Twas a good weekend!

It was a very busy, but fun weekend! It started Saturday, when Josh and I finallllly ventured up north a little bit to visit my sister, Paula, and her boyfriend Ben. #14: Visit Paula in Fond du Lac. And now one of those trips is complete. I say finally, because she's been living in her new place there for over two years now, and the last time I went to visit her is when she needed help moving 2 years ago. I know...I'm a bad sister. Well, anyway, we didn't actually go to Fond du Lac, but that was out of my control. We went to Oshkosh, where her boyfriend lives. Fond du lac...Oshkosh...what's the difference?! I'm still counting it.

We started out this visit by completing #38: Start a Roth IRA. The boyfriend, Ben, was very nice and helped us set that up, even though I'm sure we're one of his smallest investors. :-) We're now on our way to saving a littttle bit more for retirement! Thanks Ben!

Then, we drove to Appleton to have dinner at The Melting Pot. Twas good, as usual. It seems now that we're starting to be frequent guests of this restaurant. But I'm pretty sure we won't be there again for a while. Here is a picture of our visit there:

Then, we went back to Ben's apartment and played some DDR on his Wii. I had never played before, but I figured that it could be that hard. Ummmm, yeah. I was wrong. It was about 100 times harder than I thought it was going to be. But still fun. We had a really good time hanging out with Paula and Ben!

Then, on Sunday, we drove to Neenah, WI to visit some of Josh's family. Josh's Grandma is visiting from California, so they were having a whole family get-together kind of thing. We had some goooood steaks, goooood conversation, and I got to see a cute dog!

Oh, and one of the most exciting things that happened this weekend--we FINALLY got our wedding album! Yay! It's only been almost a year. :) But I love it and it was definitely worth the wait! If you're gettting married in the Appleton area or somewhere around there, I'd definitely recommend our photographer: Picture This of Wisconsin. (http://www.picturethisofwi.com/). Jenni, the photographer, takes amazing pictures!

The Highlight of our Weekend

Is this:


Yesssss, that's a toilet paper holder. I haven't had one in two years, since I got bored in March of 2007 and decided to do some 'mini renovations' to my bathroom, and thus, took down my toilet paper holder. And never got a new one until now. It's really a wonderful invention.

And another highlight of the weekend:

Using our saw. As much as I'm afraid of it, I do really like this thing.

And now for a picture of a non-highlight of our weekend:

These dreaded door frames. They look simple enough to build--just measure, cut at 45 degree angles, paint, and nail into wall. But when you actually have to put them up and make them look good, they're not so simple anymore. As of last night, the door frames were winning. Maybe we'll have better luck on our next attempt.

A new recipe and a new love

Actually, two new loves! We'll start with those. This has nothing to do with my list, but worth talking about anyway. :)

#1: Chewy, Giant Nerds candy. Nerds are great just as they are, but these new chewy, giant version are wonderful! I think you should go out a buy a box right now!

#2: Trader Joe's grocery store. We've had one for a couple years now--maybe even longer than that. I don't keep up with that kind of thing too often. However, it's about 20 minutes away, so I never even thought about going to check it out. Josh just got back from California on Friday, though, and while he was there, he got to have the Trader Joe's experience. After hearing him talking about it, I definitely wanted to try it! And I was in LOVE! There were so many good things! But we made sure not to go over our grocery budget. :) A few noteworthy things I was excited to buy: Trader Joe's little peanut butter cups, 3-cheese pizzas, their refridgerated pizza crust, frozen stir fry, protein drinks, and lemonade iced tea. And there's a few things I'm excited to try next time we go back, including the orange chicken. Yum! If you have one near you, I'd recommend you go to it!

Ok, now onto the list. I'm still working on #38: make a new recipe each month. This month's recipe doesn't have a name, I don't think. But I'll made one up anyway. Let's call it "Squirrel Chicken." But don't worry, there's no squirrel meat in it. It was just so good, it made me think of a squirrel! I got this "recipe" from my good friend, Liz. I put "recipe" in quotes, because I didn't really have a recipe, and neither did she. I'm sure there's an actual recipe for this somewhere, but she just told me a meal she likes to make.

Here's the ingredients involved:

Chicken breasts (we used two, because there's 2 of us)
Olive Oil
Italian style bread crumbs
Provolone cheese slices (like the deli slices)
Toothpicks

And here's the "recipe:

Pound each chicken breast with one of those meat-pounder things to make it thinner. (these aren't technical terms)
Pour some olive oil on each chicken breast--make sure it's covered in it
Dip chicken breast in the bread crumbs
Place chicken breast on a plate and put a piece of provolone cheese on top.
Roll up the chicken breast and put some toothpicks in it to make it stay.

Put in greased pan.
And bake.

Now, since we didn't have an actual recipe, I just baked it for 30 minutes at 375 degrees. I started out doing 20 minutes, but after I took them out and cut them open, I saw they weren't quite done yet, so I put them back in the oven for 10 more minutes. That seemed to be a good amount of time.

And they turned out very well! Josh was very pleased with this dinner. Josh made us mashed potatoes and we also had a vegetable to round out our meal.

Here are some pictures of the chicken:

Now, you'll see on the left of this picture, that piece of chicken isn't rolled up. That was a "problem" piece of chicken. Problem meaning, it just didn't want to be rolled. Very stubborn squirrel chicken. I think the next time I make this, actually, I'm going to do that instead. I'm sure it'll taste the same, it'll cook much quicker, and it'll save me time and patience trying to roll them! I wasn't very good at that. :) All in all, it was a great meal though!

One last picture for your viewing pleasure:

This is Josh (after un-grouting our bathtub) holding the bottle of wine I got him for his birthday a few years ago. I customized the label of a picture of us, and we tried to keep it all this time. However, I don't think it wants to be kept, as it is now growing something nasty in the bottom of the inside of the bottle. Therefore, it was time to say good-bye to the wine bottle. It was a sad day. Not only because we had to throw out the wine bottle--but also because of the events that occurred during the un-grouting process. But that's for another blog. I'm not ready to talk about that yet.

I used to think I was handy..but now I'm not so sure

It's only been a week since I last wrote, but I feel like I have a lot to report on!

Let's start with one item that I just completely crossed off my list. #88: Get new tires for my car. Car people have recommending to me for about a year now, that I should think about getting new tires on my car. I always brushed off that recommendation, thinking about more exciting things I could spend $500 on. That was until this winter. Every time I drove my car out in the snow I'd have trouble stopping, or my car would slide around all over on the roads. It has been quite scary driving at times. So, this past Friday, I took my car in for new tires. In case you're wondering, I got Uniroyal Tiger Paw tires. They sound coooool, don't they? They only thing that could make them sound cooler is if the name was Squirrel Paw. But I'll settle for Tiger. It's a good animal. Just not as cute. Anyway, the guy at my car place said these would perform great in ice and snow, which is definitely what I wanted! When I was paying for them, I told the guy that it had to snow now, so I could try them out. Everyone else in the car place looked at me like I was crazy. Who really wants it to snow!? Well, I got my wish, as it snowed Sunday night. So of course, I took my car out for a drive to see how it would perform. Now, there was only about an inch of snow, so it's not like I was driving through a blizzard, but it was very icy, as it had been raining the whole day prior to the snow. And so far, I'd give the tires a good rating! No sliding around for my car!

They sure look fierce like a tiger, don't they?


Now, I'll move on to a couple items on my list in the home improvement section. Josh and I are still working on getting the bathroom renovations completed. Since he's gone for a week, I thought I might try my hand at re-caulking our bathtub. (Which is #56 on my list) Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Maybe it's simple if the old caulk had been there for a week. But it seems as if this caulk has been there for 10 years! I spent 6 hours in one day trying to get it off between the bathtub and the tile. I went through 3 different bottles of caulk remover. The first two were ok. I don't remember the names, but I don't recommend them anyway, so it doesn't matter. However, this 3rd bottle I got was the brand that was recommended to me by a lot of the DIY websites. It's the 3M brand. I just didn't get it at first because I couldn't find it anywhere! Lowe's didn't have it; nor did Home Depot. I finally found it at Menard's. And it worked like a charm. I did what the directions said and I put some onto the old caulk and let it sit for 3 hours to get the old caulk to soften. Then, I went back with my hammer and flathead screw driver, and tried to chisel the pieces of caulk away. And it came off pretty much right away! This stuff was a life saver. In case you're in the market for caulk remover, here's what the bottle looks like:


I was going to put the new caulk down right away. But while I was down in the tub chiseling away at the caulk for 6 hours, I noticed that a lot of the grout between our tiles had cracks in them! I knew that couldn't be good, as water could get in those cracks and into the wall. Yikes! So, after talking to Josh a little bit, I decided to hold off on the caulking and when he comes home next weekend, we're going to re-grout the tiles in the bathtub. This one little project is turning into a huge one! But I know this is good to do. I mean, look at the grout in these pictures:

Looks gross doesn't it? Don't worry...our whole shower area doesn't look like that, but there's a few more tiles that definitely need some work!

Another small problem I ran into while removing the caulk was up at the top of the tile, between the tile and the drywall. Some of the removal went ok up there, but at one point, I started taking out more of the drywall with my caulk remover tool! It's not horrible, but I don't know if simply putting caulk over it again will fix this problem.

Here's a picture, so you know what I'm talking about:

While it's not horrible, I feel that that shouldn't have happened. The white part of this picture is from when I tried to use some drywall plaster to see if that would fix some of the small holes. I'm not sure if it worked or not. Sooo, this is going to be another area where I will wait for Josh to come home to fix. :) I hope he's not reading this and is now afraid to come home! Don't worry babe...it's not as bad as it looks. :)

I have managed to do one thing right though. So far, at least. I have succeeded in painting the bathroom green, like the rest of our bathroom area. I only did a primer coat and the first coat of the green so far, but so far so good! I plan on doing the second coat tonight. Even though it's the smallest room in our condo, it was definitely the hardest to paint! There was so much stuff to tape and go around. And then when I had to do the high parts toward the ceiling, I had to bring my step stool in there, which didn't really fit. It was definitely a challenge.

I'm also working on putting down baseboard trim in some of our rooms. I was hoping to have that done by the time Josh gets back, but now that these other problems arose, I've decided to hold off on that project for now. One thing at a time...

That's about it for the home improvement projects for now. Hopefully next time I write, I can put up pictures that actually look good!

In other news: I am now up to 35 push-ups at once! Only 5 more to go. And when my current bottle of vitamins is used up, I might think about switching to the Flintstones gummy vitamins. They just look sooooo good! Mother, if you're reading this-- if they would've had these when I was little, I wouldn't have had to spit out my gross, chalky, Flintstones vitamin in the corner of my room every day. :) I read on the bottle that adults can take the gummy vitamins if they take 2 a day. Sounds good to me...I'm down with eating a piece of candy twice a day. :)

A Superb Review

Did I spell 'superb' right? It looks weird. Anyway, I have completed #94: Give reviews of products I bought online. I only gave 2 reviews, but I don't buy much online, so that's all you're going to get. A couple weeks ago, Josh and I bought a couple of small furniture items for our bathroom. You can see them in my bathroom pictures below. One of them is the white medicine cabinet and the other is the white linen tower to the right of our sink. We purchased both of these items from overstock.com. They both came in about 3 days from the date we ordered them, and they came in tact and looked great! Granted, we did have to put them together, but the pieces looked great and were not damaged when we took them out of the box. That's always a plus! They were both very easy to put together. Well, I can only speak for the medicine cabinet, which I helped out with. Josh put the linen tower together himself, but from what I observed, it looked fairly easy.

I gave both of these items great reviews. They look wonderful in our small bathroom and really bring the whole look together!

To read my reviews, check out these two items from overstock.com:
Linen Tower
Medicine Cabinet

In other news: The gym is going great--I am now up to 33 push-ups. Only 7 more until I hit 40! And I had a grapefruit with a banana with my breakfast this morning.