HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Because of our remodel mess and the fact that I can't just sit and blog all day without interruptions I thought I would post some pictures from Halloween pasts that still make me giggle.

I'm picking up Princess Spoiled Brat (my niece) today from school, then she's coming to stay with The Hubs and I for the weekend. We'll be doing the Halloween thing at WSU Laura's because she is the QUEEN of making holidays fantastic! Especially Halloween

So here are some pictures of Halloween Pasts for me. I'll have more pictures this weekend of our remodel, Halloween Party, and just funnin around with Princess Spoiled Brat. I was also graced with an award, a tag, and being boo'd by some bloggin buddies but I haven't had the time to reply or acknowledge them. Thank you ladies for thinking of me, I didn't forget about your gracious gifts I just haven't had time. I will get to them this next week.

My cute little pumpkins at the front door. These were my from my apartment days. When it was a cute little apartment, nothing to do but shop and mess around. Oh how I sometimes miss those days!
Princess Spoiled Brat (age 4) trying on her Princess costume, however she had to put her own twist on it with the puppy boots. The mess in the back ground was from the Princess Spoiled Brat Tornado as well as I was in the middle of moving with The Hubs in to our current house.

We made cupcakes one day. I was teaching her how to clean up properly.

This just goes to show she really is related to me. If I was 4 this would be what I would wear everyday too! The pink poodle at age 5. It was very cute.

Have a Safe and Happy Halloween!

HEY! Look What's Been Happenin

Remember my ugly downstairs room that I've been bitchin about for months? My new bloggin buddies have only heard the bitchin for months. If your a long time friend you know I have been bitchin about it for almost 3 years.

Beautiful cedar paneling. With the damn crawl space for under the house right in the middle of it. What the hell? Who puts a damn crawl space in the middle of the family room?

Ugly ass stairs

Notice the furniture is all moved to the middle? No pictures on the walls. Well I only had 3 pictures anyway so you probably wouldn't have noticed them anyway. Now there is NOTHING!

Take special note of that door that leads to the laundry room and garage. Currently faux brown wood. Circa 1970's

Well Wednesday morning bright and early .....and when I say early I mean

E A R L Y. It was still dark out. Brian and Jordan from Quick Silver Construction showed up to start the Extreme Home Make Over. 2 days of construction is what Brian told me it would take to transform this ugliness in to FABULOUSNESS.

Brian tearing out yet another electrical mess that could have started a fire in the walls. It's a long story that I won't get in to but, let's just say I'm pretty sure this house was wired before drug tests were implemented in the work place.

Cute little Jordon who is Brian's bitch. He's made me laugh every second that he's been here. Architectural graduate working construction while he gets his masters. He's done a great job on the finish work.
The place is a disaster right now and driving me nuts with the dirt, dust, and stink but I know in the end it's going to be great! The Hubs couldn't stand that all this excitement was happenin while he was at work so he came home on lunch to help out, or stand around and supervise.
It's all good, he needs to learn how to use the $1500 worth of power tools he bought last year that he NEEDED so he could make me some flower boxes. I still don't have flower boxes. I'm going to make him bust them out and redo some bathrooms when this is all done.
I'M NOT KIDDING HUBS!

Jordon spent most of his day one day 1 under those stairs putting up wainscoting and trim as well as trying to figure out how to make these ugly ass stairs fabulous.

At the end of the first day here are the results

Wainscoting up with a chair rail and almost ready for me to start painting.

Remember that horrid 1970's door? Here is the new one that I salvaged from my folks remodel job. It looks FREAKIN FABULOUS!

Makes the rest of my ugly 1970's doors look horrible. I got a new door knob ordered and it's going to be clear glass. I can't wait for it get here so I can see how beautiful it's going to be.

Franklin looking at the new door. Thinkin "hey what did you do with my door?" "I liked that old door, it never shut right and I could come and go as I pleased"

So can you guess what else I did while t he guys were working?

This whole construction thing has put a damper on Princess Lazy Ass blogging all day so this has to be short. I have painting to do and messes to clean up.

More pictures coming...............Stay tuned.................

A Beautiful Fall Weekend

It was a beautiful fall weekend here in the Pacific Northwest. The trees are so pretty right now. According to the news we are in the peak of our beautiful fall. Above is a picture of the neighbors huge beautiful oak tree. It's my lame attempt to post lovely fall pictures like some of the other creative ladies who's blog I enjoy looking at. Coastal Nest, Tammy, Stephanie just to name a few. They all had pretty pictures posted on their blogs of fall happening out their windows and pretty Halloween stuff. So, I thought I would try it. Crappy pictures yet again. Oh well.............you get the idea.

The Hubs and I did some much needed grocery shopping this weekend. This was a huge mistake the week before Halloween. We came home with all kinds of candy and crap. The thought was that it would be for the Trick or Treaters that came. Guess what??????? Last year we had ONE and this year we aren't even going to be home. We are such suckers! So I put them in pretty bowls and dishes and tried to set them out of the way so there would be some left if we did happen to get a couple kids on Friday.

The Hubs favorite. Peanut Butter M&M's., 100 Grands and Snickers bars. I'm not much of a candy eater. I'm the cookie, cake, bread, muffin, scone, doughnut eater. I can stay out of the candy, I can't stay out of the baked goods.


This weekend The Hubs and I were busy. First, we went to visit my folks and help them start moving furniture back in to their house. They have been in the middle of a TOTAL house remodel since the first part of July. They gutted their house (built in 1973) and redid everything. New bathrooms, new rooms, new closets, new hardwood floors, new doors, new tile, new brick work, new everything. It's beautiful! Before we went home we did a little shopping in their left overs pile for our remodeling we are going to start this week.

First find................This new door. They put these all through their house and it looks great. They had one left over and we're going to try and use it for the door that goes in to our laundry room. The downstairs room (that I have been posting ugly pictures of for months) that we are remodeling is so dark an dingy that I think it will help with making the room lighter and more open. It's all glass but has a built in blind in it. Above, the new door we salvaged from the left overs at my folks house.
Below is the ugly door it's going to replace. The new door is much bigger and it will be FABULOUS because this is the door that also goes out to the garage and is the door we use to bring stuff (furniture and appliances) in and out all the time. It's ALWAYS too small and moving stuff is a big chore. This will make things a lot easier. I know your saying "well how much stuff do you move?" "do you really need a new door just for that?" YES! I change furniture like socks! We are always moving stuff in and out. It will just make The Hubs life a lot easier and.........it will look much better!

Here is some tile that I salvaged also. Enough to do a space under our gas stove. These are my two tile choices.....................
I have the darker beige tile and it almost matches the carpet exactly. I picked out this tumbled rock in lighter colors but the same beige tones that I thought I might use as a border or accent in the tile design. I can't decide. The gas stove is dark chocolate brown and my furnitue is light beige. I painted the wall Martha Stewart Cake Plate Blue, which is a really light blue.

This is the lighter choices I have. I'm leaning toward the dark because..........I have white carpet through out the whole house and it's a BITCH! The white carpet looked darker in the store when it was ordered. Then when it was laid in the house it was white. I don't want to make the same mistake. This room gets ALL the traffic from outside. The carpet in there now is light and it looks horrible. The tile in the photo above is LIGHT and it's beautiful and if we don't use it downstairs there is enough to redo my entry way. Where I think it will be lovely against the white carpet and hardwood floors.

Have I shown you my entry way before? This is it. It's got some ugly ass faux brick tile, two ugly doors, and a lot of funky walls.

The rugs (that I love) are from Home Decorators. I recommend them for your rug needs. I haven't ordered anything else from them but I'm thinking of ordering some furniture.
The faux brick just lifts right off. I hit it with a hammer one day to see what would happen and to loosen it all up. Then when The Hubs started walking on it, it would just start falling apart. That way a redo would be his BRILLIANT idea and it would get on the list of things to do. Since I "fixed it" sometimes when you walk across it, it just starts falling off the sub floor. It's totally embarrassing when it happens to a guest. But the plan worked. Now The Hubs is talking about redoing it sooner then he had planned. Isn't it lovely?

The contractor called this morning and said he would be here on Wednesday to start on our downstairs. We are having tile laid, wainscoting put up, walls textured, stairs and rails done, carpet laid, and a new door put in. I'm so excited! This is a room we spend a lot of time in, basically it's where we live and it's UGLY, dirty with someone else's dirt, cold, and just not what we had in mind.We have been sitting here every Saturday and Sunday talking about what to do with it for almost 3 years. The day has finally come! This last Saturday and Sunday was weird sitting here having coffee and tea in the mornings, watching HGTV and not discussing the brick.

This week is going to be busy with guys here working. It's going to totally put a cramp in my blogging!

Let me know what you think about the tile and carpet choices. After the white carpet choice I made I don't trust my decisions.

Here is something else I have been working on for the last month or so that isn't going so well. It's a learning process that I'm not doing so well with it.
This is the Pfaff 4 D Suite of machine embroidery digitizing. About 3 or 4 months ago Tommie who does my embroidery for me said "I hate doing all this digitizing you want, you need to learn how to do it!" So I thought "OK!" That would be great. Then I could do whatever I wanted, create whatever I want. So I talked The Hubs in to letting me purchase this $2500 set up to learn how to digitize and create machine embroidery patterns. I took a class this weekend and learned nothing. Now I'm just spending all my time clicking around, reading manuals, and trying to figure it out on my own. I have another class to go to in November. This week I'm suppose to go over to Tommie's so we can mess around with it and actually do some of the embroidery patterns I have made to see how they work. This is going to go one or two ways.............1. I unload it from my computer and sell the program on eBay. 2. Take more time to learn it, talk The Hubs in to buying a big fancy embroidery machine, and make this my new profession. 3. It gets tossed in the "project" pile that The Hubs will ride my ass about every time he has to trip over it. I'll keep you posted.

Hey remember the trailer of old brick from last weekend?

It's gone! The brick that we have been wanting gone for years is GONE! The Hubs and I took it recycling this weekend and unloaded it brick by brick. Normally I would have put a picture of the brick on craigslist and let someone come get if they needed it. Craigslist is a wonderful way of getting rid of stuff!

I was sick and didn't feel like dealing with it so I did a little calling around. It was WAAAAAAAAAAAY less expensive to take to recycling then the dump. Recycling charges by the yard, the dump charges by the pound. Just a little something I learned.

If you are wondering how out of shape you are...........unload a trailer full of brick! Advil my new BFF!

Ok, I'm off to get something done.

Have a wonderful day!

Candidates and Shoes
Yeah, I'm still on that kick

As some of you know, last week while I was sick with the flu and watching the Presidential Debates I made a decision that I would make my history making,most important vote of my life selection for President based on the candidates shoes.

I know, you might think this isn't the most efficient way to make a monumental decision. One that will change the future of our country and perhaps that of other countries too. A persons shoe choice or non choice says a lot about them. Republican, Democrat, Black, White, Green, Female, Male, or Hermaphrodite doesn't matter. Shoes are the insight to all knowing of a person. Well eyes say a lot too but shoes are right up there in the top 5 things you should notice about a person.

In my dating days, no brand name, cheap, scuffed, tattered, worn or ugly shoes on the feet by my potential suitor was a DEAL BREAKER. Call me shallow I don't care. There is some fact to this.

A bloggin buddy of mine (who is waaaaaaaaaaaaay smarter then me) sent this photo to me yesterday and asked me what I thought about it. Well it sparked a great discussion between the two of us and we decided it was TOTALLY blog worthy.

I think it could say a lot of things good or bad about our Presidential Candidate but I'm interested in what you think it says.

Let me know, I'm curious to your thoughts.

****No pricey shoes were harmed in this post for the sake of conversation. The photo was also not checked for authenticity. I didn't care, I was more interested in the discussion.

Have a great day!

That's Fantastic Honey!

But Now What?

Hey remember The House of B's downstairs family room? It's the room with that wall of ugly brick, dirty carpet, entry ways on every wall, and basically just a really ugly dull room. I had asked for advice from all of you on what to do with this room last month in a blog post.

The room we spend most our time in but yet the ugliest room in the house.

This is the ugly brick that surrounds the beautiful chocolate brown gas stove.

For the last 3 years we have been sitting every Saturday and Sunday morning in this room discussing what we should do with it. We talk, we watch HGTV, and we talk, and look at magazines, and we talk and talk some more. While I was sick laying on the couch last week The Hubs came down and said to me "what should we do about this room?" This time instead of buying in to his discussion of this room yet again I decided to take things in to my own hands and try a little master manipulation. My response..........."Do you have a hammer that's big enough to hit that brick with?" The Hubs, "Yeah, why?" Me, "Why don't you just hit the brick and see what happens, see whats behind it or how thick it is" The Hubs faster then I could blink was out the door to the garage and back in with a hammer. He whacks the wall and a huge hunk falls off. Well this gets him all excited. Another whack and the bricks just started coming apart in big hunks so he took down about 1/4 of the wall in the 10 minutes we were standing there. We discussed that maybe we would start working on this and get it down and then go from there. That brick wall is really what we hated the most.

On Saturday when I was at Barn House The Hubs worked on it a little bit more and when I got home I was shocked at how much better it looked. Even the ugly cedar paneling behind the brick looked better then that brick. Well because I wasn't feeling very well I just went to bed when I got home. Thinking "I'll help tomorrow and we can get a little more done."

OOOOOOOOOOOH NO NO NO! My Dad came down on Sunday with a big ass sledge hammer! They had that wall and platform down within an hour. AMAZING! Here is the wall and platform now in the trailer ready to go to recycling.

Here is what the room looks like now. It just looks bigger. The walls need to be re textured so I can paint them.

The pretty stove looking all tiny and lonesome in the big corner of ugliness.

How about this 1970's funky Mediterranean style linoleum we found under the platform. I bet we find it under the carpet too when we take that up. I have carpet ordered. Now I have to go pick out tile to put under the stove.
So this is what The Hubs did, or at least got started while I was gone on Saturday and then had my Dad come and helped him finish it up. This was going to be the worst and dirtiest part of this little remodel job and now it's done! I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am it's all done. Like I said we have been talking about it for 3 years and we finally JUST DID IT!

When my Dad comes down to help out with house projects, he expects lunch or dinner before he leaves. Which is fine by me! I love to cook and it's fun to have someone to cook for. Why do I think you need to know this? Because I found a great recipe I'm going to share with you. My Dad and I love clam chowder, and as you know good clam chowder is really hard to find. Here in the Seattle area we have Duke's Chowder House which I LOVE LOVE LOVE. I decided to do a little searching on the Internet because there is a recipe for every restaurant dish you love if you look hard enough. There it was buried on about page 12 of my search. The recipe for Duke's Chowder that someone had posted. They stated that way back in the day, Duke's use to sell tourist postcards with the recipe on it. I made it yesterday and it was darn close! It was great chowder and hit the spot on a cold damp day.

ENJOY!

Sorry Blogger wouldn't let me post the recipe I copied off that website. I'm going to have to retype it and try again. If you would like the recipe e-mail me or click on Duke's Clam Chowder Recipe for the link .

Sorry!

Duke's Clam Chowder Recipe
SERVES 6

Barn House

Saturday morning I sprang out of bed at 5 am! The day had finally come. I had read about it, heard about it, and today was the day I was going to get to see it with my very own eyes.

I got up, pretended that I felt like a million bucks (so The Hubs would give me a hall pass) and got ready to go. Michele was at my house bright and early 7 am and we were on the road to pick up Donna. Then it was on the road 3 - 4 hours (depending on how many stops)to Vancouver WA destination..............................

Barn House Sale. I had been wanting to go to one of their sales all spring and summer but things were just to busy. Today I was going hell or high water, dead or alive! The drive out was beautiful. None of us had ever been out to the Battle Ground area in Vancouver. It was a gorgeous fall day. The trees were beautiful, sun was shining and you couldn't have asked for a nicer day.

Michele in the cute little floral CAbi Sweatshirt, myself, and Donna

Yeah, I'm the dork with her eyes closed. It's my picture thing. Some people don't smile, some people always look beautiful, some people make faces. Me......I close my eyes!

As soon as we arrived we were greeted in the parking lot by these fabulous ladies. Fellow blogging buddies. Lisa, Joy, and (a new friend) Shelia. Isabel was also there but she was super busy with the camera. Thank you Isabel! So we chatted with the girls, meet the hosts of this shin dig.....Joe and Jermonne. They were all dressed up and looked verrrrrrrrry scary. Did I get pictures? Uhmmmmmmmmmm NO! Why? Because........I was so busy talking to everyone, coughing my lungs out, and looking around I forgot. Go over to

Isabel's blog for some fabulous photos. She always does an amazing job on the pictures. Shelia has some great photos too so go visit her too. I saw Joy with a camera a snappin like crazy so I bet she will have some great photos also.

This is the entry way. It was so inviting, you could see the beautiful food spread and lovely Mimosas from the parking lot. It really looked beautiful. Made you want to jump out of your car and run right up there!

The barn entrance. Spectacular!

Some of the many displays






I tried to get a good picture of the ceiling. It was really cool. Very woodsy, spooky and romantic all at the same time.


Loved the little test tubes hanging all over in the trees with mini pumpkins in them. Great idea!

We had a wonderful time! There were all kinds of other antique shows and craft shows in the area and we hit all of them. It was just fun to drive around and sight see. We even saw a camel standing in the middle of a field in the middle of no where. It was just so funny and odd all at the same time. Then we ventured up to Portland to Monticello Antique Marketplace for lunch and a little looksie. I had heard about this place and all it's fabulousness but had never been there so while I was so close I was going!
What a great place. One should put this on their list of MUST VISIT places in Portland Oregon. It's right off The 205 at Stark St. Super easy to find. We had lunch there with Joy and Sheila. The company was wonderful and the lunch was very good. Thank you Joy and Shelia for joining us we had so much fun visiting with you both of you.
Then it was the long drive back home. We chatted about politics, gossiped about high school classmates, talked about husbands, old boyfriends, and how our parents still drive us nuts and which homes we should think about putting them in. KIDDING!
I got home about 8 pm, tired, more sick then when I left and excited to tell The Hubs all about the trip. When I put down my handbag on the counter and looked downstairs to my shock and horror you will never guess what I saw.

Any guess of what The Hubs did all day unsupervised?


Stay tuned, tomorrow I'll show pictures......................