Entryway {Mood Board}

Since everything in our house is ugly and it's overwhelming to think about trying to tackle anything inside...the entryway seems like a safe choice for the first real indoor project.  Ironically our entryway is almost exactly the same color as our old kitchen before we painted it.  It's a wine/burgundy red color and the previous owners had 57 pictures on the walls - yes I counted.  It screams dated to me and it is not us at all.  There are a ton of nail holes and the walls look streaky like they are dusty but you can't wipe it off.  Our old kitchen had the same look to it so I am convinced it is something with the paint color or it's a bad paint job.

We struggle with home style but the little bit of reno we did in our old house - we definitely lean more towards modern/cool styling and colors.  Modern mixed with some traditional/transitional elements.  We really liked having a gray walls - it is the one color we can agree on so obviously the natural choice is to make everything gray, right?  It made our house look so much brighter and the color we picked changed with the lighting which was something we liked.  The husband is actually colorblind so I pick paint colors and he gives his opinion.  Now that we have a few colors we like, we will probably keep with the same themes in this house.

My chief complaints about the entryway are:
1) Dark
2) Shiny brass light fixture
3) Wooden light switch plates (every room in our house has at least 3 different switch plate styles)
4) The honey colored front door
5) Shiny brass/gold door hardware
6) Terrible flooring
7) Boring doors and outdated hardware

So basically that list means everything in the entryway is a fail but luckily most of that is immediately fixable.  The entire house needs new flooring and we haven't even started talking about that so the tiles stay for now.  I have a jute rug that is in the entry and it will stay.  Another interesting fact about Midland (I have never heard of this before) is that many of the AC systems - the vents are trenched into the foundations.  Our return air vent is trenched under the front of our house and the return vents are by the front door under a closet - so it runs from the garage to the front door.  This is something we argued with the sellers about but they would not seal off and reroute the vent through the ceiling (they can be massive health hazards).  We have a hall closet but the front entry closet is elevated above the return vent and it has a horrible piece of 70s carpet on the floor.  That is coming out too and we will probably just seal the floor somehow.  Haven't pulled it up to see what is underneath the carpet.

Because that closet door is elevated, we need a flush mount light fixture so it won't hit when you open the door.  My intention is to carry the light fixture into our hallways so I tried to pick something cost conscious because I need four of them.

So the tentative plan is this mood board...which I have not run by the husband.  The vibe I am going for is trying to bring in as much light as possible into the space.  Right now it's like a grape cave and this house needs all the brightening up it can get.  Lightening up the paint color with Sherwin Williams Agreeable Grey will make the biggest bang for our buck.  We also will paint all of the trim and ceiling to brighten it up.  We like Sherwin Williams so we also use Ceiling Bright White and Extra White on trim.  We need to replace all of the doors in this house and the front closet is a custom size.  We have those plain, flat wood doors from the late 70s/early 80s.  I have read/watched a lot of tutorials about adding moulding to the doors but these doors are in rough shape and probably not worth salvaging.

One thing we don't necessarily agree on is art colorings.  We both like abstract art but M wants more red and I like happier, soothing prints.  I order all our Christmas/moving/announcement cards off Minted and they have a great selection of art.  I pulled both of these off the website because they fit the feel I am interested in.  Our entry is too narrow to put any furniture but there is a spot in the living room right when you walk in that I think would be great for some sort of table.

For the front door, I need to find my paint fan and pull a darker color out of the brick.  Our door is orange facing the outside and honey blonde wood on the inside.  The trim on our house is a creamy beige.  I will sand everything down and repaint it - probably Porpoise because there are hints of green in the brick and that color gives off more green than the chip shows.

So far so good - it's a start!!  It's a small enough space that we can take a decent bite out of the house and not feel like it's the never ending project (cough cough - the river rocks outside - cough cough).

Oily - My Life with Essential Oils

In January I dipped my toe in the essential oil waters. I have seen Facebook friends preach the healing powers/benefits and I thought "Hey if I could take less medicines to heal that would be nice!"  I have plantar fasciitis in my left foot and allergies so I decided to give it a shot. 

I decided to go with Young Living essential oils because a) everyone else uses them and b) their Seed to Seal promise and the fact that they are pharmaceutical grade which means they can be injested. Most bottles are 15mL which means you get about 300 drops out of one bottle and depending on the type of oil they can range from $12-35 a piece. I really wanted a diffuser and wasn't sure where to start so I ordered the premium starter kit that wholesale members can buy. It came with 10 5mL bottles of the most commonly used oils, the diffuser and some other stuff. Young Living is multi level marketing company so you can order through someone, pay retail and order online or join as a "wholesale" client and get a little bit of a discount. I signed up as a wholesale distributor so if I ever wanted to go whole hog, I could get people to sign up under me and really go crazy with the MLM. I just want to do my own thing so I don't do that stuff but if someone wanted to use my member number as a referral that's ok too. :-)

Anyway, my kit came and these oils are super concentrated - like one or two drops on your body is beyond adequate. When you diffuse, use 4-5 drops. If you put them on your body sometimes they burn (the "hot") oils so diluting them with coconut oil or olive oil helps lessen the sensation. You also cannot let the oils touch plastic. It will leech out the chemicals and eat through it. I have seen a styrofoam cup with oil swirled around in it be eaten and I put a cotton ball on my car air vent and it blistered the plastic. You have to be very careful!

So back to the experiments. We do not have kids and the husband doesn't want me touching him with my "voodoo" so I don't feel like I have had a real opportunity to experiment and see how they work. I really enjoy diffusing thieves oil blend in the house or whatever else smells good to me (so does the husband) and I need to order some more diffusers on Amazon. My YL diffuser has a light on it that doesn't turn off and I have found a different one on Amazon that has a light you can turn off. I would like to diffuse at night when we sleep. I also bought thieves concentrated cleaner that you mix with water - I really enjoy cleaning with that because it is safe to ingest and non-toxic. My only complaint is that it doesn't cut through heavy grease very well. 

My most used oils are peppermint, RC, thieves, stress away and lemongrass. My nose gets really stuffed up at night for no reason and a few years ago I got on two nose sprays. At night I started putting peppermint and RC on the outside of my nose when I sleep. It has helped SO MUCH with my congestion. If I wake up in the night and feel stuffy I put more on and it works so fast. I also think it helps me sleep better because I woke up a lot at night before I started using oils. 

I have plantar fasciitis in my left foot. Last year I had surgery on my right foot for that and a pinched nerve and the recovery is really long and difficult. I am trying to heal naturally because I don't want surgery so I read to massage 3 drops each of lemongrass, wintergreen and RC into your foot.  Lemongrass is supposed to be an excellent healer for tendons. When you do the massaging/treatments you should do them every 4 hours.  Now...I have a day job and sole of these oils don't smell that good - particularly lemongrass. I am not comfortable forcing my coworkers to smell my voodoo so I do not follow the 4 hour rule. I will say that when I do my massages my foot does feel better. It feels like bengay and I do get relief. If I did it consistently I feel like I would have good results. Lemongrass also stains things with a yellow tint so that is one thing I don't like. I recently bought the special orthosport massage oil and it is similar to my homemade combo.

Sometimes I put a few drops of lemon oil in a glass container of water to drink. It tastes the way lemon peel smells to me but I enjoy infused water occassionally. Lemon oil is also great for removing sticky adhesives. 

Stress away is one of my favorite smells - it's got a vanilla citrus smell to it. I like to run it on my feet when I go to sleep and behind my ears in the morning. Do I feel less stress?  I am not sure but I will keep up with the consistency and report back. 

I also put lavender on acne and ingest thieves with a tablespoon of honey when I feel like I'm getting sick/rundown. Thieves has anti-viral properties and it has a cinnamon smell to it...it's one of my favorites. 

My next experiment is going to be seeing if they will remove skin tags. I don't get sick a lot but my foot is my biggest struggle right now. Does anyone else use oils or have any success stories?

Cooking {Salt Crusted Snapper}

One of the husband's goals is to try to be more adventurous with cooking and try to make more "difficult" dishes.  This week's attempt was salt crusted snapper.

I have seen this done on a few cooking shows and it looked super intimidating.  The husband used to be a fishmonger at a grocery store and while it probably wasn't his favorite job, he knows how to fillet fish and prep them from scratch so it is much more cost effective now to just buy whole fishes if we can.  It's an awesome skill set to have!

He followed this recipe from Mario Batali for Food Network:

Ingredients

1 whole 3-pound fish such as snapper, bream, sea bass or porgy

4 egg whites

2 cups kosher salt

1 bunch fresh thyme

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 lemon, cut into wedges

Directions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Clean and gut fish, remove top and bottom fins, scale and remove gills. Whisk egg whites to soft peaks and fold in salt. Place thyme in body cavity and set aside. Place 4 tablespoons of egg white mixture on a large platter, suitable for oven to table use. Place fish on top of mixture and spoon remaining mixture over top of fish. Place fish and platter in oven and bake for 25 to 30 minutes. remove and strike crust to crack. Carefully remove salt crust from top of fish and divide flesh among two plates. Serve with good oil and lemons.

Things we did differently - we stuffed our fish with lemon slices, thyme and olive oil.  We also used almost a whole box of kosher salt.  The recipe says to spread the egg/salt mixture on the bottom of the dish and then place the fish on top of it.  He did that but once it baked, it was stuck on there and we are still soaking the dish trying to get some of it off.  I would suggest a piece of parchment paper then spread the salt/egg white mixture.  You want the egg/salt mixture to be the consistency of cake frosting so it's easier to mould it to the fish and it isn't runny.  I think next time using a sheet pan would be better than a pyrex.

The idea is that the salt dome holds the heat in and allows the fish to cook evenly and perfectly. It definitely cooks the fish perfectly but we had some trouble peeling off our salt dome so some fish was a little salty.  I'm not sure if we cooked it a little too long or didn't let it cool before we cracked it or missed some secret trick.  Aside from some of the salt, it was awesome and we want to try it again!

Spreading the base layer of egg/salt mixture

Baked and ready for cracking

The meat is so tender it is literally fall off the bone delicious!

Trip Recap Part 2 {MARFA}

Like I said in Part 1 of the recap, we did not plan anything for this trip.  The forecast said rain all weekend so we decided to go check out Alpine and Fort Davis on Saturday.  There is no where to eat breakfast in Marfa - there is a coffee shop called Frama that is attached to a laundromat but they do not serve food.  They do have good coffee and there is also a juice place called Squeeze Marfa which we did not try.  So off to Alpine we went.

There truly is no cell service once you get outside of the towns so I frantically checked for places to eat in Alpine once we got into town and settled on a spot called Magoo's.  Magoo's is a mexican joint but TripAdvisor people said their breakfast was good.  M got pancakes/bacon/eggs and I got huevos rancheros.  I read the menu and thought "Refried beans...uh that is not typical" but I ordered it anyway because if I eat something like pancakes, I am starving within an hour.  Let me tell you it was so random but I ate it all anyway - it was like this spicy breakfast goulash with eggs, beans, green chilies and tortillas that totally sticks to your ribs.  On the bright side, I was not hungry for most of the rest of the day so mission accomplished.  We decided after Magoo's to go check out the McDonald Observatory which is maybe 45-50 miles north of Alpine.

I really, really enjoyed the trip just because of the scenery.  I have never driven around in the Davis Mountains in the daytime and it is gorgeous (I did go to the Observatory in college for a star party one night).  Midland is flat and kind of depressing but we do get some gorgeous sunsets.  Seeing elevation changes for us is practically like rolling around on a bed full of money...it's totally awesome.  I have always enjoyed West Texas/New Mexico/Arizona.  We did lots of vacations as kids in the Southwest and I internally geek out over living out here because I love it so much.  Low humidity?  Awesome.  Seeing weather systems blow up before they make it here?  Double awesome. Cool nights where you can actually sit outside and enjoy yourself?  Triple awesome.

Now that we have established that West Texas is awesome...back to the trip recap.  Fort Davis is nestled in the mountains and we wanted to check out the Fort (it's a national park) but decided to press on and see the Observatory because the chance of an outside star party that night was slim considering the weather.  The stars were aligned (he he he) because when we got there they were just about to start a tour of the observatories.  For $8/adult we got in our car and off we drove up the mountain to the facility that has the Harlan J Smith telescope.  They also have a shuttle if you would prefer to take that to the facilities.

Waiting for the tour to begin at the top

The McDonald Observatory was created because a Texas banker out of Paris, TX left the bulk of his fortune to the University of Texas to endow an astronomy observatory.  He was an amateur astronomy and just loved studying the field.  This year is the Observatory's 75th anniversary.  Here is a summary of the daytime tour directly off the website:

The Tour typically begins at the overlook to the south of the 107" dome.  From there, peaks over 80 miles way can be seen.  At this location, your guide will typically discuss some of the history of the Observatory and why this location was chosen for an astronomical research facility. After pointing out some of the peaks in the area, the tour typically then proceeds to the ground floor lobby of the 107" dome where some of the history of that telescope is discussed. After a climb up four flights of steps (an elevator is available for those who shouldn't or can't take the steps .. your guide with discuss access to the elevator) the tour continues with descriptions of the parts of the telescope seen at the 5th floor level, demonstrations of the telescope motions, etc.
After visiting the 107" telescope, your guide will provide instructions for continuing with the tour at the summit of Mt. Fowlkes and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. At the HET, you'll learn more about that telescope's unique, low-cost (for a world class telescope, at least) design and about new cutting-edge research projects for which the HET is currently being re-engineered.

This is exactly as described and the tour takes about an hour and half.  The Hobby-Eberly is currently undergoing upgrades so that the astronomers will be able to study dark matter/dark energy. It is basically a honeycomb of mirrors that are about 27 inches each in diameter and because of the construction, it is a little disappointing to view but it has some neat features they explain in detail.  They expect the construction to be done next year. 

The storms were starting to fire up while we were there and as soon as we were done with the tour and went back to the guest center, the rain hit hard.  It didn't occur to either of us to watch the movie or stay and explore the visitor center - we did want to get back to Marfa and try Pizza Foundation so we got our Christmas ornament (it's a tradition to buy an ornament when we go on trips) and off we went into the monsoon.  Apparently this time of year is monsoon season down there.  

We got back to Marfa and went straight to Pizza Foundation.  I had read reviews and they open at 1 and serve until they run out of pizza dough.  We were worried they would feed all the hipsters before we got a chance to try it.  Their menu is simple but the kid at the counter was annoyed at me asking how it works.  They have 3 "foundations" and then you can add extra toppings.  They offer a cheese, white and margarita pizza.  We decided to do half white add onion (him) and half margarita add sausage (me) since the pizzas are 18 inches wide.  It was amazing.  There is a place in Frisco called Pizzaria Testa and it's true Naples type pizza and Pizza Foundation was exactly as delicious but they are way more generous with toppings.  I would go back to Marfa just to eat pizza.  Soooo good!

We wanted to walk around Marfa and see what there was to see....there's not much.  We went into this store Freida's that a waiter at Maiya's recommended because his wife owns it and it wasn't really our speed.  We walked into an art gallery that was doing an exhibit on 9/11 - it was a woman who painted it from a child's perspective.  Again it wasn't our speed.  There wasn't much else open so we decided to try the rock shop and I ended up getting a rock.  The rock shop had some cool stuff but it was kind of expensive.  Like everywhere in Marfa, there is practically no air conditioning or it's tiny window units that don't cool well.  Back to the casita we went for some relaxing and a few hours later we decided to try Jett's Grill at the Hotel Paisano.  The food was pretty good but the best part for me was my drink - the American Honey.  They muddled the liquor, lemon and sweetness together and serve it over an oversized iced tea ice cube.  I could have drank 10 of those things but stopped at 2.  I want to try to make it at home.

After dinner we wanted to try Frama to see if they had ice cream but they closed at 8 so we went back to the casita and waited it out to go check out the Marfa Lights around 9:45ish.  Legend has it that these lights have been seen since 1883 by ranchers and no one knows what they are.  There is a "light stop" off the highway and it was pretty crowded - I am not sure if we actually saw the lights but we kept seeing something.  I had read that the lights dance, shoot across the land and are different colors.  We saw lights that kind of blinked on and off so the husband maintains they were highway lights.  I have no idea what they were.  Take a lawn chair and some drinks and let me know what you see!

Sunday was our last day and we got coffee at Frama and headed out to Prada Marfa.  Prada Marfa is an art installation that was set up in 2005 - it is a sealed off Prada store front with real Prada items inside of it.  It is about 35 miles west of Marfa towards Valentine.  It is...weird.  I got one great picture but this place has been vandalized with graffiti and the awnings are ripped so it looks kind of sad.  I'm glad we got to see it but it was not life changing.  Once we were done with that we took the super scenic route back to Midland and about 3-4 hours later we were home!  It was a great trip and we would like to go back and spend more time in Fort Davis and Alpine next time!

The menu at Frama is scrabble tiles!

Congratulations if you made it to the end of this post!  I need to work on making these shorter!

Review: Whirlpool Cabrio Washer and Dryer

When we moved out here we knew that we would probably sell our washer and dryer.  I had bought them when I moved to DFW so they were about seven years old.  Recently we were having trouble with the dryer and had to call out a technician twice.  It seemed like it was getting to be a fire hazard and the apartments out here include washer dryers so onto craigslist they went and an appliance dealer picked them up.  I bought them before HE models were a thing and it was glorious for washing out all the dog hair and handling big loads of laundry.

Our criteria was a top loading washer and a dryer that had a door that opened from the top - not the side.  They don't make those anymore so side opening door it is!  The prices are sort of all over the place based on brand, colors and drum sizes.  In our old house we had to buy a new dishwasher so after reading a bunch of reviews, we settled on a Maytag brand.  It actually worked really well so I was thinking stick with Maytag for the washer and dryer.  Off to Lowes we went and low and behold...apparently they do not make non-HE type washers anymore.  Was this bad?  Hell yes it was!  So plans out the window, now we were back to square one.  We had a budget in mind and when we really priced out the Maytags, realistically they were over our budget.  After some deliberation (and a sale) we settled on the Whirlpool Cabrio Platinum series in white.  There is a top tier in the Cabrio that has a few more features than ours but we didn't feel we needed the extras and I think it was $250 more each piece.  I had read reviews and they came in pretty positive to the Maytags - the biggest complaint was that the spin cycle was violent and clothes were getting torn.

Terrible photo but our laundry room is narrow

I have to say we have been pleasantly surprised at our purchases.  I actually read the manuals on them because they come with preset cycles for all sorts of clothing types - delicates, sheets, normal, casual, etc.  If this is your first time with an HE washer/dryer and you do not read the manual, you are doing yourself a disservice.  People complain in reviews that these appliances are horrible but they are not reading the manual and/or treating them like they are old washers.  You can't shove as many clothes in the drum so the loads have to be a little smaller (i.e.: not a whole basket of clothes can go in there).  They maybe use 1/3 of the original amount of water in a non-HE so that is another complaint.  I'm not sure how it gets anything clean but it works and we have done the dog's blankets and yard clothes but nothing super greasy.  They also spin things harder to get what little water is out of the clothes so when the cycle is done things are really wrinkly.  The dryer usually fixes that or you can adjust the spin cycle so it is not as aggressive.

The dryer works well and has the same features that the washer has except ours has always made this whining noise and even the delivery guy commented on it.  I had Lowe's come out and the guy decided the motor was going out and is ordering a new one.  It hasn't come in yet but it should be under manufacture warranty since we have barely had this over one month (they won't replace it - I asked).  The guy came out ten days ago and I haven't heard anything new so I am starting to lose my patience and need to follow up.  This is the first time I have had to use Lowe's Service Advantage for an appointment that involved ordering parts.

A nice feature the dryer has is a steam cycle - M uses it a lot for his work clothes and I have used it a few times but you are supposed to let it run the entire cycle or you will have wet spots on your clothes.  I just want my stuff fluffed for a few minutes so it doesn't work for me but he likes it a lot.

And here is my public service announcement.  Our old house had an interior laundry room and the dryer vent stack went up and out through the roof.  We lived in our house for almost 4 years and started noticing that the dryer was taking a super long time to dry items - like over 2 hours.  It finally occurred to us that maybe the dryer vent was clogged with lint and needed to be cleaned out.  Neither of us knew what was really involved with that so I called an HVAC company and they came out to check it out.  $150ish dollars later and they cleaned out so much lint that they suspected it had never been cleaned since the house was built 10 years ago.  M was home so he saw the little tool they used and how easy it was to clean it out - he said we could do it ourselves.  So even if I felt a little dumb paying for that, knowing we could do it ourselves going forward was nice.  You buy this little gizmo for about $20, attach it to a power drill and run it up and down the vent stack to drive out the lint.  One person can do it and the other can vacuum up the lint.  We just had to do this last weekend because we have an interior laundry room again with a vertical stack.  It maybe takes 20 minutes (unless you have to do replacement work on your stack like we did).  Our new dryer has a "clean vent" alert button and it went off which is a great feature!

You have to do this about once every six months - if you don't your running the risk of a fire hazard and your dryer will not last as long.  We ended up having to call a repair guy out for our old dryer and once it started working so hard, it never recovered even after we cleaned out the vent stack.  Now go forth and protect your house!  You're welcome.

Trip Recap Part 1 {MARFA}

Last weekend we decided to run away screaming from Midland.  Just kidding!  But for the past six months we have done nothing but work/pack/move/stress about *insert everything here* so in reality it did feel like we were running away from reality for 72ish hours.  Where does one go to escape reality?  One of the more irreverent spots in Texas - MARFA!

Marfa is about 3 hours from Midland and there are several routes to get down there.  We chose to follow Google Maps which lately has been sending us on some weird routes - definitely need to go back to paper maps for things like long distance trips.  Anyway, we elected to drive a route that would take us through the mountains towards Alpine then cut across the 30 miles to Marfa.  

I had looked on VRBO.com on the recommendation of a coworker.  He had just gone down to Marfa for the Viva Big Bend Music Festival and their group rented a house using VRBO.  I ended up booking the Marfa Boarding House Casita.  Other than that, I really didn't look up anything about Marfa.  Usually I like to scour TripAdvisor and see reviews so we at least have an idea of something to do but not this time.  One thing about Marfa is that there are only 3 "real" hotels and I was looking for something more private and relaxing so I thought the casita would be a good thing to try.  

I kept harping about how excited I was about the casita because the owners said the big house was not occupied so we would have the grounds to ourself.  I kept going on and on about "Don't forget your swimsuit!" because there was a pool.  Imagine my shock when we got there....and there's no pool.  There are not a ton of rentals to choose from in Marfa that are small - I kept going back to this huge house that was $2,500/night and it had a gorgeous pool.  It would be awesome for a family trip but obviously out of the question for us.  I stumbled upon the casita and for whatever reason I was totally convinced it was on the same property as the big house.  Vacation FAIL.  Oh well!  We don't really get in the water that much so it was okay.  

The casita was actually really nice.  It is a house that was built in the 1910/1920s and the casita was an old storage house for coal.  It was a perfect size and clean...it looked exactly like the photos other than some tired aspects that don't photograph (or are photoshopped?)  The biggest issue is that there is no central AC...they have two window units that wheel around and pipe hot air out a window vent.  The bathroom also does not have an AC unit and the vent tubing is short enough on the wheelie AC that you can't get the air flowing into the bathroom (it was decently hot).  They work fine but they are EXTREMELY loud and it was actually the worst part of the trip having to listen to them.  It wasn't cold enough to open the windows and the one night we tried for 15 minutes it was bug central.  It was also raining off and on all weekend.  

We got to Marfa about 8pm and we were warned that they roll up the red carpet pretty early...which is very true.  I guess I expected Marfa to be this cool little hip town that people are renovating/revitalizing that has some galleries, shops and restaurants - enough that you could stay all weekend and not leave.  Well...Marfa surprised me a little.  It is a very small town and it looks like it's falling apart.  Mechanic shops have been repurposed into restaurants and you honestly can't tell where anything is because every building looks like it's shut in or vacant.  There are also no street signs.  It was kind of weird but we settled on dinner at Maiyas because it looked like the only place open.  Maiyas is...Italian?  The menu is small but they offered a lot of pasta dishes so it could be considered Italian.  We enjoyed our meal and were happy to eat some dinner - their chocolate torte was absolutely amazing but the best part was the ice cream.  They carry Jeni's ice cream in sea salt caramel and we probably could have eaten a bowl each all by ourselves instead of the tiny scoop we got with our torte.  It was awesome.  You can actually order the ice cream online for $12/pint.  Expensive yes but they offer flat rate shipping so stuff that online cart full of goodies and eat until you pass out from happiness!  

We went back to the casita and learned about the train.  Marfa was originally established as a point for the railroads...and the railroad runs straight through town.  They fly through at about 60mph and blow that horn as loud as possible.  One thing I have been very aware of is how often trains come through out here in West Texas.  It is actually neat to see but I think there are 5 or 6 trains a night that run through town and you hear this rumbling before you see them.  Our casita was on the western outskirts of town so we knew when the trains were on their way!

Next up...Part 2 (aka Day 2)

Fountain Demo Part 1,345,543

If it wasn't 110* outside we probably could have knocked the majority of this project out on a Saturday/Sunday but so far it has stretched over 3 half Saturdays.  Yes, half days.  It is so ridiculously hot out here by noon that we just have to quit and find something else to do like take a nap and watch F1 racing.

This weekend we leveled out the rim of the pond and then bought 20 bags of topsoil and filled in the hole.  It is starting to look like a backyard but we probably need 20 more bags of soil to account for settling and make it as level as possible.  Then there are the rocks.  The bulk drop off is across the street from my office which is perfect if I take a change of clothes and can dump off rocks a few times a week on my way home.  We haven't quite figured out how to transport them yet so that the weight is manageable and we can lift the container into the truck bed without having to make thousands of trips.  SO. MANY. ROCKS.

Hey I finally made an appearance in my own blog!

Once we finish this pond project and get the rocks out of here, I would like to start tearing out the honeysuckle and rose bush off the fence (photo to come).  Or show the interior of the house some attention and do a little painting and try scraping the popcorn ceilings.

I see a few people checking out my site which is exciting!  Does anyone have anything in particular that they would like to read about?

Something Awesome: RAGGEDedge Gear

We did a mini vacation to Austin a few years ago and stopped at Toy Joy which is a fun, eclectic toy store that has some unusual items.  M found a bacon wallet and it was great because it got a lot of compliments and laughs.  Everyone loves bacon, right?  One of his biggest complaints was that sitting on a a bi-fold wallet all day was bothering his back like he was pinching a nerve so he started shopping around for a minimalist wallet that you could put in your front pants pocket.

He found this website called RAGGEDedge Gear (they have an Etsy store too) and they have some really neat products.  The wallet he selected is a carbon fiber sailcloth wallet so it is super light and strong.  One side has three pockets for cards/cash and the other is a clear slot for your driver's license.  

They also sell gear bags and Father's Day was coming up.  My parents have a sailboat and are big into racing so we thought the perfect gift was a tote bag made out of hi-tech sailcloth.  My dad really loved it and we were surprised at the size - it was bigger than we thought it was going to be but he says it is perfect.  We selected the Armadillo 22L style.

So far the wallet is holding strong except for one stitch that has ripped in a corner but it is hidden by the material fold.  It stays clean, it's easy to wipe and the compact design has been perfect.  If you are in the market for something neat I would definitely check out their website!

**I was not paid to endorse RAGGEDedge - I paid for these items with my own money and just think it is a cool business with products that we have enjoyed.  They have no idea who I am**

Review: Nest Learning Thermostat

Our HVAC system was installed in 1997 and I think the thermostat is original to the house.  I don't have any pictures of it but it had 4 controls that you would push up or down and there was a post-it on how to reset it when you change the air filter.  I have never seen a thermostat so old before and we had no clue how to work it.  Solution?  The Nest Learning Thermostat.

Nest claims to be a thermostat that will learn your habits and adjust the AC accordingly to help you save money and energy.  Some energy companies will give you a discount when you have a Nest and participate in whatever energy saving program they offer.  After about a week and a half of using it, it "learns" your schedule and adjusts accordingly.  You can also create a schedule for it.  It will email you a monthly usage report too.

We picked up a Nest at Lowe's for $259.  Let me preface this by saying that I do not believe in "smart homes".  I don't believe in being able to access things like your security system from the internet because I feel that it's vulnerable to hackers, etc.  Maybe these feelings are unfounded but I was resistant to Nest because a) it is kind of expensive and b) the "smart home" factor.  Luckily we only had to buy one since we are a one story home that's about 2300 sq ft.

Set up of Nest is really simple.  We were installing ours on a Friday night after hours but you follow instructions on the website and it walks you through how to connect the wires.  It did say that we had to call customer service because our wires were not straight forward, but we got it installed without incident.  M did email this photo of our wires and they responded the next day with a set up explanation.

So once we got it installed, Nest searches for your wifi connection and gets hooked up to the house.  You can give Nest a new name, tell it where it is located  in the house (our's is in a hallway), set your location, time, etc.  You turn the silver dial to select your option and push into the Nest to select the options.  Nest will use your location to sync up with the weather forecast.  One of my favorite features with Nest is that you can control it from your phone.  I know I said I don't believe in "smart homes" but I have been disappointed with Nest and that is the best feature in my opinion.

We have had Nest for a month.  It is on a schedule where it's at 76* during the day and at 9pm it drops to 70* for sleeping.  I like it to be a frozen tundra when I sleep.  I have half Fridays so around noon it will go down to 74*.  It has learned we are not home during the day so it will go into "Auto Away" mode which means that the highest temp it will get to is 76* and the lowest is 61* before either the heater or AC kicks on.  Every day it will run a report on the app to tell you how many hours Nest ran.  It will tell you if you got a leaf for low energy usage, if it was an unusually hot day so energy consumption was above average, the weather was cool so it didn't need to run as much, or that Auto Away helped you.  

This month we got our monthly usage report and I was really excited because I thought it would go into detail about Nest's capabilities.  What a disappointment!  All it told me is that we cooled our house for 215 hours in July and recommended that we turn our temperature down 30 minutes before we go to sleep to give Nest a head start.  It does kick on to start cooling down for sleep at 9 but we do not usually go to bed until 10 or 11.  Anytime you turn Nest down it will tell you how long it takes to get to that temperature.  Our HVAC is almost 20 years old so it takes way more effort to cool our house than a newer system.  I honestly hope it breaks so we can get a new one while we are under our home warranty.

Overall my review of Nest is positive even though I have been so disappointed with the information it provides.  I truly expected a smart thermostat to tell me all kinds of information about how I could lower my energy usage and save money.  Granted, we do not necessarily follow Nest's recommendations (especially at night) but it has been really interesting to see how much our AC unit runs on a daily basis and just generally what kind of hot/cold temps our house feels good at.  Nest does "auto away" us on Saturday/Sundays which is fine but if we are doing projects or moving around a lot I have to adjust it so it feels cooler.  Sometimes it will go back to "auto away" after I turn the temp down so that is kind of frustrating.

I also have tried to enroll in the Nest discount program that Reliant Energy provides but I still have not received any emails so I need to call them again.  You can save up to 80 cents a kilowatt hour when you participate in the program!  

The one thing I am REALLY interested in trying is the smoke/CO2 detectors that Nest makes.  They are $99 each so that is a little pricey but they come either battery operated or hard-wired so you could take them with you if you moved.  Our house is small so over time that would be a beneficial upgrade.

Attic Ladder

One of the unexpected expenses we have had since we moved into the house was the attic ladder.  This house was built in 1980 and I think it is original to the house.  When we were moving in and M tried to get on the ladder to haul Christmas stuff up - it buckled like it was about to snap.  For three weeks we had our stuff all over the house while we tried to figure out what to do.  Our inspector was not able to get up into the attic using the ladder because the former owners were crazy hoarders and had so much crap blocking it that all he could do was open it part way and get inside using his own ladder.  If we had known we might have asked them to fix it.  Or maybe they broke it hauling their stuff down?  Who knows.

Anywho...I called our home warranty company to see if an attic ladder is covered.  It's not and neither are fire ants so that was disappointing.  Maybe it was just me but I wasn't sure if you could buy a ladder, had to call a contractor or what the solution was.  So I did some googling and low and behold - you can actually buy an attic ladder and install it yourself!  CRAZY!  Last weekend we spent Sunday installing it and frankly the whole project is very straightforward - except for tedious task of the temporary support beams while you bolt the ladder into place.

I think it took us three hours to install it and the only casualty was our garage fridge getting a decent dent on the edge when M dropped the ladder.  I thought that when you bought an attic ladder you were replacing just the stairs - it is actually a frame, ladder and door.  We selected an aluminum ladder which in hindsight was the best choice because I had to lift the ladder up to M so he could settle it on our temporary support beams and a wood one might have been too heavy.

The part we struggled with was lining up the temporary support boards.  They give you specific measurements on how far apart to space them but ultimately when you pull the door down, there is not much frame surrounding the door so we ended up picking up the ladder, shifting it to crack open the door and slide it under the support beam.  The only post-install fix we need to make is lowering the legs - now when you are on the ladder it is not touching the floor.  Luckily that is an easy fix.  As you can see from the pictures, our supervisor couldn't take how slow the minions were moving on this project!

This weekend we have my company family picnic (which is actually a Rockhounds baseball game) but otherwise we are going to cool it on projects this weekend.  We agreed to start filling in the pond hole and maybe rip out the half dead plants at the front of the house but otherwise, nothing major this weekend!

That Guy Craig and His List

Today we got all of the monkey grass out of the yard around the fountain and.....got rid of all the rocks too!  We have a love/hate relationship with Craigslist.  We have had good experiences with it for the most part but people can be flakey and you have to have the mantra of "first come, first serve".  I would say the #1 most important part of using it is to get a free Google Voice cell phone number.  They won't know your real phone number when they call/text and it is just an element of safety.  Today I posted all of the rocks up on for free - and a nice couple who live south of Midland came by and picked them all up.  They even took the stuff we were going to toss because they said it was easier for them to get rid of it since there is a caliche pit close to their property.  It feels really good for the yard to look like progress has been made and it has been overcast all day long so the weather has been on our side!  The river rocks still linger and we need to start scraping them up and figure out how to get rid of them.  No one on Craigslist seems to want them if they are not pre-washed and properly packaged.  Since I am not a garden center, they are out of luck!

The other project we started today was seeing what these trails of river rocks are that run around our workshop.  We bought a pick ax last weekend at Lowe's and M insisted we would never use it....it's the #1 tool used on these outdoor projects lately so the joke is on us!  The guess is that the trenches are french drains - but they aren't proper french drains.  A correctly built french drain is a trench that has rocks and then a pipe with lining around it to divert the water.  The "french drain" at our house is a trench lined with what looks like aluminum flashing, no holes and rocks on top of it.  We have managed to rip out one side of the drains and have the side of the shop to go so who knows when that will get done.  Our old house had french drains built into the gutters which was a nice feature except that they were not done properly and our yard was always so squishy when it rained.  Our new house does not have gutters but we are considering having them installed at some point.

We also made a run to the citizen's collection center which is actually really nice and like the one our town had back in DFW.  I wish they were open on Sundays because it would probably encourage us to power through projects all weekend long if we could make another run.  We even met this little 4 ft long guy over by the tree limb/organic drop off section.  No rattle so we aren't sure what he is!

Fontaine Eww

One of the first things we wanted to demo in the house was this fountain.  Our yard has a huge 30 x 30 workshop in the backyard which eats up all of the big yard space.  Because of the shed, the yard is pretty small and mostly just runs along our property line.  When we first saw the fountain it was okay - it was one of the seller's favorite features - but to us it is a mosquito haven, we didn't want the dog playing in it and we like having grass.  I would say the fountain is probably 6 feet long by 4 or 5 feet wide and 2.5 ft deep.

On move-in day the fountain was on and running....and not all the way full.  The next day the fountain was maybe 1/3 of the way full....where was the water going?  Like everything else in our house it probably wasn't well taken care of so I shut it off to see what happened.  By day three it was just a tiny bit of water so we knew it needed to come out.  The mosquitos are really bad at the house so one day I got so fed up I poured bleach into the water until I could buy some water boots to get in there and scoop it all out.  We weren't sure if it was a plastic mould or if it was just some kind of weed/water barrier.  While we were tackling the side yard we decided to start this project.

After mowing down the monkey grasses (gotta check for spiders!) and moving all the rocks, we realized it was just a hole they had double lined.  We broke it up into sections and started tearing the liner with box cutters to try to avoid the stagnant water.  Let me tell you, it smelled so bad when we started pulling the liners out!!!  All this black sludge came pouring out of the liner and settled into the hole - luckily it dried out quickly and it hasn't really smelled since then.

So this is the yard's current state.  I am hoping this weekend we can finish the demo and figuring out how to back-fill this hole.  Ultimately we would like to remove all of the river rocks on the right side of the fountain and make that grass too.  I need to craiglist these nicer rocks - they would be great for someone's yard as a decorative edge on a flower bed.  Unfortunately there are close to 2 truck beds worth of rocks so I hope someone wants them!