roomba (2)

If you've been hanging around these parts for awhile you might remember when Roomba joined our family in April of 2009. We got a lot of raised eyebrows from friends, which I totally understand. I mean, really? Do you really need a robot to vacuum your floors for you??

And no, friends, you don't.

However.

We have very dark hardwood floors. We have two white, heavy shedding dogs. This is a very ugly combination.

Roomba was out of commission for a few weeks this summer which left me to manage the floors on my own. I was sweeping the floors DAILY and was still frustrated by the little white hairs that kept reappearing. Also? Sweeping dog hair on nearly 1,000 square feet of hardwood floors doesn't exactly make it on to my list of favorite activities.

All that to say, Roomba is worth it for us. Roomba means my floors stay clean and my sanity stays intact. Or, at least as intact as it can be with two dogs.

And then Roomba died. Dead. Totally dead. His brushes just up and stopped spinning, rendering him completely useless. Fortunately, we read the reviews before we purchased Roomba and noted that all Roomba owners agree that you simply have to purchase an extended warranty with a Roomba. Roomba's die. Usually within a year or so of when you bring them home. Since you'll drop a good chunk of change for one of these fantastic little robots it's worth protecting.

We purchase our extended warranties at Square Trade. We've found them to be more reasonable than store warranties and their coverage is fantastic. When Roomba first started the "Circle Dance" this summer they helped us reset him and all was well again until late this Fall. When his brushes stopped spinning we just mailed him in to Square Trade and they immediately sent us a check for the full purchase price.

Replacing Roomba was a no brainer for us. He's totally worth it. But because we got such a killer deal on him the first time it was impossible to replace him for the same price. We decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to the pet model. It's supposed to deal with dog hair much better than the original version and the bin is 3x the size which means less emptying after every cycle. After combining a sale, a coupon code and free shipping we walked away with a pretty sweet deal on our new house keeper.

Roomba (2) showed up on our doorstep on Christmas Eve. We've used him every day since and are so glad to have our robot-provided housecleaning back. He's definitely a luxury but for us he's also a sanity provider. What are your favorite splurges that ended up being totally worth every penny you paid?

[source]

Disclaimer: iRobot (Roomba's creator) has no idea we're totally in love with their product and they certainly didn't pay us to write this review. Square Trade also did not compensate us in any way, shape or form for this post. We just found a product (Roomba) and a service (Square Trade) that we love and we believe in sharing about things we love.

merry christmas

We hope your Christmas was every bit as wonderful as ours was! I can't wait to hear all your stories and see the pictures. It's been an incredible weekend for us but all that celebrating will sure wear you out!!

Merry Christmas from our little family to yours!

twice the love

With almost four months under our belt as a two-doggy family, one of the questions we get a lot is "are two dogs more work than one?"

Um, how do I put this nicely?

YES.

At least in our experience, a thousand times yes. (Contrary to what the photo below would have you believe)

Of course, we have two very high energy, attention-needing dogs. That shed.

And honestly, I think the extra work will decrease as we all continue to figure out what it means to live as a two person-two dog house. It's definitely taken the pups awhile to get used to each other. They fight like...well, they fight like siblings. They both want the same bone, they both want to be closer to Nick, they both want to eat first, they don't want to share their treats. And sometimes they fight (loudly) about it.

Beemer and Shalai both love to be dirty. During a couple weeks with heavy rain this Fall I was mopping the floor 5 or 6 times a day (really truly). And they shed. The dog hair is out of control. Which is why Roomba is a necessary part of our life (and he's been out of commission for a couple of weeks! But more on that soon). We're sweeping floors and vacuuming couches on a daily basis but every time I turn around I spy more white hairs on our dark floors.

There's also twice as many nails to clip and twice as much fur to brush. And since Beemer weighs in at twice Shalai's weight and is twice her height, we've discovered a whole new level of dog noses on the counter. We've already sacrificed a lasagna, beef jerky, a biscuit and a plate of cookies to Beemer's much-longer snout. But we're learning to put everything in the back corner (or in the microwave!) and Beemer is learning that counter surfing is not an acceptable hobby in this house.

Just keeping track of them is half the trick. Somebody is always into something. Shalai's pulling all the stuffing out of her bed while Beemer's pulling charred logs out of the fireplace. And there's twice the barking. And (way more than) twice the whining. (HOLY WHINING, BEEMER!)

And the vet bills? Yeah, twice as many of those, too.

But it's so worth it. Really.

Shalai is so much more mellow now that she has somebody she has to keep track of all day long. (What a job!) She rules our two-puppy roost, which Beemer has never questioned.

And the adjustment to two dogs is definitely nothing like the adjustment from zero to one.

We still have a lot of work to do with some behavioral issues, but we're really truly glad Beemer is part of the family. Because now there's twice the love and twice the puppy kisses and twice the excitement every time we come home.

Plus? They're super cute together.

How about all you other two-puppy (or kitty!) families? What was your experience like? We have to keep reminding ourselves that we're still only a few months into this adventure and that it's going to keep getting better from here!

fail

A couple weeks ago (right before our first snowstorm of the season was forecasted) we decided to install our (gorgeous) new storm door to replace this monstrosity that I've strongly disliked since I first laid eyes on it. As part of our exterior make-over this year we decided to just go ahead and replace it.

The slatted glass. The torn screen. The way it sticks and doesn't shut correctly. Not really a fan of any part of this door.

So we bought a new one. It's absolutely beautiful. And it has a full pane of glorious glass to reflect light and open up the porch.

Unfortunately, old man winter showed up early and has been fairly relentless this year. Right before the temps dropped below 30 we decided to race the clock and try to install the door in the 3 hours of daylight we had left on a Sunday night.

Go ahead. You can laugh.

Things started off fairly well. But about the time I couldn't feel my fingers (20 minutes in) I was ready to be done. As you can well imagine, we were oh-so-far from done with the door.

One of the first steps in the instructions is to measure the width of your door opening from the insides of the door jam. In three places. In one place (and, conveniently, where we measured before we ordered the door) we were well within the range we needed. In the other two spots, however, our door jam was 1/4" too small for the door. 

Being the stubborn folks we are, we decided to give it a whirl and see if the door might (possibly?) fit anyway.  If it didn't we were going to have to pack it back up and wait until Spring to reconstruct our door jam.

Wanna guess how this story ends?

There was no way that door was going in. We got a couple pieces put together, which will save us some time in the Spring, but we'll have to spend one last winter with our ugly existing door.

So I just bought a huge wreath and I'm pretending that fixes everything.

Anyone else have a foiled project recently? We're here to sympathize.

weekend wrap-up

This weekend was packed full of holiday goodness.

Friday night was a cookie exchange with some lovely ladies at my dear friend Allison's house. I finished baking my cookies for said exchange precisely 25 minutes before I needed to be at the shindig. I whipped up two batches of Darby's gingersnaps. I think they turned out quite tasty, or at least the number of them I've eaten since Friday night would support that theory.

Saturday morning I ran some errands with a girlfriend while Nick hosted a meet-and-greet with the pup we'll be puppysitting for a week after Christmas (stay tuned. it'll be fun). Then we were off and running to a big family get-together with Nick's extended family.

Sunday morning we played with our church's Christmas choir/orchestra. Then Nick was off to hang out with the guys while I curled up with a hot cup of tea and one of my dear girlfriends.

Now the dogs are gnawing on bones in front of the fireplace. I just placed the last couple of orders on Amazon for Christmas gifts. Then I read Traditional Home while sipping hot cocoa (with LOTS of marshmallows).

Monday morning is far too few hours away, but I love these quiet nights at home.

How was your weekend, friends?

happy puppy

I might not be the biggest fan, but our little snowstorm made somebody else pretty happy.

checklist: updated

Our neighborhood Christmas party was this weekend, which means we ran headlong into our deadline for the pre-party checklist.

Here's how we did:

• Install thresholds in the kitchen and bathroom. 
• Half done. The one for the kitchen cracked because of some sagging/gaping issues. We have a new one but ran out of time to install it without making the house smell like varnish. Nothing says Christmas party like some nice strong varnish.
• Swap out light switches and replace covers so as not to electrocute guests.
• Done! While he was at it Nick actually replaced all the remaining switches so they look like this:

• Repair and paint kitchen ceiling.
• We got the holes patched but didn't have time to paint. Dang it.
• Finish painting the stairway.
• Well, we finished the hallway upstairs but not the entire stairway (holy tall ceilings, batman). 
• Re-install handrails in the stairways
• DONE. And don't they look awesome??

Even though we didn't make it through our entire list we did make some great progress. Plus, we got the whole house (super) clean and got all the food prepped on top of it. The party was a complete and total success, too.

Even though people had to trek through 4 foot drifts to make it out we had about 35 neighbors in our home for a wonderful evening. So many stories from neighbors who have been here for 20, 40 or 60 years! We met a lot of new neighbors and caught up with some we hadn't seen in awhile. At the end of the night we were reminded again just how lucky we are to have landed in this neighborhood.

Maybe we can get the rest of the list checked off before our next party.

oh the weather outside is frightful...

So we had a little snowstorm this weekend.

 Please note the pile of snow that's taller then my friendly neighbor.

It started snowing around 9:00 on Friday night. It stopped around 9:00 on Saturday night.

The official report for the city of St. Paul is 23 inches.

TWENTY-THREE. INCHES.

In 24 hours. It was a mess.

In fact, 48 hours after it started we have yet to see a plow come down our street. Or our alley. But the street perpendicular to ours was plowed, which means there is a four foot wall of snow blocking both ends of the street. We are literally snowed in.

Plows were pulled off the streets because they kept getting stuck, USPS pulled their mail carriers, the buses stopped running, OUR AIRPORT SHUT DOWN COMPLETELY, the Mall of America closed and then this morning our metrodome collapsed.

You guys, it was exciting stuff!

The picture above is of our alley. We're trying to dig ourselves out of this mess and wondering how we're going to get to work tomorrow morning.

I have a feeling we're in for a long winter.

See also: I have no idea why I live in Minnesota.

countdown

Every year our neighborhood gets together for a progressive Christmas party but this is the first year we've been able to be a part of the celebration because of schedule conflicts every other year. So, naturally we agreed to host one step of the dinner.

What this means is that in 5 days our entire neighborhood is going to walk through our house for the second time. The first time was three years ago when our house was on the market. Our house was vacant for a year and a half before we bought it, and in that time span almost every single neighbor in a four block radius walked through it at some point. A handful of them have been over since we moved in, but plenty of them haven't seen it since it looked like this:

And while we've come a long way since we took those pictures there's still a lot to do. We're feeling pressure to wrap up some loose ends before our neighbors see it for the first time as our home.

Now, our neighbors have been nothing but supportive and encouraging throughout this entire process. Even when we have power tools running at 10pm or bobcats racing around the backyard at 6am they make a point to come over and tell us it's looking great. We also know we happen to be the talk of the neighborhood on many occasions, so we feel like the expectations are pretty high.

It's also a good excuse for us to finally knock out some smaller projects that have dragged on for.ever.

So here's the hit list (besides the normal stuff like cleaning, picking up and begging the dogs to STOP SHEDDING):

• Install thresholds in the kitchen and bathroom.
• Swap out light switches and replace covers so as not to electrocute guests.
• Repair and paint kitchen ceiling.
• Finish painting the stairway.
• Re-install handrails in the stairways.

There were a couple projects that got cut from the pre-party list, like tearing out a wall in the dining room, insulating the office (which includes tearing out all the interior walls), taking down the upper cabinets in the kitchen to stain them and insulate behind them and restoring the original dining room ceiling. We're itching to tackle this second list, but it's going to have to wait until after the holidays because we're hosting a couple get-togethers between now and 1-1-11. 

We sure have our work cut out for us before Saturday. We'll keep you updated on our progress. Wish us luck! 

dare to DIY - homemade gifts

I missed last week's Dare to DIY party over at Newly Woodwards because I have yet to bake a single Christmas cookie. But Kim's challenge this week is to dare to make homemade gifts. Now, I can't spill the beans on anything in the works for Christmas this year, but I wanted to share something Nick made a couple of years ago.

Since we bought this crazy house Nick hasn't had much time for woodworking projects, but when we lived in our (rented) duplex for the first 9 months of our marriage he loved working with wood. In addition to a beautiful full-size bookcase and a jewelry box (for me) Nick made my mom her Christmas gift that year.

Isn't it beautiful?

It was inspired by a design from Woodworking magazine.

I wish I had better pictures of it, but these are from a couple of years ago. I've learned a thing or two about taking better pictures since then (hopefully).

Hopefully someday the house projects will slow down a little bit so Nick has more time for woodworking. He's such a perfectionist that his projects turn out absolutely beautiful. He also likes to adapt ideas he finds printed to make them truly unique and personal. The end results are always incredible!

If you're still working through your Christmas list be sure to check out all the amazing projects over at Newly Woodwards!

tree hugger

Every year we're tempted to snag a "reusable" tree on a mega sale after Christmas. And someday, we might go that route. But for now we're sticking with a real tree. There's just no scented candle that can quite compare to the smell of a fresh-cut tree. Besides, what would I do with all my free time I didn't have needles to sweep up??

We've always taken advantage of Home Depot's $20 tree specials before, but this year we finally made it out to a tree farm to find and cut our own. And because we're big believers in "the more the merrier" we asked our good friends Josh and Mikalah (of Posy the Porcelain Pig fame) to come along.

We drove out to a farm just outside the city where every tree was $35, no matter what type or what size. We wandered through a field of trees for awhile because I was thinking all the trees looked pretty small until I stopped and  stood next to one. Turns out they weren't as small as they appeared. Fortunately, 9 foot ceilings mean we have room for a taller tree.

 Nick had it cut down in a flash and we hauled it back up to the barn. We sipped hot cider, window shopped through a barn full of antiques and snuggled a kitty. It was about as perfect a tree farm experience as I could've dreamed of. All the staff was unbelievably welcoming and kind. If you live in the great state of Minnesota we absolutely recommend checking out Black Woods Tree Farm!

Back at home with our guests we finally had an excuse to use our holiday table setting. (At least, after quickly rinsing some glitter out of the bowls.) Between the tree in the corner of the living room and the red and silver on the table it really helped us shift from Thanksgiving/Fall to Christmas/Winter.

Sunday evening we decked out the tree. The dogs are convinced the ornaments are a ginormous collection of balls placed on the tree solely for their entertainment.

This tree is the perfect size and I love the not-quite-perfect shape that reminds me it's real. Because that's how our life is. Not quite the cookie-cutter shape of perfection, but it's real and it's alive.

And it's us.

I love this time of year.