FIVE!

It's happened. I am the mother of a five year old.

It's crazy that Charlie is now five years old. I'm pretty sure that he was just 5.5 pounds a year or so ago.

This morning to celebrate we attempted a photo shoot. As you can see from the photo below, Charlie was not very on board with that and opted to start shredding the newspaper instead.

We attempted again during my lunch break after a long birthday walk.

Things went much better.

Until Charlie discovered that my "5" was made up of chewable cardboard.

The shoot quickly derailed.

 

 

Happy 5th Birthday Charlie! We are the luckiest people in the world to have such a wonderful pup.

Summer Cleaning

In preparation for our European vacation, Dan and I went through his clothes this past weekend to determine what he had that still fit and looked good, what needed to go to the tailor, what could be donated and what could just be retired to the trash.

Somehow the stars aligned and we were both fully gung-ho about going through his entire wardrobe! It's a good thing too, since I don't think we've done a major clean out in the entire 7+ years we've been together.

We took some breaks to really admire some treasures from Dan's college days:

But overall we stayed on course and ended up with a huge donation to the local Goodwill :)

Now we know exactly what he's got, and where we need to focus our efforts on the shopping front :)

Poor Monty!

A few weeks ago Monty had to go for a little ride to the mechanic.

It turns out that when you're 11 years old, things start to fall apart a little bit.

Don't worry, he's back up and running now, but not exactly good as new. We have some upgrades to make on the poor guy and we may be trading Dan's car in and letting him drive Monty exclusively in the next few months. Which means, I'm in the market for a new ride.
I've already let Dan know that because we are saving for our future beach house I will sacrifice for a few more years and avoid putting myself in a Cayenne.

I'm pretty sure that makes me girlfriend of the year, right?

Seriously though, what should I get? I think I am leaning toward a lease and I kind of like the idea of a smaller SUV, but since I have not been thinking about getting a new car at all, I am sort of open to anything.

Even the Mailman loves Charlie

Did you know that our mailbox is a basket?

I love it. But mostly, I love when I get fun things like notes, cards and invites in it. While the Red Plum circular that we got the other day didn't make me very happy, the treat that came with it certainly made Charlie smile :)

He makes friends everywhere he goes!

A Message from Charlie

It Tastes Like Summer!

At the grocery store on monday I saw two things that mean summer to me and had to pick them up for that nights dinner.

Cherries and Corn on the Cob!!

Dan and I have found a new recipe for Buffalo Chicken Wing Sandwiches that we've pretty much had once a week for the past month so I thought I would share. It takes about 10 minutes to put the whole thing together and it's really yummy, so that makes it a winner in my book.

I found the recipe in one of the past few month's Real Simple magazines and have modified it slightly so that it's a little less caloric.

Here's what you'll need:

• 1 Rotisserie Chicken, shredded (if you can get one from Costco, then you'll probably have enough for leftovers)
• 1/2 Cup of Hot Sauce (we use Wingman's Buffalo Style Medium Sauce)
• 1-2 tablespoons butter (I tend to use less butter)
• 1/4 Cup Blue Cheese Crumbles
• Bread/Bun of your choice

And here's how to make it:

First heat the butter in a skillet and then add the chicken and mix it up. Then drop in the hot sauce and mix it again. Once the chicken is warmed through you're done! Just place it on your bread, which tastes even better toasted and add blue cheese.

This dish is normally awesome, but with cherries and corn on the cob off to the side, it was a perfect start to summer meal!

If You Plan on Running a Half Marathon...

...it's good to have a team of supporters cheering you on. Charlie couldn't come to the race, but he did leave me the following note on our fridge.

He's so thoughtful :)

I was on such a roll!

I can't believe I haven't posted on here since January 24th! I was doing so well for the year up until then, but now I am back! Whenever I stop blogging for a while I always find that I miss it. It helps me to keep tabs on what is going on in my life and it's even more fun to look back on older posts to see how things have changed.

Plus, what else am I supposed to do with the bajillion photos that I take each year? :)

I'm blaming this hiatus on my new running hobby. Or more specifically, my 1/2 marathon training plan that kicked off at the end of January. I'm pretty new to this whole running thing, so it was a huge awakening to see all of the hard work that it actually takes to get into running shape.

Besides my training, I got promoted at work, went to Breck, ran a 5K with Dan, joined a running club, went on Spring Break to San Diego with D, and generally just started to get way more into health and fitness. Also Dan started doing yoga and loves it now! It is pretty much one of my favorite things to do with him at the moment.

It has been a busy two months, but I hope to start posting more regularly now that I am a bit more used to this whole health and fitness no matter what else is going on mentality :)

The view from my front step when I woke up this morning...

Sure it's not the best mountain view money can buy but it's still so pretty. Also, note the moon! I think that means that I was up early, which for me is quite a feat!

Happy Friday!

2011 - 315 N. Goals

Last week I posted a list recapping all of the projects we were able to complete at the house in 2010. Here's a look at all of the things I'm hoping we can accomplish in 2011.

1. Paint our fence... (I referred to it's current state in this post, and it has not changed much since)
2. Hire a tree trimmer to take care of some tree branches outside of our expertise
3. Hire an electrician to remove some old knob & tube wiring that's still in our attic
4. Have insulation added to the attic roof
5. Remove wallpaper from the 2nd bedroom and paint
6. Have the remaining carpet removed downstairs and refinish all of the wood floors
7. Paint trim in dining room
8. Touch up paint in our bedroom and the sunroom
9. Paint wall under the stairs
10. Have front porch steps fixed and apply stone veneer
11. Remove rotting wood under front porch and replace with lattice
12. Install shelves in the downstairs linen closet
13. Pick out new paint colors for house exterior and paint
14. Have quote done for kitchen renovation in 2012

It's a lot, so even if we just get half of this list done I'll be happy. With a house as old as ours, I'm surprised I could keep this list to only 14 items!

Ode to 2010

Thought I would do one more 2010 recap in photos to capture the year in one post (last 2010 post, I promise). It was really a fun year all together and seeing all of these photos in one place, reminds me that I should really blog more throughout the year to capture all of these events.

2010 - 315 N. Improvements in Review

Every year I start off by making a list of all of the things I want us to accomplish on the house as the year goes on. This year, we may have diverged from that list a bit, but really made a lot of headway nonetheless.

Here's a recap of what went down throughout the year.

February: Installed a new garbage disposal and a new bathroom faucet
May: Bought and installed a new water heater after ours died suddenly
May: Started a service to rid our lawn of ant colonies so they don't start coming inside
June: Trimmed trees around the house, cleaned out the garage and cleared the dog run
July: Painted the sunroom
May-October: Cleared out and revamped the right of way in front of the house (this deserves a post in its own right, which I will try to get to soon)
September: Bought a rug for the sunroom
October: Routed the sewer line and had the furnace inspected
November: Scraped the popcorn ceiling out of the 2nd bedroom and tore up and removed the carpet from the room.
November: Had insulation added to the attic eaves
December: Bought a new couch!

As the year goes by I never think that we are doing enough (I have big goals), but when I look back I feel like we actually managed to accomplish a lot. I'll share our 2011 goal list in the next few days. It's pretty optimistic, but I'm a glass half full kind of person and can't help myself.

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

We're back from spending Christmas in New York and slowly getting back into the swing of things. We're happy to have this guy back with us every day!

We brought with us a gift for Charlie from Grandma and Grandpa, which he has has been thoroughly enjoying.

I actually woke up to him squeaking it this morning. We had such a great time in New York and I miss spending time with my family already.

Walking the Talk

If you know anything about my working life, you most likely know that a good portion of my time is spent working on the advertising needs of a large utility client (said client will not be named in an effort to avoid Google alerting many of the people I work with on a regular basis). Regardless, a lot of our messaging revolves around the efficiency products and programs that this utility offers to their customers and the benefits that people can reap by investing in efficiency efforts. 

If you know anything about my personal life, which you do if you are reading this blog, you know that I live in a 106 year old home, with it's original octopus arm gravity-fed furnace, original (and completely beautiful) wooden windows, old appliances and many other idiosyncrasies that make this house one of the least energy efficient homes around.Suffice it to say our utility bills each winter can be astronomical.

So, when the opportunity presented itself, I decided to take advantage of a 2010 tax credit for adding insulation to your home and had blown in insulation added to the eaves in my house early this week!

Charlie was very involved in this process, so it's a very good thing that the guys who were doing it liked dogs. Here he is on the sidewalk outside my house right next to their truck. He took an opportunity when I wasn't watching to go through the open gate and help out.

So after a little bit of work to get the process started on our end, we are now looking at glowing R-values in our attic crawl spaces. Our actual attic is another story though. We need to have some old wiring removed before we can have insulation added there. However, in the short term I am giving myself a big pat on the back for actually doing something that I tell others to do every day! I think my own local utility will thank me, and hopefully in the long term my wallet will too.

Thanksgiving 2010

I was pretty ambitious this Turkey day! Not only did I participate in a Turkey Trot that morning, but we hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year. Our friends that Bivens came over and we held up our yearly tradition of feasting together. This was actually our 4th Thanksgiving together and the first one held at my house.

The food was great! But all in all, it was a really chaotic experience for me. I think I ended up taking on way to much of the cooking myself.

Don't mind Eric, he's trying to be creepy here!

Here's my plate! Filled with sweet potato casserole, a cranberry glazed turkey, mashed potatoes, mac & cheese, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, gravy and a bread role!  Oh, and stuffing, which I almost forgot to make entirely!

Next year, I will seriously consider having Whole Foods make most of the meal for us so I can focus more on wine and socializing and less on recipes and ingredient lists!Hope your Thanksgiving was a great one!

It's a Bird... It's a Plane...

It's SUPER CHARLIE!

I woke up on Halloween and decided that Charlie needed a costume. So I spent the better part of the day making him a cape.

And a mask... which didn't work out very well.

His special power was extreme guarding, which he proudly displayed by looking out the front window for the better part of the night and appearing ferocious to all neighborhood children.

His friend Jake stopped by dressed as a bumble bee. This was of course the best photo I could get of the two of them.

I dressed up as an 80s Prom Queen for passing out candy, which was a big hit with the tweens that came to the door.

It was a much nicer look than the Zombie Audrey Hepburn get up I had to wear at work on Friday.

Yes, that's a mimosa in my hand. And yes, it was 10 in the morning. You'd drink too if you had to act like a zombie in front of your clients and colleagues :)

Life...

It is feeling really busy right now. I'm not really sure why, but I've been pretty motivated for the past month and have started about a million projects and set a ton of goals for myself that are taking up a ton of my time. It's a really good thing, but when I think about all of the things that I want to get done with in a day it can be overwhelming.

I have to admit that I am not loving my tumblr snapshot blog as much as I thought I would. In the past week I've kind of fallen of the wagon with it, because I feel like it is too disconnected from this blog and I'm feeling like I'm neglecting both. I am currently toying with the idea of merging that blog into this one and just using this from now on.

Besides my blog dilemma, I have also gotten into a pretty good fitness routine and started running.. which, if you know me (which you probably do if you are reading this blog), is a really strange thing for me to be into. Before this month I could barely run a mile and now I'm running over 10 miles a week!

We've also been doing a ton of Fall maintenance at the house and getting in over our heads on to many do it yourself home improvement projects. My house is kind of a disaster right now, but I think all of it will pay off in the next few weeks.

I have big plans to do a bunch of posts on everything that has been going on. I just need to find those additional hours in my day.. they've got to be hiding out somewhere.

Bummer

So this morning I looked outside of our bedroom window to see this...

Let's take a closer look. What was once up here...

...was now on our dog run fence.

My first thought... when did that happen?! No big deal that we sleep with the window open, right by where this giant tree branch fell and had no clue. Looks like we can sleep through anything, and I'm not sure that's a good thing!

My second thought... who's supposed to pay for that? As you can tell, it's from a tree in our neighbor's yard. Dan said she stopped by this afternoon and told him that a tree guy was going to be coming who could also work on fences, but we're still slightly fuzzy on what exactly that means to us from a cost perspective. Time will tell.

I'm just glad that this guy wasn't out there when it happened.

Instant Puppy Tears Come from This Place....

 ... The DOG RUN! Yes, beneath all of this shrubbery is an actual dog run. It sits at the side of our house and really does not get much use because a) it looked like the above photo, and b) Charlie hates being locked in it. He starts crying and barking immediately and pretty much bothers the entire neighborhood. What can I say, he is a party animal and needs to be a part of the action. Here he is in the action while I tried to photograph the space...

Anyway, we finally decided to spend some time and take care of issue a, which resulted in a dog run that looks like this....

 I know It looks so much better! Charlie still wants nothing to do with it unless someone is in there with him, but with a house as old as ours, just crossing a project or two off of our list is good enough for me. I'd like to put some sort of ground covering down around this so we don't have a ton of weeds popping up, so I'm on the look out for something pet-friendly and aesthetically pleasing. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Meet My Peony Plant...

Do you notice anything wrong with this picture? For the life of me I can't get flowers to bloom out of this. It is now the third summer since I've planted this puppy and I was really thinking that this was going to be the year... no luck! Am I doing something wrong?

On the other hand my Columbines have never looked better and my Delphinium plant in the backyard is going to bloom this year for the first time in three summers too! Still working on a million projects here at the house. I'll post some updates tomorrow.