My puppy is awesome

When Aster yawns my heart melts a little. If anyone else bit my toe, I'd probably be ticked. The fact that he already "fits" into our house, is adorable. When he lays on his back and his ears flap out, he looks like a mix between Chewbacca and Yoda. As soon as I find my camera I'll upload a pic.

(dis)Aster

We got a puppy!

Zac and I have been wanting a dog ... for pretty much forever. We made ourselves wait until we had the house with the backyard. But now that we're fairly settled in, we couldn't help but start looking. And well, you know how that goes ... you look and then you fall in love. We originally went to the Akron humane society and met a few dogs, but they were all fully grown and set in their ways. Plus, we really didn't want to miss out on the cute puppy phase, even though that comes with all the other not-so-cute puppy-isms.

He's a cocker spaniel / cavalier king charles spaniel aka black fuzzy furball. Zac came up with his name as we were playing with him at the store, "We could call him Aster, short for (dis)Aster, cause he's a puppy!"

At Steph's house to show the boys their new friend

Chillin' on the couch

Sleepy puppy

Zac being a trouble-maker (don't worry, he only sniffed it)

Is it Friday yet?

So sorry I have been a terrible blogger recently. This past weekend we moved into our new house. YEAH! You'd think that after being married for less than two years, we wouldn't yet have accumulated that much stuff - wrong!! Between misc. junk in closets, clothes & shoes, guitar and drum stuff, craft and painting supplies, tools, kitchen, and on and on - we had a lot of stuff! I've purged and organized, but we're still trying to find a place for all of the stuff in the new house. What a task! My new goal is to over time add new furniture that helps cleverly store our belongings.

On another note, we are no longer able to access free wireless internet at the house. booo! You see, at the condo, we turned on the mac and like magic we picked up someone's unprotected wireless signal. No such luck at the new house. So, we're waiting to see what the other bills are like before investing in overly-priced internet access. Plus, we're right down the street from the Stow Library - so we can always go there if necessary.

Finally, I'm working on creating my sister's bridal shower invites. I had a brilliant plan, now I just need to find the time to make it happen. I think I'm going to have to enlist the help of a nice graphic artist friend at work. My photoshop skills are so rusty it aint even funny!

More pics of the house to come. You'll be amazed at the transformation!

Painting

This is the week of paint. Each night after work, Zac and I go to the house and ... paint. Well, more accurately, Zac paints and I watch or try to help in any way I can. You see, I have many skills, but precision and neatness are not really my thing. So I do as much as I can, but ultimately Zac gets ticked at the way I do things or I get frustrated at his snail pace. Good times. : )

We've had plenty of issues in this process. Dirty walls. Peeling paint. Weird orange dots. Poor prior paint jobs. More peeling paint. Yuck.

The issue we're now having is paint color. Weeks before we closed on the house, we toiled over paint colors since every inch needed to be refreshed. I think we brought home just about every swatch from the depot. We thought about it. We made pictures. We cut the swatches out individually and made a diagram. After pretending to be interior designers, we finally settled on a color scheme. All well and good, right? Not so much. We're finally getting color on the walls and it doesn't feel quite right. Either the colors we picked don't seem true to swatch - or on the walls, they just don't feel right. As a significant investment in time and money we're a bit frustrated. But hey, you can always repaint. Yeah right. Not in this lifetime. Let's just hope it starts to grow on us.

More house clean-up

This weekend we spent a lot of time over at the house removing wallpaper borders, prepping for paint and cleaning up the back yard. I never got a before pic. But just imagine this: Over two years of Oak leaves trapped within a chain-link fence + mucky water issues  in the far corner. Fun times. We've now got at least 40-50 huge trash bags filled with yard waste to be picked up by the garbage men 5-bags at time each week. 

My parents are pretty awesome. They've spent the past two weekends helping us with the yard clean-up. And they're not the only ones, my sister and bff-Jack also made guest appearances last weekend. They've got mad skills. 

Zac said something to me tonight as we were driving home from dinner with my parents. Side note - dinner which they treated US to, after THEY helped with the crazy yard work all day - and my dad's birthday is this week. Seems like we should have been the ones to treat to dinner, but that's just how they roll. Anyway, as we were driving home, Zac said that he was really learning a lot from my parents over the past few weeks about what it means to be good parents.  I can be so short and snotty to my mom, but then when I need her, she's always there. And my dad, he's just like the nicest guy ever and knows just about everything. They've been nothing but the bested role models my whole life and it means a lot that Zac sees that too.  

Giant Eagle Newsletter

If you happen to be out and about this weekend and you shop at Giant Eagle, make sure to take a moment to pick up the first-ever Giant Eagle Private Brand Newsletter called g.

My colleagues and I at hfa have been hard at work over the past few months to concept, write, design and take this newsletter to final art. (Yes, I am a little proud of my team.) As the first issue, this was a definite learning experience for working with a major grocery retailer. Future issues to include more recipes, health and time-saving tips, coupons and more.

You will find the newsletter either at the front of the store (by the circulars) or at checkout. Enjoy!

Before pics

Kitchen cleanup

Living Room after carpet removal

The front outside

Dining room w/ carpet

Living room with carpet

Bedroom 1 with carpet

Bedroom 1 without carpet - yuck!