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Ice Ice Baby

alison — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:05:14 +0000

One of my goals while I am off of work this summer is to paint all or most of our house. We painted our living room this spring, but had yet to paint anything else until last week.

Dana stayed with Tony and I for a few days and the two of us decided to paint one of the guest bedrooms that I have had a “vision” for for quite some time. The room isn’t put together yet, but here is what we have so far: (I don’t have any specific before pictures, but here is a picture of the other bedroom that looked exactly like the bedroom we painted)

And here is a picture of the newly painted room:

We love it! I could just stay in there all day. My goal was to find a light, icy blue color that was NOT a baby blue, and I we definitely got it right! The color is much brighter in person; the picture doesn’t do it justice. Now I just need to hang shelves and pictures and paint a nightstand to match and the room will be complete!

A day or two later I was still in the painting groove, so I painted our front hallway the same color as the living room. We are really happy with the way it turned out (aside from a few touch-ups I need to take care of!)

Next on my painting list:
~ The kitchen: some form of a burnt orange color
~ The staircase and upstairs hallway: same color as the living room or a shade lighter
~ Our bedroom: some form of tangerine orange

Bring it on!

Problem Solver

alison — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:53:21 +0000

Due to the wicked storms and 16 hour power outage last Wednesday, Tony and I (who am I kidding…mostly Tony) had to keep an eye on the sump pump to make sure it didn’t overflow into our basement. Tony, an amazingly creative problem solver :) , came up with a way to quickly siphon the sump pump using a hose leading from the sump pump outside to the almost end of our yard. It worked like a charm!

Before we got ready for bed, I asked Tony if he was going to set the alarm to check the sump pump in the middle of the night. He casually replied that he’ll just make an alarm that will go off when the water reaches the danger zone. After spending a short 15 minutes, or maybe even less, he came up with a system in which a piece of wood with a light ball attached to the end would raise up with the water level in the sump pump and loudly ring a bell when the water reached a certain point. Here’s a clip of how it ended up looking and working. It’s dark, but fun to watch just the same!

Sure enough at one in the morning Tony woke me up saying, “Alison! The alarm is going off!” He went downstairs, used his hose system to siphon the water out of the sump pump, and came back to bed knowing that he didn’t need to worry about it overflowing. His newly created alarm system would let him know if he was needed in the basement again!

Flying Bikes and Squeaky Pipes

tony — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 18:48:44 +0000

This weekend was a busy one chocked full of good times and fun projects. In addition to bowling with our small group, and my company holiday party, we also got a chance to install one of our Christmas presents, using another Christmas present. And by we, I mean mostly me, Tony, since Alison was off doing other things. The bike hangers were easily installed using my new cordless drilldriver… here are some pix of the final product. It really opens up that corner of our garage and gives us even more room – or at least, will when we finally get all our moving boxes unpacked and out of the way! I also finally fixed the squeaky bathtub drain for good. The last time I thought I fixed it actually made it worse since instead of just the bathtub movement making the drain squeak, the whole bathroom floor did! This time I got smart and cut out a 1″ section of the upper PVC drain pipe and replaced it with a flexible rubber section. No more squeak! Now I just have to re-finish the part of the drywall in my closet’s closet that I had to cut into to access the plumbing… And of course, a picture so you can see what i mean…

2007 Review

alison — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:58:39 +0000

Tony and I have been blessed with another amazing year together! Here’s a quick review:

In January, Tony and I celebrated our one year anniversary by seeing a Cirque du Soleil show. We decided to make Ada Bible Church our home church, and got connected with a small group.

Tony and I celebrated out 26^th birthdays February and March!

In April, Tony joined the praise team at church! He loves having the opportunity to play on Sunday mornings, which has also opened the door for him to playing at some other functions.

In May, Tony was promoted from contractor to employee at his job! This gave us the go-ahead to start looking for houses. We fell in love with a lot in a new neighborhood, and signed a contract for them to start building! We also celebrated with Tony’s sister Kim as she graduated from Cornerstone University.

In June, I completed my first year teaching at my new school! I also began taking classes towards my master’s degree at Grand Valley State University. Tony and I celebrated our nephew Caiden’s first birthday with his family and friends, and I had the privilege of spending a weekend relaxing in Traverse City with my parents and Dana.

In July, Tony and I saw BB King in concert. I traveled with my sister and good friend, Jennifer, to Destin Beach, Florida for a week of girls time in the sun.

In August, Tony and I closed on our first house! We moved in with the help of Jen, Phil, and Pete, and quickly began making it a home.

In September, I began my third school year teaching. I have been blessed with a wonderful class this year!

In October, Tony and I went to see Shane and Shane in concert with Jen and Phil. Tony also saw Phil Keaggy in concert with my dad and brother while I spent some quality girl time with my mom and Yiayia.

In November, Tony and I hosted thanksgiving at our house with both sides of our family! It was fun to have a full house, and to host our first big event here.

In December, Tony and I spent a night with my parents in Rochester to celebrate Christmas together before traveling to Kentucky to spend the holiday with his family. We had a great time and enjoyed the warm (50-60 degree) weather.

We are excited to see what God has in store for us in 2008!

We’ve got Gutters!

tony — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 00:58:49 +0000

We returned from a weekend out of town on Sunday to find that our new gutters had been installed! They match the house so well we didn’t even notice when we pulled in, I went back out to look after we found the bill in the mail! Hopefully now we won’t have so much erosion along the side and back of the house when it rains hard… We also chose to install screens on the gutters since we have so many trees around whose leaves would love to clog up our nice gutters.

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Nice Grass!

tony — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:24:03 +0000

Only 8 days since our hydro-seeding we have tiny shoots of grass shooting up all over the yard! It’s tough to see them since they are camouflaged in the green color of the hydro-seed mix. Interestingly enough, I also took a closer look at the hydro-seed mixture and I found some print on parts of it… I think it is recycled newspaper. neat! If you think you see $0.25 in the photo, you’re right. I dropped a quarter in there for perspective. The few larger shoots in the picture are not from the seed, they have been growing on their own since we moved in… You can see the new shoots have a darker color base and are greener on the tiny soft tips… I checked out the roots too, they are pretty long already, some over an inch! They say when the grass gets to be 3-4 inches tall it’s time to mow… we’ll see if we get there before it starts snowing. It’s been oh-so-nice to use the sprinkler system to water the yard and keep our new grass happy! It’s funny since even though i don’t have to wake up to turn on the sprinklers at 7:30am, i still like to get out of bed and watch them do their thing.

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Rain Gutters?

tony — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:20:13 +0000

I’ve been reading up a bit on gutters, since our builder (apparently) doesn’t put them on houses. We’ve got some erosion going on along the sides of the house where the rain falls. I was thinking about putting some kind of paver stones on the ground where the water hits, but i think gutters might be a better solution… It looks like a few of the neighbors have had them added, so it’d be nice to talk to them about who they had install them. I’m also considering putting some on myself, since there isn’t much to the job. The major challenge would be that the roof on one side of the house that needs a gutter is about 3 stories off the ground… It might be worth the savings to have somebody else to it so i don’t have to buy a ladder that tall! I wonder if I could rent one, hmm. Anyone installed gutters?

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It’s Hydromatic – Grass Seed!

tony — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 04:01:15 +0000

Today we came home to a nice green lawn! The hydro-seeding is done! It looks like they also did some final grading to the yard which is very cool! They even marked off the sprinklers so they didn’t drive over them with their equipment! I’m excited to get to turn on the sprinkler system now and watch our lawn come to life! I found some care tips that seem pretty good. I wonder if we’ll need to mow this year?!

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Watering the lawn?

tony — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 04:08:39 +0000

I’ve been reading and thinking about the best way to get our future hydro seeded lawn off to a good healthy start. I’m thinking that a sprinkler system is definitely the way to go… From my reading, watering the lawn consistently in the mornings before the sun comes up will help the lawn grow nicely. Peet gave me a nice tour of his sprinkler system and we’ve got a pretty good idea of how we can layout my system. Rainbird’s website also gives free system design by email, it just takes two weeks… we need to figure out when the builder’s lawn guy is planning on planting the lawn so we can get the system in before then. We also need to find out if the plumber can put in the sprinkler system copper pipe… i’m pretty excited to put in a system myself especially since it will really help with our whole lawn growing process, and long into the future…