Our new place

We've been having a lot of people asking to see pictures of the house that we bought so I thought I would post them on the blog instead of emailing a bunch of different people seperately.  I will post the pictures and then say what we plan to change if anything.


Outside of the house - putting up a porch swing on the right side of the deck and pulling out that bush on the right side of the yard.

Front door and stained glass windows as you go up the stairs

Kitchen - They painted the real wood cabinets so we will strip those back to the wood and then stain them to the color we want. LOVE the hardware on the cabinets....1920's vintage.

Living room - that area rug is gone and we will be changing the window treatments

Front window in living room - changing those window treatments

Dining room - they gave us that table but we will be throwing out the area rug under the table

Basement full bathroom

Basement - cleaning the floor, resealing, and painting it.  This is only half the basement.  The other half (which I dont have a pic of) has the washer/dryer and a door with stairs leading up to the backyard.  There is also a good sized storage room down here.

Backyard - pull out those bushes against the garage and make a garden

Side yard with stamped concrete patio - maybe pulling out those bushes

2 car detached garage behind the house

Hallway upstairs to the bedrooms - pulling carpet up and redoing exisiting hardwood floors underneath

Hallway which all 3 bedrooms are off of - pulling carpet and redoing existing hardwood floors underneath

Upstaits full bathroom

Master bedroom - 15X14 - pulling carpet and redoing existing hardwood floors underneath plus painting all walls and getting window treatments

Guest bedroom - 14X13 - pulling carpet and redoing existing hardwood floors underneath, getting window treatments

I don't have a pic of the third bedroom which we will use as a nursery because it is smaller, 10X7 but pulling that carpet as well and redoing existing hardwood floors underneath plus window treatments

Attic bedroom upstairs - 22X13 maybe paint a wall but that bed will be gone.  Redoing stairs leading up to this bedroom to original hardwood

Let's go fly a kite!

Chris and I went to our realtors office to put in an offer on the house we found that we want to buy and afterwards I really wanted to go find a kite to buy because it was a beautiful day and pretty windy and I thought it the perfect chance to do so.  We couldn't find a place that sold nice kites so we ran to Kmart and bought 2 plastic kids kites at 3.49 each!  I got a bumblebee transformers kite and Chris got a spiderman kite.  After assembling the kites I was surprised to find they were pretty well crafted and would last a lot longer than I initially thought. 

We started out in a park closer to our house.

The trees kept cutting off the wind flow to the kites though so we moved to a bigger park with open fields where the kites could fly higher!

We stayed out and flew the kites for about 1 1/2 hours and then called it quits...it was pretty hot!

Fun in Erie

Chris and I went to the food show for his work over 2 days in Erie which is always a lot of fun.  This is the second year we have gone and there is always lots of good food and things to see.  While we were there we started to see these big fiberglass frog statues and I got curious and looked it up on my phone as to what they were.  In 2004 there was an art project called "Leap Frog" where the frog statues were created them decorated by artists and auctioned off to buisnesses for them to put in front of their stores.  The money then went to different children's organizations.  We found out there are 102 of these statues around town and set out to try and find as many as we could and take pictures with them.  We found 17 of the 102 in the time we had there and want to go back and try to find some more in the future. 

  

Visiting DC - Day 2

Day two started out just as gorgeous as the first and after a quick buffet breakfast we were off to the subway again to make our way back to the National Mall to see all the things we had missed the day before.  On our way though we decided to take a detour to Arlington Cemetery.  Good choice.

The view was breathtaking from the top of the cemetery.  You could see the whole mall and the bridge that crossed the river to the Lincoln Memorial. 

There was also a part in the cemetery called the Tomb of the Unknowns which contains the remains of unknown American Soldiers from World War 1 and II, the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War.  The tomb is guarded 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by specially trained members of the 3rd United States Infantry.(the Old Guard)  They do a changing of the guard every 30 minutes and have a strict way of marching when they are on guard at the tomb.  It was a very touching thing to watch and see how very attentive and honored they are to do this.

It says "Here Rest In Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But To God." 


After the cemetery, we headed onto the mall where we went to the Smithsonian Air museum. I know a few little boys who would have LOVED this building. 

The actual Wright Brothers plane.  The only thing they had to replace was the fabric on the wings. 

We also went to the Holocaust Museum but there was no photography allowed.  Last place we went to was of course, the White House.

Good thing it was the last place because it started to rain and we took that as our sign to head home.  Needless to say we will be coming back soon to check out the rest of DC that we didn't get to checkout in our fun filled 2 day trip.