Basement Drywall - Progress Photos

It's been awhile since I've posted about our basement finishing project, but not to fear, we've been working slow and steady on it. We had some delays...the major one due to difficulty in finding a contractor, but we finally found one through Gordon's work a little while back. All the electrical work was done & State electrical inspection passed. We also had one additional thing to do with the HVAC and my dad generously did it when we were in Las Vegas on vacation!! To say Gordon was tickled pink with this would be an understatement. With all the rough-in work complete, the City came out again to re-check a few things...and we got a big fat Pass! That was on Monday afternoon, and the drywall commenced today. We are having our neighbor, Jon, do it and he totally rocked on it today (he also had a friend help him out). I'd say about a third of the basement, maybe even more, is hung! Woohoo!

My hubby is a rockstar and has been down in the basement all night working on...well, I'm not really sure, but I think it has to do with the media wiring stuff. What a guy! Here I am having a relaxing night in front of the computer after a very trying day or two with the little man, and he is working his butt off. Right after dinner he ran out to Lowes to get some supplies, and he has been working down there ever since. Thank you honey for all you do.

I wanted to share with all (?) of you some fresh-off-the-camera photos of the progress that was made in just one day! It's really taking shape. It's going to be a great space. I don't know what all the wires and connectors and whatnot are, so if you need specifics on anything, send Gordon your inquiries!

One of the soffits in the living room. Speaker wire for surround sound!

Living room. My hubby is down there somewhere! Where's Waldo Gordon?

Bedroom closet & window - we will be having additional sheetrock around the window, I'm told.

Oops, how'd this photo get in there? This is ALL the stuff in the basement, ALL crammed in to our little bathroom (that we are not finishing until later). Gordon is a Tetris-genius!!

Storage room/office

Good Deal Alert!

I had to share a copy of my receipt from a recent shopping trip at Cub Foods. I saved 91%! Yippee!! :)

Here's what I got for a whopping $1.11:

4 boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese

1 bottle of BBQ Sauce (not on sale)

2 packages of all-natural Salsa

Love it!!

A few things to note:

* The cashier actually took the full mac & cheese price of 88 cents off (I had a buy 3, get 1 free coupon) instead of the sale price of 25 cents.

* The salsa was on sale buy one, get one free with a store coupon. I also had a manufacturer's coupon for buy one get one free. The end result - get two free!

* The $2.00 coupon was a Discover coupon that was $2 off anything when you use your Discover card. I had purchased a lot of 40 of these coupons for less than $10 on ebay...a great investment! I used them at every retail store that I went to and occasionally split up orders. I only have a few coupons left and I can use them up at Cub which takes coupons up to 3 months expired (did you know that?).

Here's the proof!

Goal Setting

Maybe if I make this "public", Gordon and I will be able to uphold these goals we have recently set for ourselves. It's quite clear from our energy levels and wardrobe malfunctions, we need to make some lifestyle changes. These are just a few small things, but personally I have definitely been the victim of trying to do too much at once, failing and reverting back to old ways & then some.

Our small goals for the next couple of weeks -

Annette:

1. No eating in the car on the way home from work.

2. Eat breakfast before leaving home in the morning.

Gordon:

1. Stop drinking soda

Joint:

1. No snacking/food after 9pm

They are small goals, but it's a start!

The Story of the Skillet Lid Explosion

As mentioned previously, I wanted to share my scary experience I had a few weeks ago. It was new supper Sunday, and I was trying to make Velveeta Cheesy Chicken & Broccoli Rice from the Kraft Foods magazine (love this!). The meal was literally within a couple minutes of being done. Gordon was upstairs or in the other room, and I think Cody and I were in the dining room or living room. All of a sudden, I hear this huge noise from the kitchen and the glass lid that was on my skillet pan had completely shattered into hundreds of pieces!! See photo proof below. OMG! I just about had a heart attack. The lid was even "tilted" off the pan slightly so it was allowing heat to escape, and the pan was not even on the heat - the rice was cooking after coming to a boil.

This was the first time I had ever seen or heard of such a thing! I thanked God and my lucky stars that Cody (and I) was no where near the stove when it happened. I cringe when I think what might have happened if we were nearby, especially little Cody.

Needless to say, dinner was ruined and Gordon promptly took Cody to get Chinese for supper and I cleaned up the glass that was everywhere!

I'm now scared to use my glass lids for anything...I don't know why this happened; defective lid? I took a few moments that night to reflect and be appreciative of everything I had and thank the Lord for keeping us safe with such a freak thing.

New Supper Sundays

For the past several weeks, we have been attempting a new recipe for Sunday supper (dinner?). I love trying new things (especially on guests :)) and this gives us something to look forward to and a fun way to close out our weekend. Some dishes are winners, others...not so much. I haven't posted yet about my skillet lid explosion yet...maybe one day.

Anyway, I don't want to necessarily make this a blog about food/recipes, but I will share with you some of the dishes that we have tried and loved!

Today, we made Crock Pot White Chicken Chili and it was very yummy! I found the recipe (from RecipeZaar - love it!) and Gordon put it together. Cody is not a huge soup fan, but he ate some of the chicken and beans. This was a great dish to make this fall season...very hearty and comforting. It could probably use a bit more spice for our liking, but this was mild enough to serve to anyone.

(Photo from RecipeZaar website)

SERVES 8

• 1 1/4 lbs boneless skinless chicken
• 2 (15 ounce) cans great northern beans or navy beans
• 1 (15 ounce) can hominy or white corn
• 1 (1 1/4 ounce) envelope taco seasoning
• 1 (4 1/2 ounce) can of chopped green chilies
• 1 (10 3/4 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup
• 1 (14 ounce) can chicken broth
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• chopped green onion (optional)
• monterey jack cheese (optional)

Place chicken in a 4 quart slow cooker. Top with beans and corn.

In a medium bowl, combine taco seasoning, chiles, condensed soup, and chicken broth. Pour over top of ingredients in the crock pot. Cover and cook on low for 8 to 10 hours.

Before serving, stir gently to break up chicken, then stir in the sour cream. Serve topped with green onions and jack cheese, if desired.

Let me know if you try it :)

Viva Las Vegas!

Well, we're back from vacation and I wanted to get this blog post written before our adventures escape my mind. Gordon and I went to Las Vegas, Nevada for 3 nights and 4 days. G'ma & G'pa Anderson came on Saturday afternoon to watch Cody while we were away, and they headed back home first thing Thursday morning. It was a win-win situation ~ Gordon and I had a little getaway (which seemed wayyyyy longer than 3 nights!) and G'ma and G'pa had some good bonding and one-on-one time with the little guy. Although I must admit that one of the first things they said when we walked through the door was, "This little guy sure wears us out!!" :)

Anyway, I wanted to share about our trip with a few stories and photographs. Hope you don't mind!

We left bright dark and early on Sunday morning (we were out the door by 4:45am and at the airport, checked in & through security by 6:00am for our 7:15am flight) and came back Wednesday evening around 5pm. We took Northwest Airlines (Delta?) and had a very good experience - no delays either way, and actually arrived in Vegas 20 minutes early. Also, both directions, we ended up with an empty seat in our row, which allowed us to stretch out a bit & be more comfortable...well as comfortable as one can get in an airplane seat.

We stayed at the MGM Grand and we had a pretty good experience there. This hotel is HUGE!! It took forever to walk from our room to anywhere. It has something like 5,000 rooms. That is like 4X the size of the population of my hometown. Unreal. Our room was pretty nice and we had a good view of some of the Strip. The thing we didn't understand that the pool area was super far from the rooms and you had to walk through almost the entire casino plus shopping areas to get there. Unfortunately, because of this, we didn't spent any time at the pool. I am not sure if there are lockers or changing areas or what, but I'm pretty sure no one wants to see a dripping hotel guest walking through the casino area to get back to their room. From what we could tell, there was no back way either. I don't understand the logic. Oh well!

(One view from our hotel room window)

We arrived at the hotel from the airport around 9am so obviously our room wasn't ready yet. We left our luggage with the bellman who would stow it until our room was ready to be checked into. We decided to start walking, which would be the theme of this vacation! We found one of the Tix for Tonight locations right by our hotel and decided to get in line to get tickets to a couple of shows. I would highly recommend this if going to Vegas! We got half price tickets for The Lion King for that evening and also for Legends in Concert for the following night. We spent about an hour of time waiting in line & purchasing our tickets, and probably saved about $150 ~ since that's far higher than our hourly pay rate at our jobs, I'd say it was definitely worth it!

After getting tickets, we walked around more, got our actual seat locations for the Lion King (3rd row!!) and then stopped for lunch at the Mandalay Bay buffet. How can you go to Vegas without visiting a buffet?! We were starving by that point, and it was very good. We loved Mandalay Bay...they had something pumping through the air vents that smelled like beach and ocean...mmmmm :)

We walked back to our hotel and got checked into our room and attempted to take a quick nap...after all, we did wake up at 4 AM that morning! (Whoever planned a 7:15am flight...grumble...I can only say this because it was ME!) Unfortunately, I don't think we really slept much and soon it was time to get ready for the evening.

We stopped for a light dinner of pizza and our first try of gelato (mango! yum!) at the deli counter at Caffe Giorgio at Mandalay Bay.

The Lion King was a great show and we really enjoyed it. I've always wanted to go but it seemed to sell out fast when it was in Minneapolis. Our seats (did I mention we had 3rd row!?) were incredible and it was a fabulous production.

Afterwards we walked back to our hotel and promptly passed out from exhaustion!

So, that brings us to Monday. We slept in and it was wonderful :) Today we decided to buy a one day pass for the Monorail so we could ride up and down the strip and see more of the hotels/casinos. We rode to the end and checked out Sahara...not impressed. What a difference the older & newer casinos are! Then we went to Circus Circus and had fun playing the different Midway games (SkeeBall, air hockey, etc) and redeeming our tickets for a junky toy for Cody. We loved it's "vintage" feel!

We did a lot of walking this day (wait, that was every day!) and saw different casinos like Caesar's Palace, Treasure Island, etc.

Oh! One crappy thing that happened on our trip was that after we turned off my phone to get on the plane in Minnesota, is that it never turned back on! ARGH! We ended up finding an Apple Store in the Forum Shops at Caesar's Palace and found out my phone was completely dead. Sigh. Phone #2 - a goner. By the grace of God, it was still under warranty by 19 days & I was able to get a new phone! All was right with the world again...

Anyway, that night we waited for the TI pirate show but unfortunately it got cancelled due to the high winds. Disappointing as we had planned to see the Bellagio Fountains too, but figured those wouldn't be going either.

We saw the Legends in Concert show which is an impersonation concert and featured Jerry Lee Lewis, Tina Turner, Bette Midler, Michael Jackson and of COURSE, Elvis! This was kinda cheezy but I figure you HAVE to see Elvis while in Vegas! (And not to fret, we saw a few versions of him, plus Michael Jackson, the following night wandering the streets...) Afterwards we went to our second buffet at Harrah's which was okay but not great since it was 8:00pm and we were SO tired that we were just in a daze.

That brings us to Tuesday and our last full day there. We intended for this to be a more relaxing day with less walking (I cannot even explain how much our feet and leg muscles ached), but unfortunately that did not happen as we walked a lot this day, too. We did have a nice, normal breakfast to start the day with my first cup of coffee of the trip. Withdrawals anyone? It's not to say you couldn't find coffee in Vegas - there were Starbucks everywhere!!

One of our main daytime activities this day was checking out the Paris hotel/casino and riding up to the top of the Eiffel Tower where we had great views of the city! Gordon found out that this is a half-scale of the real Eiffel Tower in France. At the top, it was really windy and I was surprised at how Gordon "handled" the heights! ;) Here's one view from the top:

During the day, we also went to Bellagio which is one of the fancier hotels on the Strip. Beautiful fountains outside and gorgeous inside:

(The only picture of us in Vegas, inside the Bellagio courtyard)

(This is the ceiling of the lobby...these are glass!)

By nighttime, the winds had died down, so this night we were able to see the Treasure Island pirates/sirens show (decent but not really worth the extra walk or wait), the Mirage volcano eruption (cool, yet hot) and the Bellagio Fountain show (one of the highlights of the trip). Here are a few photos to explain what I'm talking about:

And because I'm sure you're all wondering, we did do some gambling on our trip...it was Vegas after all!!

One of the things we enjoyed was seeing some of the fancy restaurants and perusing their menus. We both LOVE the show Top Chef and this season happens to be in Las Vegas. It was really neat to see some of the restaurants that have been featured on the show. We considered going to one of these nicer restaurant, but we just couldn't do it (read: our wallets wouldn't let us)! This restaurant below featured $195 entrees! I wish I would have taken a picture of the menu...Joel Robuchon is the "Chef of the Century" and this is his only U.S. restaurant.

Hey, to put things in perspective, I found a 7-11 and got a Slurpee and that was exciting enough for me! :)

And I know "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" (there was even a sign in the airport 'reminding' us of that when were leaving, ha.), but we did see some, uhmm, interesting things there. A few things come to mind: a gaggle of girls wearing "We put the sin in Wisconsin" on our plane, two cross-dressers attending a show in feather boas & pink hairdos, a guy in khaki shorts wading through the outdoor ponds at the Mirage looking for something, a "little person" Elvis, and a guy laying in the middle of the sidewalk who we weren't sure if he was dead or passed out. Woo!

Oh...did I mention the weather was beautiful! 70 or 75 degrees every day with lots of sunshine. It got a little chilly at night but nothing a light jacket wouldn't fix. Ah. I miss the sunshine now.

The most annoying thing by far were the people on the sidewalks and streets handing out cards for "escort" services or trying to give/sell you discount club/show passes or to get you to go to timeshare presentations. They were everywhere and much worse than I remember during my one other visit to Las Vegas. They almost got in your face & were very rude. This was frustrating but you learned to ignore them and not make eye contact...at least this is what I did! Hopefully by the next time we go, they'll find a way to outlaw this type of solicitation. I'm not holding my breath though, it is Las Vegas after all and they don't exactly have a lot of rules there. We loved all the people walking down the street with beer bottles or drinks in hand!

All in all, we had a good time, but it was exhausting and next time we vow to go somewhere more relaxing :) We were SO excited to get home and see our little guy though. I can't explain the look on his face when he saw us. Worth everything right there! He did so good at home with G'ma and G'pa, slept all night, did good at bathtime and napped well. I don't know how people go on week-long vacations or have nights out all the time without their little ones...I was miserably lonesome for him after a couple of days!

I will leave you with a couple of my favorite photos from our trip of the New York New York and the Luxor hotels/casinos ~ I adore the sky blue sky and gorgeous backdrop...

The End of Another Week...

It's Sunday night and I was the lucky recipient of an afternoon nap and drinking coffee too late, so here I am writing a blog post. Praying Cody sleeps through the night tonight! It's been a rough few weeks for the "STTN" success statistics. Sigh. I was reading that nightmares usually happen towards the second half of the night, while night terrors happen in the first third...neither of which sound good...but he's been more waking up in the early morning hours (1am, 3am) than before midnight. Here's hoping to a good night's sleep for us all!

Not much to report from here. Pretty much just in the routine of life right now. The glasses are going very well. I don't think he took them off one time today!! Usually the struggle is to get them on, but he's been even better about that lately. Praise the Lord! I was really worried about the transition, but he's a smart little boy and realizes that they help him see better, so he doesn't mind them too much. That's not to say they're not totally bent out of whack, smudged and fingerprinted on an hourly basis!

Cody turned 19 months old on the 3rd...how did that happen? The sign picture is getting more & more challenging. I'm going to try and keep doing until he turns 2 years old, and then take it on a semi-annual basis, but it's definitely a struggle to get the shot! This is the best photo I could come by for this month's photo - it's only slightly crinkled and tore ;)

In terms of the basement refinishing project, we've been busy trying to secure an electrical contractor. We received a few bids but weren't too impressed by the dollar amount nor representatives of companies we sought quotes from. Fortunately, Gordon's co-worker referred a family friend and we have decided to use him. We will be buying all the materials and will just pay him labor costs. He was even so nice to call Gordon this week and let him know that one of the items was on sale right now at Menards. Yes! A bargain shopper. I'm not sure when he's going to be completing the work, but hopefully it's soon as we have a huge pile of sheet rock in our garage waiting to be put up! Our neighbor Jon will be doing the sheet rock work for us.

In other news, both Gordon and I had scheduled a week off in October a long time ago as we needed to use the time off plus figured we would need a vacation about now. Well, the week quickly approached and we considered going to DisneyWorld, but Cody is just too little yet. I think it would be exhausting and probably not that much fun for any of us. We will wait until he's a little older and be able to actually remember the trip. But, we didn't want to just sit at home twiddling our thumbs, wasting our vacation time (you know, because there's a lot of time to do that with a toddler! Yeah, uh-huh.), so we decided, pretty last minute, to go on our first out-of-town vacation without Cody to....

Vegas baby! Gordon has never been there, and I have only been once for a day-trip, so we thought it was the perfect mini-vacation that we could just go for a few days and see everything there is to see. Neither one of us are gamblers, but there's plenty to do and see there. We're excited! We're staying for 3 nights at the MGM Grand and G'ma & G'pa are coming down to watch the little guy. It's a win-win situation! We're excited, but nervous & anxious to leave Cody. I think he'll probably have a good time with his grandparents though :)

This weekend marked the first *ahem* snowfall of the season. On October 10! In Paul Allen style, NOOOOOOO!!!! Way, way too early for snow. I must admit though, I was kind of excited to show Cody that it had snowed, since he probably doesn't remember winter last year since he never went out and played in it or anything. Here's a quick photo of him looking at the new ground cover. As he peered out the window for the first time, I'm pretty sure he said "WOW! Look at that!" :)

Of course, the snow all melted, but it stayed cold and dreary for most of this weekend. I'm only looking forward to winter soley for the fact that we can take him to play outside, go sledding, etc. First I need to find 2 pairs of winter boots for him! YIKES!

I've been deal shopping as always and have tons of stuff I got for free or that the stores paid me to take. Yahooooo! I haven't had time to go through receipts and blog about them, but don't worry, the deals are still finding me. Now that busy season is coming up in my work, I hope to "cash out" on some of the deals programs and focus on other things. It's fun, but like most things I get into, I get entirely too involved and dare I say, addicted.

Oh, gotta throw this in there before I go....yeahhhhhhhh Vikings!! 5-0 babyeee!

A couple more pictures before I publish this blog...the first one is big helper Cody. He was carrying Mama's heavy bag of Walgreens goodies. He also likes to throw things in the garbage cans (he knows where they are in each room), enjoys putting laundry from washer to dryer or dryer to basket, getting shoes out (his or mom's or dad's), etc. I'm just waiting for the day when he can mop the kitchen floor :-)

The second photo is just one of our little "studious" cutie! Hope you enjoy.