Monday, May 26, 2008

Good Times Had By All

Last week was BBQ weekend! With the weather being oh so perfect we had people over for three days in a row. We bought a little soaking pool on Saturday which people seemed to really appreciate...


David and Simon had a water war.
Simon always getting into some kind of mischief.
Colin, Ben Tuuri, Asa, Joe and some guy in a hat.
Food-post consumption
Ben Tuuri, Matt and Ana
Amee, Sarah and Sam Tooze
Jason Prentice and Nick Fukuda
Jordan and Sean...everyone had an iPod to share
Hannah and Amber (that's Amee in the background)

Hacienda de Hayes

Okay it's done! I finally put together a short slideshow of our house renovation! Hooray! I can FINALLY cross this of my to do list ( yes, I actually have one and it really was on the list :-D). We took these pictures before we moved most of our stuff in, so you can see that the after pictures look rather empty, but the change is still pretty dramatic. Enjoy!

Click on the picture and it will take you to the slideshow.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Row Row Row Your Boat...

So it's a gorgeous 89 degree day today. The sun is out, the birds are chirping, there isn't a cloud in the sky and this is what's currently sitting in my driveway right now...





No it's not mine, it belongs to Dave Hamerstrom. We had a BBQ last night which he attended (and brought GOBS of food by the way, I'll keep him in mind for next time... :-D ), but by the time he was ready to leave it was to late to drop his boat off at the Barnard's which is where he normally stores it on weekends (he lives in McMinville). So, now here I am in my cute little bermuda shorts and pink halter top ready to spend a day on the water and all I can do is stare out my window...

UPDATE: Just as I was typing this when Dave knocked on the door. He's going to take us out on the river today. YEAH!!!

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

I've Been Dreaming of a True Love's Kiss...

I came across this site of an artist, Amy Mebberson, who currently lives in Portland, but used to work for Disney Animation Studios in Australia before it closed down. I really like her style and she does a lot of Disney fan art. I was looking through her gallery and came across this fan piece from Enchanted and I thought that they looked rather familier...




Maybe I'm crazy. I think that Edward definitely looks like David. Mom suggested that Giselle looked like me. Any thoughts?

Before you buy anything online STOP!

I don't know WHY this didn't occur to me before. Maybe it's because my extremely smart husband refuses to pay anything full price, but I realized that there are discounts for EVERYTHING. Now before I purchase anything (and I mean anything) online I try to research any kind of coupon/promotion code online. The best site that I found so far is Retail Me Not. People just post all kinds of coupon codes on there and it also gages the success rate people have with it.
I needed to restock on coffee for my work. They have a Flavia single-serve coffee machine and yuo can only use Flavia coffeee packs for the machine and the run abour $45 a box. I found a discount code on here that gave me enough of a discount to get an extra box for the price that we normally pay.
Go check it out!

Rub-A-Dub-Dub We Bought A Tub

Friday morning Mom and I went to Ikea and while we were shopping David called asking if we could come get him around lunch. He found a claw-foot tub on Craigslist that has been professionally refinished. The ad said he wanted $1,000, but David talked him down to to $500.
To put this into perspective, brand new claw foot tubs cost anywhere between $1,200 to $2,000.



$1,816.50 The Inside Store




You can get old junkie ones from anywhere to $100 to $250 but the cost to get it into really good condition starts at $500.
Claw Foot Tub - $250


We went there to go look at it to make sure it was something we wanted to buy. The guy who was selling them did some work on the historic Ace Hotel in downtown Portland and they gave him the tubs for free. He had them professionally sandblasted and refinished. We decided that this seemed like a pretty good deal and this had a cool story behind it too. :-) The tub is probably 100 years old or so. I don't have a picture of it, because the ad is now gone. We don't have any place for people to sit, but we have an awesome tub now! :-)
In other news Joe Mikler is moving into our guest shack for the summer while he tries to find a job. He's is going to do some work for Asa and in turn Asa will fix up the shack for us. He will probably be moving in today.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Must. Shop. For. Clothes.

Okay I admit it. I feel the NEED again. I really want to go clothes shopping, but we still have a little bit more to pay off from our renovations (this pay check should cover it). However, I have been looking at the Frugal Fashionista site and I'm just dying to spend! Hmmm, I might want to have this behaviour looked at...
But really isn't this so cute?


Okay, I'm glad that is off my mind and on the web for the whole world to see. :)