This and That

This month is flying by just as fast as fast as October did and it’s already the middle of the month! It was just the 1st! I’m almost done with the counter tops. We’ve had some rainy days so it really slowed the drying time down a lot and put me behind schedule. It’s looking really good though and we should be able to get everything in Haley and Brandon’s house before Thanksgiving so they can start back cooking. I know they are so ready to have a functional kitchen again.

Nicholas has been staying pretty busy at work but he’s had more off time this month than he has since he started so he’s been enjoying that. We’re looking forward to going to GA this weekend. I’m going to Savannah for a few days to see some of my hunnies that I haven’t seen in a couple of years and it will give N a chance to see family for a couple of days.

We went to the 30th Anniversary celebration fro Alabama LifeSaver this weekend and it was a lot of fun. It gave me a chance to meet a lot of people from the company that work at other bases and we had a chance to get dressed up for a change.

The new 407, it’s not in service yet. Right now everyone is training on it, not sure when all the bases will have theirs and the transition will be done.

All of LifeSaver’s aircraft together for the first time. Everyone was really excited for this picture because it really was awesome to see them all lined up. Everyone was still on call but luckly no one got calls during the party and had to leave. The 407 is at the very end, then Birmingham’s candy corn aircraft, Sylacauga’s aircraft, Rainbow City’s A/C, Children’s Care Flight, and last Auburn’s A/C.

Tonight we took Kady to her first Dog Training class. The instructor was looking at her and said “well there is one way to tell if she’s more Boxer or more Pit, let’s see how she reacts to a treat and command” He said that Boxers will go after a treat when you are teaching them a command but if they have to work for it they will give up and ignore it if they can’t have it right away but a Pit won’t give up and will keep going after it. Kady is a Boxer. We were trying to teach her the “settle down” command and get her to lay down and she wasn’t having it. He said Boxers are extremely smart but they question everything you want them to do and that’s her to a T. She was so funny. I’m looking forward to training her more because I think she enjoys learning.

Hard to believe just a few months ago she was this size

And now she’s this size.

As you can see that’s where she thinks she belongs on the sofa and if N is in here watching TV with me she will sit on the floor and whine at him because she wants her spot back. If he gets up for any reason she’s up there and settled in so fast it will make your head spin.

Last year I found some really cute cupcake and fun decorations at Kmart and decided to have a fun tree. It worked out that I had the perfect spot for it in the den so I put it up this week. I’ll put everything else up after Thanksgiving but I want to enjoy this tree as long as possible.

I still need to decide on a topper and tree skirt but I have some time. Maybe I’ll find the perfect thing at Christmas in the South this weekend.

More projects

When I talked to Haley about building the cabinet she told me she wanted to put butcher block counter tops on the other areas in the kitchen with the sink and a little eat in area. She wanted it stained the dark walnut to match the cabinet but we knew it wouldn’t be exactly the same since the wood tones started out so different. Since the wood in the cabinet was already so dark and had a red tone to it it took the stain really dark. The butcher block is a lot lighter so it’s not taking as dark. I had to cut out the whole for the sink and cut a couple of notches out of the counter top to fit around a wall so that took some time. The butcher blocks come with a factory oil finish and it took me forever to get that sanded off. I wasn’t expecting it to be so difficult and because it was oily it kept gumming up my good sander and I had to stop often to clean it out. 

Before I cut the sink hole

I’m using the cabinet as one of my work tables because I needed an extra one. I really just need to get some saw horses.

Everything set up and ready to stain. And our big pile of boxes that needed to go out for recycling. They are out of the way now.

After 2 coats of stain. It’s going to take me a while to get this done because it takes so long for stain to dry and since this will be at the sink it needs extra coats of Waterlox sealer. I found out about waterlox when doing research on the best sealer to use on counter tops, 2 other blogs I found has used it and a couple of years later their countertops were still in great shape. I want to put at least 5 or 6 coats of waterlox with 12 hours of dry time between coats.

And a couple of before pictures of Haley and Brandon’s kitchen so you can get an idea of how awesome it’s going to look after!

This is where the cabinet will go soon!

I’m really excited to see it all finished soon. I’m hoping we can get it done next week so it will all be finished by Thanksgiving!

Stain the cabinet

I got the cabinet sanded down this week and Haley and Brandon came over to look at it last night and loved it! I started on the stain today and it looks so good! Haley asked me to beat up and distress the edges of the drawers so I took a hammer and went to work. It went against everything in me to beat on something I built but I really like the way it looks. It’s not really noticeable unless you know to look for it but it’s a nice touch.

Before stain. We are going to put a piece of board at the bottom so you can’t see the supports and under the cabinet but we are waiting until we cut the 1/4 in plywood for the back and use a strip of that.

After stain.

I have almost as much stain on me as the cabinet has on it.

 

And because I always have to add a few dog pictures. This is what greet me every night when I head to bed. Kady thinks she needs to sleep in the very middle of the bed and Ki always claims the pillow.

Since I disturbed her she needed a good stretch.

And Pooh decided tonight that her new favorite spot to hang out is on top of the crate.

They are so weird.

Kitchen Cabinet

We finished building the cabinet on Monday. We worked on it all day and finally finished the doors a little after 6 right before N went on shift. I had to take pictures of it with my phone but I do have a camera now finally! We decided to take a break completely on Tues since that was his only day off then the cold front hit on Wed and it barely made it out of the 40’s with a strong wind and just dreary all day. I have to sand outside so there was no way I was going to start in all that. Nikki and Steve came into town Thurs afternoon for Steve to have knee surgery this morning so we still haven’t worked on it anymore. The weather should be perfect tomorrow so we’ll work on it then.

I’m hoping we’ll have it finished by this time next week. This thing is sturdy and HEAVY!! Moving it with the drawers in is impossible.

 

Nikki and Steve brought Patches up with them and Kady was in heaven!! At first Patches wasn’t on board with the crazy dog jumping all over her but they became great friends really fast. By the end of the night both dogs were exhausted and Kady slept like a rock and as soon as Patches left this morning around 10 she went in her crate and went straight to sleep! She’s been lazy all day after all her hard playing. Ki and Pooh just stood back and watched them have fun.

Some other pictures of the girls

Kady loves to look out the front door. We think we need to break this though because we don’t want her to scratch up the door or the glass.

It’s almost impossible to get all 3 of them.

And the reason we are always out of food.

He decided to eat cereal.

 

Nicholas worked at the Talladega race track on Thurs while they were practicing or doing time trials or whatever it is they do in the days before the race but he said it was really cool. They have a care center down right beside the track and he stayed in there most of the time. We have tickets to the race on Sun so we figure we’ll go out there for a little while, why not since they were free!  He flew over the house on his way back to the base so we got to see him fly over. That’s pretty cool. His company is working on bringing in new aircraft and they will allow family members to fly along on an aircraft transport so I’m really hoping he’ll get to go pick one of them up from Denver so I can go with him. It would be so awesome to fly back across the mountains and I’ve never had the chance to fly before so fingers crossed! We were hoping Oct would be slower than Sept but so far he’s ended up working a lot of overtime and everyone is stretched thin. He tried to get someone else to work today for him but it wasn’t happening and his boss told him that if he hadn’t known he was tired he would have asked him to work the rest of the weekend and straight into his next shift which would have been 21 days with only 1 day off. Yikes. At least he’ll have Sat and Sun off and will probably end up working on Mon. Maybe Nov will be slower???? I think it will because N needs a break.

I guess that’s about it around here. Oct is flying by just as fast as Sept did and it’s hard to believe we’ve been in Birmingham almost 5 months. We absolutely love it here and we are so thankful for everything in our life. This move was a huge new start for us, new job, new house, new dog, new life together and we are blessed.

Tool Time

I bought a table saw! It was an exciting day for me! A girl that lives in our neighborhood read my blog and saw the projects that I have worked on and asked up to build a cabinet for her kitchen that they are remodeling. After meeting with her and seeing what we had in mind I knew we would be able to get it done and I was excited. On Sat Haley and I went up to Cullman, AL  to Southern Accents and they had some of the coolest stuff! I knew they had a lot of reclaimed wood but I thought it was all off site in a huge gym so we were surprised to see they have a wood shop on site and a bunch of wood in the back. The owner was out at the gym with other customers so we had to wait for him to get back to the store to give us prices and cut the wood down so it would fit in my car. We got a fantastic deal on the wood for the face of the cabinet because Haley wanted rough reclaimed wood. The rest of the frame we built with plywood to save money and make sure it was very sturdy.

The new toy. It matches my miter saw.


Three drawers on each side and doors in the middle.

The wood needs to be cleaned up but it’s really pretty. I can’t wait to see if finished!


And because it’s not a blog post without some dog pictures.
Big, Medium, Small

Kady Bell

She was sleeping with her tongue out like this. I had to take a pic of it.


My camera broke so I’m having to take all the pictures with my phone. I’ll be buying a new camera SOON because I hate not having one!

Busy around here…

I’m not sure where this month went! We’ve been busy but it’s just flown by! Nicholas has been working a lot and went to FL for a week of training so I’ve been in GA visiting everyone. It seems like it’s been forever since I was home but it was around the middle of June so not that long. This is the first big trip for Kady and she’s done really good the whole time. I was worried about the ride so I put her in her crate and she hollered at me for the first 10 mins then slept the whole rest of the trip. I took her to the shop with me 2 full days and she did great up there and slept most of the time. Since Sunday she’s lost 7 of her front teeth and the adult teeth are growing in SO fast! I can’t believe how quickly they’ve come in. I think that’s one reason she was so tired on Mon and Tues, growing teeth is hard work!

We are trying to update mama’s website for her shop so I’ve been busy doing research for the best way to change everything around and add a shopping cart. I finally have things going in the right direction so I’ll be updating everything more often.

For now I’ll leave you with a picture of the last dog bed I made and our long legged baby.

 

SOLD!!

I went up to Clarksville on Thurs afternoon for closing bright and early on Friday. All the papers are signed and we are no longer home owners. It’s very nice! For the first time in almost 7 years we don’t have to worry about being solely responsible for a house! It’s really nice to be able to call the landlord when things need to be fixed around the house and know that if it’s something we can’t take care of he’ll have a repair person out to look at it within a very short amount of time. I think we’ll stick to renting for a while. In this economy buying a house isn’t the “investment” it was years ago and I don’t need the stress of waiting for a house to sell again anytime soon.

While I was gone Nicholas sent me this picture of Kady.

She apparently decided that the deck was feeling a little hard and she wanted a bed out there to lay on. N walked in there because he heard the “sssss   ssssss  ssssss” of it sliding across the floor in the kitchen. lol She is a smart girl. Since we know she’s going to get big I’ve been working to teach her to sit before I feed her and I won’t let her eat until I say she can and she’s been very good at that the last few feedings. I don’t want her to keep rushing to the bowl and knocking the food all over the place when we try to put it down. Ki and Pooh say they are glad they aren’t puppies anymore and don’t have to learn all these crazy manners we are teaching Kady like Sit! haha Spoiled mutts. They are all keeping us very entertained that’s for sure. Pooh is finally running around and playing a lot more with Kady now. I really think it’s because she realized how big Kady is getting and she wants to put her in her place now! However that’s causing fights between Ki and Pooh because as much as Ki doesn’t really like Kady either she doesn’t want Pooh to be dominate.

We have had sooooooo much rain in the last 2 days. Mainly today but it rained on and off all day Sun. The airport a few miles from us is reporting around 7 inches of rain today. There’s a lot of flooding in all of Birmingham and a lot of people without power. We’ve been lucky so far and it’s flickered a number of times but keeps coming back on. N is working tonight and I told him that if it goes off and stays off we’re packing it up and going to stay with him at the base. He didn’t even bother wearing his flight suit to work when he left the house. He took it with him so he could change when the rain moves out but he figured he might as well be comfy for most of the night. Kady doesn’t know what to think about all the rain, she has probably poked her head out the dog door 100 times today she wants to go out so bad. I’m not sure if Pooh as even peed all day. They can’t stand to be wet and I can’t blame them, we’ve had a steady medium to heavy rain the majority of the day.  We really needed it though so I’m not complaining, I just wish there had been a few breaks for the girls to all go out and potty. Now I wish we could send this rain over to TX to help with all the horrible fires they are dealing with right now. So many homes have been lost and it breaks my heart.

We bought a new bed yesterday. We’ve been waiting until the papers were signed on the house to go buy one. We have hated that old bed for a while now. We bought it right before N deployed the second time but it was obviously horrible quality and had a big sag in the middle in no time. I have a number of friends with temperpedic beds and I’ve always liked the feel of memory foam. Mari has one and I’ve slept on it a few times at her house and loved it. We went in there at 1 and the bed was delivered by 4 yesterday! Pretty fast service. And since it is Labor Day weekend we got 2 free pillows since they can’t lower the prices on the Temperpedic brand mattresses. I slept with the new pillow last night and really liked it a lot. It will be so nice to sleep comfortably and not wake up with my lower back and hips aching in the morning. The bed is a few inches shorter than our old one so now the dogs (and I mean Ki because she’s the only one that won’t walk back down the steps but Kady will be to long and big to do that soon! lol) won’t have as far to jump down off the bed. We were worried about them jumping onto the slick hardwood but Ki almost always makes sure to jump down on my side where the rug is with the grippy pad under it so she doesn’t slide.

That’s about all that’s going on around here. I don’t update as often because I really don’t have too much to say. This will be a very busy month for N because he has a week of training in FL for the new company on top of working a few extra days for another pilot ( just looked at the calendar and I think he’ll only have 4 days off this month!) . We keep trying to plan a few days home but it never fails that something comes up that keeps us from being able to do it. I’m hoping after everything calms down and we get into Oct we’ll be able to come home during his week off. All these aircraft shuttles back and forth to TX  really kept our schedule messed up in Aug because things were always so last minute. I’ll probably come home for a few days while he’s either working or in FL. I have to make the drive for the first time with Kady sooner or later and I haven’t been home since June and didn’t have much time to visit at all on that short trip.