Delia's Baby Book

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Butterfly Blocks Birthday

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Delia 1

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57 Hours of Home-Owning Experience

Well, we have finally closed on the house and have the keys to our home! What a busy weekend it has been. As soon as we put the keys in the door, we went to work!

Friday afternoon after we walked in the door, we instantly took Alex's trusty wonder bar and pried up the carpeting. We knew there would be hardwood floors in the living room, but were unsure of the rest of the rooms. We lucked out on three of the four main rooms!

living room


our bedroom *future library/office* (woo hoo hotty in the room)



bedroom
office
living room *maybe*
look at that cute daddy-o-b-o pulling up staples!

Saturday morning we were out of bed before 7 am and off to the house! I can't believe how much can be accomplished in a day!

• pulled up about 10,000 staples from the hardwood floor with the help of Dad, Sean and Renee
• pulled up all of the tack strips
  
• pulled all of the paneling out of the living room and dining room
  
• pulled the peel and stick vinyl squares off of the original tile-work in front of the fireplace. (believe me, I know, who in their right mind would put peel and stick vinyl on tile? In order to give the benefit of the doubt, the tile is in pretty rough shape, some cracks and the grout is deteriorating)
  

now we just have to figure out how to get
the adhesive off of the tile

But now, the two biggest jobs that made the most impact:

The dining room office *maybe* went from this:

walled up mirror on mirror monstrosity

To this:

And the living room dining room *maybe* went from this:

Weird not original built-in

To this:


wonderful openness!

You can not believe what a difference it makes opening up those two doorways to their original purpose. The house definitely feels much more light and airy and flows so much better!

Much more work ensued over Saturday and Sunday-we pulled and started stripping the baseboard, taped and skim coated one of the ex-paneling covered walls, took all the hardware and doors off of the kitchen cabinets to ready for priming and painting, swept up messes about a million times, pulled tons of nails out of the walls (does paneling really need 100 nails per sheet?), pulled tons of nails out of the baseboard...and now we are ready to collapse.
Coming soon....
more skim coating
more paint stripping
painting the walls in the living room, dining room, bedroom, office and kitchen
painting the kitchen cabinets
windows in the bathroom/pantry project
possibly a bathroom redo... we'll see on this one!
...and refinishing the wood floors!
all this by the end of the month when our lease is up on our apartment!
I'll keep you posted!

*if you can't tell, we are still unsure what the purpose of each room will be!

Days of Carefree TV watching...OVER

Alex bought a Playstation 3 today :(
...But, he did buy me Grand Theft Auto and Lego Star Wars!
Now lets see if I ever get to play them ;P

We're moving again!

...I know! What the hell! We lasted from September until now in our place. I guess we were never really happy with it from the start but it did become home for us for a while! Actually our first home *together* so it will always hold a special place in our heart! Except that is for the problems with the plumbing...;0 I really don't feel like going into the whole story again, but our upstairs neighbors plumbing froze and busted in our dining room ceiling...twice...in three weeks. After the other plumbing issues we had already had that month...our hot water pipe froze in our basement (but thank god did not break), we had to have our hot water heater replaced, as well as the other issues we had since we September, venting issues with the furnace in the basement, non-working cable and phone wiring, no caulking in bathroom (around shower or sink), broken faucet in kitchen...hmm I think there was more, but can't think of any. Well, to say the least, we had enough and our landlord (graciously???) let us out of our lease. Maybe not so graciously, but you know how I am, I like to get my way! So I will hopefully get some pics of the new place tomorrow and post them up here. We are moving a whole 8 blocks away onto a busier street, but now we have twice as much space, a more beautiful apartment, a long cement driveway with a garage, A BATHTUB!!! all this for LESS RENT! I can't wait until we are all moved in! now the hard part...again

Enchilada Pie...A recipe for Kathy!

Enchilada Pie

**Ingredients:

1 lb. ground turkey (optional, leave out if you want vegetarian)
1-2 cloves garlic minced
1/2 c. salsa
1 t chili powder
1 t cumin
1/2 onion diced
1 pepper (green, red or yellow) diced
1 can black beans, drained
1 can diced tomatoes, with juice
1 sm. can green chiles, with juice
1 can enchilada sauce mild or hot (I use hot! but it can make it pretty spicy!)
1 1/2 -2 c. shredded cheese (chedder, monterey jack or colby, etc)
flour or corn tortillas

preheat oven to 350 degrees

in a large frying pan or wok, brown turkey for a few minutes, then add garlic, salsa, chili powder, cumin, onion and pepper. Cook until turkey is done then add black beans, tomatoes, and green chilis and let simmer for about 10 minutes.

in a deep baking dish, pour a spoonful of enchilada sauce on the bottom and place tortillas in a single layer lining the bottom. Spoon some of the meat mixture on top, top with cheese and lg. spoonful of enchilada sauce. Repeat layering until you reach the top of the baking dish or are out of meat mixture. Top with a layer of tortillas and pour the rest of the enchilada sauce on top.

bake for 35-40 minutes until bubbly in center. You may want to line the bottom shelf in tin foil because this dish does have the possibility of making a mess in your oven.

serve as you would lasagna, you can put a dollop of sour cream on top too.

**all measurements are approximate, I don't use measuring tools with this recipe so season to your own taste. might want to add salt and pepper too (kinda forgot those two.. :) )