Fall? And a big ol' house project.

You guys!!  I think Fall is almost here?!  September starts tomorrow, which means Fall to me!!  And our weather has definitely been feeling fairly Fall-y this past week.  The mornings have been crisp, and it hasn't been feeling humid at all!!  It's kinda wonderful, and I'm hoping it lasts.  And since it's been so Fall-y around here, I started getting really excited for official Fall! And with that being said, I already made my Fall Bucket List!  Yes, in August!  I'm just way too excited. Here it is:

Most of the items are pretty darn easy, because our Fall is already feeling pretty busy!  We both have a lot of work trips and there are weddings and baby showers to go to, so I wanted our list to feel pretty easy and do-able. A lot of it is just food and movies, so those are very easy!!  We have to find an Oktoberfest that fits into our few free weekends, because all of the Oktoberfest celebrations I'm aware of are on our busy weekends... so... we shall see what happens there.

Last Saturday Kevin's dad came over to our house and the two of them worked on our den.  Our den is a room that's is down a few stairs from our main level, and it's before you get to our basement (we have a split level house). So, that room has kinda been almost last on our list of house projects because it had a few projects that we knew would be big-ish.  It basically needs to be gutted... The ceiling is a drop ceiling with these acoustic tiles (made out of cardboard or something?), and the tiles were in really bad shape and starting to show their age (at least 30 years old?). That room also had track-lighting hanging from the ceiling, so that wasn't our favorite either!  We knew we wanted to rip out the drop ceiling and put in a normal drywall ceiling, and while we were doing that we figured we'd replace the track lighting with some recessed lighting. It's a big ol' project.  Kevin and his Dad started on it last weekend, and there ended up being a lot of wiring challenges (that happens with older houses I think...), but they're hoping they'll finish up this Saturday. And after the ceiling is up, then we can work on painting, and then we'll eventually have the carpet replaced too!!  This is why we were not in a rush to start this room :)  Haha.  Hopefully we'll finish by Winter.  I didn't take any "before" pictures of the ceiling/lights, but I found some pictures that had been in the house listing before we bought the house (so this is not our furniture, etc):

There's the track lighting on the left!  Again, this is not our furniture, etc.

You can get a pretty good look at the ceiling tiles here! You can't tell how beat-up they were or how much they were falling apart, but trust me they were in pretty rough shape. The previous owner really liked palm trees, as you can tell :)  

And amazingly enough, after we finish the den, the only rooms we have left are our bedroom (just painting the walls and the ceiling), and the outdoor screened room (some people call them Florida rooms?).  We've made a lot of progress on our house!!

Christmas in August, Kitchen Progress, and Fun!

I can't believe we're halfway through August!  I'm getting SOOOO excited for Fall though, because it's my favorite season ever and I have had enough of Summer now.  The bugs are in FULL effect now (August is always the worst...), and I get a mosquito bite if I'm outside for even like 2 minutes, plus the super gross cicadas are back and noisier than ever.

Last night we went into Philly to meet up with a bunch of friends at Timmy's apartment for our "Christmas" celebration!  We get together every year, and last year it became a "Christmas in July" celebration because we weren't able to meet up at the holidays, and then this year we couldn't even meet up in July so it became "Christmas in August", which isn't a thing. Haha :) Timmy decorated his apartment with Christmas decorations though, and I made Christmas cookies, and we had a White Elephant gift exchange. It was also a goodbye party for Sarah Fro, because she's leaving to go to Asia with her boyfriend until at least March.

Last weekend McGee and I finished a house project that has been hanging over us for like over a year!!  Our hinges on our kitchen cabinets were TERRIBLE, and badly needed replacing... The hinges were brass or light gold and the finish looked terrible, and they matched the knobs that had been there, but we very easily replaced the knobs with some hammered iron (black) knobs long ago, but we'd been unable to find hinges that would work with our old cabinets!  They are definitely the original cabinets from our 1955 house, and we purchased a few black hinge options that we thought would work, but NONE of them worked.  So, we tried that for a while and kept striking out, but then we saw this cool spray paint by Rustoleum that gives a "hammered iron" look (and it's black), and we took one set of hinges off and tried it, and it looked amazing!!  So it took a few weeks, but we took all the hinges off and painted about 4 coats on them, and then last weekend we finally put all of our cabinets back up!!  They look SO good with the hammered iron hinges!!  It really helps our kitchen look complete.
Here's a Before (from last year sometime when we hadn't quite finished painting the yellow in that corner. That painting has been finished for a looong time):

 Here's an After!!  The black hinges look SO good. And they totally look like hammered iron too. 

Last weekend we also went on a loooong hike around Valley Forge with Guinness, and then he was EXHAUSTED for the rest of the day!  He just slept all day after that. And on our Sunday night we drove to McGee's parents' house for a birthday celebration for Mo. It was a fun time!  And Sunday was also my parents' anniversary!!  Happy Anniversary to them!! :)

Here we were hiking around Valley Forge!! 

I am SO happy it's Friday... I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!! Love you all!

Drunkenness. And kittens.

This past weekend I flew down to VA to visit my friend Lindsey!  I hadn't been down to see her in quite a long time!  My flight landed pretty late on Friday night (I had to work a full day, so I landed after 10pm), and then we stayed up wayyyy too late chatting and catching up!  We were both super tired the next morning, but it was worth it :)

On Saturday afternoon we went to a winery in Williamsburg, VA, and we had such a fun tour and tasting!!  The tasting included quite a few wines, so were both feeling quite tipsy by the time we were done!  Buuuuut we weren't done there, because then we had lunch at their restaurant and split a bottle of wine.  So, then we were just plain drunk.  Buuuuuut we weren't done yet!  Because then we went to a party with some of Lindsey's co-workers/friends, and we continued to drink there! Lindsey's friend had made a huuuuuge container of rum punch, so we had some of that (it was SO strong!), and then we had dinner (soooo delicious!!), and then we went outside to play Jenga!  It was a really large Jenga game, and it was SO fun. Lindsey was smart and slowed down (or stopped?) her drinking at this point, but not me!  I was super dumb and thought I was still in college or something, and I drank a LOT for the whole rest of the night. Ugh, I drank WAY too much. I was definitely a drunken idiot, but I am happy to report that I somehow did NOT get sick (I really have no idea how...), and somehow (again, I have no idea how...) I didn't feel terrible in the morning either!!  I usually get THE WORST hangovers (and I never drink anywhere near that much), but I think my body was trying to give me a "free pass" or something since I'd been so dumb. I definitely didn't feel 100% the next day, but I felt WAYYYYYY better than I should have been feeling. So, I will gratefully accept my "free pass", and try to never ever ever drink that much in one day again.

These are cement "eggs" that the winery uses to ferment their wines!  I'd never seen these before!  

Me and Lindsey

Lindsey! 

Kizzy's husband Jason (and that's Kizzy in the purple shirt!  With the infamous rum punch!)

Kizzy! She's one of Lindsey's co-workers/friends

 

You can see how tall the Jenga game could get!  I have no idea how many games we played... 

Lindsey's on a ladder! 

This is Theresa scoping out her next move! 

On Sunday we went out to breakfast, and then we went back to Lindsey's house to play a few games of Yahtzee before I had to leave to go to the airport!  The trip flew by, and I hope I get the chance to see Lindsey again soon (and next time Lindsey can be the drunken idiot and I'll be the smart one!  We can take turns!  Haha)!

When I got back to Philly on Sunday, Kevin and I went to his sister Mo's house to meet the little kittens she is fostering!  They are too young to be adopted (only 4 weeks old!), so she is fostering them until they can go to their forever homes. They are soooo tiny, and so dang cute!  One of them is the runt of the litter, so she's seriously the smallest kitten I have ever seen in my life.  She's a spunky one too, so they named her Aria (from Game of Thrones). We had so much fun playing with them and cuddling them!!

Kevin holding a kitten! I think this was the bigger one (Rory), because Aria's ears were shorter than that... 

The rest of the week has been pretty chill, except work is TOTALLY killing us both right now. The past month or so has just been really awful at work for both me and Kevin.  So, I am job hunting like crazy, but nothing has hit yet.  I'm hoping that I either find something else soon, or we win the lottery (the lottery would be VERY preferable). That's all that's going on here!  I hope everything is going great for you!!

It's August Already!!

Wow, I can't believe it's August!!  August is usually the hottest month, but it also means that Fall is quickly approaching!!  I am SO excited for Fall.  I'm very over Summer...

So far, August has been very work-filled, so this post probably won't be too interesting... Haha :)  Last weekend, McGee went to a weekend-long bachelor party that was held in the Poconos.  The groom (Kevin Juliff) is super into NASCAR, so they all went to the Poconos to go to a NASCAR event with him.  They had an RV that they parked in the middle of the track, and spent the weekend hanging out and watching races. So, while McGee was hanging in the Poconos, Guinness and I had a nice quiet weekend at home.  I watched a bunch of movies, went on some nice walks with Guinness, and I put together a few puzzles!  I haven't done a puzzle in YEARS, and I forgot how much I enjoy it. It was a super relaxing weekend, and Guinness and I had fun hanging out.  McGee also had fun even though he didn't know anything about NASCAR!

Oh my gosh you guys, I woke up one morning while McGee was gone and walked into the kitchen and heard a loud clanging like something hitting metal, so I was walking around trying to figure out what it was, and it turns out it was a HUGE spider that had gotten into Guinness's water bowl and was thrashing around and making a clanging sound every time it rammed into the side of the metal bowl. You guys, it was HUGE.  And it was super angry that it was stuck in a water bowl.  So I of course was SUPER FREAKED OUT, so I started pacing around the house trying to think of the best way to handle the situation. I thought about dumping it down the kitchen sink because that was close... but then I decided that was disgusting and I didn't want that thing in our kitchen sink.  Then I thought about carrying the water bowl outside to dump it, but I realized there was NO way I'd be able to open all of the doors necessary to get outside without spilling the bowl everywhere, so that wasn't an option either. Then I realized the best option was flushing it down a toilet.  BUT, how would I carry the bowl to the toilet without the spider crawling out (or like JUMPING ONTO MY FACE??!!)?... So, more pacing around the house.  THEN I came up with the idea of putting a wet paper towel over it to kinda hold it in the water while I carried it to the toilet.  It worked SO well, and I was able to dump it in the toilet without any issues. And YES I got a picture of it, in case you were worried I didn't.  Keep in mind that Guinness is a big dog so his water bowl is huge.  And the body of the spider was HUGE (I got a great look at it when it was being dumped into the toilet) and it was really thick, which is why it was making such a loud noise when it hit the sides of the bowl.

It looks small-ish in the picture, but seriously it was HUGE. That's a big bowl that it's in. 

The day that McGee got back from the Poconos we drove up to Valley Forge (literally 5 or 10 minutes from our house) and took Guinness on a nice walk around Valley Forge!  It was a little hotter than we were expecting, but it was still really nice and there were so many people there with dogs! 

Last night McGee and I went to a movie!  We've been wanting to see The Big Sick, and we saw that a cool old theater near us was playing it last night at a good time, and we hadn't been to that cool theater yet!  The movie theater is in Phoenixville (about 20 minutes north of our house), and it actually has some cool history!! It was built in 1903, and it was featured in the amazing 1958 movie The Blob (starring Steve McQueen). There's a famous scene in the movie when The Blob is attacking the town, and everyone runs screaming from the movie theater... and this is that movie theater!  Pretty cool, huh?  The Big Sick was a really great movie, and it was so cool seeing the movie theater too!! 

Here's the inside of the theater!  So pretty. 

Here's the famous scene in The Blob! 

Here's a movie poster for The Blob. Simply amazing. 

I hope you've all had a great week!!  Congrats on making it to Friday!!  Have a fun and/or relaxing weekend!!!