85 Bathroom: File this under "Ugh"

The girls and I went over to the Rental aka 85 today to wait for the internet-installer

 and to work on the bathroom.

Good news is, the bathroom is looking much better and is MUCH more functional.

Bad news is, I have to figure out what to do about this spot of missing paint:

Ugh.

I'm *really* hoping the porch paint of the same color is what they used here.

Otherwise who has a great idea to disguise this?

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(We aren't really allowed to repaint the whole room and the toilet cabinet thing has been relocated. 

More info on that when I do the bathroom before & afters.)

Have a great weekend! We will be moving.

Do you think it is a problem that I haven't packed a single thing??

11 Days Until Closing: The Cherry On Top?

So I was all set to do a post about the new paint color in the rental aka 85...

And then last night this happened:

I was upstairs in the hallway after putting Franca to bed and there was a simultaneous lightening strike/thunder boom literally in front of me. I honestly thought someone might have shot me. It was SO close. (Marc said it made his body shake and he was in the parlor. Neither girl woke up, which is incredible!)

Anyway, I went downstairs really shaken up about it. We chatted for about 10 mins and then I went back up to close windows. I was in our bedroom when I heard a loud noise outside followed by Marc charging up the stairs. Turns out, Marc was in the kitchen when the tree fell and he worried it hit Mina's room.

By some bizarre stroke of luck, the tree only caught the edge of the gutter even though it was leaning COMPLETELY over our house. Amazing. A branch is currently leaning on Franca's plastic picnic table, but everything else is fine.

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Here are some old photos of the cherry tree.

To be honest, we knew this tree would eventually need to be taken down, but I wanted to hold off. It is such a beautiful tree, provided great shade, produced beautiful flowers and delicious cherries (if you can get to them before the birds do). I guess nature had other plans.

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Farewell, our cherry tree.

You'll live on in some delicious BBQ smoke.

 

(how young do I look in these photos from 2008?)

I'm going to be a drunk ditch mouse.

One of the "needs" for our rental was a space for me to work. Preferably not in our bedroom. Something about spending on average 14 hours per day in the same room made me think I might go nuts. Just like everything with the rental we did get, it *just barely* meets the requirements. 

What do I mean?

 Let me show you the pantry in the rental.

But let's also call it my office.

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1st flr Plan
Click to enlarge

Why does a 1,400sf house have an 9' x 5' pantry but only one bathroom?? Your guess is as good as mine.

 I keep saying we are not allowed to keep food in there, only extra dishes, the fondue pot, heck we can even keep the vacuum in there, just no food. Or I'm going to end up not being able to fit out the door.

Remember when your parents used to send you out by the busy highway in front of your house to pick up all the beer bottles people would toss out their car windows and you would find that poor little mouse who went into the bottle, drank all the beer and got so fat he couldn't fit back out the bottle? 

Oh, wait, that was just MY parents who did that?? Anyway, you get what I mean. 

Yes, I did just compare my future self to a drunk ditch mouse.

Happy Friday!~

Bloglovin' with the Next Toolbar for the Win!

So to some of you this might not mean anything****, but to a bunch of us the shutting down of Google Reader as of July 1st is a BIG DEAL. After that announcement  alternatives quickly vied for our loyalty, namely Feedly and Bloglovin'. Feedly has a clean layout and the name Bloglovin'. Ew. I could not decide which one I wanted to switch to, so I stuck my head in the sand and pretended Google Reader would be here forever.

BUT then I just found out something that makes BL (I refuse to keep typing Bloglovin') pull ahead.
They have **almost ** a next button like Google Reader.

See that little button up there in my toolbar? Back when Google Reader was my thing, I would click it, and it would take me to the new posts in each blog I read! Amazing.

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Now see this? Bloglovin doesn't have a "next" button, but rather a toolbar that pops up and lets you click older and newer! Not perfect, but I'll take it.

(To see this, go to Bloglovin.com, sign up, import your links from Google Reader (so easy), "frame" view should be already be selected in settings, so just click on a blog in your list (but not the title or it will take you to the blog w/ no next toolbar), see now you have your handy toolbar!)

So unless someone tells me that I can do this in Feedly too, looks like I'm a BL girl.

p.s. ****If you don't know what any of this means, a blog reader is essentially a free service where you subscribe to a bunch of blogs and it organizes them and lists all the new posts for you. Pretty cool.

p.p.s. Does anyone know if the Bloglovin' bar gives the blog "hits"? I don;t think it goes directly to the blog itself.