Household

Oh, A Campering We Will Go!

Published on by Casey

A couple years ago, we purchased a hard-sided pop-up camper. It made camping so much more comfortable: no sleeping on an air mattress, no cooking in the rain…you get the idea. Some of us are getting old and like creature comforts, like heat and not having to trudge through the darkness to use the bathroom, hoping not to run into a bear on the way! It was super nice to have last year when it either rained or snowed, at least part of the time, for every single camping trip we took. We even towed it up to Canada on our tour of Alberta!

In fact, it was that Canadian excursion that really got us thinking about how nice it would be to have a camper that does not require folding and unfolding. Well, that was Noah’s main complaint since he was the on that had to do the set-up/take-down daily. I on the other hand wondered over the marvels of having a bathroom on wheels when driving through the middle of Alberta farm country. It was that or packing some she-wees.

That said, I keep a wondering eye, looking for a nice and affordable travel trailer. After months of quasi-searching we found one! Meet our new camper! It doesn’t have a name, which could have made that introduction more exciting. Should it have a name? If you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments.

The inside of the camper is very spacious with the slide out extended. No more cramped quarters trying not to trip over dogs (or small children). The galley area is much larger than in the TrailManor, which is cozy. A person could easily live in this camper, what with its large shower, and queen-sized bed. We’ve made a few modifications since we acquired the trailer. First off, the previous owner’s wife didn’t like the 90s furniture so they threw it out instead of refinishing/reupholstering. So, in the meantime, we have a futon and a card table set. Works fine for us, it is a camper after all, not a 5-star hotel! We also purchased a new mattress. Guaranteed clean. We also updated the microwave (now that’s roughing it!) and stereo system. Did I mention this camper came with a built in stereo and ceiling speakers? No? Well, I probably didn’t mention that the kicking stereo system also featured a cassette deck! Since we long since donated all our random cassettes, we modernized the stereo to one that uses Bluetooth and can play DVDs. Now, for the record, we don’t go camping to watch movies, but we do use our campers to stay on our mountain property. Which, if we had a cabin, movies would be involved there, so it’s justifiable. Yet, there are those occasions where it’s snowing and cold and no one wants to actually be outside, and you can only play so many games of Go Fish… 🙂

The other modifications we made were the addition of the stickers on the back. “Happy Camper” and “The Mountains Are Calling And I Must Go” bumper stickers were added, as well as the US and CA sticker map. Don’t you love how not to scale Alaska is? The states and provinces marked are ones we have been to since we started campering. I (Casey) have been to a lot more states, but it doesn’t seem right to count those.

Now, we just need a reliable buyer for the TrailManor…and warmer weather. I’m anxious for summer camping!

S’mores!

Published on by Casey

Since we have a big backyard, we decided we need to make it more inviting for fun and comfortable. We upgraded our seating arrangements from a wooden park bench to a multiple piece table and chair set. We also found a great LP fire pit on Craigslist! That fire pit is a highlight of our summer!

MallowToast

We started a new summer tradition to end the weekend with s’mores on Sunday nights. To make the tradition more fun we would also invite friend or neighbors over to share the sticky goodness with us. This new tradition also gave birth to Logan enjoying his first s’more.

FirstSmore

More on the Kitchen Remodel

Published on by Casey

A few months ago we finally selected the tile for the back splash. Until last week, it sat in our garage taking up valuable parking space. But Noah finally had some time to install and grout the tiles – and I love it! It is such a dramatic change to the kitchen but in a good way! And, we probably couldn’t have found tiles that better match the color of the cabinets and granite!


Here’s a shot Noah sent me from his phone that shows the start of the installation. As you can tell, the kitchen previously did not have any back splash. Actually, the old counter tops just had the Formica that rounded up along the wall.

 

These images are with the installation complete, but pre-grout:

 

 

And now for some close-ups post-grout:

 

 

Now that the stove has been put back and items replaced on the counter tops, I absolutely love it! It’s gorgeous!

Fare thee well 1980s kitchen

Published on by Casey

In April, we started a full-fledged kitchen remodel. Complete with new paint, cabinets, counter tops, sink/faucet, range and microwave. Whew! Six months later we finally selected a back splash tile and still don’t have a matching dishwasher. All in good time.That said, I absolutely love my new kitchen – the double range, the large center island, and of course, the granite counter tops!

Here’s a bit of what the kitchen looked like before: peachy-colored walls, white cabinets, white appliances (except for my fridge) and formica counter tops. Our house was designed with an eat-in kitchen, but we have and addition that serves as a dining space, thus we added an island from Big Lots. Don’t know how I ever managed without an island!

Here’s Logan showcasing the island and sidewall cabinets, before the counter tops and baseboards were installed. The sidewall previously did not have any cabinets, but we kept a buffet there for storage instead.

And finally, one of the “finished” images that shows the counters, cabinets, and appliances (just ignore the mess. If you have ever done a remodel, you’ll understand). 🙂

Once the back splash is installed (hopefully later this month) I’ll post some pictures of that. There are also a couple areas that still need baseboards re-installed and trim placed at the top of a couple cabinets. We also still need to buy the exhaust filter for the microwave. One day…I never need to use the exhaust fan anyway.

It’s fantastic to have the extra storage and the large island workspace. And Logan enjoys hiding in one of the sidewall cabinets we kept empty for him.

No More Fake

Published on by Casey

After a week of long hours and too many take away meals, we no longer have carpet in our living room. We no longer have “oak” pergo in our kitchen and sun room either.  And all of the baseboards match! Plus, what self-respecting hardwood floor guy does not have hardwood flooring in his own house? I must say, I love my new flooring!  I also love being able to use my stove again.  Amusingly, it did take Gretna and I a bit to stop looking for the refrigerator in the living room…

Here are some before/during/after pictures.

Can you guess how many layers of flooring were in the kitchen? One? No. Two? No. Three? Still no, try four! Pergo on top of linoleum, on top of linoleum, on top of linoleum!  Which pattern is your favorite?


Layers of linoleum


Racking the floor

 
Installed!


Sanding!


Finished!

If you want to see pictures of the whole shebang, click here.

According to traditional [wedding] anniversary gifting five years = wood.  The contemporary model states wood is the ideal gift for six years.  We’ll, we were married seven years before Noah gave me wood (flooring) as a gift.  However, he did point out that it was done in time to coincide with our five year anniversary of living in the house.  We conveniently moved into our house on our 2nd wedding anniversary. So, that counts, right? According to Noah it does. 🙂

Productive Holiday Weekend

Published on by Casey

Long weekends are always great, but then again I’m a fan of the 5-day weekend, 2-day work week (less hours, same pay).

Saturday Noah and I painted the living room.  I was tired of the drab color that our house came with.  We managed to knock it out in one day thanks to Gretna helping to entertain Logan.  We also picked one of the hottest and humid days of the year to paint.  Note: I believe it was around 96° with 34% humidity.  For those of you not familiar with Colorado weather, anything over 20% is humid here.  But we survived and our living room looks better for it. 🙂

Of course Logan had to help!

Here’s a snap shot of the wall during painting. Can you guess which is the new and which is the old color?

 Still not sure? Here’s a link to a 360° view of the room before painting: 360.io/QwrB4k

Sunday was church, errands (including buying the crown molding and window trim for the living room), painting the molding and trim, then a fabulous BBQ. Another super hot day to be sitting in my garage painting 75-feet of molding.  The BBQ was at a friend’s house in Erie (for some reason Erie thinks fireworks should be shown on July 3rd), however, we did not stay for the pyrotechnic show.  Logan’s bed time is much too early for that.  Instead, we ended the night at home watching The King’s Speech.  Good movie.  Very British.  I wonder if the Queen liked it.

Monday morning Gretna and I went shopping at a couple of stores before Logan got too cranky. Came home, did chores and helped Noah put up the molding.  It looks fabulous! Of course Logan helped Noah with the molding too!

Now all that’s left is touch up paint.  We were going to scrape the acoustics off the ceiling but decided it was way too much effort and caused too much of a mess.  Then only reason why we considered it was to “improve the value of the house”, but in reality neither Noah nor I care that it’s there, so we left it.  Besides, we have better plans for “improving the value of the house”.  I’m really excited for the next stage in our stay-cation / mini-remodel, which will happen in two more weeks!

Here’s a link to another 360° panorama, after the paint was complete and the molding was up: 360.io/mJqLhQ

Yesterday Lafayette put on their first fireworks display over the lake.  We were going to walk over during the afternoon and see what all they had set up, but it was hotter than Hades.  Instead we played in Logan’s pool, ate tri-tip and watched Gnomio & Juliet.  Maybe next year Logan can/will stay up late enough to see fireworks. 🙂

If you give a mouse a cookie

Published on by Casey

It gets dumped into a nearby open space.  That’s right folks, this morning we captured mouse #2, this one had the will to live (and a penchant for cookies and peanut butter) and chose to become captured in the live trap as opposed to the kill and contain.

We do have Lava to thank for alerting us to this latest entrapment.  This morning I was downstairs and had just let Lava in from outside, while Noah was upstairs getting Logan dressed.  Lava did her usual routine of sniffing the floor, looking for any nibbles she could find.  She must have caught a whiff of the mouse as she started dancing around the trap.  She would strain and lean to sniff the box without actually having to get close to it.  I called up to Noah to relay Lava’s behavior, and as I was doing so, she started growling at the trap.  At that time, I went upstairs to finish dressing Logan so Noah could come down and investigate.  Lo and behold, there was a mouse in the trap!  Noah dumped him out in a nearby field, but not the one behind our house.  Perhaps he will become food for our neighborhood owl.  When Noah came back inside, Lava was rewarded with a milk bone.  Good doggy!

Noah mentioned later this morning that he thought he heard something in the kitchen last night that sounded like a mouse, but thought, nah, we caught him.  Ooops.  Noah he’s just going to be paranoid about noises coming from that room.  At least the food in our pantry is now protected by Rubbermaid.

So now, that’s two mice we’ve had in our kitchen.  I really hope that’s the end of them.  As soon as Noah has the opportunity he’s going to scour the outside of the house and the crawlspace to see if he can tell where the intruders are entering the house.  And then, with any luck, we can prevent any more from coming in (more likely trap the ones that are already in).

Mousecapades

Published on by Casey

Our “adventures” with a mouse living in our kitchen finally came to an end early yesterday morning (we hope).  Around dark:thirty (I think it was around 4am) I heard a noise, which in itself if surprising considering I sleep like the dead, and probably only heard the noise as I was not fully asleep due to a bought with food poisoning.  Anyway, I woke Noah to tell him I heard a noise (of which Lava didn’t even react to).  He asked what I thought it was and I said it sounded like a mouse trap.  I thought he was going to get up and investigate but he fell back asleep, as did I.

After getting up an hour or so later, I mostly laid around or dragged myself into the bathroom to be sick, but Noah went to check the traps and voila! One of the kill and contain traps had been tripped!  There is no escaping that trap, which Noah threw in the dumpster outside.  So yay! No more mouse in the kitchen!

All you proponents of live traps, keep in mind that the mouse had to crawl around, over, or through the tunnel on the live trap to get to the pantry and into the death trap.  He had a choice.  And the bait of choice for him was not peanut butter but a Southwestern Ranch Baked Lays potato chip.

So now we just need to clean the pantry, again, and clean under the sink cabinet (and of course, when I say we I mean Noah), figure out how to disinfect under the cabinet (Raid? Lysol?) and put our food back in the pantry (still in plastic tubs).  Maybe then my kitchen can return to a level of turd-free normalcy.

Mouse Trap

Published on by Casey

“I like Mouse Trap. You roll your dice, you move your mice and nobody get’s hurt.” – Bob the Tomato (Veggie Tales)

Good advice, Bob, except we don’t actually want the mouse to keep inhabiting in our kitchen.  Up until last night, we’ve been using old school mouse traps – we used what we had on hand (thanks to the previous owners of our house):

Time-tested devices that are supposed to permanently trap our furry little intruder  (read: neck-sapped/DOA).  However, these traps don’t work with ninja mice, which apparently is what we have living in our house.  Is anyone else picturing a cartoon mouse a-la Indiana Jones, trading a weighted bag of sand for a treasure to prevent the booby trap?  No?  Just me? Did I mention, that I set off one of these traps 3 different times with my shoe?  Anyway, the other night while watching TV we heard the trap trigger.  Noah went up to check (because I refuse to find a dead mouse in my kitchen), and what did he find?  An empty trap with missing bait (a piece of cheddar).  When I called up to the kitchen to ask if the mouse had been caught Noah replied, “No, but we’ve successfully fed it.”  The mouse was MIA but he did leave some fleas on the floor.  Apparently, the trap spooked the fleas and caused them to jump ship.  Three cheers for bubonic plague!  Ugh!  A little spray and at least they were dead.

Backtracking a little, Wednesday after picking-up Logan from his nanny’s, he and I went shopping for plastic containers in which to store food.  However, we didn’t get around to using them as we wanted to disinfect the pantry first and toss out anything the mouse got into.  Saturday night Noah spent an hour or so emptying the pantry and cleaning the shelves.  Turns out the mouse prefers Cheetos, Carnation Instant Breakfast and dried beans (one particular bean out of a variety of 15 – he actually made a little pile of the unwanted beans).  Once cleaned, Noah restocked the pantry, with a lot more empty shelves than when he started do to the amount of food we tossed.

Yesterday morning, our infiltrator was back and attacked a defenseless muffin mix package (honey bran, in case you were wondering).  Gah!  Noah went shopping again yesterday for more plastic bins (we should buy stock in Sterilite) and we packed all the food away.  However, these bins are currently just sitting on our kitchen floor as we have to, once again, disinfect the shelves.  Noah also bought a fancy new mouse trap, one that will prevent me from having to see – or tempt Lava to munch on a dead mouse:

Noah tried to buy some of these traps on Thursday but Ace was sold out.  That must mean they work well, right?  One trap was baited with peanut butter and placed on the floor next to the pantry.  The second trap was baited with bread and placed on a shelf in the pantry.  Finally, we thought, we should catch this varmint!  But alas, this morning, both traps were still empty.

And so, the hunt continues…

Something’s in the kitchen with Dinah…

Published on by Casey

Things I like to find in my kitchen:

  • No dirty dishes
  • Food simmering on the stove or in the crock-pot
  • A fresh bouquet of flowers on the table

Unfortunately, none of those were what I saw this morning as I readied for work.  Instead, I heard a noise near the pantry and saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye.  I pondered over whether the refrigerator just kicked on/off and if there was a light or something underneath that I had never noticed before.  Those thoughts only lasted mere moments as by then, I saw the culprit – a mouse – scurry out the other side of the fridge, under the front of the stove and then into a crevice between the toe kick and cabinet by the sink.  Awesome!

Now, Noah had worked very very very late and was still upstairs sleeping (Logan too was asleep), however, I ran up the stairs screaming Noah’s name to wake him up.  I think I then shook him awake yelling that there was a mouse in the kitchen!  I am not afraid of mice. I had several as pets growing up.  But there’s just something about finding one in your kitchen, coming out of your pantry and running across the floor that is not a pleasant experience.

Noah got up (Logan slept through the chaos) and went into our crawl space to get some traps, which he set-up two along the toe kicks.  He didn’t bait them, and we had to keep Lava from sniffing them.  By the time I left, the mouse was still MIA.  Noah didn’t think it would take too long for it to get caught, but I’ve talked to him a couple times since I left the house this morning and he didn’t mention catching the mouse before he left for work.  So, when I get home today I am hoping I don’t find:

  • A dead mouse in the trap (mainly because I don’t want to have to be the one to deal with it and I don’t need to see that…
  • A partial dead mouse in the trap, because that means a certain dog of mine got the munchies (this has happened before) and thus I need to make her vomit.
  • A trap stuck to Lava’s face.  This is possible and would not surprise me.  Perhaps then, if that’s the case, it may be a good thing she’s a wooly beast right now.

Over the weekend, Noah brought me a container out of the pantry that had a few little brown somethings on top.  He asked me what I thought they were.  I said they didn’t look like poop any of my mice had dropped.  They looked more like caraway seeds or weird dead bugs (which bugs in the pantry wouldn’t be ideal either).  I guess now we know what they were…yuck!

Since we live near several open spaces, I supposed it was inevitable for a mouse to infiltrate our kitchen.  And Lava is a terrible house cat.

On the way home today, Logan and I are stopping at the store and buying some more plastic storage containers.  Who knows what that little guy has munched on so far…or how many of his friends he has invited to the smorgasbord!  Oh and can you tell just how excited I am to disinfect my pantry!  Better plan – I’ll take care of the baby and Noah can clean out the food and disinfect the shelves.  Yes, much better idea.