I've spent considerable time over the past week looking into the best airfare, hotel package for the trip Jenn and I are going to take to celebrate our 5th anniversary (which is coming up on April 17th). We've decided to head to Chicago, for one last get away before our baby arrives, and we decided Chicago would be fun.
I figured I'd post this picture because I've had planes on the brain the past week or so, thinking of where, and when to book. This picture was taken at the observation park on Dorsey Rd. It was cool watching this plane taxi around and then take off. Very neat. Enjoy!
Here we are, another week, another kitchen update. This blog is starting to feel like my kitchen update blog. Oh well. Yesterday, Jake, Joe and I worked to take out the kitchen cabinets, the last major demo step!, and then we replaced a piece of the sub-floor that had to much give and was rotten. We also added a 1x6 and a some 3/4" plywood to the wall to assist in the installation of the cabinets this coming weekend. And finally, we prepped the drywall (cut) to be put up after the plumbing and electric are all squared away.
Jenn and I will be without kitchen, or kitchen sink this week. We do have a stove, microwave and refrigerator, and paper plates and utensils, so I think we'll be ok. This weekend is the big day(s) with plans to start and hopefully complete the majority of the installation. I'll keep everyone posted! Enjoy!
This is to funny for me to not post this. When I saw this I laughed out loud. It is available by Snorg Tees on t-shirts. Wearing this on a shirt isn't really my thing, but sharing it with everyone else is. To funny. Enjoy!
Yesterday I was reading about a new car that is currently in concept mode, that is scheduled to be released in 2011. Its a new electric roadster car made by Tesla. The car looks money, however, the interior control panel is what I thought was the most awesome. Below is a picture of it, and its looks incredible. This is where car technology needs to be going in my opinion. There's no reason that the entire center console can't be a big touch screen. One that can be reprogrammed easily and customizable. That would be awesome. Check it out. Also, if you click on the picture below you can go to the original article, which is from wired.com.
Here's the big unveil of our nursery room color choice. Even though we know we're having a little girl, we decided to go neutral with the color scheme. Today we're getting the furniture delivered, so we decided to go ahead and get the room painted before the furniture is in there, so that it would be good to go. We still need to touch up the baseboards, and the ceiling, and I'm going to add some decorative painting to one of the walls, but the bulk of the painting, the mint green, is now complete. Take a look!
I have a few instances of our nephews clearly enjoying either the rain, or the products of it. Once time when they came down to visit it was raining outside, so they put on their bathing suits and outside they went to play in the rain. It was funny.
In this picture below, we all went for a walk after a morning/afternoon of rain and Damien made sure to get his puddle splashing in. I have to confess, while I don't really like to jump in puddles anymore, I do love to drive through them. Its tons of fun. Enjoy!
When Jenn and I were still in school, they didn't have these shirts. If they did, I think we would both have been rock'n these shirts around campus. Alas, they didn't. We saw them a few weeks back when we went up to get Jenn fitted for her graduation gown. She was all kinds of excited about it, which is cool for her. I don't personally have much interest in the whole graduation ceremony thing, but hey, if she's into it, then I'm here to support her. She'll be graduating with her Masters on May 22, and its a date that I'm sure can't come soon enough for Jenn. As for the pic...Enjoy!
After tearing out the floor Saturday I decide to challenge Max to a wrestling match. He didn't really stand a chance, I've got a few pounds on him. By the way, if I haven't told you, he weigh 92.5 pounds now! He's gigantic! Either way, Jenn took a few pictures as I wrestled him to the ground. I love his face in this shot. Enjoy!
As promised the other day, here's a picture of what our kitchen now looks like. I feel like each Monday when I sit down to post a picture here, I have some new update on the kitchen. And this week is no different. Like I said on Saturday, friends and I (thanks again Ben and Jake) worked to pull out the floor in the kitchen. Here is what it looks like now.
Our next step is to remove the cabinets. That was originally scheduled for this past weekend, but it turns out that our cabinets won't be delivered until next week, not this week like I previously thought. So this Sunday is my scheduled cabinet DEMO day. Then installation hopefully on April 3 - 5. From there, new flooring on the entire first floor. Should be fun! Enjoy!
Not technically an entire day's work, but still...it was did take about 3 hours and it was hard work. Today Ben, Jake and I took out the linoleum flooring in the kitchen, as well as the two supporting layers of floor. It wasn't that hard thanks to the good tools Ben and Jake brought with them. Without which I'm thinking it would have taken forever. What you see here are the remnants of the floor all piled up outside. I'll post a picture of the cleaned floor next. Enjoy!
Yesterday's research, to ensure I wasn't reposting a picutre already shown, provided insight that I haven't posted to many pictures from our trip to the Golden Gate Bridge. Therefore, I figured today was as good a day as any to get another picture up on the blog.
This is one of the last shots of the bridge I took, from the last vantage point we scouted out. I spent some time online, surfing sites like Flickr to find good vantage points to photograph the bridge from. I love to get those classic shots, but at the same time I wanted the opportunity to get my own custom, new shot. This was taken off of a deserted lonely fishing pier at the bottom of the hill. I like the angle, and the bird flying by in the left of the image. Enjoy!
Yesterday's dense morning fog had me thinking of San Francisco this morning when I wanted to post a picture. The fog was so thick yesterday, I don't think there was more than 100 yards of visibility while driving up Ft. Smallwood Rd. to work. It was nuts.
All that fog reminded me of when we went to San Francisco. It was classic foggy both days we were there, and I think this picture of the fog rolling in over the hillside near the golden gate bridge, shows that well. Enjoy!
Like I said the other day, Jenn and I have been busy in the house. Last night was moving more stuff out of the nursery to make room. The picture below however, is how the kitchen/dining room now looks. Its definitely different looking without the red walls. We do plan to re-paint what was red, to another color, but we're not to sure what just yet. The wall between the doors looks amazing I think. Congrats to Brad, the contractor that fixed the drywall for us. You can also see where the doughboy wallpaper border has been removed from above the cabinets. Enjoy!
This weekend was a very busy weekend for Jenn and I. Saturday Jenn went to an event at Babies R Us (which I must say, we seem to frequent quite a bit these days) and while she was gone I took down the doughboy wallpaper border that was up in the kitchen. With that down, yesterday we were able to prime the new walls as well as prime over the red paint. In addition to all this we moved around a bunch of furniture in preparation for the nursery.
All this means that Max was around all the time, but didn't really have much to do. There were plenty of times that he was in the way, but he's pretty quick to move. And while we were painting, he ended up bumping his tail into the wet paint, and now he looks like a skunk. Enjoy!
Here's that tower that looks so cool whenever you head down Howard St. downtown. I love how it looks. Especially compared to all the newer buildings that are downtown now, and that new Hilton. For those that don't know, its known as the Bromo Seltzer Tower. And if you're intersested, here's a wikipedia link to some history. This was taken on July 4th last year, which is why I think I have the slight blowouts on the green lights. Which by the way, I like. Enjoy!
As promised, here's a picture of the full blown toy. The characters name here is Storm Shadow, one of two G.I. Joe ninjas that I purchased a week ago. They make for some neat photographic opportunities as well (which of course I'll share eventually). Thats about it, I talked a lot about this yesterday and I don't have to much to add today. Enjoy!
I have very fond memories of my toys from my childhood. For those that don't know, I grew up in the 80's and some in the 90's. But what I seem to remember as the awesome toys of my youth, those were all 80's tv show tie in toys. And I loved them that way. I can remember playing with my G.I. Joe's, or Transformers, or Ninja Turtles and even He-Man action figures with friends around the street.
That brings me to today, some 20 years later. It seems the world knows that back in the 80's they got us hooked on these brands, and now that we're older, we like a different type of toy, one that seems a bit more "collectable" than the old ones. Please note however, that this toy discussion does not include LEGO. I've been an adult fan for about 10 years now (wow, I hadn't realized I'd been collecting that long until just now...), but I wasn't REALLY into as a kid.
This picture today is a close up shot of some detail of a toy called "Mighty Muggs", google it if you've never heard of it. I got one of them for christmas from Jenn (Iron Man) because thought it looked cool. I recently picked up this little guy, whose name I will reveal in an upcoming post (try to guess), who is part of the G.I. Joe line of these same toys. Either way, I love the attention to detail that they have on them. Enjoy!
Max. Everyone's seen him. Although I still post pictures of him doing, or in this case not doing, different things. A few nights ago when I was downstairs taking pictures (see the post on Tuesday of the media cabinet for example), Max of course came down with me, and this was the result of his efforts. He usually sits pretty still while I take pictures of him, maybe he likes it, who knows. Enjoy!
Two days last week and then finishing up this week, Brad Stevens (Ben's brother in law) patched up all the drywall holes that were a result of removing the kitchen wall. I have to say, Brad did an awesome job and it looks amazing! This weekend I need to get the wall primed so we can get a coat of white paint on it before we start doing the cabinet demo and re-installation. Enjoy!
So when we decided to redo the basement a few months back, we got the projector (which is awesome by the way) and then I needed something to put the projector on and then hold the A/V equipment that would be feeding into the projector. Enter the IKEA Linarp bookcase. This bookcase is pretty awesome. Jenn and I put it together in a little over an hour and half of work, and it serves this purpose incredibly well. Here you can see the completed redo of the back of the basement, with the media cabinet (full of movies), and little stand for the Rock Band guitar, and a little bit of TV memorabilia on the mantle. Enjoy!
With a beautiful spring day like today (even thought spring is still 2 weeks away), I felt compelled to find a picture from my stash of some blooms. This is from last spring when the tree in our front yard bloomed out. It always looks really cool, and then of course makes a horrendous mess in our front yard, but hey, at least it looks good doing it. Enjoy!
As spring feels like its upon us, I thought this was a cool pictures to post. With yesterday being so warm, and today looking to be a nice one again, many people (Jenn and I included) busted out some flip-flops. As you can see here, Old Navy is primed, stocked and ready to sell you just about any color of said footwear that you would like. I thought the display that they had setup was pretty cool, so I took this to share. This was taken with the cell phone, not to bad. Yesterday's picture was a cell phone pic too. Enjoy!
Two weeks ago Jenn and I bought our new cabinets from Lowes and while standing in line at customer service to ask a question, Jenn noticed this sign. We both found it very comical. Just the fact that all they want you to do is point to what you can read. Amazing. Enjoy this and this beautiful Saturday weather!
I figure after all the grey gloomy pictures of the snow this week, I'd end the week with a nice blue sky scene. One thing I find interesting when reading other peoples blogs on photos and such, they don't always like to see the clear blue skies. Some people like the clouds for dramatic effect, others like some clouds to add character, and a few (not many) like the blue skies. I myself, I like the blue. There's something about the blue sky that is uplifting. That and of course I love taking long exposure pics at night, but thats another story, another picture.
As for this one, it was taken at Downs Park a few months back and again, its more attempts at playing with aperture settings (how much of the distance is in focus). I liked the reeds and then the contrast of the dark blue water, the lighter blue sky. It all worked for me. Enjoy!
This picture isn't blurry. If you look at the bottom of the picture you can see what looks like blurryness, but its not. When I went to take the picture the wind kicked up just at that moment, and blew a ton of snow around. This was the result. Enjoy!
So Monday when I was home for the snow and all, I did venture out to take a few pictures. It was nice to get out and photograph for a few minutes, however it was a bit cold, and windy, and did I mention cold? I took this picture because I thought that the snow looked pretty cool resting on the playground stuff, and I thought it was a good contrast between what we normally see in a playground picture. Usually sunny and kids, not dark, and covered in snow. Enjoy!
So yesterday you'll remember that I mentioned some video. Well today I bring you a first. After 607 previous photo posts, I bring the first video on this blog. Yesterday while Jenn and I were playing with Max in the snow, we each took a little bit of video of him running around and playing fetch. I put all this video together last night into one cohesive video to share here. Enjoy!
So today I didn't go to work. I couldn't have gone in if I wanted to. Today was a code red day for the government which meant "stay away". So I did exactly as I was told. Stayed away. Jenn of course had the day off (the county called her around 8:30 last night to tell her). We went outside and played with Max in the snow, and then came in for some hot chocolate. I of course took a few frozen minutes to try and photograph some of the awesome snow. Jenn measured this morning and out on our deck there was 6 inches of snow. Its been a while since we've seen that much snow. I hope everyone else enjoyed their snow day (i'll have more pictures and hopefully some video of Max this week). Enjoy!
