Halloweening

It's Halloween! What could be better? Schumacher place gets thousands of kids for trick-or-treating (not an exaggeration). Last year we ran out of candy twice necessitating 2 separate candy runs to IGA where it costs approx. $30/bag for bottle caps and skittles: Yuck! This year we were prepared (with the good stuff. . . Reese's, yes please!)

Ruth also had the great suggestion that we should throw a neighborhood block party too to try to meet some of our neighbors. I think it was a huge success

 We passed out Hot Chocolate to all of the adults

Courtney brought an unreal amount of puppy chow

 Batman carved a pumpkin (granted this was last week)

 Rowdy wore her pumpkin suit

Even Rowdy and Batman's  friends came.

 All in all it was a great night!

Paint-pocolypse

I have gone crazy with white paint. I love it. Everything looks so much better and cleaner with a fresh coat of white paint.
It all started when we needed a cabinet door for our bathroom. It's weird to need a cabinet door for the bathroom, I know, but our house was built in 1902, and we needed a cabinet door for the bathroom.

Joe's mom is awesome at bargain shopping and found us the perfect door that was almost the right size. The only problem was it was scratched, and had the door handle holes in the wrong place.

At little wood putty and primer, and the door was off to a good start

Joe, Rowdy, and Batman were too busy eating ice cream to help

Then they had to sleep off all of the ice cream

Three coats of paint later, and we have a cabinet door in our bathroom!

But since the white paint was already out, this horrible 70's wood vanity. . .

Became white (it looks even better with the doors on)

 And this horrible yellow door became white (no before picture, I didn't want to subject you to how bad it was).

Hooray for white paint!

Note: Valspar white paint in semi-gloss bright white = sucks! Glidden trim and door paint in bright white = rules! Seriously though, the glidden paint was sooo much better, but watch out, you need to paint with a window open because those fumes are killer (and it sort of reminded me of painting with cottage cheese, yuck!)

Recipe Fail

In the past couple of months I have been desperately trying to bake/cook things I've never tried before. It's all a part of my "I have free time, I should learn how to do new things," challenge. So here is an update:
Things that turned out great and I would recommend:
Cake Batter Rice Krispie Treats


Pizza Bites


Oreo and Peanut Butter Brownie Cakes


Auntie Anne's At Home Baking Kit

Maybe it was my cooking ability, or maybe these recipes are awful. Either way, these recipes have failed miserably . . . for the love of all things holy, please don't make these:

Sausage Vegetable Soup

Neopolitan Gooey Cake Bars

Millionaire's Shortbread

Chicken Fried Steak



London, Ohio

I finally have a computer again. Joe broke the screen on my computer last week and I have been without (and without insanity) ever since (darn). But now I'm back in business! And to celebrate, I have some pictures of a truly amazing experience: London, Ohio

Today, our friends Will and Courtney took us to our very first auction (they are old pro's) in London, OH. Let me tell you, it was awesome! It was an incredible array of some pretty worthless collectibles. It was certainly better than any thriftstore I've ever been. I was shocked when I saw just how many things (or boxes of things) sold for $2.

I have to say, the bidding part was the most fun.

There were multiple wagons piled high with boxes of junk/garbage to bid on (and if no one wanted a box, they would just keep adding things to it until it sold):

Furby

Unfortunately, this guy was bid on while we were getting lunch :(

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

Joe and I ended up with a pretty good haul for a grand total of $7:

• Box of Cups/Glassware
• Tree Trimmers
• 8 Foot Folding Table
• 2 Shirts
• Vegetable Steamer (thanks to Courtney)
• Plastic Tote w/ Lid

This guy came in my box of glasses. . . but I decided it could go ahead and be placed on the "free" table. Update: doesn't it look like these two people are in my mug? Get out of there gnomes!

All in all, I would say it was a successful day, and as soon as we got home from the auction, we put those tree trimmers to work:

I would highly recommend you check out an auction near you!

Day 1

What are we thinking? What have I let myself be talked in to? Joe has decided that we should try "insanity" instead of restarting p90x. Today was day 1. It was awful.

There are some things that (after 1 workout) I can say I do like about insanity:

• Shaun T doesn't remind me of Michael Scott (Tony Horton)
• Workouts are only 45 min instead of 90 min
• It's only 60 days instead of 90
• No equipment necessary (i.e. no pull up bar screwed into door jam)
• one of the participants in the video can't keep up

Then there are some things that I don't like as much:

• we made it through 25 min out of the 45 min video before experiencing total muscle failure
• the goal of the video is total muscle failure :(
• I still hate working out

I will keep you posted as we continue our journey into insanity. Has anyone tried it? Any tips?

Oh Office Jobs. . .

This video is super cheesy. . . so obviously I loved it. If only they had an "OPTIVA" and "MS Office 2010 Upgrade from 2003" section.

Thank Goodness for the Internet

     I realize the internet (and by internet I mean Google) is the greatest invention of our time. . . but I wonder if anyone ever really knew just how awesome it was going to turn out. You can literally find information on ANYTHING!
     We have a friend from church who recently deployed with the national guard. He is going to be stateside for a few months before he ships out to Afghanistan. As he was deploying, I felt like it was really important to 1.) Pray for him (his name is Jordan if you would like to join in praying for him with us) and 2.) Send him care packages. But having never sent care packages to people in the military, I had no idea what to include: enter Google. If you search "how to send a care package to a soldier" you will see 439,000 pages of do's and don'ts for sending care packages. Some pages are written from people who send them often, some are from soldiers who receive them, and some are even from food safety specialists on how to not have your package spoil in the heat. It really is awesome. I'm glad I read through it too, because there are definitely some good tips that I never would have thought of (i.e. send M&M cookies instead of chocolate chip because the candy coating will help keep the chocolate from melting).
     Since our friend is going to be stateside for a little while where mail is more reliable, we opted for Cheryl's for the first package (it was really hard not to get one for Jordan and one for Katie and Joe too).

Though I will definitely be employing some of the new really awesome tips I found for the next one.

If you are interested, some really great resources I found were:

anysoldier.com

www.treatanysoldier.com/

militarycarepackages.net/

www.ehow.com/how_4490375_send-care-package-soldier.html