Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween! Yes, I am one of those people that dressed their dogs up for Halloween.... I know. I know. But the costumes were just too cute to pass up. So I had to buy them. Lily lasted in hers for about 10 minutes but Sammy lasted in hers for over an hour.

We also dressed up. Just not tonight. Hopefully I will have pictures to post tomorrow of Ben & me in our costumes. Tonight we had about 10 trick-or-treaters. Not too bad considering there are no children on our block.

Here are a few more pictures of the dogs:

My office

I have been working on making my part of the basement a more workable office. One thing I was lacking is somewhere to hang my inspiration & trend photos. Normally I make trend boards on foam core but I have no where & no way to hang them up. So I had to come up with another way to display.

When we moved to our new building at work, each person with an office got a full wall of cork tiles. So they had a bulletin board the size of an entire wall. So I thought about buying an over sized bulletin board to hang up. They were more expensive than I wanted to spend, but I found cork tiles of my own. Perfect!

So I bought some & hung them on the wall above my desk. Of course, the sticky pads they came with didn't work. The tiles kept falling off. So I finally glued them to the wall last night. And, presto! I had a reusable trend/inspiration board.

And yes, I drew the pictures hanging on either side of the board. The desk is an old student desk. It came from the elementary school my great-great-aunt went to. And my grandfather painted it blue. Some day I plan to strip it & stain it back to it's original color, which was a dark mahogany/cherry color. Someday.

Wedding Quilt

So my dear, sweet sister-in-law, Ellen, made us a beautiful quilt for our wedding. We got it during their visit in July. We have been using it for a few weeks now that the weather is cooling off at night. I finally got around to taking a couple of pictures of it this weekend. So while the bed was made & there were no animals on it, I tried to figure out how to get the best shot.

It is a difficult quilt to take of picture of that does it justice. It fades from light at the top to dark at the bottom. But since our bed literally takes up the whole room, it was hard to get the effect. But, trust me, it is a beautiful piece of work.

And she took the time to add 2 calla lilies appliques at the bottom corner. They are my favorite flower, so it was quite appropriate. The quilt pattern is a cool, funky swirl pattern which also fits me perfectly.
So thank you, Ellen, for the beautiful wedding gift. We really do love it & really are using it.

Trophy

So we have a little football pool going on at work. Each week we pick who will win a game (normally the Sunday night game) and how many points total scored. The winner gets a non-alcoholic drink of their choice.

So the game we bet on over the weekend was the Steelers vs Broncos. I was grumpy because I can not go against the Broncos, being the die-hard fan that I am. And after watching the embarrassment a couple of weeks ago by the Chargers, I was sure the Broncos were going to lose this one too. But I had no choice, I had to pick the Broncos.

Miracle of miracles, they actually won the game! And so the oh-so-beautiful trophy landed on my desk. It consists of a candlestick, bundt cake pan & football wrapped in foil. Isn't it lovely? Aren't I lucky to have it on my desk all week? I bet you are jealous :)

Free Beer

So Saturday night Ben, Margaret (my sister) and I went to see one of my favorite bands, Jackopierce at the Soiled Dove Underground.

The Soiled Dove is a really great place to see a concert for grownups. They have tables to sit at & a bartender that brings the drinks to you. Very chic. We of course sat up front because I did not want to be back with the talkers.

After the opening act, Creede Williams (who was hilarious & decent music too), the waitress brought me 2 extra beers "from the band". I freaked out for a little bit about why I got the free beers, since I was sitting there with my husband, but my sister suggested that it was because I was sitting front row center. And that made sense to me.

The concert was absolutely awesome. Jackopierce is my favorite band to see live. It is all acoustic but there is still so much energy. And they love Colorado, it's like a 2nd home to them. I knew every single song except for the new one. I was probably pretty funny to watch because I was literally bouncing in my seat, clapping, screaming & singing every word along with them. You know you have seen a band a few too many times when you can tell which song they are going to sing before the 1st words come out of their mouths :) This was my 11th time seeing them. (Most of those times were while I was in college though.)

Every semester they would come play at The Blue Note around finals. You had to buy tickets the day they went on sale otherwise it would sell out. I saw them every semester except for 1st semester my freshman year. There was always a bunch of us that would go & inevitably we would run into others that we knew & have a huge group up front. The concerts are some of my most memorable times from college.

New shoes

So I have a slight problem. I either have flip flops & sandals or boots to wear. I only have 1 pair of plain old shoes to wear. Which sucks right now because it is too cold for flip flops but not every day is boot weather.

So I went out last night to find a pair of shoes to add to my collection that will work during the fall transition time. And I found the most comfy new pair. Normally when I buy shoes, I end up with a blister or 10 on my feet by the end of the day. But not with these shoes. Not a single place being rubbed wrong or a single sore spot. I love them!!! And want them in every color! I totally recommend them.

(if you click on the picture above, it should be linked to more info about the shoes.)

Cleaning & other business

Our weekend was spent mostly cleaning & working. We desperately needed to clean since it has been a little while & I can not stand the clutter & dust any more. I even moved an old dresser into the kitchen as temporary additional storage. We desperately need more drawers because we only have one drawer for all our cooking utensils which was overflowing. You often have to shake it to get it open or closed. But now I have space for all the utensils, the kitchen towels & even a place for our napkins & place mats. Hopefully soon I will be able to find a bakers rack or some kind of hutch that a) I like, b) is not an enormous piece of furniture and c) don't have to pay out the nose for.

The other part of the weekend was spent working on Ben's new business. He & his father have been discussing for some time now about going into property investment & management. And finally on Friday they decided to go for it and put an offer on a house. The house is a 3 bed 1 bath in desperate shape. We looked at it on Saturday & I wanted to cry when we were done. The outside doesn't look too bad. The yard is dead & littered with trash. But the inside was horrendous. I still can not believe that people live like this. The entire house was stained & filthy. Paint was splattered all over the living room (even on the TV). There were so many flies in the house that there was fly tape hanging in the dining room. In the kitchen, there were gnats all over, eggs sitting on the counter & about 1/2 the cabinet doors were missing. And the back door does not have a door knob, only a deadbolt.

There were 4 kids left home alone. All probably under the age of 9. The front door was unlocked. And no one told them we were coming over to look at the house. But they were not worried or scared there were strangers walking through the house.

And the worst part was there was a bright, shiny new truck in the driveway. These people were taking better care of a car then a house where children lived.

I felt amazingly blessed for the environment I grew up in & live in. And sad that there are children being raised in that environment. I can not fully explain the disgusting state this house was in.

But, we find out in about 2 weeks if the bank accepted the offer. If so, I will post some pictures so you can see what it looks like.