Something BIG

Something big is happening today in Denver, well, Centennial to be exact.  Today is the Grand Opening of IKEA!  This is good news for a few people who will need to furnish a new house on a budget.  In honor of the big day I decided to have swedish meatballs for lunch.

We Went Out Last Night

Just because we have a huge house project to work on doesn't mean we haven't been enjoying our summer.  July has been a ton of fun so far (minus a few unexpected vehicle problems--saved for a later post).

We kicked off the month with First Friday on Tennyson.  We met up with friends and family and enjoyed some drinks, music and art.  Josh bought a print from Jimmy Sellars.  We haven't framed it yet, but are excited to find it a home in our new place.

Irish Rabbit Stew

The next week we celebrated my cousin's 16th birthday at Red Rocks.  We saw Kenny Chesney and it was amazing!!  Seriously, I had a blast.  I love Red Rocks.

I also got to go out on the town with my good friends to see one night of the Colorado Burlesque Festival.  It was a fun way to spend an evening while Josh was out of town.  He went to Crested Butte for a bachelor party.  The guys rafted, mountain biked and enjoyed some fresh air.  Bachelor party = no pictures.

The next weekend was devoted to the girls.  One of my best friends, Gina, flew out from LA to celebrate her 30th birthday with myself and our friend Mariyah.  All three of us used to live together back in the day, so it was a ton of fun to spend time together.  Among the list of fun stuff we did: 

Ran a 10K in Keystone

Manicures and Pedicures at Tootsies

Lots of snacks including (sushi, cupcakes, pink berry, and poutine)

and

Drinks, Dancing and General Merry-Making

My sister Anna also had a birthday this month.  She came up to Denver to visit us and can take the title of "Our First Official House Guest."  We hit up the Underground Music Showcase (UMS) with several of our friends.  It was a blast and we saw tons of sweet bands.  A few of my favorites were My Gold Mask, Gauntlet Hair, and Fierce Bad Rabbit.  I also liked the mini tambourine I got during the Kissing Party show, however, I don't know if the people around me liked it very much.  Here are a few photos from the UMS to send you off with.  Note:  we were trying to fit in with the hipsters downtown, hence, Josh's speedo tank top.  Enjoy.

The music on the video is The Knew.  I had to use an older track because I don't have cool movie making software that lets me upload mp4's. . . yet.

Home at Last, kind of

We have been in a bit of a holding pattern on the house the past few weeks while we waited on the final plans and elevations.  The good news is. . . .we officially moved in!  This Wednesday will mark two weeks in the new house.  We have set ourselves up in the basement for the time being and it is working out well.  Our new washer and dryer arrived; the mother-in-law kitchen is up and running (thanks to a little help from my mother-in law :) ); we finally have cable and internet; I made a few updates to the bathroom (no more gold!!); and Josh has been working on getting a section of new fence up for the dogs.  He and my uncle installed the dog door over the weekend and it is working great.

Here is the fence progress so far.  We still have some finishing touches to add. (and apparently our only photo is blurry, sorry) The rest of the fence will go up after our neighbors harvest their vegetables for the year.  They didn't want us to disturb thier crop.

The dogs are excited to have some freedom again!  They were confined to the porch by a huge baby gate before the fence was installed.

Look ma, no gold!

I'll post more pics of our current living situation soon, inlcuding our sexy wood panelled bedroom.  Jealous??

"All or Nothing" must have been the motto when our pink bathroom was designed.  Even the light bulbs in the fixtures are pink.  I wondered why the lights were so dim.

We Get By With a Little Help . . .

from our friends {and family}.

This weekend was full of highs and lows.  After a full day of more demo on Friday, I looked at the state of our house and started to cry.  We are definitely in the stage of things "looking worse before they look better," and things were looking slightly bleak on Friday afternoon.  We needed to finish cutting the concrete in our basement for windows; there was about an inch of dust on the floor in every room; one of our trees was ran over in the backyard; weeds were taking over the front AND back yard; and our POD arrived--full of our belongings--and needed to be unloaded before Tuesday morning.

Thankfully, our family dropped everything a lent us a hand to get things under control.  My mom, dad, sisters, aunt, uncle and cousins spent the entire day sweating on our behalf.  Josh's parents also dropped by just in time for the unloading of the POD.  Great timing for us, bad timing for them--but it was appreciated.

Remember what our back porch looked like the day we closed on the house?

Here is what it looks like now surrounded by our family members after a long day of work.  Pretty strange, right?

So, why are we all sweaty?  What did we accomplish?  Let me show you.

We tackled pruning the front yard.  It was in rough shape and now it looks crisp and clean.  My mom and aunt tackled the torturous rose beds and put an end to the tiny weed trees sprouting up all over the yard.  See how good it looks now:

Below is how it looked back in April--even before the over-growth really started.

We also did some landscaping in the backyard.  The maple that was ran over during the concrete pour was cut down, along with a mutant aspen tree.  We leveled the dirt around the new hot tub pad.  The hot tub was moved from the old pad to the new pad.  We mowed the lawn, weed-wacked, and pulled/sawed down tons of weeds.  And after it was all said in done, things started to look a little brighter.

Below is the before shot from April.  Can you spot the missing trees and lattice?

Here is how the new hot tub pad looks now.

versus before (below)

My sisters spent some time putting together the swing for under the arbor.  We really appreciated it later when we took breaks.  We don't have many chairs floating around our construction zone.  On a side note--look at those grape vines!!  They are growing like crazy!

Another accomplishment included digging out the window wells for our new egress windows.  We had to dig-out four of these guys!  My uncle and cousin did two of them while we were in Vermont, and they did a lot of the heavy lifting on the other two over the weekend.

Josh cut the windows from the inside.  See how much bigger they will be when we get our replacements?  They are going to be ah-may-zing!

Sadly, we didn't get any photos of the mounds of dust created when Josh cut the concrete for the windows.  It seriously coated the entire floor.   We had to sweep the floors several times; mop the floors; swiffer the walls, hand-wash the walls, and mop the walls to prep the basement for moving all of our stuff inside.  It took my mom, dad, sisters, cousin and myself over an hour to clean--if not longer.  Strangely, it took considerably less time to unload the 16 foot POD.  Fifty minutes to be exact.  To speed the process, Josh had a great idea and cut removable access panel in the railing for the side door.  Cool, huh?  It is easily re-attached.  You would never know unless you took a hard look.

I can't thank everyone enough who came by to help over the weekend.  We are so grateful.

We accomplished so much on Saturday, in fact, we almost didn't know what to do with ourselves on Sunday and Monday.  We did little things like hook up the swamp cooler and hang new house numbers.  The only major step we took after everyone left was spending lots of money.  Josh and I finally bit the bullet and ordered our new kitchen cabinets (more to come on this later).  We also purchased a new washing machine and dryer.  They arrive the day we "officially" move-in.  It was exciting to make a few decisions and get things rolling.

Lobsters, Lakes & Libation

We aren't all work and no play these days.  We still get out.  We actually spent a long weekend on the east coast at the end of June.  It was a great trip and we got to see lots of Josh's family.  Our first night was spent in Connecticut with his grandma Lynn.  We had a fabulous lobster dinner--seriously, they had to be 2 lbs. each-and spent a few hours catching up.  It was great.

The main draw for the weekend, however, was Josh's grandpa Bob's 80th birthday party.  So we packed up and drove up to Vermont for the remainder of the weekend. 

On the Saturday before the main event, we had a big family dinner at Bob and Louise's house.  The weather was perfect and EVERYTHING was green.  It is so pretty up there!  Luckily the sky was also pretty clear and we were treated to a mini airshow.  Bob lives next door to an airport and there was a pilot practicing for an upcoming airshow in the weeks to come.  It was very cool.

The main event was Sunday--a party on a river boat on Lake Champlain.  Before we headed out for the boat, we had a leisurely breakfast, prepared by my handsome husband and his sister.  They made on-order omelette's and they were perfect.  We also spent some time blowing up balloons and preparing centerpieces for the boat.

The boat was beautiful and so were the views.  It was interesting to meet some of Bob's long-time friends and neighbors.  We also got to catch up with Josh's cousins, which might have been one of the highlights of our trip--the amazing strawberry shortcake we had for dessert was a very close second.

After everyone took off the next day, Josh and I stuck around to spend a little extra time with Bob and Louise.  They took us to Blueberry Lake for kayaking and swimming.  Afterwards we shared some small batch beers from Vermont and visited a nearby brewery for lunch.  It was extremely relaxed and the perfect end to our weekend on the east coast.

Gucci even took a few trips out of the kayak.  It was adorable.