to see her and spend some time with her since she lives on the East coast and we don't get to see her too often.
We have to take a break from housework at some point, so I thought I would share some of our non-house stuff with y'all too! Enjoy!
That is the question I probably should have asked my husband when he told me sewage had overflowed onto our front yard. I can only imagine what my face looked like when he told me. But before I go into detail about all that, let me start from the beginning....
ONE WEEK BEFORE THE MESS (Friday)....
I was going about my business cleaning the guest bathroom toilet and flushed it several times to flush away the cleaning solution. Well imagine my surprise when I look down and see a pool of water on the floor that appears to be coming from the base of the toilet. Uh oh! This does not seem like a good thing....Well, I will try not to worry about it too much and will wait until Tim gets home in a few days and let him figure it out.
TWO DAYS LATER (Sunday)....
Over the course of the next few days, the master bath toilet decides it doesn't want to flush anymore. Despite fierce plunging (I think I burned 300 calories plunging that thing) it would flush a little and then gurgle back at me. Gross. Thanks goodness Tim will be home tomorrow...
MONDAY BEFORE....
Tim comes home! Yay! Poor guy can barely get in the door before I bombard him with information about how our house is falling to pieces. Guest bath is officially out of commission and master bath is "sort of" working, but still gurgling and requires plunging several times a day. We make it work....for now.
TUESDAY....
Tim is so proud of the fence he fixed that he decides to become Plumber Tim and attempt to fix the guest bath toilet. I would prefer to call a plumber but he is persistent, so I will let him have at it. After disassembling the toilet, he replaces the wax ring (who knew that was under a toilet?) and puts everything back together. Unfortunately, the toilet is still leaking...
WEDNESDAY-FRIDAY....
Over the next few days we make a million trips to Home Depot (they should know us by name by now). Our purchases include:
*an accordion plunger
*a toilet auger
*a thicker wax ring
*some plumbing contraption Tim rented (SOOOO glad we didn't have to buy that thing)
None of these things fixed our problem. I'm really thinking its time to call a plumber at this point.
FRIDAY NIGHT....
Tim heads out to the front yard with a head lamp (he looks like a coal miner) and a fishing pole. Last time I checked we didn't have a lake in our front yard, so I ask him what he is up to now. He is going to check the pipe that is capped in our front yard. He pulls out a soda bottle and some other trash, but still not sure what the problem is.
Tim decides to enlist the help of our neighbors, Mark and Casey. Lucky for us, Mark is awesome and knows exactly what the problem is. Mark and Tim put a hose in one pipe to figure out where the clog is. This is where the fun begins! Tim comes in and tells me that sewage is everywhere in our front yard. SAY WHAT????? Ew, ew, ick, ewwwwww!!! I am scared and vow not to go into the front yard until its cleaned up. Unfortunately, Mark tells us that we have a broken pipe and will have to dig a monster hole in our front yard to replace it. Since they can't do that at 10pm on a Friday night, the project will have to resume in the morning.
SATURDAY....
The digging begins and after a few hours we have a nice deep 4 ft. hole in our front yard. From there it is smooth sailing (or at least it seemed that way from my view from the house!) and Mark helps Tim replace the pipe and Tim fills up the hole so well that nobody can tell it was ever even there!!!
So, long story short, my husband can now add plumber to his resume because he did such a good job fixing this big problem (with a lot of help and support from our incredible neighbor, Mark!) and saved us a TON of money by not calling a plumber when I originally wanted to. If anyone ever needs any plumbing supplies, come and see us because we now have a bunch of toilet de-clogging products that we didn't even need to begin with! Also, I'm sorry I missed the photo of the big hole in the yard. They filled it in before I could grab the camera :o( I'll be more prepared next time!
Happy flushing!
Hello everyone! We are so excited to use this site to share our new home with you!
Let me give you a little back ground of how we ended up in McKinney...
Tim and I had been looking for the perfect place to live. That "perfect place" had to have affordable living, access to a major airport, warm weather, fishing and hunting for Tim, and shopping and a small town feel for Steph.
After spending the first part of the summer in Oklahoma City (and considering making OKC our permanent home), we talked to some people who lived in the Dallas area, so we began doing our research. Tim discovered McKinney and was able to make a trip down here while I was back home. He loved it, so we decided to take a trip to McKinney together when I got back into town.
Well, as luck would have it, as soon as I got back to OKC, Tim was traded and we had to pack up and move to New Hampshire. Luckily, several of his teammates were from Texas and they sold us on moving to the Lone Star State. The beginning of September we made our way to McKinney (sight unseen to me!) and began our house search. It didn't take long - we took the first house our realtor showed us and we closed on Friday, October 13th (it's a good thing we aren't superstitious!).
So here we are and we couldn't be happier about our choice to make McKinney our home. It's a beautiful, little community filled with warm, friendly people. Our home will be a work in progress for some time, so we will be posting before and after pictures as we go and sharing all of our adventures with you along the way! We hope you enjoy this site - I know we are going to have a blast creating it!
Lots of love,
Stephanie & Tim
