Updates and Such

Here are some of the pictures that have been hiding out in my camera. Don't worry, we haven't missed too much...

A couple weekends ago, Tanya and I took a little sewing class! It was a good experience and I definitely left class feeling like I could sew a sunglass case and maybe even some curtains. I haven't sewn since class though and I feel my skills quickly slipping away.

Maggie is being funny on a daily basis, as usual. She is really helping me get to know my neighbors. Today while I was on a conference call, I noticed that Maggie and Sadie were barking for too long at a dog walking down the alley. Turns out the Beagle - named Miller - had wandered a few blocks from his home and was alone. I tried to take him home, but no one was there so I decided to leave him in my yard for a bit with my girls. Not 10 minutes later, that dog (not one of my princesses of course) opened the gate and Maggie and Miller ran off. I went outside and Sadie was sitting on the deck like "see what a good dog I am, I didn't run away". After about 20 minutes of searching the neighborhood (and the ditches on the busy streets), I couldn't find either Maggie or Miller. A little while later, I got a call from a lady who lives almost on Colfax and she had my dog. Apparently Maggie and Miller were still together when they caught Maggie, but Miller slipped away. He was last seen by the ice cream shop. His parents weren't worried, apparently he gets out all the time.

Maggie's favorite ball right now is this old golf ball. She thinks it's the perfect size!

And here she is, just enjoying the sun. This picture cracks me up. "Please come rub my belly"!!

All the rain has been making my weeds grow like crazy! All I had was a push mower and these weeds were way to high for the push mower to do any good. You could lose a dog in that!! Don't worry, I have a lawn mower now and the weeds are under control. From a glance, it almost looks like a grassy yard!!
And I can't believe I never posted these two pictures of Zoe Saba!! I love the first picture of her and Ruthie - so adorable!! Much love to the Saba's!

Sooo tiny! Well, I'm sure she is about 2x this size now... I need to go see for myself!

That's about all I have taken pictures of in the past month. I'll try to do better... Or not. I hope everyone has a great week!!

1952 vs 2009, A Time Capsule

In 1952, my house was renovated. Under the hardwood floors that were installed then, the previous owners left me a type of time capsule in the form of a few old newspaper clippings. Based on the clippings found, I think they were trying to let me know how much things cost in 1952.

The following pictures are from The Denver Post, November 10, 1952 (my parent's were 2 at the time...)

I can't figure out what the top item on the left was, but 1lb of Chocolate Covered Cherries now goes for about $20. Which is about 40x the 1952 price.

Minute Maid OJ varies depending on if it is on sale, but you can buy it on the internet (seriously) for $4.49 for a 12 oz can. The 10.5 cent can is 6oz, so relatively speaking, OJ is up 21x.

Wrigley's gum now goes for about $0.50 a pack instead of 1.5 cents a pack, so 33x the 1952 price.

And yummy potatoes... Now let's say they cost an average amount of about $0.50 a pound. This 25 pound bag would go for about $12.50 today. That's a 14x incease over 1952.

The interesting thing here is the lotion that costs $1 for a 16oz bottle. I could probably get a cheap bottle of 16oz lotion at the dollar store. I could also pay about $56 for 16oz of Keils, so anywhere from 1-56x the price of 1952. Who loves their digital TV? I know I do... Can you imagine spending even $309.95 today to watch about 3 channels, each with only a few programs airing? Seems outrageous to me! Considering the typical inflation since 1952 is about 8x, maybe I need to start looking for sale food items to compare with instead of internet prices... But that still means this small, heavy TV would cost $2472 of today's dollars!

Any hockey fans out there? Can you imagine what it would be like to have only 6 teams?!? What, no Avalanche?

This little blast from the past sponsored by the past and current owner at 1201 Adams St.

Proud of My Sister!!

After three years of hard work, my little sister finished her MBA at one of the top MBA schools in the nation!! Despite the fact that there were 600 graduates in the MBA school (which took almost 3 hours!!), the whole weekend was a blast full of more fun than I can possibly capture here! I'm so proud of her and how hard see worked! This weekend was certainly a celebration and I will remember it and laugh forever!

I got to meet my sisters boyfriend! He is awesome. And his music is awesome too - we jammed to it most of the time we were in the car!

Some of the other highlights included a nice dinner after graduation that my Aunt and cousin were able to attend. The food was tasty, but the company and our reason for being there was the best!

On Saturday, we took an adventure for the record books. I have never laughed so hard and for so long as we did on our little day trip to Santa Barbara. You would think the 3 hour (100 mile) car ride would put a damper on the day, but it left lots of time for a photo shoot!

We got a bit of a late start, and met rediculous traffic, so we didn't get to Santa Barbara until about 3pm. Good thing we found a few tasting rooms that were open until 6pm. We hit up three different locales representing 4 vineyards and managed to get pretty toasty in about 3 hours.

Then the laughter started and didn't end until the car ride home. We rented a 4 person bike and cruised all over thinking we were fast scaring other tourists. We went places we weren't allowed, almost ran some people over, went over a bumb so big it tossed my sisters purse all over the pier, peddled so hard we knocked the chain off, and otherwise had the most fantastic time!

After some brunch and some needed rest on Sunday, we went horse back riding though the Hollywood hills! The day was a little smoggy and pretty warm but it was a great way to spend an hour with family. We also went to see Angels and Demons during the earthquake (I thought it was just good sound effects) and had a good sushi dinner and yummy frozen yogurt.

Thanks "Master" for hosting us and setting up a fantastic itinerary!! It was a perfect weekend and I couldn't be more proud of my sister (and her friends!) for all she accomplished!!

The Un-Crate-Able Sadie Mae

Have you seen (or read) Marley and Me? If so, you know what the first few years of Sadie's life were like. It was tough. She was so adorable I couldn't even stand it, but she was baaaad.

First thing on the list was to crate train her. I worked about 5 minutes from home at the time and so she was never alone for more than 3-4 hours without some play time. She hated her crate. On most occasions, she would poop in her crate. Even in the middle of the night. You can't sleep through that, so a trip outside at 2am to hose off the crate and the dog were required. One night right after she was spayed (at 6 months, about 60 pounds, and about 100 poop clean outs), she was allowed to sleep outside her crate. She never pooped at night again. She also stopped pooping when she was given the 3'x5' laundry room to hang out in. I guess she trained me?

The list of things she distroyed included:

-Any toy. Even the guaranteed undestructible ones.
-Vistors shoes. Sadie had to use her allowance to buy a few people new shoes because she destroyed theirs in about 15 seconds.
-The laundry room. Including riping up the linoleum floor, chewing off the baseboards and 2, yes TWO huge holes through the drywall as she tried to escape.
-The deck. She managed a 1foot x 1foot hole in the deck boards somehow and chewed about 50% of the railing so it looked like there was a beaver in the back yard.
-Countless sunglasses, Playstation games, loaves of bread, pens, markers (on the couch), an ink cartridge, the broom (I'll take the blame for that one, it was funny), you name it, she ate it.

I called her my "counter-surfer" and she still is to this day. If you turned your back for 1 second, she snatched something off the counter. She's a little slower now but she'll still jump up there!

One time, my mom was visiting and she had a new wireless adapter card for her PC. She set it on the table as she got out the rest of her PC stuff. She went to reach for the adapter card and it was gone. She hadn't even seen Sadie come by, but sure enough Sadie had about 10 teeth marks into it in no time flat! She new exactly what to snatch and was bold enough to do it with us right there!! Baaaad dog. But really funny and adorable too, right?

Yesterday, I was looking at the outrageously priced dog treats for cleaning teeth. They're about $1 each for the small ones. I bought a bag of 12 to see if they worked. Sadie ate the entire bag while I was at dinner last night. She's just lettin me know who's in charge around here, in case I forgot.

Overall, Sadie has become a fantastic dog and companion. She has been my rock through the hardest things I have ever faced. She has seen me cry more than anyone or anything else combined. The most amazing thing about Sadie is how empathetic she is to my feelings. She knows when I'm happy and when I need to be cheered up. It is amazing.

Here's to my best friend.

On a hike - she loves to hike: My beautiful girl:
My screen saver for the last year:And of course, the hugging shots:
My favorite picture of all time:

Playing Favorites

I try to be a good and fair "mom" to my two dogs, but having two dogs definitely leads to having a favorite every now and then... I can't help it. When my mom was here last time, she told me that I don't pay as much attention to Sadie as I used to. She's right. At first, I justified it by saying that Maggie gave Sadie more attention than she lost from me. Maybe that's ok, but maybe not. So saying all that, I feel even more guilty about this post, but today I want to tell you why Maggie is such a great dog. Next post will be about why Sadie is such a great dog, I promise.

I don't know if you can see this chart very well, but it is from puggles.org. If it weren't for this website, Maggie wouldn't be my dog. It says that 95% of puggles like to cuddle. If anyone has known me for a while, they know about my teddy bears. There was the care bear, Tenderheart, and of course Kimmy who lost a foot to Sadie when she was a puppy... I always loved having a teddy bear that I could curl up with. Sadie is a good snuggler for a big dog, but she usually gets hot or uncomfortable after about 10 minutes. One or two body parts touching is more than enough for Sadie.

When we first met Maggie, I hadn't heard of a puggle yet, but she was the cutest dog I had ever seen. I went to puggle.org and saw lots and lots of pictures. At first, I was trying to convince myself that I could get a puggle any time, no need to impulse buy. The problem was, Maggie was so much cuter than even the cutest puggles on the website! And they LOVE to cuddle!! So, I had to have her!! Best decision ever. She is the most loving, affectionate dog out there. If you don't want a dog to sit in your lab, don't get a puggle. Just last night, I was sitting on the couch eating dinner and Maggie came up and just laid her head on my leg. She just wanted to touch. It was so sweet! And then, there is the face:

The underbite cracks me up. I really think this is her smiling. The underbite usually only comes out when she is happy, so I love seeing this face.

Anytime I want, I can just scoop her up and give her a hug. And I think she loves it as much as I do! When work is stessful or I'm worried about my house / future / whatever, Maggie is always ready to cuddle and she has a smile and wagging tail to tell me everything will be ok. Horray for Maggie - I love that little dog.

If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say...

Don't say anything at all, right?

Well, after a month I finally found enough good things to talk about to have a new post!

As usual, the dogs have been great, and hilarious! They love to play so much. "Tug" is by far the favorite game.

Strangely enough, Maggie almost always wins. Not because of strength, I don't think! Haha!
This one happens a lot - Sadie is saying "mom, I didn't do it - Maggie tore that toy apart!" in case I couldn't tell...

And I've been hanging things up... I am thinking of it as 'staging' which makes me reluctant to do it, but it must be done! My mom gave me money for curtains for the living room for my b-day. After a ton of thought, I finally bought shear curtains on a tension rod for privacy and brown curtains for color.

And I hung some pictures on the wall!!

A couple of weekends ago, the 'rents came up again and gave me some free labor. We got some mean painting done in the basement (and after a few more 2-3 hour sessions, I am almost done with paint...). And the basement floor is leveled out, waiting for some tile:

My dad got after the ugly tree with his chain saw, and setup my patio furniture. Now my deck feels like a great place to have a few drinks and relax!!I painted the cabinet doors for the basement bathroom and it made SO MUCH difference! The doors are on now and I can't believe how much better it looks. Just a few more projects...

And if I didn't get enough chances to paint, someone decided to tag me. again. I guess this really is an urban neighborhood... Selling feature, perhaps?

What a Year...

Exactly one year ago today, I handed over the keys to my cute little townhouse in Belmar. I loved that place - it was perfect for me and Sadie! A nice park across the street, the library, and of course, all the shopping!! Sadie and I often wandered over to the Petco, just to look around. There were some negatives, like the ancient neighbors and a cement courtyard, but overall it worked. During the 2007-2008 winter, I promised Sadie I would find a place with a yard by fall 2008 so she could spend time outside (and so that snow boots weren't required 3-4 times a day when she needed to go outside). In January 2008, just as I acknowledged that I would try to find place with a yard at some point during the year, I got the postcard that started all of this...

I should also mentioned that this postcard arrived 2 weeks after Maggie - call it fate, but it felt right to sell my townhouse and find a back yard!

I looked at probably 80 different places over the next 6 weeks trying to find the right place. I found one promising place and had it under contract, but in the end the seller and I couldn't agree to terms. I wanted something in an old neighborhood that was move in ready.

Umm, what did I just say? Move in ready?? Hmmm...

I had a list of things I wanted in my "dream home" and when I found the house on Adams, I saw the potential. I underestimated the work to get to "dream home" status, but it had potential.

First on the list was a yard. I think my yard is perfect! Not too big and not too small. And Maggie spends about 8 hours a day outside, minimum, so this is perfect for her.Next on the list was an open floor plan and I could tell that this place would make me happy. This is the only room that got a minor face lift. It was close to perfect right from the start.

A garage was also a must, and a 2 car garage was preferred. That is what I found, plus the access off 12th instead of the alley AND an oversized section that has tons of potential as well.

I also wanted a front porch-- check. A laundry shoot, or even better main floor laundry -- check! A nice kitchen, with room for entertaining -- check!! A good neighborhood within walking distance of bars - check!!! A home office and also a place for visitors to sleep - check!!!!

So, after the roller coaster of the past 12 months, I have indeed found my dream home:

Now, I just hope I can keep it ;)