Yes!

No more major purchases!

B and I are not making much progress on that to do list. Mostly because in the last week we've each gotten a brand new car! I got my new Verano last weekend and yesterday we got B into a Ford Focus hatchback. He currently drives a 2004 Dodge Durango, it gets awful gas mileage... with his drive to work he was putting in basically $100 a week. We needed something more fuel efficient, obviously, but also something that the dogs will fit in. That's where the hatchback came in. With the seats folded down we have a bunch of space for the dogs to stretch out. Eventually we'll probably upgrade to an SUV but since it is just B and I and the dogs we don't really need the extra room. We don't have the car yet, they had to have it delivered to the dealership, but we'll be able to pick it up tomorrow when B gets off work!

Small accomplishment though, I finally set up my Keurig! My parents got me one for Christmas and I had just never gotten around to setting it up. I am enjoying my first cup of coffee from it as I type. Love the convenience of it so far, the little K-cups are so simple to use without having to measure coffee grinds. And maybe this way I won't go overboard and drink a whole pot of coffee! Now that we have dishes (thank you Ikea!), the kitchen is really coming together. We still need new pots and pans, a knife block, and I'd like to replace our red toaster and white toaster oven with black versions, but we're nearly there!

My parents are coming over this afternoon to meet Lux! Can't wait for them to see her. My dad and Luna are already bffs, it is really cute to see how excited they both get to see each other.

Hopefully next time I'll have some actual progress to post! It's just way too tempting to spend the day by our pool instead of working on the house, but we'll get there.

I have one rule: New is always better.

Yesterday I said good bye to a long time friend. This was my baby. I bought her when I was going to school in NY, and then decided to move home less than 2 months later. So we spent 3 days driving cross country back to AZ. I loved my Volvo but she wasn't a young lady anymore... 2003 with over 105k miles. It was getting to where I was going to have to start doing preventative maintenance and I really just wasn't ready for that kind of investment in a car I knew I would be getting out of sooner rather than later.

I've been researching cars online for awhile now, but you can only get so much reading reviews and looking at pictures so yesterday B and I decided to go test drive some of my favorites. Let me just say, car shopping in July in Arizona is possibly the worst idea ever. We stopped by Chevy and I looked at the Cruze and the Equinox. I liked them both and the Cruze was a serious contender. My little sis has one and she loves it. I looked at an upgraded one with remote start and a few other cool features. We went over to Buick to look at the Verano and I may have fallen in love. The guy we worked with was awesome, he got me into the Verano for the exact same price that I would've gotten into the Cruze for but I have leather seats, a rear view camera, satellite radio, Pandora connectivity and the remote start that I really wanted to have. Haven't had a chance to drive it yet, but I love it so far. I did sacrifice on fuel economy over the Cruze but it is a much smoother ride. And it is an automatic! After nearly 5 years of driving stick its a welcome change! I'll post a better picture later but that's from the dealer site. Love it!

Accomplishments!

Unfortunately we haven't managed to get anything done off of the to do list so far. We had a bit of a situation come up with the pool but now all is well.


A few weeks ago we noticed that our pool didn't seem to be registering that there were chemicals in in. We talked to our pool repair guy and he said it probably needed to be drained, since we didn't know when the previous home owners last drained it. Well, we put it off. About a week ago we got hit with a storm that did enough damage that our pool was getting a greenish film over it that we couldn't get rid of with any amount of scrubbing and filter running. Contacted a company to drain and acid wash the pool and we went from the photo at left to the sparkling pool at the right. We're going to hire a company to take care of the chemicals and keeping the water balanced so that we don't have to worry about it. Once we get rid of the tree that clogs the skimmer on a daily basis I think that'll be so much easier to do, but for now we'll let someone knowledgeable take care of it.

Also, we bought dishes! We'd been using my set from my first apartment. 4 plates and 4 bowls. With only 2 of us in the house we would run out of clean plates before we had a full load of dishes. Enter Ikea. We went with the Fargrik 18 piece dinnerware set. It is white stoneware with service for 6. We bought 2 sets and then 12 of the larger bowls all for about $90. One of the things I loved about this set is that it doesn't come with coffee mugs, none of the sets at Ikea do. They sell them individually so I may pick up a couple that match (they're only $0.99!) but B doesn't drink coffee so we really have no need for a full set of mugs. It was driving me crazy trying to find a set of dinnerware that didn't have mugs and had good reviews. These are microwave and dishwasher safe, cheap to replace should we need to, and white is such a basic color that I can just invest in some pretty chargers if we ever entertain and dress them up a bit.

Today is my only day off for the week so I'm going to go enjoy it!

Fur baby!

 Meet Lux! Our little girl Luna finally has a baby sister! We adopted her yesterday from one of the no-kill shelters in Phoenix, Home Fur Good. They think she is a lab and some sort of shepherd mix looking at her ears and coat. She is a sweet little fur ball, but definitely still a baby, only 10 weeks old.


It is super cute because she looks a lot like Luna, we'll see if that holds true as she gets older. B and I bought her a tiny version of Luna's collar so now they match. Luna seems to love having a baby sister so far. She seemed a little apprehensive initially, but I think having a live in playmate will be really good for her. She's still learning how to play with Lux, her aunties are 100lb rottweiler so it is a bit of an adjustment to go to an 11 lb baby.

Nap time is over, playtime now!