Chez Nous

Alright folks, here they are - pictures of the rooms I'm willing to show you of our house. For the less glamorous photos, see the rest of the blog.

Our bedroom. Missing:Bed skirt, headboard, curtains.

My desk, also in our bedroom. I bought the desk at a garage sale for - no joke - $10. After paint to re-cover it, new drawer pulls, and a lot of time spent sanding, the total cost was less than $50.

Two views of our kitchen. I'll leave it up to your imagination to figure out how they fit together. (Hint: stove).

The dining room (hmmm, those chairs look familiar).

Two views of the living room. Somehow this album didn't seem complete without a picture containing Pearl wrestling with an over-sized stuffed animal (bottom).

And there you have it! Happy three-day weekend!

Under Construction

The Olympics are coming to an end, and Dan and I have been trying to find something new to occupy our evenings and weekends. So we decided to install a brand new HVAC system, you know, as one does. Call it green (save 20%+ energy), call it space saving, call it upgrading... I call it Dan flexing his man muscle. Ever since he was a toddler and his dad bought him his first tool belt, Dan has been itching to work on his own big, impressive projects. Well, this project is certainly big.

This is our present source of heat that we are getting rid of, a radiator under almost every window in the house (this is our bedroom):


You know those air registers in the floors of every house built in the last 50 years? That is what we're installing - a forced air heating/AC system. It consists of running air ducts throughout the ceiling of the basement and up into every room in the house, then installing a furnace. No big deal, really.

So, Dan started going full steam ahead this weekend, getting to the store when they opened Saturday morning and working ever since in our creepy, dusty basement. Old Man Germann (since, we decided, 25 is old) came over Saturday and the two of them installed the main air duct:


They even got as far as installing the first complete register in our bedroom. This notably involved taking a jigsaw (Dan's birthday present) to my oak wood floors. I had to avert my eyes and swallow the tears - rightfully so, because this was the beautiful result!


It may seem like we're well on our way, but there is still a LOT of man muscle flexing to be done. This is just half of the duct yet to install (we didn't even buy the other half yet):

Also to be noted in this picture - the awesome basement floor tile. I'm looking forward to starting that project. But, one thing at a time!

My name's Allison, and I'm an Olympiholic

There's a disease taking the country by storm, and I have fallen prey. The symptoms range from enthusiasm to exhaustion and it is often characterized by one or more of the following: staying up until midnight to watch Nastia and Shawn nail their floor routines (disregarding the fact that your alarm will sound in 6.25 hours), bookmarking NBCOlympics.com so you can check the medal count 15x a day, watching Michael Phelps every single time he gets in the pool, and getting very emotionally involved in all this tiebreaker/age/judging gymnastics controversy. I know I'm not alone in my suffering. On that note, I figured that many of you would enjoy this as much as I did when I found it:

Go USA!

3 Weeks Later

Yup, we've been a little busy. Not so busy that it's actually a viable excuse for me not to update in over 3 weeks, but busy none the less. What we've been doing:

Growing my hair out - see: previous post and the Olfelt's August budget

Moving for the second time in 2 months - Less than a handful of boxes left to unpack, if you don't count those 8 in the corner.

Celebrating - Dan turned 22 last week and it was a multi-stage party involving friends, family, and jetskiing.

Making furniture - the Ikea way, that is. We got a china hutch from the "as-is" section of Ikea. It was the floor model and the doors didn't open very well, so it was 50% off. After disassembling it to fit it in our pint-sized SUV, we realized that the door hardware was just installed backwards, and now it works perfectly.

Watching the Olympics - Addicted. That's all there is to it.

Having company - Yay for friends who visit! Trips to the Mall of America, the Science Museum, and other assorted tourist-y places.

Projects Projects Projects - Pull the vine off the back of the house, empty the dis-GUS-ting pond in the backyard, water and fertilize the lawn, re-wire the 70 year old electrical sockets, replace the vast array of colored switches and face plates, new door handles, new light fixture, getting the TV to work, the list goes on, really.

It is my solemn vow to have pictures up of the house sometime this week (seeing as how I'm not presently employed, this shouldn't be a problem). I just have to clean first.