A fun night at home...

This morning started out pretty ordinary and routine, with the exception of an appointment with a roofer to get an estimate before we headed off to work. It's times like that when I feel like my parents. Like when we got the versalok retaining wall. And now we're looking to get a new roof before winter. Our roof isn't leaking or anything, but it's just old and would be a wise investment to get done. Plus a potential stressful situation would be eliminated in case it did start leaking. Since pieces of our roof flew off in the wind storm the other weekend, we thought it'd be a good time to get it done.

Moving on...after work I decided to make a big pot of homemade chicken noodle soup. Yum! It definitely was the perfect cool and brisk evening for doing so. I started the soup in my regular large (5 qts I think) pot, but had to bring out the big guns to finish it. Yes, the 12 qt stock pot came out, making its first debut of the season. While the soup was cooking away, I decided to make another seasonal first-pumpkin roll! I've always loved pumpkin rolls, but haven't started making them myself until last year. The first one I made was verrrryyy sloppy haha. I think I was so excited that I didn't let the cake cool enough so it melted the filling as I was trying to roll it. I've gotten a lot better though and last night's was a breeze. I let the cake cool for hours and even kept the filling refrigerated until rolling time.

After dinner we moved the twin bed into the office for Mima to stay in and to make room for the air mattress for mom and dad. They're coming Saturday and we wanted to have things ready for their visit. Other small evening activities included folding laundry and other general ridding up.

At 9:00, we settled onto the couch for the season 5 premiere of "The Office"! I'll admit I was a bit worried about Pam when she seemed to be flirting with her chubby artsy friend. But I was so excited when Jim proposed near the end of the episode! It's been a long time coming and as a faithful viewer I've gone through the ups and downs with them and am happy to see them together haha.

After "The Office" I rolled my pumpkin roll and put it in the fridge for this weekend. I also divided up the soup into 3 portions. One small one for my lunch tomorrow, one bigger one for freezing for later and an even larger one for the fridge for this weekend with the fam.

All in all it was a very simple and "typical" night, but with the added fun of seasonal food fun and a favorite TV show premiere. I'm really a simple kinda gal when it comes down to it. :)

Weekend Productivity

Things we did this weekend:

1. Recaulked bathroom tub

2. Touch up painting in bathroom

3. Visited aunt Paula

4. Trimmed hedges

5. Weeded all front garden areas

6. Weed N Feed all grass in front and back

7. Transplanted the flowers in the front area we are turning to grass to a garden area

8. Cleaned bathroom

9. Put all spring/summer stuff away from the front

10. Put out my pumpkins, mums, indian corn and bale of hay on the front porch (yay for Fall!)

11. Gave myself a pedicure with crimson/rust colored polish

12. Gave myself a natural manicure with a 7 way filer to bring out natural shine, etc.

13. Got a hair cut

14. Made homemade alfredo sauce

What a good, busy, and fun weekend. And I'm sad it's over, but time sure is flyin' these days.

Cleanest Kitchen in PA

After work today Peter and I cleaned our kitchen from top to bottom, including taking all of the shelves and drawers out of the fridge and giving that and the freezer a good scrub down.  I figured since it was empty from the power outage that we should take advantage of the opportunity to clean it.  

Peter went to pick up the food from Jerry's and the coolers we took over the first time were sticky inside for some reason so when he called I said just dump it in the trunk of the car haha.  Luckily 2 folks from church were there to help him.  Here's what the trunk looked like when he got back:

It's kinda hard to see since it was dark out and we took it with his iPhone, but it was a trunk full of frozen foods haha.  He brought them in and I organized them back into our 5ft stand up freezer and then what needed to go upstairs again.  

Our fridge/freezer in the kitchen looks more empty than they used to because the fridge no longer has the half used marinades, etc in it.  And I only put a few things in the freezer for now. 

All in all it was a night of working on getting our kitchen back in order.  We're very glad to have power again and it even feels good to have a completely cleaned and organized kitchen and fridge/freezer.

Thanks a lot, Ike!

Remnants of Hurricane Ike hit the Pittsburgh area on Sunday evening. Winds reaching over 75 mph were even reported! Thanks to Ike our power went out around 9 PM on Sunday night and as of this morning when we left for work, it was still out. Over 36 hours. Luckily we were able to empty our 5 ft stand up freezer into a friend's until our power comes back on. When I thought of losing all of that food, I was clear sick. We would have had a huge neighborhood cookout before I just threw it out. Even though there is only 2 of us, I buy in bulk. Simply because it's cheaper and we have the stand up freezer in the basement (that we purchased for $40 on craigslist) to put it in. We also cleared out some fridge items, but will have lost maybe $25-35 in food that we weren't able to put anywhere. All in all, not bad. Not as bad as Texas that's for sure.

I called my office yesterday morning before leaving home, just to make sure they had power. They did. Until I arrived haha. Literally, a minute after I got to work and set my purse down at my desk, the power went out. And didn't come back on all day haha. We were dispersed to different places to work and I even got to hang out at Peter's office a bit to do some work. At 1:00 I called it a day and Peter and I headed home after stopping for lunch. We both had a wonderful nap and then moved the food. We had to eat dinner out again and grabbed a pizza. When we got home to a dark house, we lit some candles and played cards for a bit before heading to bed. We've really been catching up on sleep the past 2 days haha.

Today we both had power and internet at our offices so we've just been working away now. Wondering if when we return home in a little over an hour if they'll be any power.

We were talking on the way home from dinner last night that even with the misfortune of no power, we are so blessed. Blessed to have a full freezer of food and a place to store it until we have power again and blessed with a home and everything in it. And it's a beautiful fall week to have lost power. We didn't lose it until after the humidity of Sunday went away. So it's been breezy and cool. Could've been in the dead of summer or winter when it's boiling or freezing.

Excited for Autumn!

Autumn has long been my favorite season and when I woke up this morning, I was reminded that it is quickly approaching.  I love the crisp air that comes with Autumn.  And wearing sweats and cuddling in blankets.  I love the turning of leaves and the beautiful pallet of colors everywhere.  In honor of the approaching of my favorite season, I temporarily took my blog offline to make a completely new layout.  After finding the images I wanted to use and tinkering with html code, it's all complete.  :)

The second half of vacation!

So I was lazy and didn't make any additional posts while on vacation.  Here's a picture update of the second half. :)

Relaxing on the beach.  This was the day I lost those sunglasses in the ocean.  :(

The old schoolhouse we visited on Labor Day.

Another view of the old Corolla Schoolhouse.

The wild growing cactus plant Peter spotted:

Another beautiful sunset picture.  That's actually a restaurant that has a spot where you can go out onto the water to eat.  We didn't eat there because it was packed.  Plus we had already eaten dinner.  :P

Bella has grown up so much and is absolutely adorable!  It just warmed your heart when she came up the stairs saying "good morning!"

Uncle Peter reading Bella a book:

We went to the beach every day.  It was glorious.  I loved just hearing and watching the waves hit the shore.

Enjoying the beach :)  And trying not to miss my old sunglasses too much haha.

"Say cheeeeeese!!"

Peter and Tim enjoyed some frisbee and I was able to snap an action shot of each of them:

How cute is she?!

It was so great to spend part of our vacation with Tim, Vasti, and Bella.  We were able to get to know each other more which was a real blessing.  We've visited everyone else in the family and spent separate time getting to know everyone, but haven't had the time to do so with them yet.  We were so glad to have this opportunity and look forward to doing more things like this in the future.

Peter and Tim making a sandcastle.  Vasti and I helped make some tunnels, too.  After that, the castle making ceased to exist haha.

Our gateway to the beach! haha

Hanna hit on Friday evening-Saturday and we ended up staying until Sunday morning because of the conditions.  We didn't want to risk anything or drive in the storm all day.  Luckily no one rented the house the week after us so we could just stay there.  Sunday morning was sunny and beautiful and we snapped a few pictures before heading home to PA. 

Here's a group shot of all of us :)

All play and no work :)

This morning before heading to the pool, we snapped a picture against our tropical fish shower curtain.  It served as a nice backdrop I think haha.  Very fitting for the beach.

We read in/by the pool for the entire afternoon, taking occasional breaks to swim around.  Then we had lunch and headed to the beach again.  

This huge seagull came up less than 3 feet from us.  I have never really seen seagulls walk up to people unless they had food haha.  It was kinda neat.

Today the Atlantic Ocean really kicked my butt. We were out jumping waves and I totally got pummeled! I'm sure I gave near by beach goers quite a show! There was actually like this big ditch in the middle of the ocean floor near the shore. It went from shallow to deep and then back to shallow. So we were working on getting past the ditch area into the ocean and while talking to Peter a wave came up behind us. Peter was like "watch out!" and thinking that it'd be better to turn my back instead of taking the crash of the wave face on, I quickly spun around, getting knocked over and losing my sunglasses, 1 diamond earring and my bathing suit bottom started falling down. Knowing that there was a roughly 40 yr old man boogie boarding nearby, I quickly grabbed for my bathing suit to cover my butt. In the process the sunglasses were lost. Upon arriving at the surface I discovered one of my earrings was gone too. What a bummer. I totally loved those glasses haha. On the plus side, no one had to see my bare butt! To anyone on the beach it probably looked like I was thrashing around in knee deep water since you couldn't tell it got deeper for a spot in the ditch type area. 

After resting up on shore for a bit after my beating from the Atlantic, we decided to go back to the house and shower up and go out and grab some dinner.  And to look for some new sunglasses for me.  

We wanted to get a picture with this picture on the wall in our house because it says "Our Beach House", but Peter's head blocked out some of it.  Oh well-we know what it says haha.

Unfortunately we forgot it was a holiday, so many places were closed.  We thought we'd head out to the lighthouse, but upon arriving there found out it was only open 9-5 and it was after 6.  Bummer.  So we grabbed some Subway and ate in the car.  After an unsuccessful search for sunglasses, we decided to make the 30 minute drive down to WalMart to look for that and a cheap earring I can wear so my hole doesn't close up.  Yes, second earring holes close up really fast.  

While driving down Rt 12, the only major road here, we saw a great sunset and decided to park the car and get out and watch it.  

You obviously can't see us in this picture because the sunset is behind us, but I still like how it turned out with our silhouettes.

I really wanted to venture out to the end of this dock where these 2 benches were.  I initially saw them on the way into town, but again tonight.  Unfortunately, when we ventured to the dock, it was marked as private property.  I was so disappointed!  This is just such a peaceful looking place to sit.

On our way back to the car, we saw this little lake-ish area with a few of these black swans.

At WalMart I was able to find a replacement pair of sunglasses.  They're not my favorite, but they do the trick and aren't terribly uncomfortable or anything.  And they were only $10 so not that bad.  I also got some studs for my ears and hope they don't get lost this week too haha.  

Upon arriving back to the house, I continued playing Super Nintendo.  They have Mario Bros.  so I've been playing my way through the game.  At first I couldn't remember any of it, but little by little it's coming back.  It's been bringing back memories from my childhood and playing with my siblings and always having my brother Erik beat the hard boards for me haha.