Oh well...

Home ownership is an adventure that rivals Lord of the Rings, Narnia and whatever else you can think of. It's a blast, even when things don't go right. Case in point, when a hammer is being used for its intended purpose, removing nails, and it breaks. Oh well! That's life I guess!

My Awesome Garage Sale Find

Here is a great little table I found wandering around Greece today looking for productive garage sales. It was only a dollar. Now this is not the best deal I have ever gotten, but it pretty far up there. I bought it thinking I would use it for a nightstand, but now I am thinking maybe an end table. Or, possibly, somewhere down in the spanish room. Or... That's the great thing about little tables, they'll go just about anywhere!

(See my lovely new dining room curtains in the background?)

Culoare Zi!

We had our first official event at our house last weekend. A while back, I think before we had bought our house, we decided to host a yearly color themed party, just for kicks and giggles. So, now that we have a place to hold the party, we decided to go ahead with the plan. We chose blue for this year as the color blue is not really associated with any holiday, and therefore it would be easier to convince people that it would be fun, and also that it was an independent event.

 

 

We decided to go with the idea of celebrating an "ancient cultural holiday" that commemorated the advent of color in the world, with color first coming into the world in 1234 B.C. We talked about how the world only existed in black and white previous to that day, and so the grateful ancestors named the first day of color "Culoare Zi" (which is simply two Romanian words, "color" and "day") We thought it was funny, but crazy enough that everyone would know we were kidding. He he. Not so much. We had to do a lot of explaining, but most people though it was funny.

 

 

The only thing we required of our guests was to wear something blue! (By the way, if you don't get an invite to the yellow party next year, it's almost for sure because you refused to wear blue. Or it may just be because we don't like you anymore.) We planned out a fantastic menu, with foods either containing something blue (Blue Cheese Cheesecake), or having the word blue in the name (Grilled Chicken Cordon Bleu) We played blues in the background, and decorated with blue candles, flowers and balloons. It was blue-ti-ful!

 

 

Overall, in spite of the heat, the party was a smashing success. I put together a montage of the party pics for your viewing pleasure. Here's to a wonderful yellow party for Culoare Zi '09!

Centipedes

We get horrible, huge, hairy centidpedes in our new house. Blech. Some of them have literally been as long as my fingers. Very, very disgusting. Whenever I see them I go all cold and get a chill, and I am incapable of taking any action against the darn bug. Here's a picture, you'll see why I hate them. (I kept it small so you wouldn't be too grossed out.)

I did some research on how to keep centidpedes out of the house, and found out that basically you can't. However, we had bought some liquid food ant traps to keep the ants out of our kitchen and guess what? The centidpedes like the food too, and it kills them too! Awesome, so although I have to clean up centidpede corpses every few days, I am not as afraid of the dead ones as I am the alive ones. Here's to Liquid Ant Killer!

Safe and secure

When we toured our house during the open house (before it was our house) we noticed that the front door didn't close well.



When we bought our house in February we noticed that the front door would open on its own. (Scary)



So, we bought a new lock for the door. As it turns out, that didn't work. Old style door did not mesh with new style lock. So, we put a chain on the door and called it a day. Obviously, this did not feel all that secure. But, we were hesitant to buy a new door as we didn't want to replace one of the few original things left in the house. But, then we met our neighbor's son, who is a wealth of knowledge, and he told us that our current door was not, in fact, the original door. So we happily began the search for a new door. Front doors are expensive!!! :-)

We finally found a new, beautiful door for a price that wouldn't kill us. We ordered a new lock, and spent Father's Day weekend installing our new door.


Turns out our castle's walls are much thicker than your average house's, and we actually had to build another frame onto the exisiting door frame to make it fit out to the front of the house. I love our house! It still needs some paint and finishing details, but all in all we think it looks pretty sweet. Don't you agree?