Frakkin' Apples. Frakkin' Leaves.

I have a true love/hate relationship with the trees in our front yard. During the Spring and Summer, the trees are marvelous. It is literally 15 degrees cooler under our trees...neighbors come and hang out, nice shade, good times. Then late Fall hits and the trees decided to make our lives miserable. First off, they hold onto their leaves as long as they can (mid November, about 30% of the leaves have fallen), then when the first snowstorm comes, the trees laugh in our faces and start shedding their leaves like their lives depend on it (I don't know if any of that made much sense). I will be picking up leaves and apples until sometime in January.



The pictures of the kids above was from yesterday. Notice the shorts the boys were wearing (yeah, rather warm). The pictures here with the snow are from this morning...we got 8 inches of snow. Late this morning, the wind picked up and the leaves and apples came tumbling down. We now have enough applesauce to feed a homeless shelter.

I want my garage orange, brown and red!

Our garage door broke...and to make a long story short, it looks like we are going to get the springs fixed on it and paint our wood garage door so that it looks better than the beat up one we have right now. The question is - what color should we paint it? Click on the pic to see the garage door images better...but how cool would be to use some of these styles? How could you not love the audaciousness of the '50s?

Locked and loaded...in bed

This seems like a genius idea. A gun rack that you can attach right to your bed. Nothing says gun safety like being able to attach your rifle or shotgun right to your bed. Hopefully the sheet will protect any of your kids from playing with it. http://www.the-backup.com/

The only way that this idea could be even better if they had some kind of contraption where you could attach your rifle right to your pillow.

On another note--I am selling little tiny plastic bags that attach to the headboard of my bed...these plastic bags will be able to hold one grenade. You never know when you will need it and attaching it to the bed just makes sense.

Trees: A Love--Hate Relationship

I love trees. A neighborhood just looks better with bunches of trees lining the street. But, let me tell you--there is a problem with trees. They frakkin' shed their leaves! March till September is fabulous. But then come October, trees decide that they need to shed their leaves and leave it all over the yard.

There is a huge tree next to our house. Love it but it does not decide to let go of its leaves until late November, December and January. Let me tell you--picking up leaves in the dead of winter, well, it aint fun. But I am counting my blessings though to have such a marvelous tree even if I am cussing while picking up all of the leaves. I do have something to be thankful for though--my apple tree only blooms apples every other year and this is the off year...so no applesauce covered driveway this winter. Yay for me!

Late Fall/Early December, I have a different job...I become a professional leaf bagger-er. If it is a sunny day, I head out and pick up leaves. Over the past few years, I am averaging anywhere between 60-85 bags of leaves filled. Right now, I am op to around 50 bags packed. That people, is a lot of leaves. The cool thing though, is that the city of Holladay has a dump off where you can take all of your bagged leaves and leave them there. They have about 20 huge dumpsters on the lot and you just drop it off. Every weekend, the dumpsters are absolutely full and it is surrounded by hundreds of bags.

Rant over.

Fixin' it well

After a short 1.5 years, I finally put a faceplate on our light switches. I did not even have to hire someone to do it. I have no idea why the color is so off in the picture of the one without the faceplate, but it also looks like I painted too...which I didn't. I hate painting. A lot.

I also changed the flapper in our toilet so that our toilet works right now, instead of slowly leaking water in the toilet which led to our toilet flushing itself about every 10 minutes.

Feel free to call me HandySam whenever you want. I can be a metrosexual and a handyman. Pretty impressive.

Did he paint that lawn yellow?

It has been a rather strange summer for weather so far. During the month of June, it seemed to rain pretty much every single day. It was the rainiest June in the past 10 years. It would sprinkle in the morning and then rain at night. Almost every single day.

So, I was a little perplexed the other day when I drove by this home. Nice looking home with the worst lawn that I have ever seen. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand when some lawns can go a bit yellow as the summer progresses. A typical SLC summer will have weeks without a drop of rain and temps hovering around 100 degrees.

But now tell me thins--how did this lawn end up looking like this? It frakkin' rained every single day! You look up into our mountains and our mountains our green. I mean, even just plain dirt has green growing out of it here in the city. Seriously, for the life of me, I cannot figure out how the lawn could look like this after all of this rain.

There are really only 4 possible explanations for this happening:

1. This homeowner installed a reverse sprinkler system--basically instead of water coming out of the sprinkler heads, the sprinklers heads must be sucking up all moisture out of the lawn.
2. Covering the lawn when it rains--I can just picture the homeowner sending his kids out with tarps to cover the lawn every single time it rains.
3. Using hair dryers on the lawn--After each rainstorm, the homeowner goes out and uses a hair blower on the lawn to dry it out as soon as possible.
4. He has a dog that takes care of his business and is marking his territory over every single piece of grass.
   

These are the only possible ways that this lawn could look like this after such a rainy month. Now with all that said, I probably care too much about my own lawn and I am probably on the opposite extreme of this homeowner. And I can care less if he mocks me for the putting green lawn that I have in front of my house.

A new way to handle your business...

I care about the environment. When we bought our current house, it had the old school toilets. If I remember right, one of toilets was a nice peach colored one (you can never go wrong with a peach colored toilet) and I believe it even had the wood seat (Classy!). You would flush the toilet and the water would swirl around for 2-3 minutes and slowly disappear and 9 gallons of water later, it took care of your business.

So we upgraded to fabulous toilets. DO NOT GET ME STARTED on toilet talk. I could go on for hours and I apologize to all of you that have had to listen to me talk about it. Anyway, we replaced 3 of the 4 toilets in our house with the water conservation toilets and they work great.

But, I found a new toilet. It uses even loss water and takes care of your waste. The EcoJohn. How does it work? It BURNS up your waste. That is correct. It basically incinerates your waste. Gone. As you can see by the picture, it actually has a chimney. Who hasn't wanted a toilet with a chimney attached? It needs the things a typical toilet would need--a chimney, a power source and a propane tank. Typical, huh?

So, after burning up your waste, what do you end up with? After a few months, you need to take out the cup full of ash out of your toilet. Yes, ash. Yes, about a cup full of it. They recommend that you can then spread it in your garden as a 'fertilizer.' Anyway, I will let one of you buy it first and try it out...and if you do, I am sooooo coming over to your house. http://www.ecojohn.com/index.html

Buff, not in the buff, from all of the shoveling

Monday was quite a snowstorm. I woke up to notice about 6 inches of snow on the ground and you could tell that it was not going to stop anytime soon. So, I put on my muscle T-shirt and strolled outside to do a little shoveling. The day ended with 11 inches of snow. This seems to have been the winter of some major storms.

Small body, small place

Beckham is one talented boy. If there is a small place in our house, he will figure out how to fit his body there. Our small island sink became a perfect place to spend an evening.

Flashback Sunday: on Monday

Sam usually does the blog- but yesterday he was so busy putting down the wood floor in our kitchen that he didn't get a chance. So I'm trying out this newfandangled technology.

First I would just like to say (and all you parents of toddlers should be able to empathize) that Yo Gabba Gabba is the scariest show on television. It's on Nickelodeon each morning at 9:30, and if there's ever been a show that evidences someone's brain on drugs, this is it. I'll be cleaning the house (yeah, right) and the tv is on in the background, and suddenly I get this strange feeling- like I've just entered the twilight zone or I've been teleported to a really bad episode of Star Trek. My first thought is always that aliens have invaded. The eeriness of the show catches me off guard- every day! Beckham (our 20-month old) by this time is usually standing an inch from the television screen, with swirling spirals in his eyes (think hypnotized WB cartoon character). If I catch it in time, I run to tackle him, shielding his eyes as we topple to the floor and yank the plug out of the wall. But once in a while, I'm too late. And before I know it, we are both sitting within an inch of the screen, and a couple of days have gone by. And we haven't eaten.

Good idea for a date night: Tivo the opening of Yo Gabba Gabba and watch it over and over. To be used only under adult supervision!



Secondly: meet Dave, our contractor extraordinaire. When I was uploading our latest batch of family pictures, I came across this gem. Apparently when I'm not home, he takes pictures of himself with our camera. So I told him he was going to be banished to our blog for the infraction.

Dave is the best craftsman around. But I'm afraid he gives me too much credit as to my handiness. He comes to me each time he encounters a problem. He hasn't noticed, but I've been recycling the same three questions each time we talk. They are: 1) What's a -------? 2) Is that bad? 3) Can we do anything about it?

Example:
Dave: We have a problem. The cabinets have a toe-kick.
Brodi: What's a toe-kick? (At this point I zone out because I know the answer will sound very foreign)
Dave: It's a blah blah blah. And it means we won't have a vent.
Brodi: Is that bad?
Dave: Well, vents provide heat and air conditioning.
Brodi: So that's bad?
Dave: If you want heat, yeah.
Brodi: Is there anything we can do about it?
Dave: Well I guess we could blah blah blah blah blah.
Brodi: Great. Let's do it. Glad I could help.

Although lately I think my stupidity is beginning to sink in. He asked me for some duct tape, and when I paused to think about where it would be, he told me it's like masking tape, only it's silver and wider. Kay, Dave, I know what duct tape is! But I can see how he would assume.

Carter cute comment: We have half our wood floor in, and this morning we awoke to find Carter, sitting serenely in the middle of the floor, just staring. We don't know how long he had been there. When he saw us, he said, "Dad, this is so cool."

And as for a flashback:
On our family vacation to Jackson Hole this summer, Beckham was a little out of sorts. He would wake up at all hours of the night, and scream to be let out of his crib. Early one morning, we gave in and took him out of bed. Sam went to make him a bottle, and when he came back, he found Beckham flat on his tummy, face down, his Bootie (read blanket) wrapped around his head, completely asleep. Sure, give him a comfy crib with, heaven forbid, a mattress, and he cries abuse. A hard dirty floor, however? He's gone.

The kitchen remodel keeps moving along

You can see the beam up there.....................................................up in the ceiling with no way down.

Let me tell you...when you decide you want to knock down 5 walls, you need to have a plan. Now, why on earth would you need a plan? If you knock down a few load bearing walls and you haven't thought it through, well, you got yourself some problems. Like the entire house falling down. But, WE HAD A PLAN and the roof did not fall down. Thats good news. The bad news was getting two 20-foot beams into our ceiling. We cut a hole in our garage and we started putting it thru the hall. Now, we do not have a high sloped roof, so while our do-it-all man Dave pushed the beam up thru the wall, I was inside the ceiling grabbing the beam and trying to help him pull it through. He ended up having to cut out some of the rafters to get it to fit (and yes, he did repair it all), we finally got it in. Both of them. From the pictures, this is Dave giving me some of the 1954 Jim Beam alcohol that I found in the ceiling to compensate me for the 2 hours that I sweated and cried and moaned in the roof.


I have also decided that insulation was a truly terrible invention. Yes it helps keep the cold out and yes, it helps cut down utility costs...but entire you have rolled around in it on your belly trying to get around--then you have no idea how bad that stuff is. I still itch. At least I didn't find any body parts or dead animals up there. Unfortunately I did not find any treasures either (unless you count old alcohol bottles treasures...which I think some of you do). Remodel is entering its third week on Monday. 4 weeks to go. And yes, we are all sick of it.

The kitchen/dining room/living room Remodel--and it aint pretty

Don't get me wrong. We loved our 1970 appliances. We loved our beautiful brick floor...oh wait, I mean, brick linoleum floor. Seriously, nothing says classy like a linoleum brick floor. We loved the boxiness of our kitchen and our dining room. There seemed to be walls everywhere you looked. We loved our old school oak cabinets and the 2-3 lights that were expected to keep all of the rooms well lit. This was a good kitchen about 20 years ago but we needed to make it our own. Yes, I know it was ours and we did own it, but you know what I mean.


























So--we decided to change some things up. Out came the sledgehammers and down came the walls. Remodeling is not much fun. The final results can be enjoyable, but I can think of 13,298 other things that I enjoy more than doing a remodel. It is amazing how much wood, nails, plaster and junk is behind 50 year old walls. There is so much dust everywhere in our house that I still have dust settling in inside my belly button. I have learned to be much more colorful with my language as well. My language would make a sailor blush, but what happens in the kitchen, stays in the kitchen. I have also become very good friends withe people out at the SL Dump. My truck is working overtime dropping things off. Brodi has informed me that if I die in the next 10 years, it will be because I have inhaled about 13 pounds of plaster. For the most part, I do use a mask. Our fabulous remodeler-do it all-handyman Dave is the guy that does most of the work around here and I am simply his apprentice who cheers him on and picks up the junk after he has knocked it down.

















We have now finished the first 2 weeks of the remodel. Cabinets get delivered toward the end of October, so we have to hurry. We still have all the electrical, finishing the ceilings, putting down new wood floors and getting the appliances in. In 3 weeks. Should be fun. I am putting in three sets of pictures now with a before demolition shot of the kitchen, old laundry room, and the dining room/bookcase separation area. Yes, it is looking different. Yes, it is very depressing right now. We live downstairs and it has saved us to have a kitchen down there (even though the kitchen sink does not drain well). And I know you may be asking--yes, I will post some pictures of me shirtless with a sledgehammer.