Chugging Along

I feel bad that I haven't updated in the last few days, but I couldn't think of anything to write about that didn't relate to our house. Well, that hasn't changed so I have resigned to stay with that subject.
However, before I dive into that I am pleased to announce the arrival of my nephew Henry George Shubin. He was born Monday evening weighing a hefty 9.5lbs. Congratulations to George and Rachel.
Saturday is the big day we've been looking forward to. We will be occupying our house full time! Currently, we are still working on painting the trim. It's slow going ,but I'm happy with the results. We have been getting a lot of help and I don't even want to think about how far behind we would be without it. I feel slightly panicked that we will not have all the painting done before Saturday, but I think I'm just wound up. I'm taking Thursday off to work on the house. Hopefully, this will give me the extra time I need to finish things up. The office has by far been the hardest color to pick. I originally wanted it to be antique green, but when I put it on the wall it looked like a Granny Smith apple. Then we decided to paint it the same nice gold color as the media room downstairs. Masha and I painted the walls and while the color looks great for the media room it made the office look like the inside of a pumpkin! Argh! I don't know what color I want for that room, but I have a very light yellow as a default if I can't find anything.
Monday, during lunch I was calling carpet stores in the area to see about buying carpets for our two bedrooms upstairs. Brand new carpeting is very expensive (about $20.00 a yrd). I called asking about remnants and found it to average about $10.00 a yrd. I remembered a place in Salem that only sold remnants and called them. They were by far the cheapest (about $7 a yrd) and I was able to get enough to fit both rooms so they will match. Mandee's dad, Craig, will be installing this on Monday. Since we couldn't get him in before the weekend we are going to be sleeping on an air mattress our first two nights in the house. I don't want to put together a bed only to have to move it out right away.
David and I are going to buy some light fixtures today. This is something else we just cannot seem to agree on. When we talk about the kind that we want we are both in agreement, but when we actually go look at the fixtures we just can't seem to narrow it down. I find it so odd that we've agreed on pretty much everything, but there are just a few small things we just go round and round on.
Sorry for the boring update. Hopefully I can get some pictures up for the next post to spice things up a bit. I may not be able to update again until next week, so until then...

Paint...The Final Frontier

Today is Friday. I have Fridays off so I'm heading over to the house to continue painting. Mom and Anika will be there around 2:00 to help for a couple of hours. Masha and Amy will be there around dinner time. It's not going the way I had originally planned, but it's getting done and I'm letting it go at that. Besides, how often do things go the way you originally plan?
Overall, I'm very happy with our colors and I'm very grateful for all the help we've been getting. We are really powering through and I can't thank everyone enough for their help.
I took the day off yesterday from painting and just rested. I was so tired that the idea of even stepping foot in the house was daunting. David was so wonderful and told me to take the evening off to get some rest. I feel much better now. I REALLY needed the rest. He did send me to Home Depot to get some more paint. Unfortunately, I might have to buy another gallon today. He accidentally painted the ceiling in the living room and hallway with the trim paint and now we have very glossy ceilings. :) Maybe I should give him the night off... :)

Ah yes, the white color...
Well, to conclude my previous post about us finding a white we could both agree on, we went to Home Depot ready to buy the paint we needed and meet up everyone who would be helping us that night. First, we had to pick a white that would be our trim and ceiling. We both picked a few that we liked personally, but again could not find one we could agree on. He said mine was to dirty and I thought his was to stark. We needed to find something that was soft, but not off white. We went through all the Behr colors for a half hour just trying to find something.
I wandered over to the Disney colors (yes, you know where this is going, but don't get ahead of me now) and noticed that they were Behr colors as well.
At first I thought all the colors were either too primary or childish, but when I looked through the whites I came across a few that I thought were rather nice. I showed my two favorite to David and he picked "Hums in the Sun" which also happened to be the one that I liked the best. There should have been fireworks to proclaim our joy that we found our color. I realize how silly it is to get hung up over white, but when you are involved in a project like this for a month you begin to go a little crazy.
Well, now that it's on the ceilings I love it even more. It's the perfect white. It looks clean and still is very soft.

I Love This Game!

3 weeks ago I joined The Grocery Game online in order to learn how to save money on groceries. The two things you need to do in order to play the "game" is to clip coupons every week from the Sunday paper and then use the list they compile at the store you choose.
The idea is to stockpile on items at rock bottom prices so that when you need it you already have it (and at the cheapest price possible). When you only buy things when you need them you are overpaying for items you could have gotten for much less had you stockpiled at the right time. Eventually, your needs list becomes much smaller, because you have stockpiled enough to basically have a mini store in your pantry.

As I said, I'm currently on week 3 (it's supposed to take 12 weeks to create a good stockpile). I was especially excited to go shopping this week since a lot of my needs list went along with their stockpile list. I went to Safeway yesterday armed with my list and the coupons I've accumulated. I went up and down the aisles filling my shopping cart until I could hardly push it. A few things I accumulated were 2 cases of bottled water, several bags of frozen rolls, soups, holiday candies and 3 pot roasts. The total shelf price was $98.13. The total that I paid...$24.05! I saved 76%!
My checker chuckled and said, "Wow, I'm giving you a really good deal, aren't I?"
Ha! He wishes! Winco just seems so expensive to me now. :)


I've attached a copy of my receipt to show you exactly what happened.
If you are interested in trying this go to http://www.thegrocerygame.com/
There is 4week trial for $1. After that it goes up to $10 a month.
Also, you can refer me in the sign-up page. Use shukanawoo@hotmail.com for the e-mail as that's the one my account with them is linked to.

Home Sweat Home

Today we are going to start painting our new house. Hooray! This is the part I've been looking forward to since it's the last big thing we were going to do before moving in. We are actually way ahead of schedule and I feel pretty good.
We received the keys to our Victorian farmhouse February 28th and so far we have:
Taken down all the nasty pink flowered wall paper that was covering the house
Put Sheetrock on the ceilings
Mudded the walls (they were plaster)
Knocked down the entry way wall to open up the living room
Laid hardwood floors on the lower level

Right now this is such a project that it doesn't feel like this is going to be my home. I feel more comfortable with it since we started working on it, but it's still some getting used to.

Getting back to painting David and I have been able to agree on every color-except the trim! We both want white but I want an antique white and he wants a more classic white. We are actually heading out to Home Dept in a little bit to finalize our choice. This will be interesting...