Fine Dining

Well, it has been a busy week for us.  My birthday was last Friday & Shane woke up at 6:50am to cook breakfast before school.

Bacon, eggs & hashbrowns. YUM! What a great way to start the day.

Later that day, I received a delivery at school.  Well, make that two deliveries-he sent me two bouquets of flowers!  One that was beautiful and my favorite color-red; and another fun one-a giant martini glass with a witch's hat & broom in honor of Halloween.

He also gave me shiny new red rainboots:

Then on Halloween, we sat on the front porch to greet all of the trick-or-treaters-we've never even had a handful of visitors, but in this neighborhood, we had all sorts of ghosts & goblins.  We handed out over nine huge bags of candy.

On Friday, they came and replaced our cracked front door.  It won't get finished until next weekend-but so far, this one is weather & spider proof!

We hung a couple of pictures in the master bath.  They are small in this picture, but they make the bathroom look a little more "finished."

In even more exciting news...I know everyone is ready for a great Thanksgiving meal & now we have somewhere to eat it!

That's right...our dining table was delivered today.

Here's the base of the table...

...and the detail in the top...



The table and chairs are distressed like our wood floors.

I went to decorate the table for Thanksgiving with the cornucopia which I made years ago...however, it looks teensy-tiny on this huge tabletop, so I guess I'll get busy making something more appropriate.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone in a couple of weeks!

Finally~Decorating & Throwing Parties!

We are all settled in and have even decorated for fall.

 I made this wreath at a craft party the other night...just as soon as I can figure out how to hang it on our super-sized door, the wreath will greet you when you come in our front door.

But right now, the pumpkins and scarecrow will have to suffice for fall decorations on the porch.  I'll figure out the wreath before Thanksgiving...

We've hung a few pictures...

...and a wreath-which looks better when you are on the ground floor...it looks kind of silly from this angle!

We've moved Shane's grandfather's green leather chair from the garage into the office & it looks great in there.  We can almost fit the Tahoe into the garage, as well!

We've been stocking up the wine room.  Shane is thrilled that I'm not drinking it faster than we are buying it.

I've finally gotten the studio semi-organized.  It's not beautiful, but at least I can see what I have and work on some projects.

I really love having the ribbon rolls displayed so I can see what I have in order to use it.

I can't forget to show you where we hosted our first OU watch party.

Most of the party was upstairs in Skid's Bar & Lounge...

You can see a TV from wherever you are in the room...now we just need to hang up some of our sports memorabilia for decorations.

The men are going to love watching football here after our big Thanksgiving feast!

 ...and just for fun, here are a couple of pics from the other big party we had-a baby shower for one of my girlfriends.

If Only We Both Played Poker...

Our poker table was delivered on Friday.

We are so excited to start playing poker again.  Oh, wait. Scratch that...Shane is so excited to play poker again, I don't like card games-including poker.  I am, however so excited that I won't be homeless every fourth Friday night.  The poker boys can play upstairs until their hearts are content and can read in the peace and quiet of the bedroom.  Ahhh...

Apparently, I've been spoiled by the Amini's and Mathis Brothers delivery services because I was very surprised to arrive home to find that the poker table had been delivered like this:

Guess who had to carry it upstairs? That's right, we did.

It seats eight and each player has a place for poker chips and a beverage.

We were a little concerned that the cup holders might be too small for the beverage-of-choice, so we tried it out.

Everything fits just fine. Whew.

It fits in the west corner of the room, this is why the pool table sits on one side instead of the middle.

I think we need a name for our game room, "Skid's Lounge & Bar" is all that comes to mind, but not nearly catchy enough.  I'll have to keep working on that.

In other news...

You've got to be careful around our place, if the little ones don't like what you're up to, they'll tell you about it.  She wasn't about to actually leave her bed, though.

..and Bo, he's more of a sneaky-chair-thief...Shane left his chair for a bit to do some yard work and came back to Bo watching football.

You also might like an updated pic from when the painters last visited.  One of the things they finished was staining the entrance to the litter box and it looks so much better.

 Hiding the litter box was one of the best things we did with this house!

A delivery...

Our desk was delivered today...

Shane said he was going to work at the desk...

But I caught him relaxing with his feet up...

But...
the most exciting part of the day was tonight...
when it RAINED!

The rain helped to drop the temperature down into the high 70's for a little bit.  Hopefully, we'll get some more rain tomorrow.

99% Complete

That's right, the house STILL isn't completely finished.  Yeah, I know...we thought that the great thing about having a Parade house was that it had an absolute finish date.

Hahaha.  The last laugh was certainly on us!  We are still trying to get things finished.  After we moved in & both went back to work, I took another couple of days off so that we could get the subs back in to have everything finished.

We scheduled the electricians, the drywall guys & the lighting store to come finish up their areas.  They all arrived.  However the painters and tile guys haven't come back yet & we are still missing legs to the island that will need to be installed by the trim guys, so there is still lots of little things that need finished.

At least we finally have that silly grounding rod out of the back yard.  After Shane & I spent hours digging and wiggling that grounding rod to remove it, with no success, the electricians came and in about 5 minutes pulled the thing straight out of the ground.

Can you see how long it is? It's about 3 feet taller than the guy holding it...it felt like it was tied to some building in China.

They said we loosened it up. I believe them.

We aren't having a lot of luck with the garden this year.  It's a little pathetic compared to last year, but with the late start, the hotter-than-hades weather and the terrible soil we just didn't have much hope.

One cucumber has managed to survive.  It's about 3 inches long.

We have some marble size cherry tomatoes that have looked exactly like this photo for about 3 weeks.  I am inclined to think they will never turn red.

However, the pink-double-knockout-roses seem to be doing well & I'm enjoying them quite a lot.

We have straightened up the garage and there is now room for two of our cars. I'm not showing you the third car garage for a reason.  It's still on my "to-do" list.

Also in the garage, here is Shane's new workbench.  It has a light and a place to hang all the tools you normally use, as well as several electrical outlets on one side so you can plug in your tools.

Remember I said the drywall guys showed up?  Now the house looks like this. 

Almost every room is currently decorated with white patches and blue tape.  The drywall guys are telling me that the painters need to sand the patch job...the painters are telling me the drywall guys should do it...and yet no one is actually doing it.

I'm getting a little irritated.



Today we found a place to hang our very cool double-sided clock.  (It's in the game room in case you couldn't tell.)  (Mom, there is an OU sign hanging in that doorknob too, thanks.)

In our bathroom, you can see the stool for my make-up area. I love the make-up area and I love having all the space in the drawers and cabinets.  It is this clean every day.  Really.  I'm not even kidding.  Shane can hardly believe it.

 Also, Minnie & Bo have a classy new black & white water bowl that matches the decor. 

We couldn't really expect them to walk all the way to the kitchen every time they needed a drink; I mean there legs are kind of short.

Minnie would look like this after every trek for a drink-wiped out!

Also, in the laundry room we have another new decoration necessitated by Minnie & Bo.  Can you see the red box right next to the flowers?

It's a "Hello Kitty" mini-fridge.

Inside, it's just large enough to hold a can of food for both the critters as well as some of their medicine which must be kept refrigerated.

I mean, you can't really expect us to walk back and forth from the laundry room to the fridge and back to the laundry room every time they need to eat...

It has nothing to do with the length of our legs, we're just too lazy.