Dexter's Second Birthday Party

About a month ago, I talked about Dexter's first birthday party and plans for his second.  I can hardly believe it has already been a month, let alone another year has gone by.  Saturday was the big day and boy were we busy the last few days leading up to the party.  In our typical fashion, we waited until the last minutes to take care of everything, but luckily, I'd say it all went off without a hitch.  We did our shopping and cleaning over the long Memorial Day weekend, John called on Tuesday and got our food ordered from Rockland's, a few tables and some chairs reserved, and made an appointment for Dexter to get his birthday haircut.  Then Saturday morning, we were up bright and early to do our last second cleaning, setting up and decorating.  I had the crazy idea I might fit in a quick nap before 5:00, but no luck for me.  Fortunately, we did manage to pull everything together and the weather miraculously cooperated without any of the sweltering heat of last year.

Now for the details and I'll start off with something random... the "Windex Outdoor All-in-One Glass Cleaning Tool" is amazing.  After a ton of deliberation, we finally cracked and bought one.  The biggest hold-up was its price at about $14.99 at Target.  However, our windows were so nasty (mostly due to our MDF project back in January that resulted in mountains of dust on the ground and a disgusting layer all over the siding and windows), we had to do something.  The kit comes with a Swiffer-like apparatus (a pole that you stick a cleaning pad on) that's easy to assemble.  Then you just squirt down the pad with a hose, spray your window, scoot the pad around, and spray it clean.  That's it.  No wiping or anything.  We worked together with John manning the hose and me scooting the pad and in no time we were done.  Just like it promised, we were left with a streak-free shine on our windows... and I even did my back windshield.  The kit only comes with one pad and the refills are a little pricey, too, but if we keep up with our window cleaning frequency of once every eight months, I think we can foot the $10 or so.  :)

Look how happy you can be to wash your windows!  yay!

OK, back on track, with the outside all clean, we were free to do our thing inside.  I had grand plans in the beginning of DIYing some decorations and all that, but I had to take a step back and remind myself it's a dog birthday party and we can't afford to go nuts and don't want to end up as new subject matter for TLC to feature along with Hoarders, Extreme Couponers, and Crazy Eating Habits people.  So, we made our first trip to Party Depot.  It was kind of a weird store with a weird vibe, but lucky for us, we found some inexpensive decorations to spice up our place... just a few cute fan decorations (decorations shaped like fans, not decorations for fans like some may have thought...), a package of paper lanterns, and some streamers.  I think it may have cost a whopping total of $10.  Here's our set up.  Once people arrived, our photo taking kind of fell off, so boo to that.  Oh, and check out our awesomely painted kitchen.  Yeah, we finally finished painting the rest of our main floor, but our place has been so much of a mess since then, it hasn't been appropriate for photos...

That's not a creepy stalker in the doorway, that's just our friend Paul.

And because every kid who goes to a party likes to take home a little goody bag, I prepared doggy bags for our canine guests.  I baked two kinds of dog biscuits, a peanut butter based treat and a beef and cheddar (gotta have your sweet and savory), and threw in a squeaky Kong tennis ball.  Maybe that was too much...

Here are our guests, human and canine, (hopefully) enjoying themselves.  Our boys had a great time meeting and playing with other dogs.  It was incredibly nice having the fence up to keep everyone safe.  Chewie had an amazing time playing with our friend Keith's dog, Bailey.  I guess he has a thing for older women.  Apparently she did, too, as Keith said she was asleep in the car before they turned onto the first street from our house.  We were thrilled to have our friends over and catch up.  Now that we have our house and yard, I think we'll have to schedule more (smaller) parties here and there because it's just too much fun eating, drinking, and laughing all evening.  We're so lucky to have such amazing sons and friends.  :)

Jasmine making sure she's protected from mosquito bites.

Jet doing a jig... or something.

And then acting as dog whisperer.

The guys hogging the comfy chairs.  Typical.

Making Lemonade

Moving is the worst.  I certainly wouldn't be surprised if some study came out announcing the process of moving results in a loss of five years from your lifespan.  Moving would be just be added to the list of everything else that kills us... you know, BPAs, cell phones, Sarah Palin's reality show.  I must say, though, on our actual moving day, just two short months ago, everything went unexpectedly well and no one was horribly injured and more importantly, none of our stuff was damaged.  Well... everything except for our unsuspecting stairway leading into the basement.

As you may recall, we faced a challenge in moving our ginormous La-Z-Boy sectional into the basement due to the narrow door and stairway.  Our poor friends were barely hanging on after a full day of lugging heavy boxes and furniture, and of course, the sectional had to be the very last task.  Once our friend, Paul, had removed the door frame, the guys were able to squeeze forcibly shove and kick the couch, piece by piece down the stairs.

Couch v. Tiny Stairway

A moving day miracle occurred and my beloved couch found its way home, but we were left with this... modern art?  I like to think of it as an expression of the frustration of today's homeowner... struggling to get by in a down economy, like you're just trying to climb your way up, get your piece of the American Dream, but something just keeps kicking you in the face.  Uh huh... that sounds right.

Then there is this scraggly door frame.  It kind of gives our basement an even creepier feel, what with the low ceilings, freezing temperatures, and two black cats darting to and fro.  Yikes... maybe we should devote more effort to making the basement a little friendlier before we wake up chained to a bathtub down there (a la "Saw")...

Anyways, we decided we wanted to commemorate this first adventure at Grafton.  At the time, it was just so frustrating, but looking back, I'd chalk it up to an invaluable experience.  It is an opportunity to be reminded of how great our friends are and there's nothing wrong with a getting a few bumps and scratches in life.  So, I gathered a few chunks of wall and Gorilla Glued them to an extra scrap of contact paper I had been using to line our cabinets, and stuck it in a little shadow box we bought at IKEA.

We hung it right inside our stairway and the almost happy face arrangement of the chunks greets us on each trip down to the basement.  So, there you go.  We got some cheap art, great memories, and a comfy couch to relax on.  Now that's what I call making lemonade out of life's lemons.  Those lemons better watch out because we're not afraid to kick, shove, and tear stuff up to get what we want.  :)

Week 1

Last Saturday was the Big Move.  With the great preparations we had made, we thought it would be a piece of cake and we'd be relaxing in our house by sundown.  As they say, though, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and awry our plans did go.  All seemed to be going smoothly until it came time to haul our enormous sectional down into our basement family room.  Apparently in 1948, not only were people much shorter with smaller feet and less storage needs, they also didn't need as wide of doors as we have today.  After trying both the stairway from inside and outside, it was obvious our couch wasn't making it to its intended home without some extreme measures.  Following hours of trips up and down the stairs and lugging all sorts of boxes and furniture, we all were tired, frustrated and starting to feel a bit hopeless.  Luckily, our friend, Paul, was able to pull us back from the brink by expertly popping off the door and frame, which gave us just enough space to shove the couch down the stairs.  The individual pieces were violently thrust down the narrow stairwell, leaving gouges along the walls, but in the end they all made their way downstairs.  Thanks to the assistance and forward thinking of Jessellee, our bed had been assembled and made, and at the end of the night looked like a sweet cloud from heaven and I don't think either of us had ever felt so happy to lie down.  While it might have been a crazy hectic day, it made us realize how lucky we are to have such amazing friends who all went way, way above and beyond to help us, even when they were just as tired and sore, if not more so.  So, we say thanks to Keith, Mike, Paul and Jessellee, and Terry.  We literally couldn't have done it with out them and we're so grateful we could spend our first day in the house with such special people.

In the days since, our lives have revolved solely around boxes.  Whether it be unpacking them, moving them around, tearing them open in a desperate search for something we know must be somewhere, or tripping over them, only to crash into another box.  Moving around the house makes me feel like we're contestants on "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge: Home Edition", but thankfully, minus the giant pools of mud.  I think when we're not watching, the boxes are going off and reproducing because I swear even though we've unpacked quite a few, there are more appearing in their place.  Around the boxes, we're slowly managing to arrange our rooms and if you squint really, really hard, you can almost see at some point, it might actually look like a home.


Don't...get...eliminated!!

By yesterday, John and I were pretty exhausted and overcome with ennui from unpacking, and it was obvious we both needed a day off and a big ol' dose of a well-known, traditional Swedish cure of all that ails you: a trip to IKEA.  Nothing invigorates the body, mind, and soul better than the smell of particle board in the morning.  We picked up a new bed frame (a platform to allow Dexter to hop on and off easily... don't judge us... our lives revolve around The Boys and we know it), a taller dresser to better fit in our small master, a new TV stand to complete our built-in look for the living room, and a shadow box picture frame to memorialize the Big Move by framing a few chunks of our house that fell during the Great Sectional Escapade.  We left IKEA with a cart full of flat boxes, frozen yogurt cones in our hands, and a renewed hope in our hearts.


IKEA loves our home.

What a week.  Who knew buying a house would be so much work?  Here we are, already a full week into our adventures in homeownership.  Closing feels like both just yesterday and forever ago.  The past week has been exhausting and exciting and full of ups and downs.  Even though we're both spotted with bruises, sore in all sorts of places, and a little worried someone might find us crushed underneath an avalanche of boxes... it's a labor of love and so far, we still love our little house.