Along Came a Spider and Sat Down Beside Her...

Last week was my first snake sighting. That took a while to get past. I've seen plenty of spiders in my lifetime... and plenty at our new house. Most have been daddy long legs (the only kind of spider I sorta can live with because they eat mosquitoes). The rest have all been measly garden spiders... until tonight.

We stopped back by our house to turn off our porch light... a wonderful sign of being done working there for the day. Low and behold, I spotted something that looked like a spider under our kitchen window. I thought... that's too big to be a spider. So I said to Nathan... "Is that a spider?" There wasn't much light but we decided it was and we'd get a better look with a flashlight. Once I got the flashlight outside, we brought this particular beast into the light and sure enough, a gigantic spider. And this was no garden spider mind you. The next most logical question regarding spiders in the desert was "is it a brown recluse or black widow?" Nathan said it looked like a wolf spider then reassured me that after an entire lifetime of living in the desert, this was definitely the biggest spider he had even seen with the exception of a tarantula. Comforting, right? It's good to know that after a full 25 years in the desert, your husband spots the biggest spider he's ever seen underneath your own kitchen window!! I really love our house and all, but i'm really starting to get concerned about living there....

First snakes, now gargantuas spiders... please let me never have to update you on what would be next... because I don't even want to know or encounter what would be next. Now I'm going to go shower and make that feeling of spiders crawling all over me go away :)

House Renovation Update #1

Here are some pictures from the process... some are blurry because my camera is dying, but we hope you enjoy! There is a full update at the end of all the pictures if you're interested :)

This gives you an idea of the mass amouts of wallpaper

...and border
This is to give you an idea of how atrocious it was,
and how hard it was to get off!

Since everything else in the house had a pink theme to it, why not have the walls be pepto-bismol pink too? I mean, thats what was under the border in this room! Oh my...

This is the room in all its glory with no more wallpaper,

and no more pink carpet!

tile-less kitchen

tile-less entry... wohoo! Good job honey!

New cherry hardwood laminate flooring

This is a better picture of the actual color of the hardwood.

So, the moment you have all been waiting for is finally here!!! Just kidding... I know you haven't all been waiting for it :) But here is the status of our house:

• Officially closed on May 14th (my good friend Lane's birthday). We got in and started working on Friday May 15th (my good friend Bridgey's birthday). We worked for a good solid 3 days on nothing but taking wall paper down. So much fun!! May I just advise anyone who looks at this blog to never put a shred of wall paper up in your home... don't ever do that to anyone else who might live there after you. It's just downright torture.
• Spent most of the following week painting and continuing to take down wallpaper.
• Thursday we had a few friends from church come and lend a hand... including our good friend Marj, who was our lifesaver and godsend when it came to getting the tile out of the front entryway. Nathan worked for a good 2 days on that tile and finally got it out thanks to Marj lending us some very helpful power tools. Thursday night, Nathan's dad came and ripped out all of our lovely mauve/pink/rose/ugly carpet and started on the padding underneath.
• By Friday, all of the carpeting was out, the tile in the kitchen was gone, the tile in the entry was working on being gone, our padding was all out, and we were preparing to lay down our new flooring on Saturday morning.
• Saturday we had a lot of helping hands thanks to our families. Some of Nathan's family came and helped out by painting, cleaning my gross blinds, and laying down flooring. All of my family came at some point on saturday, and they were put to work painting, taking down wall paper and various other tasks.
• Sunday--by sunday evening the flooring was completely installed in our hallway, kitchen, and large living space. Nathan worked on taking the linoleum out of the bathroom so flooring could be installed there too.
• Monday found us finishing up the rest of the flooring (it was completely finished on Monday!!!) as well as moving out of our apartment. We got everything moved into our house (all in the living/dining area) and my old college roommate emily helped me get our apartment all cleaned up. She was such a huge help!!!

So here we are in this week planning on doing some more work this week/weekend. Saturday morning we have carpet installed in our 3 bedrooms, along with the rest of the baseboards in the bedrooms. That will pretty much take care of it for our renovations. Then the fun begins trying to get everything unpacked and settled in. A few projects will remain, but over the summer should be completed. We need to get tile for the Master Bathroom, get quarter-round for all of our hardwood flooring in the kitchen and bathrooms, and relax and bask in a job well done :)... oh yeah and massages and pedicures and manicures to try and restore our bodies to a normal state.

It was my parking spot

One more :) Beverly sent this to me, and it was too funny not to share. The sad thing is there are probably really people like this out there :)

The Blood Song

I came across this video on another blog called girl talk which i check periodically. Every friday they post "friday funnies" and I saw this one from last week. At the very end of the song, the little girl says something really funny... so watch all the way to the end :) Enjoy!

There's a Snake in my Boots

On May 18th, 2009 at approximately 7:30 I experienced my first snake sighting in Rosamond. We were driving down the street to our new house to work on taking off some more of the wall paper when all of the sudden I saw something in the road. I continued driving and as I realized what I saw, I slammed on the breaks, threw the car into reverse and screamed at Nathan "There's a snake in the road back there!!!!!!!!!!!!!" He said... "So...?" I was freaking out... and even though it was just a garden snake, I really feel my response was appropriate. I honestly hoped I would never see a snake... but who am I kidding?? I live in the desert.

I promptly told Nathan that if I ever saw a snake in or near our house, I'd pack my bags and leave this wretched place. Snakes are of the devil (he was a snake himself!) and I will not stay if I ever have such an encounter again.