Friday Favorites!

This is a bit late, but with the holiday traveling and our internet being messed up...it's the best I could do :-)

1) Date night - The Friday before last, Josh and I went to Baltimore Comedy Factory for out date night. We had so much fun! I've never seen standup live so it was a great change to our typical date night. :-)

2) Football - We beat Clemson! I definitely didn't expect the win. I do feel like we missed out on a little bit of excitement. I know that sounds weird, but I just knew they were going to come back and beat us. Finally near the end of the 4th quarter I realized that wasn't going to happen. By that time we were so far ahead with so little time left. Don't get me wrong, I'm SUPER excited that we won, but there wasn't that really exciting, "OMG, we just beat #7!" moment. 

3) 3 day week - I love short work weeks!

4) Thanksgiving - I LOVE Thanksgiving! It's probably tied with Christmas for my favorite holiday. We got to eat some delicious food and spend some time with our family. Thanksgiving marks the beginning of Christmas season for us, so there's plenty of excitement!

5) Black Friday - Yes, we're some of the crazy people that go out shopping on Black Friday. No, I don't camp out in line for one of the 3 TVs Best Buy might have. We go mostly to spend time with Josh's side of the family. We get up every year and go together. Sometimes we get some shopping done, sometimes we don't. This year, we got a lot done. On Black Friday alone, we knocked out over half of our Christmas list. SCORE!

Friday Favorites!

I'm so glad I've started doing this. If I would have had this exact same week a few weeks ago, I probably would have told you that I've had a crappy week. When I look at these few things, I remember it actually wasn't so bad. It was actually pretty darn good.

1) New work hours - We're working shorter hours now that Josh has started his new job! The tradeoff is that he doesn't get every other Friday off anymore, but I like this better! I think Bailey does too :-)

2) Girls night - As much as I love just hanging out with the hubby at home, it's nice to get out of the house and hang out with some of the girls! I went to a friend's house for a girl's night last Saturday. It was a much needed change of pace.

3) New phone - This is a favorite and a not favorite all at the same time. I like my new phone, but I bought it because I had to. I lost my old one at the dog park. While it's much better, there are definitely other things I would have preferred to use my spending money on :-)

4) Natalia's call - I love when my niece calls me :-) She called a few nights ago to tell me they  had a tornado watch at home. Haha. She also wanted to check in on everyone and tell me what she had for dinner. It just amazes me at how she can hold a conversation :-) Little kids are so dang cute!

5) I got my ring back - I had to have a prong re-tipped on my engagement ring. I didn't want to hand it over, but when I got it back it was as shiny, white and scratch free as it was the day I got it :-)

6) Bailey howls - We've been trying to get Bailey to howl for the longest time without much luck. She will do it sporadically, but we want her to do it on command. We didn't think she really had it in her to be honest. Well, we were curious about how long she barks and whines when we leave for work. We decided to record her when we left for work. She doesn't do a lot of barking and whining...she howls! Not the little wimpy howls we get when she gets excited about something, but a real howl! Of course, it's not ideal for her to be howling that early in the morning, but I'm glad to know she has it in her!

Friday Favorites!

I borrowed this idea from my bestie. It's so easy to forget those little things that make you smile throughout the week, so I would like to list a few things about each week that made it great :-) 

1) NC State Football! Yes! We beat UNC for the 5th year in a row. It was an even sweeter win after all the crap talk from Withers leading up to the game. AND...shutout? Heck yea! AND, LSU beat Bama! Great football week!

2) Brewing! We brewed our Holiday beer Sunday night. I'm really excited about it and I can't wait to try it. This has been put off for a couple weeks now (lack of time when we had visitors and lack of hot water when the heater was broken), so it's not going to be ready in time for Thanksgiving like we hoped :-/ That's alright though, I'm sure it will be worth the wait.

3) Gone with the Wind - I finally finished the book a couple weekends ago and I was so excited to watch the movie. Josh and I stayed up really late Friday night to watch it. Of course, the book was better, but it was still a really good movie.

4) Cleaners - I bought a Livingsocial voucher for housecleaning. We had an appointment for Saturday morning. So, in just an hour or so, our house was cleaned AND we made a huge amount of progress in cleaning out and organizing our garage. We need to get rid of some stuff we've been hanging onto, but we're well on our way to being able to park our car in the garage before Winter sneaks up on us! Too bad I can't find my camera charger, this is definitely a project I would like to have a before/after shot of!

5) New job! - Not for me, for Josh! I haven't posted about it before, but today was his last day at his current job. He starts his new job on Monday. We're both really excited. This is a great opportunity for us! We celebrated with a happy hour after work today. Waffle fries topped with crab dip and cheese...DELICIOUS! 

The Woes of Being a Homeowner

Being a homeowner is very different from what I expected. It's not nearly as glamorous for sure, and it's a lot of work. We're way behind where I thought we would be at this point. For that reason, sometimes I regret not buying a newer home. Sometimes I think we are going to end up spending just as much as if we had bought one of the new construction townhomes we looked at once we do everything we want to do. I know that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it seems that way sometimes. I have to remind myself that we bought the house as more of an investment than anything. The amount of money we were going to spend in rent for the 5-7 years we plan on being here was absolutely ridiculous (and that's just with a small 1 bedroom apartment...anything larger would have been even more ridiculous!), and we did get a good deal. Not only that, but I was just plan sick of apartment living. It was definitely a lot less responsibility, but I love having a place to call ours! And, even if we don't actually make money on the house once we sell, we've learned a LOT! There are things I know to look for now that I would have never considered before owning a home. There are things that I have realized are or are not actually that important when it comes down to it. I know this is going to be a great experience when it's all said and done, and I definitely wouldn't want to go back to apartment living, but sometimes it's just frustrating.

There are tons of changes we want to make to our house, from simple updates or renovations to adding a deck. By this time, I thought we would have our kitchen completely renovated. We're not even close. One obvious reason is money. Every project, big or small, seems to end up costing more than we think. There are those "little" things we need to get for projects that add up really quickly. Also, I didn't think about those things we would HAVE to spend money on, like fixing a leaky window or replacing a water heater (more on that later). Of course I knew there would be repairs, I just didn't think they would come soon. The other reason is TIME. There's never enough of it. Since we're beginners at this homeowner thing and neither of us are particularly handy, our projects always take longer than we plan. For this reason, we're making some changes to the way we plan for projects. We're going to plan for the project to take twice as long as we think it will and 1.5 times as much as we think it will cost. This will account for the numerous trips to Lowe's to pick up tools we didn't think we would need. Haha.

Now, back to the water heater, the main reason for this post. It went out on us. That's bad enough. What's worse? It went out when we had 4 guests in the house! I felt SO bad. Some of them got lucky and only had to endure 1 cold shower, others (sorry Hutch!) were pretty much screwed for 4 days. Josh researched some stuff and tried a few things on the water heater. In the end, the heating coil was corroded or something and the whole thing needed to be replaced. We did a bit of research and picked out a water heater. We decided to have it installed. Josh has learned very quickly that he hates anything plumbing related. He had already been trying to repair the thing for several days. He was just burnt out. Lowe's had same day installation if you ordered before noon. That worked perfectly. Josh ordered it on Thursday. Well, same day installation was $100 extra, so we decided one more day wouldn't kill us. They only had one in stock that they could deliver soon (and it wasn't the one we picked out, but at least it was cheaper). So, we were getting our new water heater on Friday. Yay for hot water! Nope, no hot water of Friday. The lady taking the order didn't think to tell Josh that someone needed to come in to sign a contract before they would send anyone out, and she didn't update the phone number on file with the number Josh gave her (they had Josh's phone number on file...Josh lost his phone). Mid-day Friday we still hadn't heard a thing. That's when I called to figure out what was going on. This is when I found out we had to go to Lowe's first. We went in after work to sign the contract. Someone finally made it out on Monday to install the water heater. So...several hundred dollars and a week later, we could take hot showers again!

Luckily, I have an amazing husband who warmed water on the stove for me to take baths rather than cold showers, so the bathing part wasn't so bad. Washing dishes was horrible, it's so much harder to get dishes clean with cold water! For this reason, we decided to put off brewing our Christmas beer for a week :-/ Hot water is definitely one of those things we took for granted. 

Household Binder

I mentioned in my 101 in 1001 list that I wanted to complete a household binder. I really want to get more organized and I think this is a good start. I'm just about ready to tackle this project! Josh and I have decided to put house projects on hold for a few months because we're just burnt out. Once we finish our current one (the half bath), that's it until...I don't really know when, but at least after New Years. This will give me some more time to work on things I want to accomplish. I've decided to make this my December project so I'll be all ready for the new year! For now, I'll stick to planning, finding inspiration and collecting the supplies I'll need.

One of my favorite blogs for inspiration I've found so far is IHeart Organizing. Not only are there great ideas for making a household binder, but she's got great tips on organizing ANY part of your house you can think of. I have a feeling I'll be spending a lot of time there!

Here are my potential categories and the things that will be under each section:

- Meal Planning: fridge, freezer and pantry inventory; dishes we want to try?

- Finances: Payment schedule/checklist, account info, maybe I'll print a copy of our budget for here? Maybe not?

- Home Maintenance: Cleaning checklists/schedules, maintenance schedule (like changing filters, checking smoke detector batteries, etc.), contact info for contractors that we've used. I want to get a baseball card sleeve to add business cards to this section

- Contacts: phone numbers, addresses and e-mails of friends/family

- Pets: Bailey's vaccination schedule, heatworm/flea prevention schedule, vet info, emergency vet info, boarding/daycare facilities...or maybe this one should go in the travel section?

- Emergency Info: Drs (when we finally get a regular Dr), closest hospital info (is it bad that I still don't know where our closest hospital is?), Dentist, OBGYN...eventually pediatrician, etc. I haven't decided if I'll call this tab emergency info for sure...maybe just Healthcare (since it's not all emergency info?)
- Travel: packing list (I make one EVERY time we go somewhere and it pretty much stays the same...this way I can save some time :-)), care instructions for Bailey in case we have a sitter (as well as kids...eventually)
- Auto: maintenance schedule/checklist

Some other things I'm thinking about putting in there:
- Project to-do list (like, major projects for the house)
- Paint swatches we've used for the house, (with the room they were used in written on them)
- Past home improvements

The more I think about it, the more I think I could make a whole separate binder with the last few things.

So...what do you think? What would you put in your binder? Are there any categories I'm missing? Just something within a category I'm missing? Would you put something under a different category? I would love any suggestions!