"Wicked" Pandora Station

My little lady LOVES broadway musicals. My poor husband is outnumbered.

I am officially the worst blogger.

I've had some long breaks from blogging before, but I'm pretty sure this one takes the cake.  I promise you though, there is good reason!  Not only have we been kicking butt on the house during the week, but we've also been spending the weekends with all of the wonderful people that we love and missed over the last two years! (If we haven't spent a weekend with you yet, it's not that we don't love you, or that we didn't miss you, it's that we're saving the best for last!) 

I'm going to spend the rest of this post sharing pictures from our fun adventures over the past two months.  However, I have to preface this by saying that I wasn't the best at capturing every little detail this summer.  Sorry.  And most of the pictures are of the new best thing in my life little Lydia Hutchinson (so sue me, she's an adorable baby).  Check back for updates on each and every room in the house as the night progresses!  Happy Labor Day!

We spent a long weekend with Colin's sister Kristy and her husband Aaron, and the only pictures I came away with were of their adorable little hedgehog Oxford.

Kristy made me this sweet hat.  And I'm sorry I made you so jealous wearing it while holding that adorable little animal.

Let the Lydia show commence:

Sure there's a baby now, but we're all still the same crazies.

Renovation is more fun with friends!

This weekend our dear friend George drove up for a visit, and we put him straight to work!  I can't express enough what a huge help it was to have some more manpower to get us through the end of the demolition.  After the "hey, hi, how are you" moments had passed, we busted out the mini sledge hammer and got to work on the rest of the tile in the entryway and in front of the fireplace.  This is one of my absolute favorite things, but since the boys were so much more efficient, I decided to finish scraping the back room instead.

The finished fireplace demo.

The boys working on the entryway

Since we're replacing 13 doors in the house, and hardware can get expensive, we decided to try and spray paint what we already had to match our bronze fixtures.  I only took a picture after I applied the final coat, so I'll be updating this section later today after I finish with the sealant.  It worked great and saved us a ton of money!

The last thing we did for the day was finishing priming all of the door frames (we're also saving those since they're in pretty good shape and it'll save lots of $$).

George working hard!

Since the boys worked really hard all day, we headed to the Bremerton Brewfest for the rest of the evening!  I volunteered to be the DD (of course), since these two have long awaited a beer drinking reunion (and I don't like beer).  Ultimately, it was a little bit of a letdown.  The "commemorative beer cups"  were small, plastic, and paled in comparison to other cups we've gotten at brewfests before.  The lines were long and there were no food vendors, so the restaurants along the streets were selling hamburgers and hot dogs over the fence.  It seems super silly unsafe to me to have a beer festival without food, but it is Bremerton I guess!  The highlights were definitely getting more information on local breweries (including some from Poulsbo!), and catching a glimpse of Colin's future ship, the USS Stennis, after taking a wrong turn and ending up at the base! :)

The first beer -

The last beer.

After only being there a short time, 10 vendors had run out of beer, and the lines were getting longer and longer, so we decided to head back to a local bar in Poulsbo to get food and end the night.  After our stint at Tisley's Europub, these boys got back to what they do best - eating tots, drinking beer, and playing video games!  What a successful weekend long reunion!

Obviously, after the previous days excitement and hard work, we took Sunday morning nice and slow.  Once we had gotten George on his way back to Portland, Colin tried his hand at cutting the tiles for the fireplace with our new tile saw.  I think it came out perfectly, and I can't wait to lay them today!

We had initially chosen these pretty expensive accent pieces (almost $3 a piece!) for this area, but after a great suggestion from a friend, we looked into buying a sheet of smaller tiles used for back splashes and bathrooms, and cutting it up to make our own.  It worked out great and saved us a bundle!  Not to mention we love these accent pieces better than the ones we had originally chosen, and because they were netted together, we only had to use scissors to get those cuts perfect :)

Our floors should be getting here today (yay!!!!!!) and thus begins a long week of getting tile and laminate done.  My goal is to be done with all of this and on to painting doors and moulding by the time Colin's mom comes to visit the first weekend in August!  Wish us luck!

It doesn't matter to Lao Tzu if it's covered in cling wrap, a couch is still for napping!

Oh how I've missed you, Seattle!

From the ferry

Yesterday was an excellent day as far as getting out of the house goes!  Waaaaayyy back in May when we were talking about how we were going to spend our second wedding anniversary, we decided it would be fun to go back to the place where we had our first official date, since we would be so close to Seattle.  Of course, as you all know, we were not close to Seattle on our anniversary, and had to play the whole thing by ear.  Because he knows how much of a sap I am for stuff like this, and it seems we'll have a pretty constant stream of people coming and going around here for the next two months, Colin decided that yesterday would be the perfect day to fulfill our initial anniversary plans!

Excited to have made it!

So we got dressed like normal people (not in paint clothes), and headed towards the ferry on Bainbridge Island!  I have to say, I don't think I really realized how close Seattle is until we drove out there.  Having only taken the Bremerton ferry before (which takes about an hour usually when all is said and done), being able to see Seattle from the ferry before ever leaving was pretty amazing, and it only took around a half an hour! 

Since there was no real reason to drive, we decided to walk on and enjoy the sights.  The whole ferry seemed to be filled with happy people and happy dogs yesterday.  It was pretty great.  I spent most of the time just being excited to be back :)

The Pike Pub and Brewery

Once we were on land again, we walked over to Pike and did the mandatory walk around before ending up at the brewery.  It's funny to think that when we were first there Colin had only been 19 for about a month or so, and neither one of us could drink.  This time, we thoroughly took advantage of their amazing happy hour!  We ordered a huge chunk of smoked salmon with cream cheese and rye bread, steamed clams, garlic shrimp, and crab and artichoke dip.  Did I mention that they were all around $6 each?  It was a ridiculously good deal and not a thing was short of delicious.  Needless to say, we pretty much devoured it all - Colin taking the cake by single-handedly eating roughly 40 beer boiled clams stomach ache free. 

The carnage

After we packed up what we could of the leftovers, we headed back towards the ferry and back home.  It was an exciting, spontaneous adventure that I'm glad we didn't just say we were going to do and forget about.  As far as the difference between now and 2006?  2006:  I ordered the cheapest, seemingly easiest thing to eat as to make sure not to make a fool of myself, and took at least two bathroom breaks to make sure I still looked ok.  2011:  We both ordered a million things off of the appetizer list with no embarrassment, and just comfortably enjoyed a day out together!

Successful day in the city!

Sad Headache Sunday and Continued Improvements

 Today was sort of a sad headache kind of Sunday.  After getting some things done around the house, I got a killer headache and spent the rest of the night in my hipster shades hiding from light and sound :( 

But before the devastating pounding started, we got some really great things accomplished and the living room area is nearly done!  Yay!  Not only did we replace every outlet and light switch in the living room and entry way, but we also installed the new chandelier in the entry way, unpacked our bathroom stuff (finally) and organized the master bath, and installed a new doorbell!  It was definitely a slower day around here, but as the smaller projects that we're able to do get fewer and fewer, it's nice to be able to just sit back, watch some Adventure Time, and relax with our cats for a while. 

Here's the photographic evidence of all of our hard work:

The old entryway light fixture that seamlessly combined painted gold and silver plastic, wood paneling, and spray painted black aluminum.  It was definitely one of a kind.  It also hung really low into the entry way for some strange reason.

Our new beautiful light fixture that was actually (and surprisingly) much easier to install (lets face it, Colin really did all the work on this one).  It turns out we learned from the disaster yesterday in the dining room!

Our old yellowed, mysteriously sticky, cracked doorbell.

Our new sleek white doorbell that plays a fancy little tune!

Of course he spent most of the day doing extremely manly things like drinking protein shakes, lifting double his body weight on the bowflex, and hunting giant elk.

Extreme kitten relaxation.

We're more actively researching tiling the entry way and in front of the fireplace (aka watching a million videos on youtube), and hopefully will start on ripping up floors this week.  It's sort of a daunting task, but just knowing that we're almost done with the big stuff for a while is motivation enough!

The end of an era :(

Last night, the magic died.  The last Harry Potter film is finally upon us, and we celebrated accordingly!  At the last minute, Colin and I decided to make an impromptu visit to Portland to watch with friends since he got Friday off from work (yay!)!  This is the last film, and the last time we can wear our shirts without looking like crazies, so we figured it was more than worth it :) 

After a three hour drive we (of course) headed to buffalo wild wings before the big movie with some of our besties! (I also reunited with my baby!)

If my old girl would make it up to WA we wouldn't even need to find a truck!  She could haul everything for us!

My first attempt at getting a picture of the boys.  Apparently saying "this is for the blog!" doesn't elicit the exact response I was looking for :)

Much better :)

The Winging Beauty!

After we had our wing fill, we headed to the movie!  For the first time ever, we didn't have to wait in a huge line outside, they let all Harry Potter moviegoers into their auditoriums to wait!  It was a much better system.  Much warmer.  After finding seats together, we conjured up some free popcorn from Yahoo!  with our wands.

After two hours and five minutes of pure emotional roller coaster, we gave our final review:

I'd say that was one successful conclusion to a Harry Potter lifetime of fun.  Now, please excuse me while I go read all seven books again and cry about how it's ended too soon. 

PS
Um, did I mention there was an ever so short teaser trailer for The Dark Knight Rises?  Yeah it was pretty much the most epic moment ever and I can't wait until Summer 2012!!!!

Nature Walk and History Time at Devil's Hopyard

 Hello, my name is Colin.  Tonight, I'm giving Kristin some time off.  She's worked so hard on her blog and I don't want her to get overwhelmed.

Today, after weeks of prodding, I finally got Kristin out of the cave (our hotel) and got her to go on a hike with me. We get out sometimes, but it's been tough to get here out into nature ever since our run in with ticks at the beach.  We went to a really great state park called "Devil's Hopyard" about thirty minutes outside of Waterford, CT.  The park is known for a really beautiful waterfall and several unnaturally large potholes indented into the large granite boulders covering the landscape.  You're probably wondering where the name for the state park came from.  It certainly is unusual and there are two theories about its origin.

The waterfalls from above

 The first theory says that many years ago, when the countryside was countryside and not suburbia (seriously, in Connecticut you can't get away from people, even the access road into the park is lined with houses and power lines), there was a small farm which made its money by growing hops for a local brewery.  Apparently, this "hopyard" was quite well known by the locals and for many years one farmhand, Dibble, was the sole tenant of this patch of land.  Logically people coined the phrase "Dibble's Hopyard" and used it to reference that general part of the countryside.  Like a classic game of telephone, the name Dibble evolved into Devil and so came the modern name "Devil's Hopyard."  Now, this seems like a reasonable story, but I think the second theory is a little more believable.

The second theory is told as follows:  Many, many years ago (probably around 1692), the Devil - complete with horns, cloven hooves, and that ugly balding tail - emerged from a large molten fissure in the Connecticut hillside.  You see, He intended to come up near Salem, Massachusetts to check in on his newly recruited witch clan but missed his mark.  This meant for a pretty long walk, one he hadn't planned for, so he was already pretty pissed.  He started heading in the direction of Salem when he stumbled upon the large waterfall that marks today's state park.  As the devil tried to cross over the falls, he lost his footing and dipped his tail into the clean, cold, Connecticut water.  Now in case you didn't know, the devil hates getting wet.  Hates getting wet!  He was furious. Smoke started coming out his ears, his horns started glowing red, and he proceeded to have a full-on devil tantrum.  With his massive cloven hooves, he stomped all over the Connecticut countryside leaving unnaturally large hoof prints, and when his anger peaked, he hopped from boulder to boulder indenting the rocks with his rage, forming the potholes we see today, and hence the name "Devil's Hopyard."

It's pretty obvious that the second theory is probably correct, but there will always be skeptics.  Either way, these days the park is a really great place to spend an afternoon.  I've been lucky enough to visit in both early spring and summer and both times, the scenery has been astounding.  I only wish I could see it during the turning of the leaves.  Kristin was a really great sport during the whole trip even though the state park wasn't immune to the tick epidemic that seems to plague Connecticut this time of year.  We spent about two hours hiking the trails and snapping some nice forest pictures.

Here's a nice mushroom ball.

We weren't up for the steeper hike to the "Devil's Oven" due to our limited foot wear - one of the side affects of living in a hotel.  Though, we were able to snap a picture of where we expected the oven to be through the trees.

"Devil's Oven" - either where the devil cooks his soul pizza's or where emerged from.

All in all, the day was a really nice way for Kristin and I to spend some time together away from the hotel.  The weather was perfect for the trip and we were able to see some really beautiful facets of New England.

Flower we found and picked (sorry bees)

There was also a really nice stream in the park that made me wish I had my fishing gear (and a license), but just seeing it was enjoyment enough.

Quiet stream - the cherry on top

Embarrassing confessions

I have a confession to make.  I am a celebrity "novel" junky.  I've read it all from Perez Hilton to the Kardashians and let me just say, some are totally worth it, while others should get new ghost writers.  I've even gone as far as gifting someone (who will remain nameless for her own protection) Spencer and Heidi's "book." Your Welcome (to those of you who I didn't send this book for the gift of not having to forever explain why it's in your collection, and to that special someone who received it -  I know it's been enjoyed).

Some of my past favorites include Kendra Wilkinson's Sliding into Home (like you've never wondered what goes on in the playboy mansion!!  And it's worse!), and Perez Hilton's Red Carpet Suicide: A Survival Guide on Keeping up with the Hiltons (say what you want about him, but this book is hilariously true).

However, today I read a book that rocked my celeb loving world.  Let me introduce you to Tina Fey's Bossypants.  It is absolutely one of the best books I've ever read.  I don't care if you aren't into reading (or whatever), don't like 30 Rock, or have a "thing" against funny books - Go out and buy a copy.  Who cares how much it costs!  Do it!

I love this book on so many different levels.  I love it as a woman.  I love it as a fan of her work.  I love it as a fan of comedy.  I love it as a fan of reading.  And I love it as a fan of equality.  And I assure you you don't need to feel the same about all of these things as I do.  You WILL find something you love about this book.

So in conclusion yes, I have read Kardashian Konfidential (and it is the worst book known to man), but I promise you I'm right about this.  To make it easier for you, I'm including direct amazon links to my favorite celeb books.  Buy them!






It's funnier if you read his blog before he "changed" into a better person, but still good even if you just follow celebrity gossip.  Plus it's cheap.  Like real cheap.











What initially drew me to this book was the curiosity of a ridiculously old man having a ridiculous number of girlfriends, and while you will find the answer to all those gross mansion questions, you'll also probably be surprised that it's a pretty good book.  The best part about it is that you get to learn about Kendra without having to deal with that obnoxious laugh.









 This one's the kicker.  Like I said, worth every penny.  Without a doubt in my all time top five books I've ever read.  Please do yourself a favor (especially if you're a female, but it would be excellent education for males too), and buy this book.  Now.  The link is right there.  Super easy.






After being inspired by this read, I think I'm going to move on to Chelsea Handler and Ellen Degeneres.  Keep an eye out for how those fair on my list of celeb novel endeavors, now that I'm officially out.

Do you secretly read trashy celeb books, too?  What's your favorite? Have a different embarrassing (yet still PG-13) confession?  You know what to do.

Nap time.

Living Social

I know a lot of people have already jumped on the Groupon train, but have you started using Living Social yet?  It's a great service that I actually like better than Groupon.  They still have city specific deals, but they also have escapes (vacation packages), and family deals for most large cities.  Then, to top it all off, if you share the referral link they provide after purchasing the deal, and three other people use it to buy the same deal, you get yours free!  Awesome, right?  It's a great site that I highly suggest you all check out for some fun savings.  Who knows, it may just introduce you to some new activity in your city that you never even knew existed!  (And did I mention that they have an easy to use app for your phone, too?)

Today's deal is particularly enticing for us, since living in a hotel makes it difficult to get out and do things (we didn't really pack accordingly), we've been going to the movies way more than we normally do.  And with prices for tickets, popcorn, etc through the roof lately, I just couldn't pass this up!  The daily deal on Living Social today is $9 for TWO movie tickets through fandango!  That's 70% savings!  And with all of the awesome movies coming out this summer, how can you not?

Of course, here is my referral link: https://livingsocial.com/deals/57725?ref=personalized-link-box-13695481&rpi=13695481 don't feel like you have to click it, but it sure would be nice :)  And of course if you do score this deal, make sure to post your own link on facebook, blogs, in emails, etc!

What great deals have you scored through living social?  Have you ever gotten one of their "escapes?"  What movies are you going to see with your new super cheap fandango tickets?

Day trip to Massachusetts take two!

On our second day of Massachusetts adventuring, we headed out to Springfield - the city of firsts.  Just for fun you should look up Springfield, MA's wikipedia page.  The number of things invented in this town is just ridiculous.  What first drew us to Springfield was a conversation we had with a bartender in Glens Falls.  She had shared with us that it was her grandson's birthday, so she was taking him to the MA city for the weekend to visit the Dr. Seuss Memorial Gardens.  Upon hearing this I was instantly devastated that I hadn't heard of it earlier, and beyond sad that we'd run out of time to go ourselves.  "Luckily," the navy must have been listening, and granted us the opportunity to visit! (Silver lining, anyone?)

After some research we found out that they have what they call a museum "quadrangle," where you pay one flat fee ($12.50 a person, or $10.75 with military discount) to visit five museums in one day.  Of course we couldn't pass up a deal like this, and it made driving an hour just to see statues of Dr. Seuss characters more reasonable.  

Being a Green Eggs and Ham enthusiast, a picture with Sam-I-am was the highlight of the trip for me, but it was all pretty amazing.  The statues are excellent, and watching the excited kids run around the main characters of their favorite books is a great way to spend the afternoon.  As for the museums themselves, we only actually visited two - because of time, and because one was closed for repairs.  The Science/Natural history combo museum was by far our favorite.  It started out a little shaky with some rough exhibits of taxidermied animals, but by the end we more than enjoyed our time there. 

Life size T-Rex in the dinosaur exhibit!

The second museum we visited was the art museum.  It was definitely less than stellar.  Our biggest complaints were the lack of original art (nearly everything in their main room was a replica of the original piece), the lack of definition between Japanese and Chinese exhibits (they were mixed in all together, without information cards to let us know what was what), and that the majority of the museum was under construction until 2014!  The highlight was actually the architecture and detailed woodwork of the building itself.  Since one museum was closed all together (the Connecticut Valley History museum that houses the actual Dr. Seuss Exhibit :( ), and the art museum was pretty torn apart, we probably would have been upset had the tickets cost any more. 

Since we were starving and the regular art museum had major shortcomings, we decided to skip the modern art museum and find somewhere to eat.  Unfortunately, Springfield was majorly a little rougher around the edges than we had expected, and nearly everything in town was either closed or boarded up, so we went out on a limb and decided to stop in Hartford to eat on our way home instead!

Colin throwing up his "spud" gang sign :)

The only thing we really knew about Hartford is what we had heard on the news, which was gangs, gangs, gangs, and more gangs.  Nearly every time we turn it on (both in CT and NY) there is something about gang violence in Hartford, but we figured there had to be some good parts somewhere.  After a quick check of my foursquare app on my brand new iphone (woo!), we decided to eat at a hamburger restaurant called Plan B.  We figured it was fitting considering this was our literal "plan B" for the day.  Not to mention the reviews were nothing short of "this is the best burger I've ever had" etc. etc. 

After sitting down to order our plan b burgers, we found that those reviews were more than accurate.  These burgers are so good they could turn even the strictest vegetarians back to meat (I'm looking at you, Ms. Ross!).  Not only do they make their own ground beef in house, but they also use all natural free range meat (see picture below), and it definitely pays off.  We were more than pleasantly surprised.  It was definitely a risk we were glad we had taken. 

That pretty much concludes our memorial day weekend!  We took today to catch up on some reading and relax before closing out the evening with Kung Fu Panda 2 (Colin loves him some Kung Fu Panda).  It's getting so warm here that we actually had to use the AC in our room today, which is something we definitely didn't pack for, and the cat's surely weren't ready for (as seen in the picture below :D), but we're still loving the sunshine.  Here's to hoping this week yields some answers about our future!! Keep your fingers crossed!

Click in to see more pictures of us frolicking around the Dr. Seuss gardens!