Friday, September 18, 2015

Late Summer



Alright, ya'll. I have not fallen off the face of the earth but life got busy and then it was SUMMER! But now sadly things are cooling off and I'm back to blogging. Not that I'm unhappy to be blogging but I was rather enjoying spending my time doing other fun things. And now I've got plenty of fun things to fill you in on!

Seriously though, life has been full and mostly crazy fun. In the last six months Justin's grandma passed away, we've worked on house projects, worked on yard projects, bought a new car (my dream car; a Suburu Forester!), had Katherine stay for two weeks, run (a little), gone on weekend trips and camping trips, and started prepping for Baby Lange.


21 weeks


Yup. You read that right. We're expecting a kiddo right around New Years! I'm 25 weeks along and feeling great. I've had a super smooth pregnancy so far and haven't really had to slow down at all yet. I did have to give up running fairly early on but only because I don't have the money to buy a new $70 sports bra at this point. Sorry for the TMI but running bras are crazy expensive! I'm still walking plenty though to make up for it. I'm currently taking brisk 3 mile walks four to five days a week and that's been helping keep me sane.

It's been a very uneventful pregnancy though and I'm pretty thrilled with that. For realz though, why didn't anyone tell me how hard it is to pick out kid names?!? We're not finding out the gender so we have to have both names but seriously though. There are so many awesome options! I currently have about 50 of each gender on my list. Granted, some of those are only options for middle names but still. That's a shit ton of names to sort through. And Justin is making his own list without looking at mine. So it'll be fun to compare and see how similar our tastes are!


24 weeks


So there you have it. That's been our main source of excitement this summer. I've got lots more to say about what we've been doing but I figure that I'll save all that for later posts. For now though, if you have kids what did you name them and did you have a hard time narrowing things down like I am? Tell me what names you love! There's always room for a few more on my list! ;-)



Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Maple Syrup Weekend 2015




















The title says it all, really. It was a gorgeous weekend in mid Indiana at my uncle's cabin. Plenty of mud and muck to be found but so much fun. Boiling sap, hikes in the woods, gun shooting, and piles of delicious food. It really doesn't get much better than that. Our day of labor netted us 1 3/4 gallons of maple syrup; just enough for every family to take home a pint or so.

This was our third year attending and it was the warmest by far. It was in the 60s both days and by Sunday afternoon the sun was so hot that I stripped down to a sleeveless shirt. Frankly, the whole weekend was just basically perfection. But then I've thought that about the last two years too. What can I say? I love Maple Syrup Weekend :-)



Thursday, February 19, 2015

Beginnings

There are eight color samples in this room. Oof.



Most of my supplies.


Woot! It's that time people. I'm starting painting today. The east bedroom/guest room is first up in the docket. Hopefully I'll have progress photos next week. But the next two days will just involve putting fresh coats of white on the ceiling, trim, windows, and the inside of the closet. Aka, the boring stuff. But it needs to be done and it'll be so worth it once it's all put together.

Wish me luck!



Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Couch Shelf DIY



Fun stuff is still happening all over our house. I'm not sure that I'll ever actually declare my house "done". I'm having too much fun working on things!

A few months ago one of my projects was to put a shelf up behind our couch and I'm a huge fan. This idea came to me ages ago when we put our couch in front of the window but I didn't get around to it until this fall. But now that it's done I can't believe that I waited this long.

This was a pretty simple, and inexpensive, project in the grand scheme of things but fairly time consuming. There's lots of quick steps with downtime between them so it's good for a weekend at home. It made a big impact in the room though and I love having it there to hold my water bottle. And, let's be honest, lots of other things too.

I threw together a semi tutorial for you. Nothing very detailed but here's what I ended up doing.


For this project I used:

1x6x8 pine board
primer
paint
polycrylic
3 shelf brackets
2 shelf screw sets
sandpaper
paint brushes
drill


A couple of general notes: 
Always make sure that you wipe down the board before priming or painting it. That gets rid of any dust or hairs that might land on it while you're not working on it.

And always make sure to read the directions on the cans before starting this project. Different materials have different dry and re-coat times and you want to make sure your project always gets as much drying time as the manufacturer says is necessary! I find it helpful to take notes on what time I finish a coat so that I know when I can start the next one.




Step 1: Sand and prime shelf.

This step was definitely the fastest for me. Because I wanted a shelf for behind my couch I didn't cut my board. But if you wanted a shorter shelf or two you could certainly cut this down to size. I've heard that some hardware stores will cut them for you when you buy them but I've never tested that out myself. Make sure that you have enough brackets for your project. If you're doing multiple shelves then you'll need at least two per shelf.

Once your board is the right length, sand the shelf lightly with fine grit sandpaper and then put a thin coat of primer on the shelf. I primed, and painted, all sides/edges of the shelf because I knew they were going to be visible. But if you're planning on hanging the shelf somewhere where no one will see the bottom then you can just do the parts that will be seen.




Step 2: Paint board with 1-2 coats of desired color

I used what was left of a paint sample container in a smokey blue. It was a basic flat latex paint and I diluted it very slightly with water to help make the brush strokes less visible. I'm not sure that was really necessary but it turned out well. I put two coats of paint on my shelf because one coat didn't give very good coverage. Maybe if I had not diluted the paint it would have worked better. I really don't know.




 Step 3: Coat shelf with polycrylic

Once again how many coats of sealant you choose to do it totally up to you. I went with three on the tops and sides and one on the bottom. I wanted all surfaces of the shelf to be sealed because I planned to put drinks and food on the shelf. If you're using it for decoration only you might not even need the polycrylic at all!




Step 3: Hang your shelf!

I don't have a lot of particular guidance about hanging your shelf. Most of it's up to you: where you want it, what it's function is going to be, etc. For me, I wanted it under the windowsill but not touching the couch top. I knew I'd be using it to hold all kinds of things: books, mugs, my knitting, and snacks for sure. And because I wanted it by the couch I knew that it had the potential to be climbed on by child visitors so I wanted it to be very strong. We ended up going with three shelf brackets, each of which is mounted into a stud. A pair is rated at 100lbs so the shelf should be able to hold any sized kid who might want to perch on it! (Or some some adults for that matter!)

Also, make very, very sure to get all your marks level. I wouldn't just eyeball this since you're putting weight on it. You wouldn't want anything to fall on your head while you were napping!




Step 4: Enjoy!

All in all, this was as easy as I hoped it would be! I worked on it off and on over the course of a week or so while I was home and it came together just like I envisioned. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments and I'll answer what I can. Happy projecting!


My cozy corner



Thursday, February 5, 2015

Run 2015: January


Alright, peeps. Welcome to Run 2015 January edition. I'll be keeping my running posts sweet and simple this year. One per month with additional race posts as desired. I don't actually have any races planned at this point but I'm hoping to maintain my half marathon base throughout the year as much as possible. Who knows? That might come back to bite me in the ass but for now I'm loving the freedom of not running much/at all! Because seriously, I'm not up for going out and running in 16 inches of snow right now!

January was a light month with only three runs and a little bit of weight training. I predict that February will be light as well but I plan to be back at it in March. Here's what my running looked like in January though.


January 17
     3.11 in 31:41, average 10:11
     Why yes, we really did take four weeks off after the Huff. It wasn't really intentional. We meant to take off one week and somehow it slipped into four. But really. It was pretty awesome. And this was a short easy run to get us loosened back up.

January 24
     5.24 in 56:57, average 10:52
     This run has a really funny looking map. We went to our favourite bike trail for a six mile run and the trails were so icy that we didn't quite make it a mile before we gave up. So we loaded up and drove to a different park and ran paved, and plowed, trails instead. This was a nice comfortable run. Our times weren't really that slow. The first icy mile worked out to be a 13 minute mile and that kind of threw off our average!

January 31 - Winter Night Trail Half Marathon!
     13.1 in 2:51:09.9, average 13.04
     Third run of the year as a half marathon? Yes please! You all, this was an awesome race. Like seriously, seriously awesome. As the name of the race suggests we ran a half marathon, on snowy/muddy trails, in the dark, in the middle of winter. And I would do it again in a heart beat. The race took place down in Indy in Eagle Creek Park and started at 6pm as the light; just as the light was almost gone.

We had never run any of the trails so they were completely new to us (although I had been to the park a few times as a child and was entertaining Justin with stories of field trips) but the route was fairly level, only a few minor hills and small stream crossings. It was well marked in most places and we ran two 6.75 mile loops. Endomondo clocked me in at 13.6 miles so it was a little longer than advertised but not enough to make a difference.


Who doesn't want to finish under a disco ball?


And yeah, that was about it. We put on our headlights, hit the trail around 6pm and finished up a few hours later. It started snowing about an hour into our run and snowed the rest of the time. It was actually the beginning of the storm that ended up dumping a foot of snow at our house. The snow was gorgeous blowing across our headlight beams and piling up on the trail. 

The best way to describe it is just fun. It was easy and comfortable and we had beautiful weather and beautiful scenery. I actually wish that we had signed up for the full marathon because I would have loved to have gone around a few more times. Of course, that would have meant that I would have needed to keep up with my running after the Huff but it would have been worth it!


After the race!


There's a sister race coming up in June. The Summer Night Trail Marathon (and half and quarter) that sounds like it'll be just as fantastic as the winter one was. I think we may do it. What could possibly be better than a run on a dark night in a gorgeous park with a couple hundred of my closest friends?



Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Welcome February!

Clean snow


We got 12 inches of fresh snow on February 1st and it was the perfect thing to get my month off to a good start. I'm not much of one for new years resolutions. I need time to think these things through and that one week between christmas and new years isn't near enough time to get my priorities straightened out. But February 1st? That I can rock. I came up with four main areas that I want to focus on this year: finish the interior of the house, grow a vegetable garden, increase/maintain my physical health, and continue my personal education. These are all a little vague on purpose. That way I can pick one or two things that fit within each category and work on them each month.

So without further ado, here's February's list of goals:

Paint the guest room
     I think we've finally picked a color for this room (yay!) so I'll be able to work on it soon. This will involve painting the ceiling, trim, and the inside of the closet as well as the walls so I may not get this finished this month. We don't have any furniture for this room but painting is definitely the first step!

Exercise 3 times a week
     We slacked a little with the running since the Huff and I'd love to get back into that but with all the snow and ice that might not happen much. But even if I can't run, I can still do other things. We have a set of dumbbells in the basement and there are lots of fantastic yoga videos on youtube. Plus I tend to count things like shoveling snow and hauling dirt as exercise. So this should be doable.

Install pegboard in kitchen
     This will go a long way toward giving us more storage for our pots and pans and it should be pretty simple. It is a project that Justin and I will work on together though soo we'll see when we get it done.

Research seed starting
   Fairly self explanatory. I don't think that I need to start any of my seedlings in February but I don't actually know! So I need research and come up with a game plan for how and when that needs to happen. Probably next month's goal will be to actually start them!

Blog twice per week (Tue & Thur)
     This is actually one of the goals that I anticipate being more challenging for me. I love writing but I get distracted by my responsibilities inside and outside of the home. But I really love going back and rereading my old posts. Especially the series that I've maintained such as Run 2014. I want to have a record of what we've been doing and our lives. But that means that I need to write more often! This goal is my start at making that happen.


Well, there you have it folks. My five main February 2015 goals. Did you make any resolutions this year and if so how are they going?



Thursday, January 8, 2015

Passive Solar

I've been thinking about passive solar heating recently and it's a pretty amazing concept. Basically, the idea is to design a house that faces south (when you live north of the equator), has large windows, and some form of thermal mass (stone, concrete, or brick for example) that will absorb heat from the sunlight that comes in through the windows. The warm thermal mass traps and slowly releases heat into the room which means that your furnace doesn't have to run as often. That is a seriously fantastic idea! Everyone loves sunshine and free heat is awesome!


Look at all that sunlight!


Passive solar is something that Justin and I have talked about on many occasions and would absolutely love to incorporate more of into our house. Obviously since we bought an existing house we won't be designing a passive solar house from scratch but there are things that we can change that would make our current house even more passive. Because of the age of our house it was actually designed in a more 'passive' fashion.

Our house was built in 1968 by Justin grandparents and was built for comfort according to 1960s standards. That included a boiler in the basement with hot water baseboards but did not include central air conditioning. In fact, central air wasn't installed until sometime in the 90s. Justin tells me that he remembers when it was installed. :-) That's good though because that means that our house has has lots and lots of windows, 21 if you count the screen doors, all of which open. The front of the house faces north and the main living areas of the house are all on the south side. There are eight southern windows and they let in a significant amount of light and heat.


The south side of our house before we removed the awnings.

Six of these windows are overhung by the roof and that's pretty much the best thing ever. There are two benefits to having your windows under an overhang of some sort. The first is that when it rains in the summer time the rain doesn't come in your windows unless it's storming and blowing. As people who rarely use the air conditioner and prefer to have the house open all summer this is perfect for us. And was also just a part of how the house was designed. No air conditioner until the 90s, remember?

The second benefit is that during the summer that bit of roof actually protects our house from passive solar heat. That might seem a bit counter productive since I've been talking about how much I love passive solar heat but you don't want the sun to heat your house during the summer! The over hang keeps the sun out of our house and actually helps to keep the whole house cooler. But during the winter, when the sun is further south, the over hangs are narrow enough that they don't block the sunlight. So overhangs block heat in the summer and allow heat into the house during the winter. This is pretty ingenious if you ask me and is one of my absolute favourite features of this house.

But, suppose that Justin and I want to increase the amount of sunlight that gets into our house during the winter time, what sorts of things could we do? The first thing that comes to mind is install more windows. That's definitely not something that all houses can accomodate but ours definitely can. When I look at the back of the house in the photo above there are two main places that stand out as options for windows. The first is on the left between the two sets of double windows and the other is at the right end of the house, in the master bedroom. Both of these are locations that could be improved by an additional window or two.


Possibly a window instead of a mirror?

As you can see, there's a large chunk of wall that would look lovely with another window. There are two main options for this room: to install either a third set of double windows or a picture window that spans the area between sets. Obviously there are benefits and drawbacks to each. The main difference of course is that a set of windows would open and allow a breeze and a picture window would not. Cost and structural integrity are also things that we would have to take into consideration. 


Justin taking down the curtains. Look at all that empty wall space!

And then in the master bedroom who wouldn't love an additional or larger window. Maybe with a built in bench seat and bookcases? Of course it is a bedroom and we need a way to make the room dark (the neighbors have a street light in their backyard...) but I'm sure we could figure that out.

The other main way that we could encourage passive solar gain is by installing thermal mass, particularly in the main rooms of the house. That idea has the potential to be easier or harder than windows. It just depends on how we go about it. Simple would be something like replacing our carpet with ceramic tile or maybe stone floors. Travertine tile is beautiful. Or we could install a brick or stone fireplace in the main room of the house. We like that option a little better than stone floors. We both grew up in houses with wood burning fireplaces and miss it like crazy. We've been talking about wanting to install one ever since we bought the house. Putting in the fireplace would be perfect. We could have fires like we've been wanting and it would have help us in our goal incorporating passive solar heat into our house. It's a win-win!

You may be asking yourself 'Well, why doesn't the house have a fireplace already? That's normal isn't it?". Yes, yes it is. But when Justin's grandparents built this house there were only two things that Grandma insisted that she did NOT want: a fireplace and wood floors. Sigh. Oh well, guess we can't have everything!

Of course, we could certainly install a fireplace and more windows. But they both cost money and we'll have to do more research to determine the best option for our house. For now I'm just dreaming outloud! Tell me what you all think, though. Is passive solar something that you've thought about before or something that you think about when you visit other houses? Are there any ways that you could incorporate elements of passive solar design into your current home?


For More Info on Passive Solar Design:
Energy.gov: Passive Solar Home Design
Arizona Solar Center: Passive Solar Design Manual
US Air Force: Passive Solar Handbook


Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Happy 2015!

Christmas Eve Service


Happy 2015!!!! I hope you had a wonderful time celebrating the holidays and have had a relaxing start to the new year. I'm finding it hard to believe that the holidays are done and gone and that it's already 2015. But I know that it must be true because Justin went back to work yesterday and I packed up the Christmas decorations.


Look at all those handsome men!

 
Justin had two weeks off and we spent them eating, sleeping, playing, and visiting family! It was so much fun to have him home with me and I miss him now that he's back at work. I much prefer it when he's home and I always feel unsettled when he returns to work after a long break. But I'll get used to it again and it'll be all good.





The only downside to having Justin home is that I don't write much when he's home. It's not that I don't have time. I definitely do. It's just that there are a million and one even more fun things that I can be doing! Like reading more books or watching cartoons (I got Dexter's Lab season 1 for Christmas!) or eating delicious. It's hard to type with a snack in your hand and your nose in a book.


Picking colors is very intense business around here.


But now that Justin's back at work again I hope to be here more regularly. I have things to say and photos to share, people! Now that the house is silent I can hammer out my thoughts for the new year. I think I pretty much have more one little word and goals picked out. Now to write them out!


Jan 6th - First snowstorm of the new year.


I'll save all that for another day though. Right now it's sunny, 6F, and there's fresh snow. That means I get to go shovel!



(Edited) P.S. A very happy 56th birthday to my daddy! I love you!