Shopping Spree!

Ava went with her 4H puppy club -- Puppy PALS -- to the East Brunswick Mall for a walk around the mall on Monday night. It was great exposure for her and the rest of the pups. Afterwards, we went to Ruby Tuesdays (all the pups and people too!) for dessert. Ava did very well in the mall and she let me know when she had to go to the bathroom too -- she kept looking inside every store we walked by. She wasn't shopping for pink things, instead she was looking for a way out. So we left the mall and she went outside like a good girl. She did very well in the restaurant too except for a few barks. I'm just happy she didn't poop in the mall :-) !
She was one tired puppy when we came home...and that's a good thing.

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You're gonna shoot your eye out!

We pushed the backwall of the house 14 feet out on the first floor. This gave gave my Dad a bigger bedroom on the first floor along with room for his own walk-in closet, his own bathroom and a powder room in the hallway.

It also gave us another room behind the kitchen. We used to have a dining room and a small kitchen but when we remodeled our kitchen about nine years ago, we merged the two rooms together to give us a big eat-in kitchen.

When we had our little cape cod with walk-up attic, I held all my Creative Memories scrapbooking workshops upstairs. It was nice to have a separate area for my business. But with the remodel, we put all bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs so I needed a new space for my workshop area.

The new room behind the kitchen has lots of names. The floor plan calls it a family room. To the contractors, I call it a dining room. To everyone else familiar with my Creative Memories business, I call it my crop room/office. One thing I wanted was lots and lots of light so the electrician installed 9 recessed lights with silver canisters for even more reflection.

It's also big enough to serve dinner in there, so I wanted to have a nice fixture over my workshop/dining table. Since I have so much lighting from the recessed lights, I decided to go with a candle chandelier. And no, I don't mean a chandelier with lights in the shape of candles, I mean a chandelier with real candles.

I found two that I like at illuminations.com. I'm leaning towards the one on the left because it is bigger and will look better in the room.

When I tell people I am putting in a candle chandelier and they finally understand what I am talking about, the majority of people respond vehemently with: You're gonna burn down your house! It really is so similar to the way everybody told poor Ralphie (A Christmas Story) that he was gonna shoot his eye out.

So for those of you who think I will burn down my house, here are a few facts about candles and candle chandeliers. First of all, these are little itty bitty tea lights -- not huge fat pillar candles. Tealights are self-extinguishing and usually burn for 4 hours. If you buy good quality tealights like the ones available from PartyLite, they will burn clean -- i.e. no sooty residue will be left behind. One person commented that it will be hard to dust -- well, it won't be any harder to dust than any other type of chandelier and maybe even a little bit easier because those little glass votive holders come out and can be washed. And for those of you that say it won't give off enough light...don't forget there are 9 recessed lights in the room (with silver canisters for even more reflection) and btw, they are on a dimmer so we don't have to have blindingly bright light all the time.

And if you're still concerned, well, we do have home owner's insurance :-)

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No, it is not fun! :-)

I spent a few hours on Friday afternoon in my unfinished home with my friend Laura (whom Ed calls LCD) picking out paint colors. Laura thinks picking out colors, tile, and all the decorating sort of stuff is fun. I think she has a serious illness.

Actually, a lot of people must have that same illness because so many people have said to me -- oh, it will be so much fun to pick out your blah-blah-blah -- you can plug in paint, tile, cabinets, floor, whatever word you would like, here. It probaby wouldn't be so bad to pick out things and maybe I would actually have "fun" if I didn't have to do a whole house all at once! And it isn't our little itsy bitsy cape cod anymore with 1 bathroom and 2 bedrooms. Now it's a 4 bedroom, 3.5 bathroom colonial.

So let's see, so far Ed and I spent 2 days picking out bathroom tile. It took us an afternoon to pick out the tile for my Dad's bathroom and when we returned the next day, we changed our mind! Ugh! After we spent another afternoon picking out tile for our 3.5 bathrooms and a laundry room, the tile lady asked us what color grout we wanted. By that time I had a serious headache and really just wanted to go home so I asked, can't someone else pick that out for us? She said the contractor could.

On Friday most of the tile arrived at the house and I asked the foreman if anyone picked out grout colors for us. He said the tile store owner let some of the ladies on the sales staff pick it out -- I'm sure they have much better taste than I do...and they probably didn't have a headache either!

We spent an entire afternoon picking out bathroom cabinets for just the master bath only to realize that the place we were at was way out of our budget so we went somewhere else. At least at the other place, it went much faster...in two afternoons we picked cabinets AND countertops! Maybe we're getting better at this :-)

Yesterday, we spent an afternoon picking out ceiling fans. 4 ceiling fans for 4 bedrooms in about 2 hours. Thankfully the salesguy must have realized how fried I was by the end of that because he said to come back another day to pick out the hallway lights. I have to wait on the upstairs hallway light anyway since the sheetrockers seem to have covered up the fixture and we're not sure where it is anymore.

I am so glad that we did not remodel our entire kitchen too! Picking out a new floor for the kitchen wasn't bad at all since we just kind of copied what someone else had :-)

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Walk in the Park...Clove Lakes

The nice thing about living at Ed's parents while our home is being remodeled is that they are really close to Clove Lakes Park. Our home is near a park and you could say it is in walking distance but you either have to go under Route 1 or cross it and I'm not fond of either option. And also, it is a bit of a walk so by the time I reached the park, I probably would have enough "walk" in me to get back home and that would be it.

Ed has been trying to get home early enough so we can go for a decent walk in the park while it is still light.

It snowed last week and for once, it has been cold enough for the snow to hang around for awhile.

I have to admit that raising two yellow labs over the last few years has kinda spoiled me. I forgot how hard it was to take pictures of black labs :-)

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Stacks of Floor!

I stopped at our home the other day and there was a stack of wood in our new den. All our flooring has arrived. It's just sitting there warming up to a nice temperature before it gets installed.
Tiling starts on Tuesday!

Hmmmm...an odd bit of space

It seems like it was so long ago when we had a little cape cod but in reality, our little cape was intact up until November 19th--just two months ago! A little over two months ago, we were playing fetch with Ava in our empty 2nd floor because the backyard had a huge hole in it and this was the only open space we had.
Now we have a full "colonial" sized 2nd floor instead of a sloped ceiling 2nd floor. Our cape cod 2nd floor used to be totally open -- no walls except for half walls around the stairwell. Now we have lots of walls since we now have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms upstairs. And there is also now this odd bit of space around our stairwell.

I didn't quite realize that having bedrooms on either side of the stairwell also meant that the stairwell would be totally closed in on the 2nd floor. It made me realize that most stairwells have a "side landing" -- some sort of openess on the side of the stairwell and I guess that is partly to make the stairwell look open instead of what we have which is fairly closed in except for the top step where it opens up onto the landing.

So are there any suggestions out there to make this look more open? I did think about putting a mirror straight across from the top step but then knowing me, I'd probably be looking in the mirror and lose my balance -- and that's probably a bad thing at the top of the stairs.

In the meantime, the whole house is sheetrocked and spackled -- yippee! Hardwood floors are going in within the next few days and then it is tiling, painting and floor finishing -- not sure if that is the correct order but the end appears to be in sight!

Which is good since Ava may be wearing out her welcome -- so far her tally is a pair of shoes, a pretty glass lawn ball ornament and some sod for the backyard -- it's coming out of her allowance :-)

Don't Feed the Fish!

Since the sink blog post a few weeks ago, people have been asking what we finally decided on.

I have to admit that while I like the vessel sink idea, I probably would have gone with a traditional sink except for the fact that we saw the sink with fish. I really like fish. I would have gone with frogs or turtles if they had them. Ed really liked the vessel sink and while he would have preferred the "old oaken bucket" he was happy with the fish too.

Of course I had to ask other people their opinion and that was probably a mistake. I told my mil that we went with the vessel sink despite her telling me earlier that she didn't like them AT ALL. She is such a sweetie -- she immediately retracted her statement and said she didn't like the "old oaken bucket" and that she did like the fish. I don't know if I should believe her or not, afterall, they do call her Saint Alice for a reason.

My youngest sister was sweet too. She told me she thought the fish were tacky. When I told her it was too late, the sink had already been ordered she said she would never have told me she thought it was tacky if she knew I had already bought it.

In the end, I guess it doesn't matter who likes or does not like the sink because both Ed and I do.

The next decision was which countertop to put under the vessel sink. Because of the goldfish, it seemed obvious to me that we should go with something watery. I think this is the counter top we picked but I'm not positive of the product #.

I hope it is "watery" enough through the clear sink bowl.

One family member that will definitely like the sink is Harrison. He already loves the bathroom sink and I'm sure he'll love it even more with goldfish in it.

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Guide Dog for a Blind Dog

While our house is being remodeled, we're living with our in-laws who have two golden retrievers of their own. Aiden and Bentley are brothers from the same litter and are both 7 years old. Last year, Bentley lost his eyesight and is now completely blind. He used to play a lot but not so much once he lost his vision.



Ava is almost nine months old and is definitely an "energetic" puppy. We've already bought Lee a new pair of shoes, we owe Ed's mom a lawn glass ball and Ed's Dad some new sod for the backyard. And things like gloves and hats eventually move higher and higher up and out of puppyreach. She's definitely a loveable brat and while Aiden (also known as Mr. CrankyPants) doesn't care for her, Bentley loves to play with Ava and he even initiates playtime with her. We don't know if she realizes he is blind but she must know that something is different. When she plays with Harley, she is very rough and jumpy. She tones down her energy when she plays with Bentley -- it is sweet to watch the two of them play together.



Bentley wandered into our bedroom the other day and next thing I knew, he had managed to jump up onto our bed. Pretty amazing considering this is our bed from our home and it is higher than any of the other beds in the house and he has never been on it before. Next thing I knew, Ava was up on the bed lying nicely next to Bentley. She isn't allowed on the bed since she is a Seeing Eye Puppy but I had to take a picture before I told her to get off.


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We Passed!

Yippee! We passed all our inspections last Thursday. Friday they started insulating the house. What a difference that bit of fiberglass makes -- the house is definitely a lot warmer and it doesn't echo anymore. We passed our insulation inspection on Monday -- we seem to have a lot of inspections. Now we're ready for the next step...sheetrock!

Loads of sheetrock arrived on Monday -- I didn't know they came in such long boards! They popped one of the upstairs windows out and used a crane to get the sheetrock for the second floor in. It was nicely lined up inside the house waiting to go up on the walls. Sorry to Papa Scozzare -- the sheetrock is from National Gypsum, not USG where he used to manage a spackle plant. But he says it is still really good sheetrock so we have his approval!

Sheetrocking started on Tuesday and I'm hoping the next time I stop by the house, we'll have real walls up. It's so nice to be moving along again.

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Waiting, waiting and more waiting...

Our home is sided...almost...we're still missing gutters and the contractor doesn't like the way the seams are showing on the siding on the front of the house so I think they are going to rip some of it off and redo it. The 2nd floor over the bay window is also going to have different siding -- I think he called it cedar shake but I'm not sure. We're happy leaving it the way it is but I know the contractor wants to change it since he says it will make the house "pop".

But in the meantime, work has pretty much come to a halt while we wait for inspectors to come do an open wall inspection. Plumbing has already been inspected but I think we're waiting on electrical and maybe heating and cooling too. Unfortunately there are no inspectors available until January 7th! We've been waiting since before New Year's :-( So now we're falling behind schedule and won't be back in as soon as we had hoped. I do know that someone has been in the house -- I had left a bag of Christmas cookies in the kitchen and they were gone last time we looked so unless Santa stopped in for a snack, someone was by. The contractor said the plumber and heating and cooling guys came in to do some little things...I knew it couldn't be Santa since our Santa presents arrived in Staten Island and not Edison :-)

It's been cold but not too bad so we went for a winter walk at Sourland Mountain. Harley and Ava had a great time and we all slept well that night.