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!

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.

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.

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.

Under Construction

We've got a lot of projects underway here at 315. I'll be posting some before and afters in the next few days, but I'm pretty excited about how great things are looking over here.

Three Years

Today is Dan and my three year anniversary of being homeowners of our house at 315! It is hard to believe that three years have already passed.

I remember when we bought it, I made a list and timeline of all of these projects I was going to be able to get done in the first year. There must have been about 100 line items on that list and I've probably gotten to about 10 of them in three years.

In a lot of ways we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we decided to buy a house, yet alone a 105-year old house that needs some work. There have been some near catastrophes and all of my projects can definitely wear on Dan's spirit, but it's been a really good learning experience from us and has given me a place to focus my efforts outside of work.

Knowing that this three year anniversary was looming, I recently started completing some more of the items on my to do list and hope to be able to share them on here over the next few months. To start off you can see my recent dining room painting escapade here, on the blog I share with my siblings.

Today is the start of a three-day weekend for me! I'm off to the big city in search of some dresses for upcoming wedding events. I'll update on my finds later :)

Did I mention that I love gardening?

Look how pretty!