Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope your holiday shopping is going well and you are looking forward to your respective celebrations! David and I love Christmas, and we especially love the family time and how the holidays always bring everyone together. David has been working from the office lately, so we've had even more time together to enjoy the festivities. Even Ash looks ready for Christmas with his holiday collar! Here is he looking confused/unhappy because I told him to "stay" while I snapped a photo.

Our upstairs tenants hung a wreathe, and so on his way home David picked up one for our door as well. In hindsight, we should have chosen the bright red bow for visibility. Still, our very first wreath! 

When I went up to Vermont for Pepper's vet appointment I enlisted my dad to help me find a Christmas tree that was fresh, beautiful, and smelled great. We tried one place first and weren't super happy with what we found, but at the second place we found the beauty pictured below! David begrudgingly strung the lights (I like a lot of lights, this tree could have even used a third strand!) and then we decorated it together while Ash watched hesitatingly from afar. Since then we've been slowly adding presents! 

 

We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season. We will be beginning our celebrations on Saturday with my baby brother's wedding (crazy!) and then splitting our time between each of our families. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The roof, the roof, the roof is..... gone?

For those of you who know the Bloodhound Gang song that the title of this post refers to, nothing is actually on fire. But, for some reason, that song came to mind while I watched the drycleaner across the street being demolished this morning. We have known for awhile now that the very unsightly drycleaner across the street from our house would eventually be torn down and converted into 6 condos, but we didn't know when. This morning I wake up to a backhoe tearing into the roof of the building with a vengeance  Woopee! We are really excited to have this eye sore out of our lives. We are a bit concerned that with 6 condos on the lot instead of a small little business, we may lose some of the sunlight in our dining room. Not much we can do about that though, so for now I'm enjoying my front seat view of this demo process while working at my desk. Here are a few pictures! 

And one video titled "backhoe vs. steel beam". I think the beam is winning... 

Katie and her colleagues make "Submit It Maybe (Call Me Maybe)"

Katie's research lab (Katie = David's sister) does a holiday talent show with their Italian cohorts (her lab has members both in Italy and at Harvard). This year, she and her lab mates remade the popular song "Call Me Maybe" to reflect relevant research themes in the lab. I'm posting about this video here because a) the video is awesome and entertaining and b) Ash is a guest star in the video! If you are short on time skip ahead to minute 2:55 to see Ash. To watch the music video, click here. 

Shelves in the garage

Now that the loft is in, I've been waiting to put some shelving in to help organize the place. I have a TON of stuff in the garage, from go-karting to yard work stuff, and I simply don't have space in the lower level if I want to put a car in the garage (it was really really disorganized). This was the motivation to building the loft, which helped some, but I really needed to have some shelves up there to make good use of the space.

Matt helped me put up the shelves which have 20" brackets which EACH are capable of holding 1,000 lbs. I put 24" deep particle board on them as it was the cheapest thing I could find that had some stiffness. I'm pretty sure my boards will break before I get anywhere near that point, but in theory, I could hang a car off of each shelf. Actually, with five brackets on each shelf the load capacity is 5,000 lbs, which is WAY over the capacity of the particle board (and potentially my wall). Good thing I don't plan on using it.

The shelves are currently pretty full. The good thing is that they have pretty much removed everything that was on the main floor! You'll see what happened down there in a later post..

Happy Birthday Ash!

About a year ago we made the leap to adopt Ash (read more about that here), and we couldn't be happier having him as part of our family. He is perfect! We love him so much and he has brought so much joy to our lives. Because he is a rescue we don't know his actual birthday, so we declared the day we adopted him as his birthday; Happy Birthday Ash! To celebrate the day, we brought him home one of his favorite treats :)

Who do you trust to give you a haircut?

David's mother has been cutting his hair his entire life and doing a fantastic job at it. While he was at Cornell it didn't matter that sometimes he'd go months without seeing his mom, he'd just cycle through a very trim look and a very bushy look. Since starting at Stroud, a regular haircut has been more important. Luckily, it has mostly worked out scheduling wise for his mom to cut his hair, with just a couple of trips to see this barber down the street (who he quite likes). Yesterday afternoon (David his home this week on vacation) David and I decided he needed a haircut, but instead of going to the barber he thought it would be a good opportunity to let me wield the scissors. Keep in mind that I have never given a person a haircut (other than a couple of really hack job ear trims on my uncle Chip). I have groomed the dogs (see blog post here), but I'm not quite sure that translates... 

Anyway, I took a look at a video from a blog I read for some pointers, set up in the kitchen (my makeshift "grooming" studio), and got to work. It took me a bit longer than it takes his mom, and David is not known for his ability to sit for long periods of time. This is probably a good thing though, because if he had been a happy client to sit for hours I would have been much more focused on perfecting the cut. All in all the end result looked pretty good! I may have to make a few adjustments over the next day or so as I see straggling long pieces, but I'm satisfied with my first hair cutting attempt. Luckily, David thinks it looks "great" as well! 

Front shot

Side shot

Professional Tire Service

As you can imagine with 4 cars, I've accumulated a lot of spare tires. The rx7 doesn't have any extra, but Caroline's snow tires, extra truck tires, and soon to be extra MR2 tires take up a lot of space in the garage. The solution in a 13 foot tall garage? An overhead tire rack!

Matt and I made the rack using one of the extra steel beams I bought when I bought the ones for the loft floor. It works pretty well and looks professional. The beam is twisting in the center a little due to the weight of the tires (not a structural concern, but it looks off), so I'll be putting in a strap to hold the top of the beam to the wall in the center. Strap or no strap though, it still makes the garage look like a professional tire shop!

Poodle Symphony

Last week David and I dog-sat for Mom and Tommy while they were in Florida with Dan and Purvi. This meant that instead of having just two poodles running around the house (Ash and Pepper) we had four doggies to care for (Coal and Brandy being the temporary guests). One evening we left all four dogs alone while we went to take care of a few wedding tasks. We had been meaning to video Ash while he was alone in the house to try and catch him in middle of his shoe arranging act. We decided that with all four dogs it would be a great opportunity to see what the little fur balls do without any humans around.

This is just an image of the video - click on the link below to watch the clip!

The video we took is about 50 minutes long, and the majority of it is quite boring - you just see each dog change position, or go for a walk. In the first 5 minutes though the dogs are really vocal. It's actually sad to listen to, because you can hear how upset they are to have been left alone. In the video you will only see 3 dogs, and this is because we left Pepper in the crate as we were unsure how he and the other dogs would get along without us around. Either Pepper or Coal starts off the howling, and then all three black poodles join into what becomes a miniature poodle symphony (Brandy seems oblivious to the chaos). If you skip through the rest of the video you may be lucky enough to catch Ash in the act of carrying a shoe or two!

To watch the video, click on the link below. It's a large file, so we have stored the video elsewhere and made it available for you to watch. You'll get a good laugh!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone! Those of us in the Boston area decided to celebrate this tasty holiday by bringing out some of the "child" in us. In other words, we got together on Sunday night to carve pumpkins and eat candy. Katie T. and Phil didn't think they had carved pumpkins since they were little kids! We all plunged our hands into the slimey pumpkin bellies, carved intricate designs with carving knives clearly designed for safety and not effectiveness, roasted and ate pumpkin seeds, ate pizza, enjoyed delicious apple crisp courtesy of Christine, and snitched bites of our favorite Halloween candy treats. Fun was had by all! 

Alex and Ruby: we missed you guys!!!! Today for Halloween we will be cleaning up the porch a bit, putting the pumpkins on display, and hoping for a couple of trick-er treat-ers. As our house has a higher likelihood of seeing a couple of kids come by, Christine and Matt will be coming over to join us! 

Our foray into fostering poodles

For quite some time now David and I have been discussing fostering a poodle through Poodle Rescue Vermont, the organization we adopted Ash from. A few weeks ago we decided to sign up and see what happened. Almost immediately, we were met with a very warm reception and a request to foster one of their very special poodles, named Pepper. Pepper is special because he has had a very serious fungal infection, and so has needed quite a bit of medical care and attention from PRVT. He is doing well now and his most recent tests came back completely normal. He is still on a couple of medications, that we give him in the morning and at night.

To help keep all of Pepper's followers up to date on his progress, we have created a second blog devoted to  Pepper and any future poodles that we foster. You can visit it here: http://fosterpoodles.blogspot.com/. There is also a permanent link to to the fostering blog on the sidebar of THIS blog.

Pepper will be with us until PRVT finds his forever home. So far Pepper has done a fantastic job settling in - he is very much a people person and not at all timid like Ash was in the beginning. He and Ash aren't quite sure how they feel about each other yet. The first day was met by an exchange of low growls and general apathy towards each other, and then on the second day Ash decided that he wanted play with Pepper and so invited him to play on many different occasions by pouncing towards him or tugging gently on his ear. Pepper isn't sure how he feels about this though, and so hasn't reciprocated yet. Ash isn't sure how he feels about David and I giving Pepper attention, so that has led to a few small snafus. However, I think they will warm up to each other with time - once they work out what their roles (e.g., right now I think they both think they are top dog). 

We will keep this blog devoted to our lives, updates about the house, and stories about Ash. If you would like to follow Pepper's journey, please visit our fostering blog!

Finally... the bathroom is finished!

Finally, after many months, the bathroom is finished! We started the renovation back in May and got about 80% finished in the first few weeks and have been chipping away very, very slowly for the last few months. The bathroom was a significant change, with both the sink and tub moving to different locations. The "before" picture really does not do justice to how bad the bathroom was. Try to imagine the cardboard walls, the inches of caulk sealing the round tub to a square wall, and the "no mans land" behind the shower head (to the left of the sink) when you look at the pictures.

Notice Ash posing for the camera in the after picture

The new layout actually gives a lot more space, as we went with a 48" tub (rather than a 60") and recovered the "dead space" on the right side of the room.

Demolition - you can see the layers of wall that have been added over time. Lots of wallpaper! With the help of Grandpa John and Tommy we removed everything but the toilet, all the way down to the lath. There unfortunately wasn't much worth salvaging in this room.

The first step in re-building the bathroom was to construct a wall to enclose the bathtub. We were excited that the new layout would create a little alcove for the toilet, making it less crowded than in the old layout. I was pretty happy with how my first big plumbing job turned out - and after the initial tweaks, we've had no leaks! I also had never done any wall tiling, but a few YouTube videos helped get me started and in the end it was a pretty straightforward job. We did not plan well with the grout though, and most of it had hardened quite a bit before we had time to wipe it off. We were able to "scrape it smooth", but it took much longer than it should have. Caroline was a trooper helping to install the cement board underneath the floor tile at 2am in the morning - she had just had a gum graft done and so wasn't feeling in tip top condition. We were pushing the time envelope so that the tiles would have time to set over night and we could continue working the next day. Luckily Mom was there to help us move along for this part. 

In regards to the window, the new lay out is much nicer because the window is actually part of the bathroom - making the shower more private and allowing more sunlight to enter the room. However, once the window became such a prominent aspect of the bathroom, it was necessary to replace the sill and trim as they had significantly rotted due to being exposed to the water in the shower. In addition, it was all pretty cheap wood and looked very out of place in the house. Dad made the new sill with his router, and it looks pretty good!

We are really happy with the finished bathroom, and everything is much more usable. We have so much more storage (which Caroline is having quite a bit of fun organizing). We now have a cabinet over the toilet, drawers in the vanity, and an amazingly spacious shelf from IKEA next to the sink for towels and commonly used items. We particularly love the back splash over the sink - it adds a nice accent to the room! Also, not shown very well in the pictures is a nifty vertical towel rod (also from IKEA) next to the sink - it has lots of pegs sticking out in different directions so is a really space efficient way to hang multiple towels. 

We still have a few finishing touches to make (e.g., painting the floor vent, installing a threshold, touching up some wall paint, installing a curved shower rod, buying a new bathmat, etc.) To see more pictures of the entire renovation process, click here. 

African violet ICU

Anyone who has heard me talk about any of my gardening attempts knows that I do not typically have great success. I have killed a number of house plants, and the herbs my mom so kindly gave me for Christmas didn't even make it until spring. However, now that David and I have a nice back yard and a house to decorate, I have jumped in with renewed determination to keep my plants healthy. This well-intentioned effort was immediately met by the death of my third African violet (take a guess what happened to #1 and #2).

Luckily the leaves still looked green and healthy, so I set out to salvage the plant by rooting the leaves. At my grandmother's instruction, I placed the leaves in a dish of water and kept them in the sun until they each sprouted a good set of roots. I have now transferred each leaf to its own pot (filled with African violet potting mix) and will do my best to nurse each leaf into its own plant. Wish me luck! This African violet has been on edge long enough that I don't even remember what color flowers it has... 

Our first 5K!

As many of you know, David and I have been working hard to get in better shape and lose some of the weight we gained while eating out all the time during house renovations.  In addition to eating healthier, we have been trying to run a few times a week. David was able to jump back into it a little bit better than I was, but I have slowly worked my way up from suffering through a single mile to being able to reasonably comfortably run about three.  I got it in my head about a month ago that one way to keep myself motivated would be to sign up for a 5K!  Luckily for me, I have an awesome fiance who jumps on board with these sorts of things and he signed up as well. We are even planning to do another one in December!

We woke up early this morning (7:00am) and went through our morning routine (breakfast for Ash, breakfast for us, walk for Ash) and then headed down to Davis Square to participate in our very first 5K. The 5K was sponsored by the Somerville Homeless Coalition, so our registration fee went to a good cause. Oh, and we got cool matching t-shirts :) We didn't quite know what to expect, but in the end it turned out to be a lot of fun! Based on bib numbers there seemed to be about 1000 participants, and it was neat to run with a crowd. We decided before hand that we wouldn't run together so that David could compete for a personal best (I'm most certainly slower than he is, and was happy to trudge along at my own pace). We know a 5K isn't very far, but at least its a start for us non-runners! We hung around Davis after to enjoy a complimentary brunch, and are now back home for a little bit of Saturday yard work.

Ash, the fearsome interior decorator

Our dog loves to interior decorate when we are gone. For some reason, Caroline and I insist on putting clothes in the hamper and shoes near the door, which is obviously the wrong spot. The right spot, according to Mr. Ash, is wedged between the window ledge and the back of the living room chair that he likes to sit on and watch the outside. We had gotten used to putting things back after coming home, but today we found something new!

If you look carefully, you can see Caroline's wirelesss mouse on the windowsill! We aren't totally sure how or why Ash decided that it should go with the shoes and clothes, but he decided it belonged on the windowsill. Just like everything else, it wasn't hurt at all. We'll have to see what he goes after next!

Happy -1 year anniversary to us!

Yesterday (September 21, 2012) marked our "negative 1" year wedding anniversary. At this time next year we will be newlyweds! We thought it was very appropriate that Jackie posted our engagement photos yesterday morning. David arrived home from work yesterday evening with this beautiful orchid to say "I love you" to me and to acknowledge the special date (he said he had planned to get it even before he realized it was Sept 21st). So far I have had very limited success with keeping plants alive, but I will do my best to keep this one going! 

We spent our night with Katie at Fenway watching the Red Sox lose to the Orioles. Not surprisingly, I'm not big into sports (I at fell asleep AT a NASCAR race - imagine the noise of the cars and the discomfort of the benches you will will appreciate how hard this is to do) so I spent my night largely focused on the junk food available (frrrriiiied douuuugh) and asking stupid questions about what was going on in the game. My own baseball illiteracy aside, we all had a good time, and managed not to get too trampled by the large crowd of Red Sox fans riding the T :)

Joe's Pond Engagement Photos with Jackie (a.k.a., Caroline and David in love)

This past weekend David and I drove up to VT for the Poodle Reunion (click here for more details) and for our engagement photo session. We held the session at Joe's Pond and used the car David rebuilt in high school as one of our props - thanks to Susan and Harvie for meeting us in NH to give us the car! Our wedding photographer is Jackie Nagle (J. Harper Photography), and I am just so excited about her and her photos. Jackie and I went to high school together, though I'm only just now really getting to know her. She is so full of joy and energy!  She made our engagement photo session fun, and the photos in her "sneak peak" are absolutely gorgeous. I'm looking forward to having her capture our wedding day! 

Reunion of the Little Black Poodles

This past weekend we have what we called the "Reunion of the Little Black Poodles". It was brought to our attention by PRVT that there was a third miniature poodle (named Tucker) who was rescued with Ash and Coal. Carla, the third poodle's owner/mother, reached out to my mom and I to have a get together with the three poodles and see if they recognized each other. 

The three poodles getting to know each other

A video of the poodles playing - unfortunately they weren't playing as much by the time I got the camera out 

The reunion took place at my mom's house in East Burke. We planned a big brunch - complete with omelettes, sausage, hash browns, fruit salad, muffins, bread, and cherry pie. Oh, and lots of yummy treats for the dogs! It was really nice to be introduced to Tucker and to get to know his parents, Paul and Carla. We had a great time. While Tucker had much longer legs than Coal, his face and mannerisms seemed quite like Coals. Tucker was such a sweet heart! 

Tucker, before jumping into the fray 

Carla and Tucker

Doggy gift bag, courtesy of my mom (Ami)

New treats for Ash, courtesy of Carla

Surprisingly, Ashy really liked Carla

Paul, Tommy, and David talking about "guy stuff"

Ashy

Coal-y, loving his mama

Ash's foster father John was closely involved with the rescue and adoption of all three poodles, so he was invited as well. At the last minute John was unable to attend - instead he drove another PRVT poodle to his new forever home! David and I hope to get together with John at some point in the future so that he can see how far Ash has progressed, and so that we can see if Ash recognizes John. 

Caroline the (wanna be) groomer

For awhile now David and I have contemplated grooming Ash ourselves. When we first got him David thought it was entirely unnecessary to take Ash to a professional groomer (it's just a buzz cut right?) but I pushed to at least take Ash to a professional the first few cuts to see what they did, and what haircuts we liked.

We first took him to Bark of the Town in Andover, MA. We weren't thrilled with any of the groomers we found near our home, so I branched out and looked for one near my grandmother. Good excuse for lunch with Gram! We liked Bark of the Town - the people were very friendly, and he always got a neat cut. Initially they didn't trim his head the way we liked, and one time I couldn't stop laughing because he looked like he had a bobble head.

Bobble head Ash - I had to trim his face after with scissors - after which he looked much better

Our results for the head were much better when he visited the groomer my mom uses in VT, which he did a couple of times while he was up there visiting. The last time we took him to Bark of the Town (about 6 weeks ago) we got the cut we were looking for, though it was a touch short. It grew out perfectly, and we thought he looked super cute. This was actually achieved by bringing in a picture of his former foster brother Fred, who's cut I particularly liked.

Now that we have the perfect cut at a groomer we like (you can see a picture of Ash's good haircut and Coal's short haircut here), it is only sensible that we mess with the system and try to do it ourselves. Actually, we decided to try to do it ourselves because we have engagement photos this weekend (some of which he will likely be in) and we didn't want him to have TOO short a cut. At the same time, he was looking a bit shabby. I thought - maybe this is a good time for me to just give him a trim! First I trimmed his head with hair cutting scissors, and it looked pretty good. I did it outside to minimize the mess, and he sat there very quietly and patiently while I gingerly snipped away. I was happy with the result, and David thought he looked cute. However, his head then looked quite tiny because his body was so poofy in comparison. Naturally, I hopped on Amazon and purchased a highly rated buzzer to finish my grooming job.

Buzzer with good reviews and an affordable price

So last night Ash got a bath (he doesn't seem to mind these now), a blow dry, and then we settled into the bathroom for a quick body buzz. Two hours later we had one closely sheared dog (shorter than I had originally envisioned), one VERY hairy Caroline, and a bathroom decorated in hair clippings. 

One very messy bathroom and an exhausted puppy

He was very well behaved and didn't seem to mind me buzzing and snipping his hair at all. He wasn't a huge fan of me doing his paws and legs, so I did a large part of those with scissors. They turned out a bit choppier than the rest of him, but he looks OK when it all blends in. Sadly, I did nick his skin on one of his front paws, leading to a heart breaking yelp and a little show of blood. It didn't seem too bad, but because he continued to lick it the bleeding wouldn't stop entirely. I wrapped it up after we were finished and today it looks much better.

Happy to finally have some peace and quiet in Christine's lap

Complete view of my first grooming attempt - not too bad! 

We will probably give this another attempt once his hair grows out - it should hopefully go more smoothly, take less time, and yield better results with practice. We also will begin to cut his nails and clean his ears ourselves. Ash get's pretty nervous at the groomers, so this is actually probably a more comfortable way for him to get cleaned up. Needless to say, it also saves several hundred dollars a year. However, should we ever feel this isn't working out or not have time for a DIY haircut, we can take him back to our friends at to Bark of the Town :)