New kitchen!

Some before and after shots from our recent kitchen remodel. Jim and his friend Chase painted the kitchen last week before my dad and mom flew in from Salt Lake City. My dad and Jim laid the tile for the floor and the backsplash. The only before shots I have of our kitchen were during our walk-through before buying the house.

The picture below is before.

And these are from the other side of the kitchen.

I love my new kitchen. Can't wait to get cooking :)

Thanks dad! Thanks Jim!! Thanks mom!!!

Oh and here's a close up of the backsplash... It has 3 different colors of glass tile and two different types of stone.

I've been blessed with a father that is handy and doesn't mind spending his vacation working his butt off and a husband willing to learn and help my dad with everything he needed. I'm a lucky girl!

How to Hack Your PC

Yesterday, I had occasion to put the hardware in computer hardware. It started when I needed to purchase a new video card for company use in our internet training studio.

Such a thing normally wouldn't be problematic in the least, but this upgrade needed to be performed on a slim desktop tower PC, which I've always had trouble upgrading because they require cards with special dimensions. Thankfully, I found a superb card at a reasonable price that included a mounting bracket made to fit slim tower PCs.

On bottom is the normal bracket, a skinny one that's far too wide for the slim tower. On top is the special bracket; much less wide, but taller to compensate. I went about swapping the brackets and looking ahead to the PC.

However...

The thick bracket made for this kind of PC was too tall vertically to fit. And...

The skinny traditional bracket was much too wide to fit. This is where other hardware had to be brought into play.

Namely, a hacksaw.

The hacked-off skinny bracket was exactly as wide as the card itself, and thus also the same width as the specialized slim tower bracket.

I found that I also needed to modify the case a slight bit as well, in order to have room for the VGA connector to attach. I made a cut with the hacksaw to create a thin slot...

Then folded the tab outward so that I could still utilize the screw to attach the cover to the computer case. Lastly, I put it all back together and attached the VGA cable.

Everything turned out fine in the end, even though it's not really ideal. The real lesson here is that I'll make sure we never again purchase another slim tower, they're just too much hassle unless you take the time to move them over to a traditional case (and upgrade the power supply while you're at it...) or are able to find the specialized upgrade parts that actually fit.
Thanks for reading!

Christmas 2009

Christmas was WONDERFUL this year. Had a lot of fun despite not being able to go home to Utah to see my family and friends there. Jim and I spent Christmas Eve at his grandparents' house where we played THE BEST pinball machine that belongs to Jim's uncle and aunt. There were tons of little kids which is always nice to have around Christmas. It was cute watching them open their gifts. On Christmas day we headed over to Jim's mother's house where I made them German pancakes for breakfast (yummy!) and we opened gifts. That evening we headed back over to Jim's grandparents' house for a delicious turkey dinner. It was very enjoyable.

We decorated our tree right after Thanksgiving, I couldn't wait to put it up. We did have some concerns that Miss Macy would try to chew and/or shred the tree but she left it alone. Only a few incidents of her excited tail wagging knocked ornaments off (none broke!!).
My mother was very sweet and sent us her nativity set. I did have to patch the roof with some new moss but it looks fine now. I did have one incident of being klutzy and burning my finger with the hot glue gun though. Had a decent sized blister on my finger for over a week. I'm going to say it was all worth it though! Thank you again mom!!

Jim was wonderful and decorated the outside of our house beautifully. He also installed the garage door opener with assistance from his grandpa. BEST CHRISTMAS GIFT EVER! Thanks honey!


Last but not least, here is our little monster. She's gotten so big! We had her fixed last week. Her recovery seems to be going well. We're a little worried about some swelling though so I'm taking her to the vet tomorrow to check on that.

Here is the video of Macy opening her gift. She's so adorable. I think she liked destroying the box more than the gifts in the box. Oh well. Easy to please.

Home Improvements!

We wanted to show some of the many home improvements that we were able to do around the house with the help of Lauren's father, Dale, during the trip that he and Jennifer made to see us (and the puppy, of course)!

The first major project was to repaint the entire living room, main hallway and entryway, and one of the bedrooms. The living room and hallway areas mostly had scuffs and other imperfections (where pictures and curtain rods had been hung and later repaired, for instance), and the bedroom had more of the same and was a light blue that we didn't care too much for. Luckily, the previous owners left us a bucket of paint for nearly every room in the house, so getting a color match was a breeze.

After the paint dried, Lauren's decorating skills went to work. She and her mom, Jennifer, did a fantastic job shopping and found both a bookcase and mirror that matched the living room décor that we had already. They even found a pair of lamps that went with the wrought iron look of our coffee and side tables. I was very impressed.

Here is a quick picture of the formerly blue room, now home to our bookshelves and other odds and ends!

Next up after the painting was some electrical work. Dale showed off his skill in tracing down voltages and putting in switches, and even hung a brand new ceiling fan in our bedroom. It helped solve two problems we were having; the bedroom didn't have a light fixture that worked via the switch at the door, and it meant that we could pack up the floor fan that was previously in our bedroom and get it out of there! Bravo!

One of the last projects that Dale completed before heading home was to help us wire and mount some new lighting fixtures in the hallway and dining room. Lauren once again came through on the decorating front and showed that she knows exactly the look she wants to create and is able to find items to make it happen. Below you'll find the dining room light fixture followed by the hallway fixture, with one more (not pictured) still to wire and mount.

That's all for now, but the decorating work has been a real work in progress the past few weeks. As soon as we're able to wrap up some of the other projects that Lauren's parents were kind enough to help us start, we'll be back with another update. Thanks for reading!

Miss Macy:

As promised, here are some pictures of our puppy. I will be uploading wedding/honeymoon pictures soon! Enjoy.

Busy busy...

Jim and I are now officially married. We got back from our honeymoon a week ago but have been busy moving and taking care of our new puppy to write. I will start posting pictures soon of the honeymoon, puppy and wedding (as soon as I get them). We're planning on having an open house in Cincinnati on August 15th. Invitations will be in the mail soon.

A House!!

We have great news. We're buying our first home!! We'll be closing the beginning of July (before the wedding) and moving in at the end of July (after the honeymoon). July is certainly going to be a very busy month for the both of us. Here are some pictures of our place. The pictures were taken with the tenants still in the home so pardon their children's mess!

Front

Back

Kitchen (and Jim!)

Living Room

Family Room

Master Bedroom

Second Bedroom

Third Bedroom