Can I have one?!?!

So we love our neighbors... All of them are great and have been so helpful and welcoming as we navigated this first year of homeownership!  Its so  nice to be with people closer to our age, as most of the residents of our apt complex were over the age of 70.  In our neighborhood, most of the families have dogs and kids.  We love playing with them in the backyard - which we affectionately call "the bowl."

This is Maggie, a yellow lab that lives next door.  She shares her digs with Scout, a black lab puppy.  They also became big sisters, when our neighbors had a baby last week!  It all just makes me want a little one or animal even more.  I can't wait to watch both the kids and pups grow over the years.  

Long time...

I know its been far too long since I have posted last... a lot has been going on.  

For starters I got an amazing new job a month and a half ago.  I am a Program Director in the Office of College Programs (student activities) at Franklin & Marshall College.  Its a great position, and I love my co-workers and students!

Jon and I have completed quite a few projects around the house also which I will post about in the days to come... including:

 - Speaker re-wiring

 - Redoing our laundry room

 - Redoing our first floor powder room

 - installing a new faucet system in the kitchen.  

Stay tuned for more pictures and news because now that its a bit cooler, I think that we will be more apt to do more running around for improvements!

Improvised on-door storage...

So Jon and I get really easily fed up with the clutter that gathers on and under our bathrooms sinks (lotions, pill bottles, eye drops, extra soaps, etc!).  So we found a nice little solution for our everyday used things.  

We went to Linens 'n Things and bought sponge holders (the ones that have suction cups for the side of the sinks).  We removed the suction cups and Jon attached them to the inside of the cabinet doors!  Jon made sure to find screws that were the correct depth, then he measured along a drill bit to make sure it wouldn't go through the door.  Then it was just a case of putting in the screws inside the former suction cup holes.

Now we both have one for our things we need everyday right at hand... now I just need to remember to put things back in there when I am done.  It's a cheap and quick fix for those little things that you lose easily and need often. 

 

Bagworms = ewww!

About 3 months ago my mother in law noticed something growing on one of our shrubs in the front of our house. They looked like a little mini-pinecone, and there were probably 70 of them on one small knee-high evergreen. She told us they were probably bag-worms and to save the tree that they were growing on, we would need to cut each of them off. They would hatch in mid-May and the tini larvae would crawl out of the bag and begin eating the shrub. According to a website that I found from the Univ of Kentucky, “Older larvae strip evergreens of their needles and consume whole leaves of susceptible deciduous species, leaving only the larger veins. The bag is ornamented with bits of whatever type of vegetation they are feeding upon.” Yuck! They were so mushy and we filled an entire plastic grocery bag with them by the end of one day. We have found a few others on some of the other trees / plants in the yard and removed them. Here’s hoping they don’t return…

If you want more info on these icky little guys, check out: http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef440.asp

First Post

I have started this to chronicle my husband and my adventures in homeownership.  We married on September 16, 2006 after being lifelong friends and childhood sweethearts.  We moved to Lancaster, PA in October of 2006 and lived in a 2 bedroom apartment for a year and a half.  On December 28, 2008 we settled on our first home - and she's a beauty!!  She's got a fabulous foundation for work to be done - it's beautiful as is, but we are eager to put our spin and style on it.  

As a bit of background, the house was built in 2000.  We have 3 bedrooms, 2.5 finished bathrooms (1 full one in the works in our semifinished basement), 1 first floor office, a family room, and living room connected to our dining room.  Perhaps the standout feature for us was the kitchen.  Jon and I spend a lot of time in there, and this one is incredibly spacious and fun!

It's been an educational, scary and exciting adventure as we navigate the waters of ownership. Everything from the actual settlement, to sledding down our huge hill, to learning about everything with trial and error - it's been a wild ride.  

I hope that with this blog I can not only document our projects and learnings but also provide a few laughs as we are a young couple completely consumed in our 'money pit' of a house.  I also hope to share fun and helpful links and info as we learn them... let our adventure begin...