your cornice is showing

Congrats, you survived another work day!

Our cornice is finished and it’s the prettiest cornice I ever did see. I mention a few times that we needed to have this cornice to qualify for the historic tax credit and I also mentioned that one day I would explain to ya’ll what that means. Surprise! Today isn’t that day! But, I will show you our cornice if you show me yours!

Remember we bought the house and it looks like this..

no cornice, all ugly

Then it looked like this…

And then this..

And most recently like this..

They started working on the cornice and it looked like this..

And then before I knew it, it looks like THIS!

They try to make them match the surrounding cornices, corni, cornicies.. (what is the multiple of Cornice.. anyone? Bueller? ) Which I think is amaze, I love that it restores the historic nature of the house and the neighborhood. thoughts? comments? do you now want a cornice?

ooh you fancy

Hey, Mama!

People tell me that I look like my mom; they also say I have her mannerism and that I make the same facial expressions as her. It’s one of the best compliments I could ever receive because, I want to be like her. I want to be just like her in every single way that I can. If it’s all superficial that’s fine! I’ll take it and will continue to work on the other stuff.

My mom has taught me everything I know about life- to love unconditionally, to forgive, to not judge a book by its cover, that the crazy looking people are usually the most fun and have the best stories, that everyone deserves a 2^nd chance, that a deep breath and a laugh will cure just about anything. She told me that there are three sides to every story- what he said, what she said and then the truth. She taught me to be independent, to stand on my own two feet, to spend money when you have it and don’t spend it when you don’t have it. She told me to be nice to my brothers and sister, be nice to strangers, to relax a little and that all things will work out eventually.

She believes in me and has always been my biggest fan. When other people refer to me as a “b*tch” or “stubborn” she calls me “strong willed” and “determined”. She lets me vent to her about anything, she entertains just about any crazy idea I come up with and is my first call when something good or bad happens.

Thank you, Mom- what you do is one of the most incredible, selfless jobs out there and I can only hope that one day I will be half the mom that you are. Happy Mothers Day! Wish I could have been there! I LOVE YOU!

xoxo

E

this is the only recent pic i could find..

let me entertain you..

Congrats, you survived another work day! I know it’s already Tuesday but did everyone have a nice weekend? Good. We had yet another wedding! Maybe all of this wedding stuff will start to rub off on a certain someone..

(crickets.. crickets)

we got our new entertainment center! It’s beautiful! I LOVE it. It’s rustic and beat up and matches our mirror and ahhhh sigh.  When we picked it up (on a budget, no home delivery. Woof.) we were shocked to find out that the entertainment center does in fact come built. At this moment and only this moment in this entire 6 months process, I thought to myself “I have arrived”. The thought of not having to sift through 15 pages of assembly instructions in 8 different languages makes my heart flutter and the thought of not having to be around RC while he tries to put together something with 600 different pieces is well, what dreams are made of. I am truly living the American dream now.

GLORLIOUS

monkey is unsure of it... like always.

We looked everywhere for the perfect entertainment center. We had a few musts- taller than most and narrower than most. We wanted it to be JUST deep enough for all of the gadgets to fit. We try to make it as easy as possible to find things, obv.

RC spent some time getting the TV hooked up to the speakers that are around the house. Not sure if I’ve pointed these bad boys out to you yet but we installed 4 in-ceiling speakers in the living room and 3 in the kitchen. It will be perfect for house parties, listening to Glee in surround sound and the occasional football game.

light and a speaker

We also put two speakers on our roof top deck that are connected to a different system! Unfortunately, I won’t be able to listen to Gossip Girl on the roof top but I will be able to play “Call Me Maybe” and dance and sing as much as my little heart desires. 

skip to my loo

From the number of tools in our house you would think RC built this house himself. Not true. My parents gave RC this tool kit with every tool, screw, nail, tape, thingsidon’tevenknowthenamesof, under the sun. Since he has been itching to use this stuff we decided to take on our first DIY project. Being the good furrents that we are we thought dedicating some time to making Tuck feel comfortable would be time well spent. You see, Tuck is a human in a dog suit. I know most people don’t believe me but spend some time with him and you’ll see. I swear. He has feelings, he is very sensitive about everything and you can’t change things to quickly on him because before you know it you will be down a leather couch and out about $600 in molding. Look at his human eyes..

He is adjusting to the house slowly. He loves being outside on the deck and talking to his friends across the alley but he does not like the “kids” next door. The first day we moved in we were told “don’t even try to pet our dogs, they’re vicious”.  AWE.SOME. the dogs next door bark.. a lot and it makes our little guy anxious/nervous/cranky which I can’t say I blame him! In order to make him like our new house a little more we decided to build a little potty area for him out back. You see, they sell these handy things:

Great, right?! WRONG. They’re about $280. That’s about $300 over the amount of money I want to spend on something my dog is going to pee on. (side note- this is kind of a weird, topic. I feel awkward talking about dog pee.) anyyywayyy, we set out to Home Depot to make our own!! We’re on a budget and so is the monkey!!! Our idea was to build a box and use mulch on the inside, that way we can rinse it off and we can throw it away if it started to smell funny. Once we got there, the normally not so helpful HD guy suggested we use pebbles on the bottom and then a layer of mulch. So we went along with it.. maybe this guy was a professional litter box maker?!

Then off to work RC went on building a box-

We also bought a Potty Post. That’s the yellow thing you see in the corner. Apparently it gives off some pheromones that make dogs relieve themselves near it. I’m not convinced.  It stinks and all Tuck does is smell it.

It came out awesome! It looked like a professional made it!

this is interesting..



FINISHED!!!



not sure about this smell

hanging out inside, over this whole thing.

After all of that, he wasn't impressed so after one more trip to Lowes we bought some sod and now it's up to our princess's standards!

That was our first DIY project for the house! We made it out alive, no tears and no fights. RC only had to bribe me to go to Lowes the second time around and I only had to tell him to “chill out” twice. All in all.. a great first experience.

yogi castle for lowes. fair compromise.