Aaron spent last weekend working on building out the window wall in the bathroom. There is a pipe in the wall that sticks out and so he had to build out the wall a bit so we can drywall. (I say we loosely) He also put in the new insulation. No formaldehyde! The new window came in yesterday too so I think we’re going to install that this weekend.

The pipe is in the picture below and the old window.

He also reinforced the floor boards:

And then started laying the subfloor! Yay! We now have two layers of subfloor in the bathroom. Next step is working on the shower faucet plumbing and then installing the tub. I’m supposed to be ordering the shower and sink faucets today but I’m having a really hard time finding something I like for the shower. I think I just need to order something and be done with it. I went to Lowe’s last weekend and looked at their stuff but didn’t like any of it.

Here is Aaron cutting the toilet hole out of the subfloor.

And here is where I was sitting while this happened. I didn’t contribute much to this weekend’s work…

I did go to Lowe’s and check out tile for the bathroom. I think we might use marble tile for the floor and then white subway tile around the tub. I also want to add a little accent line of blue glass subway tile around the tub to break up all the white.

We’ll probably go with these ones:

And then the regular white for most of it. Yay for $0.26 each!

I also went on an appliance shopping spree online this weekend and bought a refrigerator, dishwasher and dryer for the new house and a new oven for our current house. The double oven is coming with us so we had to replace it with another one. I ordered everything from AJ Madison because they had the best prices. Plus I ordered through Ebates and will be getting $50 cash back! I’ve never ordered from AJ Madison so we’ll see how it goes but definitely way better prices than Lowes, Home Depot, and Sears. We checked out the scratch and dent store too but I’m pretty sure that place is a huge ripoff.

Sunday was spent resting. Aaron’s parents dropped by for a bit then we decided to skip church, buy a bunch of junk food and watch movies the rest of the day. This was a good decision. We ate so many cheese puffs and watched V for Vendetta. Wooo

Sorry about the weird shadow. I’m not sure what the problem was.

So not too much different from 12 weeks though I feel bigger. I took this idea below from another blog that I read and I’m going to try to include it in the weekly(ish) posts.

• How far along? 13 weeks, 4 days
• 
  
• Total weight gain: 3 lbs as of 12 weeks, 6 days
• 
  
• Maternity clothes? Not yet but I wore the belly band one time
• 
  
• Sleep: very good
• 
  
• Miss Anything? not worrying about falling down stairs
• 
  
• Movement: zero yet
• 
  
• Food cravings: barbecue sauce, meat, milk, shrimp curry from Taste of India
• 
  
• Food aversions: hummus, salsa, Mexican food
• 
  
• Gender: No idea but will find out March 5th!
• 
  
• Symptoms: Not too much, pants getting tight, hungry a lot
• 
  
• Looking forward to: Finding out the sex

On Sunday I tried out another chocolate chip cookie recipe for potluck Sunday at church. I’m trying to find my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe so every time I make them, I’ve been trying a new recipe. I used this recipe from Brown Eyed Baker (who is a big time Pittsburgh blogger) which is originally from America’s Test Kitchen.

I liked this recipe. The cookies didn’t come out too flat which is my issue with a lot of cookies like the Nestle recipe. I like that you use melted butter so no need to remember to let the butter get to room temperature. I also liked that it required no unusual ingredients and did not call for nuts. I did not like that you are supposed to let the cookies cool on the cookie sheets. This resulted in me dirtying every single cookie sheet I have and required me waiting around one or two times for a cookie sheet to cool. I doubled the recipe so I had A LOT of dough to make into cookies.

The cookies did turn out very soft and chewy but I thought they were a bit too sweet. Maybe a tiny bit more salt would help or use bittersweet chips rather than semi-sweet. I’m not sure. I used Trader Joe’s semi-sweet chips for these. My doubled batch made about 55 cookies. I didn’t make them quite as large as the recipe suggests.

And another new recipe that I tried out last week was a pork chop recipe. That was the first time I ever made pork chops. They were good! I used this recipe for Pork Chops with Country Gravy from My Recipes. I followed the recipe exactly except used Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute in place of the poultry seasoning.

Lastly, Aaron got his diploma in the mail this week! Exciting! Here are some pictures of it.

Yay!

Last Saturday, Aaron and I found a Lowe’s three miles from our new house which was pretty exciting. We bought the tub for the new bathroom:

We also got the new sink. We decided to get another pedestal sink (we have one in our current house too) because the new bathroom is pretty tiny. Plus this probably saved us about $300 because all the vanities I found that I liked were $500+. I did make Aaron promise that we would get Carrera marble countertops for the kitchen since we went with the pedestal sink. We’ll see if that pans out.

Toilet in the back seat. We got the “Devonshire” style toilet and sink.

We took a second trip to Lowe’s later in the day with Aaron’s dad’s truck and got all of the insulation, cement board, plywood, green board which I think was actually purple, and a bunch of wood for the floor in the bathroom. Aaron is scabbing in extra pieces of wood to make the floor level and to make it stronger.

Here is the hole in the floor where the tub was. The old tub was leaking and leaked into the ceiling below (where the kitchen is) so that part of the drywall needs to be replaced.

Here is the hole from below in the kitchen. And also a better view of the previous owner’s great paint color choices.

This weekend, the hole grew:

We also ordered the new window for the bathroom. We will have one nice window with the grill in between the panes that actually opens. Yes!

Here is a better picture of the kitchen. We’re not really going to do much to the kitchen at this point except for paint the walls and get new appliances. Down the road, we plan on painting the cabinets white and getting a new countertop and backsplash. Right now, the countertops and backsplash are tile that match the floor. Bad move old owners. There are white tile EVERYWHERE.

I’m standing in the dining room taking this picture. The dining room is open to the kitchen and then those sliding doors lead out onto the deck which is covered in the back and open on the side. The door in the kitchen leads out to the open part of the deck.

Aaron, working on the floor in the bathroom. He purchased a new level this weekend and he loves it. LOVES it. We also bought a mailbox and trash can this weekend. Exciting stuff! Apparently the old owner’s took the mailbox with them because there wasn’t one.

I didn’t spend a ton of time working over there this weekend but I did finish prying all of the trim out of the bedrooms. Here is the master bedroom without any trim. It’s sponge painted a nice orange color… The floors are nice though!

Here is the second bedroom. This color isn’t so bad.

Here I am trying to take a picture of the 13 week belly. I’ll have to have Aaron take one today when I’m not wearing multiple layers.

Here’s the living room where Aaron has two table saws set up. The carpeting will eventually come out. There is oak hardwood underneath but we’re keeping the carpet there to protect it while Aaron is working on the bathroom.

And lastly, I bought my first maternity item! It’s one of those stretchy bands that you put over your unbuttoned pants so you can wear them longer. I got a black one at Target. It’s pretty comfortable. I tried it out yesterday.

Today I have to bake cookies for potluck Sunday at church and Aaron has to meet a client for a bit this morning then church this afternoon then probably watching a movie this evening. Have a nice day!

Coming August 4, 2012!

But first, Christmas happened in Troy Hill. We got a tree from Home Depot this year and it ended up being great! It doesn’t look very big in the picture but it was pretty huge. Ornaments only on one side because we don’t have very many.

We had Christmas dinner at Aaron’s parents new house which is awesome. Here is Aaron with his grandma, Dorothy. Her and Aaron are about to arm wrestle.

(that’s not true)

This past Friday we closed on our new house and Aaron immediately went over there and started demolishing the bathroom. On Saturday I went over too and started cleaning. It’s pretty gross right now. The previous owners were smokers and it was a foreclosure so it is in rough shape. I wore a respirator and rubber gloves. Possibly overkill but I didn’t want to inhale the fumes. Plus Aaron was upstairs knocking out the bathroom walls so all sorts of debris was floating around. Aaron was wearing a respirator too. I can’t believe I didn’t take a picture! His has pink filters.

The carpet in the left side of that picture is from one of the bedrooms upstairs. The house has carpet everywhere but oak hardwood underneath it all so we’re slowly tearing out the carpet and will refinish the floors before we move in.

I cleaned for a little bit then went upstairs with needle nose pliers and spent a few hours pulling staples out of the wood floors. Oh my. I finished one bedroom and now have three blisters.

We also decided to pry this hideous wooden shelving and mirror off the wall in the dining room. If you look closely, you might be able to see the red, white and blue Americana fabric hanging from it. Shaking my head at the previous owners.

Here is the vanity and the sink from the bathroom. I didn’t take a picture of the bathroom yet but Aaron has it down to the studs at this point so this weekend we’re going to start buying the drywall and a new window for the bathroom. The windows in the house are pretty gross and half of them don’t even open so we’re going to slowly replace them starting with the bathroom.

Here’s a picture of the kitchen. Yes they painted the ceiling blue and the walls red. Bright blue and red. And the doors are sort of beige and gross. Every single wall and ceiling in the house needs to be painted. They painted the ceilings of each room to match the walls. For example, the small bedroom upstairs has yellow walls and an orange ceiling with orange trim. One of the bedrooms is also sponge painted.

I’ll take some more pictures this weekend and get them up on here. I also have more exciting new to post coming up this weekend. Until then, have a great week!

Aaron is in bed sleeping and I’m sitting on the couch thinking about what we’re going to do today. I’m thinking we may go and get a Christmas tree and put up a few decorations.

Thanksgiving happened and I did a couple of crafts for it. We had my Aunt, Uncle & cousin over plus Aaron’s parents and brother. Aaron’s dad cooked the turkey and stuffing at our house while we all helped with the rest.

I made “Give Thanks” bundting. I think the appropriate word is bundting though Ecto is underlining it. Then again, Ecto was just underlined also.

I used adhesive glitter letters from Michael’s, a glue stick, scrapbook paper and kitchen twine. The hardest part of the whole project was making the triangles the right size and shape to fit the circles and the letters. Once I figured that out, it just took a little time to cut and glue everything. I like how it turned out! The pictures aren’t that great because the lighting isn’t good in the dining room and I don’t know how to use the settings on my camera very well. (We also put up curtains in the dining room finally! I ended up buying them at Ikea after one failed attempt at making them myself. I now have quite a few yards of cut up linen…)

The other little project I did for Thanksgiving was making glittered branches. Aaron and I walked over to the cemetery to gather some branches for this one. We brought them back, I trimmed them a bit then used spray adhesive to spray parts and then sprinkle on the glitter. I ended up putting flowers in mason jars for Thanksgiving and putting a couple of branches in with the flowers. Cheap Thanksgiving decorations! Branches are free! It’s rustic.

For Christmas, I was thinking of maybe spray painting some branches white then using some white glitter to make them more wintery.

I didn’t take any pictures of the Thanksgiving table unfortunately..not sure why.. but our tablecloth was a bit short with all three leaves in the table so I bought 4 yards of pale green burlap from JoAnn Fabric, folded it in half and used it as a runner on the table. It covered the uncovered ends and burlap is pretty cool and super cheap. It’s also machine washable (which I found out because I spilled gravy all over it).

So that’s what happened Thanksgiving week for the most part. Aaron also started paint stripping and staining ours stairs and he hung new doors in the bathroom and our bedroom. Doors that actually close and aren’t hideously yellowed wood! Yay! We got them both at the ReStore in Edgewood for $10 each. The doorknobs ended up costing more than the doors!

We went shopping for the doors in matching plaid.

Aaron painted the doors white.

With doorknobs! (Some painting still needs to be done but we needed to have a bathroom door for Thanksgiving)

And in developments this week… we made an offer on a house! And then they counter-offered the full asking price So then we counter-offered back! And now we wait probably until Monday to find out. It’s a foreclosure so we’re waiting to hear back from the bank as opposed to regular sellers.

That’s about it for now… Have a relaxing day!

I have a blog. Ha. It’s been about a month. Every time I would think about possibly writing a blog post, I would think about how long its been since I have and get overwhelmed with how many pictures I have and things that need to be caught up on since I last posted.

Well, in reality I only had 67 pictures on my camera and really we’ve just been trying to survive this last semester of school for Aaron and his crazy job. Plus we’ve been shopping for a new house… It’s been a busy time around here.

However, most of those 67 pictures I mentioned above were from my bff Gina’s wedding in October. Great wedding and here’s a little recap:

Here is the bride and mother of the bride:

Gina’s super awesome shoes:

Party bus.

Party bus.

PARTY bus. Bride and groom after the wedding ceremony.

Me & Aaron at the reception:

We did some dancing:

Me and the bride!

Claire doing her duty as a member of the bridal party:

And that’s probably enough pictures for this blog post. I wish I had a photo of the whole bridal party but the photographers took some interesting pictures so I’m looking forward to seeing those soon. It was a great wedding! We had so much fun and Gina and Jason are an awesome couple. <3

I uploaded pictures from my camera today and there were 215 on there! This is a testament to how long it’s been since I’ve blogged. We did a tiny bit of work in the kitchen last weekend and yesterday and I’m pretty happy with how it is turning out in there.

First of all, this yellow, metal cabinet used to be on the wall in the left part of the picture. Yellow cabinet to match the yellow, plastic tile. AH. We pulled the cabinet off the wall months ago with some future plan in mind of buying a tall cabinet, pantry type of item to put in that corner for some more storage.

It was on this wall below making for a very awkward empty bottom half of the wall. Nothing really could fit underneath so it was just wasted space.

Yesterday afternoon, Aaron suggested a trip to Ikea (an attempt to procrastinate school work which clearly will work because I love a trip to Ikea). Well anyway, instead of Ikea, I suggested we go to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Edgewood.

We programed the address into my phone which now has a data plan (! we joined the rest of the world and can now access email from everywhere), and drove over to the store. OH MY That store is amazing! Amazing! They have so much furniture and housewares and it’s way cheaper than Goodwill. It’s like Construction Junction but better and cheaper. I was in awe.

We wandered and wandered and ended up like this, sitting on the curb with a cabinet.

Yeah, it wouldn’t fit in our car. No idea why we thought it would fit in the back of the Sentra… So we called Aaron’s parents who just happened to be sort of in the vicinity and we got it into the back of their Subaru.

And got it home:

Aaron switched the doors so they open from left to right and then we added hardware to match the rest of our cabinets. When we originally purchased the cabinets for the kitchen, we saw this big cabinet at Home Depot and thought about buying it for this purpose then however, it was $279 at Home Depot and we were trying to keep our costs down. This one cost us $150 and it’s the exact same thing!

It’s perfect and HUGE. They actually had another one of them at the ReStore and we’re thinking about buying that one also and putting it next to this one.

And here’s another before and after picture because they’re fun and it reminds me of how far we’ve come with this kitchen. (We finished painting the walls last weekend too which you can see in the pictures).

Here’s a before picture of the area to the right of the sink:

And here it is now. Yay! Dishwasher I love you.

We picked up a few other things at the ReStore yesterday. These little jars were $0.50 each. I’m going to store lentils and split peas in them.

And this little cheese cloche for $1.

And just another picture of the wall now that it’s painted. The little cloche is in the picture too.

Lastly, I’ve been meaning to post this for about a month now. My grandparents bought us a panini press and we love it!

Aaron grills his sandwiches and I’ve also cooked eggplant and chicken in it. Its great! Thanks Tutu and Papap!

My friend Gina had her bridal shower yesterday and I did a dessert table for it. My first one! I was really, pretty excited to have the opportunity to do it because I’ve been looking for an excuse to make one for a while.

I also loved it because I could start baking a week before and just freeze things as I finished them.

Here’s a shot of the finished table:

Aaron had made the cupcake stand for another party that I had made cupcakes for but it needed a little face lift so we spray painted (with my favorite Heirloom White spray paint) and then I used a glue stick to glue brown 5/8″ ribbon around the edges of the stand. Gina’s wedding is in October so I tried to stick with Fall colors. I used brown and yellow with a tiny bit of pale blue mixed in.

Here are the other sources:

• The square pedestal cake plates and the giant wine glass are from Marshall’s.
• The white leaf plate in the front Aaron bought at a yard sale for about $1.
• The 9×13 pan in the front was a gift from my wedding shower (Target by Giada).
• The take out containers were leftover from our wedding.
• The truffles are on a glass cake plate that was my moms which I inherited when she moved to Florida.
• The flowers are in mason jars also from our wedding with brown ribbon tied around them.

I made the following things for the table:

• vanilla cupcakes filled with black raspberry jam with vanilla bean buttercream on top (for the toppers, I tinted fondant yellow, stamped it with a little wedding cake stamp and then cut out the circles with a cookie cutter)
• bittersweet truffles in the back left
• chocolate cake pops on both sides
• thumbprints in the front
• decorated sugar cookies in the front right (decorated with royal icing and then blue fondant flowers on top)
• swedish fish in the giant wine glass (just because I wanted to buy the giant wine glass)

I made the little description cards with a pack of notecards that were on clearance at Michael’s for $0.49. There was a picture of pie and a shovel on the front of them so I cut out brown squares from card stock and glued it over the picture. Then I printed out the labels and stuck them on. I also cut off the corners of the cards just to make it a little different.

Here is the bridal party. The bride is in the center with the teal dress. I’m in the front right with the dress with the yellow flowers.

And the angry face picture where we are all looking at different cameras..

Good times and I think I love doing dessert tables!

Linking to these parties:

Simply Designing
The Tablescaper
]]> http://pamcakesandeggs.com/2011/09/04/bridal-shower-dessert-table/feed/ 2 pamcakesandeggs IMG_7503.JPG IMG_7500.JPG IMG_7504.JPG IMG_7506.JPG IMG_7507.JPG IMG_7509.JPG UndertheTableandDreaming http://pamcakesandeggs.com/2011/08/29/a-few-life-updates-a-kitchen-video/ http://pamcakesandeggs.com/2011/08/29/a-few-life-updates-a-kitchen-video/#comments Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:19:33 +0000 Pamela https://pamcakesandeggs.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/a-few-life-updates-a-kitchen-video/ ]]> Hey!

It’s Monday evening. I’m feeling very sleepy today so I’m going to head up to bed to read soon. 9pm bed time. Yes!

Aaron and I haven’t been doing too much in the way of renovations because last weekend we were camping (still trying to finish that post) and then this weekend was consumed by baking things and crafting for my friend Gina’s bridal shower which is this weekend. Fun times! Lots and lots and lots of baking.

A few other changes have happened around here which I eluded to in the banana hanger post (which by the way, I got a lot of flack from my coworkers saying that post was boring). Boo they can’t all be exciting.

Sooo my husband, Aaron, has been in school for the past year and a half working toward finishing his bachelor’s degree (woohoo!) and then going on to get teacher certified in PA. Well, we’ve had some discussions about it off and on worrying about him being able to get a teaching job when he finishes, how much money he would be making, and even if that’s what he really wanted to do.

I’m not exactly sure how this came about but in the end, Aaron decided he wanted to get into sales instead so he decided to start looking for a part time sales job to get some experience while he finishes up his last three classes for his degree this semester. He searched for a while and was eventually offered a part time job so he went into the company where he works now and told them that he would be leaving and then they offered him a sales job! Sooo long story short (sort of short anyway), Aaron spent all of the last couple of weeks studying for two licensing exams that he had to take before he could officially start the new job.

This past Friday he passed the second exam and started the new job today! Yay!!

So what’s coming up for us in the near future?

Aaron starts class at Pitt again tomorrow on Tuesdays and Thursdays and he’ll be doing the new job part time until he graduates in December. After that he’ll start the job full time and then we’ll have time to resume the home renovations!

In the meantime, I’m still planning on a doing a bunch of smaller projects around here. Not just painting small items around here, I promise. I’m planning on painting and recovering the dining room chairs and I also want to paint and possibly wallpaper the china cabinet.

So that’s what we’ve been up to lately. Oh we did also get the little island put together in the kitchen (which started out looking like this). After we finished it and cleaned up a bit, we sat in there admiring it and I took a little video. Aaron was just randomly playing guitar. It wasn’t set up for the video but it does add a nice little soundtrack.

Have a nice night!