Here's a photo narrative of our holiday season! (I wanted to post this before it was completely irrelevant!)

Here is my glitter "Happy Holidays" banner I got on clearance at Michael's 2 (?) years ago. I love it.



Mocha turned 4 on December 15th! She celebrated by eating a bone the size of her head!



The 'theme' of our tree was 'Star Trek meets Starbucks' and had some martinis thrown in for good measure.









We purchased Phillips LED multicolored net lights for the front bushes. We severely underestimated the size of the shrubbery and had to buy two extra sets to make it look right. Around New Year's Eve, one of the middle sets burned out, making it easy for our guests to find the house (convenient!). Byron went out and looked and several bulbs were missing from that set. I think the mailman is screwing with us. In the third picture here you can see our snazzy new house numbers!







We had 3 other couples over for NYE. All of the ladies are also (nearly) audiologists. We played Cranium and Last Word and great fun was had by all. We woke Mocha up for midnight. Here also are my centerpiece, the whole room, and my cinnamon broom turned modern art piece!









Happy Holidays!

We live in Pittsburgh and we have a basement, which means that we have water in that basement. This is especially unsurprising since there is a big hill behind the house and it's easy to see how water can come down the hill and collect in the ground in the backyard when it rains.

When we first looked at the house there was some mold in one corner of the basement, so we had the sellers pay for a contractor to come in and get rid of the mold and clean up the little bit of water damage that there was.

We figured that would be that. But no, several weeks later we came back to look at it again, and there was water in the same corner. This time the sellers agreed to pay for a contractor to put in a drain all along the back wall of the basement to carry any water that came in over to the sump pump.

Since then we have not had any more water, but we'll see what happens in the Spring when the snow melts. So far we have been extremely lucky that all that happened before we closed and the sellers agreed to pay for it.

"Let's do the Time Warp Again..."

Want to know what time of year we are in here at Fruits/Roots? Here's a few hints...












I'm still posting chronologically, so we'll continue to be a little bit behind. But we've got lots more to show you!

When we purchased our lovely new abode, the previous owners had done us the favor of removing the carpet but had never done anything to refinish the hardwood in all the rooms but the kitchen and bathroom. So, we strapped on our dustmasks, rented a sander and got to work.

Here is Byron in his very best floor refinishing clothes.



A somewhat blurry picture of the floors in our bedroom, post-sanding. The paint in there looks much less grey and more blue in real life.



Another blurry picture (sorry!). This is, I believe, the office.



The guest room (these are all post-sanding, pre-finishing).



The final two pictures are the living room. If you look closely at the last one, you'll see Byron's dad, Jeff, doing something very important on the floor. What? I'm not sure.




We ended up renting a 'screening' sander which just took the top layer of the old wax and polyurethane off and was much easier to use than a typical drum sander. We then vacuumed, used a tack cloth, and used two coats of a water-based poly. The whole project was finished in a Saturday, thanks to the help of Byron's parents. We did have to apply the final coat to the living room floor in the dark so it's not perfect but we're happy with how they turned out! Look for 'after' pics coming soon!

This is a story of one of my first home-making disasters...




The mess you see above was a result of one of my first attempts at doing laundry in my new laundry room. The washing machine has a tube that runs from the output on the back of the machine up and into the washtub to the right (it's the black tube in the picture). Well, on this day, the tube kept threatening to pop up and out of the tub, spewing water all over the floor. To prevent this from occurring, I decided to yank on the tube to place it more securely into the tub. What then happened was unexpected. The other end of the tube, on the back of the machine popped off... during the spin cycle! There was a veritable fountain of dirty water erupting from the back of the machine, where I couldn't reach it. I ended up man-handling the washer (thru sheer adrenaline) to the side so I could reach the back and get the tube back on. When I succeeded in doing so, the other end popped back out of the tub, continuing the spewing from another source. I finally got the tube all settled and the water fountains under control. Now I had to deal with the flood. Did I mention this was before we moved in? I had no towels or rags... newspaper was the best I could fine. Worked pretty well! Needless to say, the tubes are now securely clamped in their respective locations, courtesy of Byron.

Additionally, I found this janky mop in the basement to help with the clean-up. Mocha decided it must be some kind of wild animal carcass...

Pass It Thru, From Me to You!

When we first looked at this house, it came pretty close to meeting our list of requirements (I should post that sometime!). One of the things it was missing was an open floor plan. We were pretty realistic about this item on our wishlist, as most of the houses we could afford were built before the advent of the popular 'open concept' floor plan.

After thinking about it for a while we decided that the empty wall in the kitchen (empty save for an outlet and heating register) could be knocked out to create a more 'open' feel to the living space in the house. When doing our pre-purchase inspection, we found out that said wall was load-bearing. And, being proud new homeowners, we didn't want to cave our pretty new roof in. This is where a pass-thru comes in.

To refresh your memory... this is what the room looked like before:



Behind that big empty wall on the left is the kitchen. This is the view from the front door.

After determining that a pass-thru would let the wall remain load-bearing (and determining what I wanted was called a pass-thru), I started to look for some inspiration online.






Not as great as a truly open floor plan, this would allow us a little more breathing room in the kitchen and flow throughout the living/public areas of the house.

Here's our pass-thru after...

Looking into the kitchen (with a sneak-peek of the re-finished kitchen cabinets!).




Looking out from the kitchen to the front window...



From the front door again...



And the gratuitous beagle shot.



All in all, we're very happy with our pass-thru. It was well worth the money to have someone do this for us. Our guests don't know it isn't original and it makes entertaining and watching Jeopardy while cooking dinner so much easier!

I'm still being a bad blogger (but... I'm being a good student!) so I'm going to post a bunch of pictures to try to get you all up to speed... we're still in October in Fruits/Roots land!

Up first... our ugly, broken, thankfully-not-glued-to-the-wall mirror. Marcia taped it all up so she, Callie and I could remove it safely. I neglected to get a photo of the way the previous owners updated the paint colors by carefully painting around the broken section...



Here are some 'action shots' of some of my painting supplies. I am/was so sick of painting. I went to the massage therapist because I hurt my back and she asked me what I'd been doing because my right side was so much tighter than my left. I couldn't think of it at the time but Byron mentioned later that I'd spent dozens of hours painting in a very short period of time!

The paint color in the office and guest room is "Tatami Mat" by Behr.



Buy yourself an angled 2" good quality cutting-in brush. It was the best $10 we spent. Another fine recommendation from John and Sherry at www.younghouselove.com, our home reno/deco idols!



Having a 5'10" sister-in-law is very useful. Saves money on ladders. ;)



Having a 13" tall beagle does not.



After applying the fancy, color-changing spackle to the walls, Callie declared it looked like our house had leprosy. Thankfully, it dried clear. That wall to the left now has a giant pass-thru in it and the whole living/dining/hall is painted "Sanctuary" by Behr!



I'm going to scour my hard drive and SD cards... see what other photos I can come up with. We're having our first real 'party' this weekend with my classmates so hopefully I'll remember to get some photos of the house all dressed up in its holiday finest! :)