And Now She's Back, From Outer Space...(I think those are the lyrics, right?!?)

Holy bejeezus, it's been ages since I've written! Life's been cuckoo bananas the past couple of months. The new job, working on the upstairs, making my first foray into the world of scrapbooking, getting some new ink, being awesome in general. You know, the yoozj (I say this all the time as a shortened version of "usual." This is the closest I can come to spelling it phonetically. Damn you, abrevs, damn you!)

So, anywhooo...life's been good. Busy. I'm working on two weddings with my old job. I had been with these two couples from the beginning of their planning processes, and B&F let me stay on with them for these two events, to keep continuity, which was nice of them. I'm learning a lot about the hotel business in my new job. It's weird, you don't really consider how much jargon you use in any given field, until you are in a different field and have to learn all new jargon. My short term goal for this job is to move from being hourly to being a salaried employee within 6 months. I have 4 months left. I think it'll happen :-D

That says "Happy Mother's Day from,  the Kids"

My sisters and I put together a scrapbook for our mom for Mother's Day, which was my first attempt at scrapbooking. On the one hand, I liked being able to have a tangible project that I could show off. On the other hand, it's crazy expensive and super overwhelming. I walked into the scrapbooking store and almost had a damn heart attack. There were colors and books and patterns and big paper and little paper and weird tools and stickers and more paper and sparkles and a whole room full of women cutting paper and chattering at each other. I almost turned around and walked out the door. But, I sucked it up, had the saleswoman show me around. In the end, it turned out to be colorful and kinda mismatched, a little uneven, but completely heartfelt and perfect. We each contacted our friends to send us a little note or picture of a memory they had of our mom. It was amazing, all of the wonderful things that people had to say about her and how she impacted their lives. And I'm not gonna lie, I cried a little bit while I was making it. No shame in my game...

On a related note, Mom wants us all to get matching-ish tattoos that say I Hope You Dance. Mom and Jade got theirs on Monday and I got mine after work today. They are all in different locations on our bodies and in different fonts and they completely reflect our personalities! Mine is a beaut!

And finally, the upstairs...It has been a BEAST! But, we've redone the floors, painted the walls, put up a new ceiling, added a couple of circuits, and put in the surround sound. We still have to put up the trim on and paint the ceiling and that's it. (As soon as it's all done, I'll post pictures of the entire remodel. It's been quite a journey!) Then we get to move furniture up and relax for a few months until the next project! Just kidding. Our bathroom has just about shit the bed. The shower tiles are starting to fall off, which means, rather than building our patio this summer and enjoying the outside, we're going to be redoing the bathroom much sooner than anticipated. Ah well, the joys of home improvement...

Change is A Comin...

Change is a comin' in our home. This weekend, Danny and I began working on our upstairs. What is our upstairs like currently, you ask? Well let me just tell you. It is a big empty room that runs the length of the house. There is some tragic wood paneling, a strange pegboard ceiling, grody cork flooring, an awesome built-in desk with some fabulous 70's pattern laminate, an interesting half wall made of pegboard, a giant closet, some built in dressers and very little ventilation/air/heat. Needless to say this is a space that we don't ever use. (Ironically, when Danny first moved into the house, it was a trainwreck, and the only place that we could sleep was in the upstairs. Just imagine me and Danny, living in this one room with two cats (which I am allergic to, and I was mortal enemies with one of them) and sleeping on an air mattress that had a slow leak, so that we would wake up pretty much on the floor every morning.)

This room is going to be transformed into a home theater/office space, that can also be used as a guest bedroom. We took down the weird pegboard wall and ceiling, and began sanding the walls to get them ready to paint. We are going to eventually replace the lights, add a ceiling fan or two, replace the floor, put wainscotting in for the ceiling, add more electrical circuits and convert the dressers into bookcases. I'm excited to see how everything will end up, and I think it will be pretty awesome! We're totes inviting folks over to hang out when it's all finished!

The weird pegboard wall has already been taken down. 

Pull down those ceiling tiles, boy!

Change is a comin' in me. I'm not a skinny girl. I've never been a skinny girl. I've always been athletic, muscular and curvy, and I am A-OK with that. Honestly, I would much rather be shapely and womanly than bone thin. But over the past 6 or 7 months, I have just been a mess. I have fallen off the fitness wagon. I have fallen off and gotten tangled up and dragged along behind. The bane of my existence is shopping for pants...to the point where I have broken down crying in the store. *Ask the boy about that day. It was traumatizing for both of us.*

My goal is to get down to 150 pounds by my birthday. That's 31 pounds of Amber to go bye-bye. I want to be able to buy pants that don't look like I've poured them on (It doesn't matter what size I buy, pants just really aren't made for my body shape). I want to be able to get shorts this summer and not worry that I'm Cameltoe McGee or that my legs look like sausages about to burst out of the casing.

I miss my collarbones. I don't own a scale because I don't really care what my weight is. I'm far too muscular to worry about having small numbers on the scale. If I ever get down to 120 pounds, it's almost guaranteed that I've had a leg amputated somewhere along the way. My biggest indicator is how my clothes fit (clearly not well these days) and whether I can see my collarbones. I can't see them, and I don't know when they stopped being well-defined.

So, now it's out there in the universe and interwebs. I am not ashamed of where I am physically and sharing it, so that's what I'm going to do. If you don't care, that's fine. It just helps me to remain accountable to myself if I can show some progress, especially if it's out there for others to see, rather than just being recorded in my personal notebook.

Now, this blog is not about to become something focused on diet and exercise. That's not interesting to me. But I will share my stats, maybe weekly, and I'm going to try to do something fun and out of the ordinary at least once a month and I may talk about that. Hell, if you have anything that you are excited about in your healthy living, let me know. I'll try most things at least once! On that note, it may be time for me to register for the Warrior Dash! Who's ready to get dirty with me?!? Ru, I know you're in there like swimwear :)

Oh, You Fency, Huh?

Well, we're almost halfway through January. Where, oh where has the time gone? Not much has been going on in Amber's World of Domesticating, because Amber is even more broke than before she had a job (oof, you know things are bad when I start referring to myself in 3rd person. I'm done with that now.)
Anyway, I don't think I ever told you about our fence! We started it Labor Day weekend, and it took us about 2 months to get to a place where we could actually let the dogs out in the back yard. It's still not completely done. I still have to stain about 1/4 of it and the garden fence, but I think we did a pretty damn good job!

First fence posts!

Some of the rails are up!

Other side of the yard, keeping out the Demon Bush!

Side fence...the gate wasn't done yet

Our neighbor has this demon thorny bush next to his driveway that we had to build the fence around. And I'm pretty sure that bush gave me more pricks than a college bar on a Saturday night! And because I'm smaller and Danny doesn't know how to use the paint sprayer, I got to climb around in the bush to stain that side of the fence. What. Fun. It was actually probably pretty entertaining to watch me in jeans, a hoody tied as tight around my face as I could get it and still breathe, a respirator, safety glasses and gloves, trying to protect myself from that pokey bastard and the toxic stain spray.

Demon Bush

Devil Thorns on the Demon Bush

Add a little stain...

 Here's the cool thing...we built this bad boy by ourselves, from scratch. None of that pre-fab panel shit. I can now take a glance at a piece of wood and be able to tell you if it's shit and warped, or if it will give you a lovely fence line. The security guards at the Menard's lumber yard know our car. I can contort my body to fit into 1/4 of the front seat of the Jeep, with bags of supplies in the footwell, and still hold on to 10 foot boards so they don't go through the front window.  I can carry and cut wood like a fuckin lumberjack. Table saw, you don't scare me. I have my own tool belt. In other words, Amber and Danny are fence building BOSSES!

A Fence, A Fence! My Kingdom for a Fence!

Today, we completed day 2 of fence construction. Well, technically day 3 if you count the day we spent last weekend digging holes with a post hole digger. (I may or may not have fallen into one of those holes while we were cleaning up, but that's neither here nor there...) It's funny, because even though it doesn't seem like a lot has been done, this business takes a LOOOOOOOONG TIME! The majority of time has been spent getting materials, one Jeep-load at a time. We make a list, hoof it over to Menard's and spent an hour or two finding everything we need, pulling the Jeep around back and loading it up. Then we spend another hour driving home (usually with me curled up in a little ball in the passenger seat, holding boards poking over my head and cowering in fear that if we take a turn too sharply, I may just end up with my head smooshed against the window) and unloading everything.

At this point, we've got enough materials to finish about half the fence, so we should get a ton done on Sunday. The sucky (not really) part is that now I have a NEW JOB (Huzzah!!), I won't be home all day on Mondays for us to have 2 full days to get things done. I'll take that trade-off :-D. I laugh whenever we are outside working because the dogs always look at us like they are ready to jump through the door. I think they know we're getting ready to let them loose in the backyard and they just can't wait!

What the Deck?!?

We finally finished the deck on Sunday! It's so pretty! We'll put some skirting around the bottom at some point, but for right now, it's all done, the grill is in its new home, and I've even sat on it with a book in my little camp chair. Look at how far we've come, and I think we did a dang good job, especially since we did this whole thing from the ground up!

Funny story though, we were going to make burgers on the grill to celebrate the deck being done (and not having to drag the grill out of the garage all the way to the side of the house, walk all the way around the house from the kitchen to use it, wait forever for it to cool down enough to put it back in the garage, get eaten alive by mosquitoes when putting it away, etc, etc)...aaaaaaaand the propane tank was empty. What is our life?!? So we made them on our tiny George Foreman grill (yay for knocking out the fat!). And you know what? Those burgers were delicious, because they were sating the hunger caused by a job well done.

Eeek, only a few boards left!!

And the finished product! (Don't mind that giant concrete pile...)

Oh, hey creeper in the door!

That is one good looking deck, if I do say so myself!

Deck the Halls

We're building a deck on the back door, so that we can let the dogs out in the backyard instead of the front. We still don't have a fence yet, but hopefully that will be coming in the next month or so. So, back to this deck business. It's a little over 5x7, and we have been working on it for over a month, with Danny's ridiculous work schedule, my ineptitude with tools, and the fact that I WILL NOT work outside near dusk because the mosquitoes eat my ass alive.

It's bee a few hours a day, here and there, just to get the framing and the posts up. There has been a ton of frustration over not having the correct tool, or bolts being stripped, or hitting a screw with the spade bit, or effing up the calculations. But I think we finally got most everything figured out.

Here's were we were a few days ago:

Just a little frame

Lola and Bozz urging us on so they can play in the backyard

 And here's where we are today...There's even more done because the boy was outside with the skeeters (after dark...GASP!!) adding steps.

Ta daaaa! Let there be railing! And posts with covers!

The view from inside. Don't mind that pile of concrete. That will be the patio soon!

Today's work was completely opposite of yesterday. We actually had the correct tools to work with, it wasn't damn monsooning, it was less than the temperature of hell outside and we had more than 2 hours before being eaten to death. We also got the decking for FREE from Danny's brother, which is AWESOME, because that stuff is around 8 bucks per foot. And the spindles in the railing came from the Habitat For Humanity Restore It store, and were the same color and brand as the decking. We got 3 boxes (57 spindles) for $30 total. When we went to Lowes after, the spindles were $3.56 each. Say whaaaaaaaat? What up $173 savings!

When it comes down to it, this project has not been cheap (At least to me. I'm always on the look-out for the sales), but in perspective, it has cost way less than if we a) hired someone to construct it or b) bought all the materials at full price. It will be cool to see how it all turns out :-)