What a busy holiday weekend!

Wow, we have had a super productive holiday weekend so far! I have done a LOT of painting, and McGee has finished a million other items from our to-do list. One of the many things that McGee did was switch out our hallway light! The light fixture that was there was very 80s and brassy (there's a lot of 80s brass around our house...), but we love the new light we picked out. 

The original light fixture... 

And our new one:

I've been working very hard on painting (I somehow even gave myself a few blisters on my hand from painting?). Our living room is painted (except for our accent wall, which will eventually be a nice blue color), and our halls are all painted now. All of the walls in our house were coated in primer by the last owner, so they were all white but starting to pick up smudges and dirt (oh the joys of having a dog...). Here are some pictures of the newly painted living room and halls:

I don't know how well you can tell in this pic, but the living room is a nice beigey grey color now. 

Ignore the boxes everywhere! That's stuff for our bathroom (lighting, sink, etc). And the wall on the right (that isn't painted yet) will be blue. 

Here's our hall (with the new light!). It's a darker beige-grey color. 

Here you can kinda see the difference between the two colors. 

McGee also got our bat house attached to one of our trees, and the biggest thing the McGee did this weekend (I told you he was busy!!) was he fixed a leaky pipe in our basement. This was something that HAD to be done before we head to CA, because the pipe wouldn't have been ok leaking for that long. Poor McGee had to make 3 trips to Home Depot, but he did an amazing job of fixing the pipe!  

There's our bat house! It's probably about 18 or 20 feet off the ground (they recommend at least 15 feet off the ground). 

Here's the pipe that McGee fixed! He had to cut it in a few spots and attach some stuff... I know nothing about it, but it looks impressive to me and it's bone dry now! 

Just over 2 weeks til our wedding!!

Oh my gosh, I can't believe our wedding is coming up so soon!!  We'll be flying out to CA in just about a week and a half. So, as you can probably imagine, we are BUSY!! We've been working on the house a lot, and also prepping for our trip out to CA. A lot of that prep the past two weekends has been figuring out a good boarding place for Guinness (we'll be boarding him for 12 days!!  Poor goober...). But, we've definitely found a great place now, and we both feel great about the facility and the people there. So, that's one HUGE thing off our to-do list before we tie the knot! :)

We've been working on the house a lot too!  We did a lot of yard work (again... ), and McGee got on our roof and cleaned the gutters and attached gutter guards to our gutters that didn't have them (which was about half of them). While he was up there, I was weeding our garden and I planted a cool flower (it's called Celosia) that we picked up during our trip to Home Depot. We also bought some paints for our living room and hallways, so we're ready to start painting soon (maybe this coming weekend).  And we've also purchased some stuff to finish off our hall bathroom, so we plan to work on that maybe this coming weekend too, or maybe we'll save that for after the wedding if this weekend ends up being crazy. There's so much work to do on this house!

Here's the cool flower! There's little yellow buds that will bloom soon I think... 

Another thing we've been doing a fair amount is going for walks over to the nature trail down the block from us! I swear, this nature trail has been the coolest surprise of purchasing this house. We had NO idea it was there until at least a few weeks after we moved in! All of the leaves are finally in everywhere, and the nature trail looks as cool as I thought it would! If you can't remember what it looked like leaf-less (from a post about a month ago), here ya go: 

This was the nature trail in mid-April... 

And here it is now: 

This past weekend we also stopped by McGee's work (Einstein Hospital) and they have a new statue out front that is SO darn cute and charming! It's Albert Einstein, just chilling on a bench. He looks so friendly. It's quite an impressive hospital, I must say... That's the ER that I went to a few years ago when I had a concussion after hitting my head on a pipe (whoops...).

Doesn't he look so cute and friendly? 

Well, that's about all that's going on here! Not a lot, but at the same time it's a LOT. We're so excited for our trip out to CA, and we're SO excited to get married of course!! I will be Erin McGee in just a few weeks! Whoa! 

Happy Mother's Day!

I hope everyone is having a very great Mother's Day! McGee just left to go over to his parents' house for an early dinner, but I'm not joining him because I caught a nasty case of Poison Ivy. It is not very fun... And I wasn't able to sleep much at all last night. Plus, it looks really gross, so I worry that I'd make his family lose their appetites :-(  The worst day of it was yesterday though, and I wasn't planning on going to the doctor or anything for it because my insurance SUCKS so I just didn't want to deal with a large bill right now. But it was definitely getting worse and worse as the day was going on, and while McGee and I were out running errands he kept looking at me (it was pretty bad on my cheeks, chin, and neck), and then he said, "Do you think maybe we should get you to a clinic or something?" and I was feeling pretty miserable, so I was like, "Yeah, that sounds good". And luckily we found a CVS right near us that has one of those Walk-In Minute Clinics, and the Nurse Practitioner there said I had a really bad case of Poison Ivy, so she put me on a heavy-duty steroid regimen that tapers down over 2 weeks. I had to take 6 pills yesterday and 6 pills again today, and I'm happy to say that I'm noticing an improvement today. One of my arms is still REALLY bad (it looks awful and gross... so I've been wearing long sleeves even though it's high 80s and really humid today), but my face and neck are doing a bit better. Last night they were soooo itchy though, so i couldn't really sleep (even though I'd taken 2 Benadryls and had lathered up in hydrocortisone cream). I've pretty much been awake since 3am this morning... so... it feels way later than 5pm right now.

BUT, enough of my complaining about stupid Poison Ivy. I decided I'd take some pictures of our yard now that we have a bunch of flowers and leaves! That will be a nice pretty post that seems fitting for Mother's Day.

Here's a bush with beautiful flowers that's right by our front steps. I have no idea what it's called, but it has some really bright fuchsia flowers! 

And here's a white bush (that seems like a different type than the fuchsia bushes), and another fuchsia one that isn't quite as healthy and full as the one by the front door. 

Here's a picture from our driveway of that same area. You can also see our plum tree, and the HUGE tree that is next to our house (that's the one we were concerned about before we bought our house, but the arborist said it's quite healthy and we just need to have it trimmed every few years). 

This is a picture from our driveway of the other side of our yard (you can see part of my car!). This side is just straight-up forest area, but it's awesome because it really blocks us from the road now that the leaves are in.

This is the back of our house. There are a bunch of bushes that seem like the same type as the fuchsia bushes in the front yard, but these are mostly red flowered bushes, with one bush that has light pink flowers. And you can see our screened room (that's behind the pink flowered bush)

This is a view to the left of the screened room (you can still see the pink flowers). There are some more tall trees that give us a bit of privacy from our neighbors, and you can see the retaining wall that will eventually have our BBQ grill and some nice chairs for lounging.

This is a view if you were standing on that retaining wall near our grill. You can see some more of our big trees, and you can see that they pretty much block the road. When the leaves are gone though (Fall and Winter) you can see all the way to Valley Forge National Park! 

And this is the view from our Master Bathroom window! I have no idea what kind of tree has those pretty white flowers, but I think it's quite a nice view. 

That's our yard! I tried to get all angles for you so you could really see the whole yard. And I apologize for my lack of knowledge about flowers and plants! I'll learn eventually I think. Our daffodils on the side yard have stopped blooming (they're my favorite type of flower, but they never bloom for very long!), and my marigolds that I planted are still alive and doing well. The white and purple flowers I planted (in the planter boxes) have pretty much committed suicide, but I'm still trying to save them. 

I hope you're all having a great day!

Our Busy Weekend

Last weekend was a busy one! I felt exhausted after it was over. But nowhere near as exhausted as McGee felt I'm sure, because he ran in the Broad Street Run on Sunday! It's a 10 mile race, and he ran it with his sisters. We had to be awake at 5am to drive into Philly, and the race started at 8am. I was terrible about taking pictures, but luckily McGee's mom was really good about it and she sent me some! We were able to see McGee and his sisters around the 3.5 mile mark, and then again after they'd finished. They all did so great! I'm sure McGee would appreciate it if I mentioned that he was the first one to finish out of the 3 of them... haha :)

Here's me and McGee and his sister Maureen (aka "Mo"). And yes, it was cold enough for a fleece that early in the morning! But it warmed up a LOT as the day went on. 

Here's a bunch of people running! The race went all through Philly. 

Here's a picture of McGee at the 3.5 mile mark! Luckily Mrs. McGee took this picture... Because I was too busy high-fiving McGee to be able to work my camera correctly! 

Here's Mo! 

Here's a great one of Mo, McGee, and Kathy (aka "Mook") after they'd finished the 10 mile race! 

And here's one of me and McGee's mom. We did an excellent job of cheering on all of the runners, if I do say so myself! It was a lot of fun cheering for everyone and giving everyone high-fives. And we ended up walking about 6 miles that day - so it's pretty much like we did the race too! Or not really... 

And here's McGee's Dad standing with the successful runners! 

Another big thing (well, sorta...) that we did last weekend was we finally changed out the cabinet knobs in our kitchen!  We still need to change out all of the hinges (as you can see in the pictures...) but other than that our kitchen is pretty much done, aside from the terrible task of ripping off all of the wallpaper and painting. We'll do that soon I think... We're going to get a few paint samples for a few rooms this weekend. It'd be great to start getting some paint on these walls! We also need a new refrigerator and dishwasher, but we hope those can wait until we've rebounded a bit from paying for the Air Conditioning install. The refrigerator is starting to act up a bit though, so please keep your fingers crossed for us that it hangs on for at least a few more months!  

Here was the before... Not only were we not a huge fan of the color, but they were also chipping and in very rough shape. 

Here's the after! They're black iron. We still need to change the hinges, but we have to find some that are the right size.

I tried to get a good up-close image... But it's hard to see because of the weird lighting (I probably should've taken the pics during daylight hours... Whoops) 

Here's the stock photo of the knob, so you can see it more clearly. It does look a bit darker than this, but not quite as dark as it looks in the pictures I took. 

I think this weekend we're going to do MORE yardwork and work on those terrible vines that are trying to kill our trees, so I'll take lots of pictures outside! We have lots of beautiful flowering bushes (I have no idea what any of them are...) so I'll take pictures of those too. All of our trees are finally getting leaves! It's making it so beautiful, and giving us lots of privacy from the road and our neighbors. 

I hope you all have a great weekend! We're almost there!