Gotta love this one

What I would do to be Madeline Cahn...

Brian Regan Comedy

Here is little bit of the funny man.

FUNNY MAN

Gar likes to listen to comedy. There are a hand full of comedians that we love and look for their new comedy albums. Well Brian Regan is a usual for us and he his HIL-A-RI-OUS.

He is on tour this summer and one of his stops was here in SLC. So for Gar's birthday, I got us tickets. We went last Saturday night and it was a blast.

Gar and I have both been to comedy clubs, but not a full-on comedy concert. What fun. It was at Thanksgiving point. Kind of a weird venue, but it was nice. It was an outside stage and you brought a blanket and kicked it on grass.

So we got there about an hour early and it was already packed. We were trying to find a good piece of grass when we realized that we were walking right behind this man....

FUNNY!!! All of the Osmond family was there. I though it was SO funny and wanted to share.

Anyway, Brian Regan... It was a great comedy concert. Gar and I laughed so much and so hard. If you don't know Mr. Regan, I highly recommend looking him up and listening to him! He was on stage for an hour and 20 minutes straight. What a good time, at one point, he lost track of his joke... We were dying. They guy that opened for him was very funny as well. It was just a good time. I really dug the comedy concerts. I may have to go to more!!!

A little sneaky peak...

OK, Nat has been crying for me to put some pix of the house up. So, here you go :)

This is the outside, (no doi)! The first thing we did was to take down the sweet Christmas lights that came with the house. And by we, I mean Gar. It looks SO much better. This is the front from the street. We are working on the grass to bring the dead spots back to life, slowly but surely it will happen. Gar has the green thumb, not me.

Gar has been working his booty off on the yard and it look SOOOO good. The back yard was literally a jungle... I'm not even exaggerating. This pic is the south west corner. Not to shabs...

This is the north side. When we moved in, the weeds were halfway up the fence. You couldn't even see the sprinklers. So, to say the least (the very least), Gar has gone to town on the weeds and making the yard look lived in. There are some summer lily plants that will hopefully grown next year. We LOVE our cloths lines. They give the back yard so much character.

We go the front room/formal dining room mostly put together. There are a couple of thing that I want to purchase, but other that that, it's is about done. This view is from the front door. We go the mantel from Becks house and cleaned it and put it in and it looks amazing in there with the wood floors. I'm so happy!

This view is from the hallway. Pretty sweet liquor cabinet huh. I am looking for the perfect wine rack... Think i found it at the PB, but will have to save some money... And in that corner, I have my eye on a beautiful floor lamp. I think I still need to talk Gar into it, but hopefully, he will LOVE the lamp like I do and we can get it... We shall see.

Here is a close up of the mantle. Isn't it SO beautiful. It looks just perfect in this room. It really matches the floors perfectly. I am going to get these awesome candles at PB and put them where the fire would normally go. They are these huge candles. I think that will looks so great.

This is the little sitting area by the front door. Pretty cute. I love the huge clock.

So there you have it. The front/formal dining room. Gar and I are really happy with how it turned out. One day, I will repaint all the floor boards. They are a mess from refinishing the floors. But, that will probably be a winter project.

It is really fun having a house. People aren't kidding when they say that they always have projects. They seem to never end. But it is FUN and I love doing all the projects with Gar. I love him.

Good times...

Aurora was here and we had a blast. It is always so great when she is here. No worries. This time she was up for 3 weeks. It was the busiest 3 week for me and Gar so we weren't able to do anything big... But we did go on the Alpine Slide and Coaster. SMF!! They have this new ride called the Alpine Coaster. That was great. Well worth the money.

It had been forever since we had been there. The slide was a great warm up. I didn't remember how long they are. Gar's SO damn cute!!!
This was Auroras first time and she had a blast. Her and Gar raced and then Gar got stuck behind and lady that was SO freaking slow. I even caught up with him... The lady said "I must be too big for these"... HAHAHAHAHA Funny!!!

This is the coaster in the pix below. Aurora is just finishing. You have your own little own cart and it pulls you up and then you hurl down the track. It was a blast. You can control your speed like the slide, but you cruise so much faster. We had a blast. I highly recommend the coaster.

Aurora is back at home now and we miss her. Hopefully, she will be back up for T-Day.

Nat keeps crying for me to put pix of the house up, not everything is put together, but I put some up this weekend so she will stop crying. LOVE YOU Nat!!

The floor... FROM HELL!

So I finally have some free time. I don't know what to do with myself.
So I blog...

I thought I'd start out with the story of refinishing our hardwood floors. I have a few pix to go along with the great tale...

These are the original hardwood floors from 1949. The guy that fixed up the house tore out the carpet and under was this beautiful floor. They weren't in the best condition, but if we wanted we could have just moved in, but we wanted it to look GOOD and new.

Gar asked a friend of his that refinishes houses and asked if he refinished hardwood floor himself, and he said NO!!! He actually hires people to do it. It usually runs him about $2,500.00. Hearing that, we opted to do it ourselves. Yeah, fun project... NOT!

It was funny, every time we asked someone how they did their floors, or told people that we were going to do it ourselves, we got this concerned look... Like they were thinking, Good luck, have fun amatures . We chose to ignore those looks and just take on the project full force.

Being the type of person that doesn't think things through, i didn't take the best pix ever. I didn't get a really good BEFORE pix. So here are some pix where you can kinda see the floors.

(This is the first night Gar and I are in the house. Our first meal. Yes, I cried. As always. I looked at Gar and said "Oh, our first dinner in our very own house." After I said that, Niagara Falls....)

Anywho, you can see the floors pretty well in these pix. (Nice home cooked meal of Arbys, gotta LOVE the curly fires and arbys sauce!!!!)You can see that the floors aren't too bad, but worn in places and the varnish was coming off. (Isn't Gar so dang cute? Uummm nice arms babe! H.O.T.I.E!!!)

We read up on refinishing floors, asked some friends that do construction for a living and got some really great tips. We took the best tips and went to town. We rented a belt sander and Gar got to work.

First, let me foreshadow and say that if we are ever presented with the opportunity to refinish hardwood floors again, I would cry and then I would cough up the $2,500.00 and hire someone else to do it...

Sanding took up the majority of the time and effort and pain! Sanding was a HUGE job. There was saw dust everywhere, i mean eve-ry-where!! Gar did all of the belt sanding work, I did do all of the taping off. Here is a pix of Gar sanding. That is the master bedroom. We found under the old stain and varnish, a beautiful pine wood floor. We were very happy that the floor were in such great condition.

The sander didn't go all the way to the walls, so this is where I came in. I got the hand sander, (thanks to some friends that had some great hand sanders), I sat on the floor, hunched over and sanded the 3 inches the from the wall the belt sander left. My back, my hands and my forearms have NEVER been that sore before in my life, literally. My fingers were numb for a week, I'M not even kidding. This is the main reason that i would pay someone else to do it. I'm sure there is an easier way to get the edges and some great tool to do it with, but we didn't have it. And our backs have not been the same sense.

The sanding took altogether about 4 full days. The cleaning was a HEADACHE. You just don't have one clean up. You have to use belt sander with 3 different grades of sandpaper and clean all the dust up. Then us the softest grade of sandpaper and make it all smooth. Then clean it again. I swear, I'm still finding dust...

Here are the floors all sanded. B.E.A - UTIFUL!

After that was time to stain. This was a little nerve racking. We found the color we wanted, and crossed our fingers that it would look good. When we would get tips from friends on how to do it, we also go a TON of horror stories... So we tried to do opposite of those. Here you can see the color in contract to the bare wood. LOVE IT~

Gar did the coat of stain and we had to wait a good 24 hours for it to dry and set. Then we (by we, I mean Gar) had to put 2 coats of varnish. AND, in between the coats of varnish, buff it with this huge buffing machine that we rented, which then, created more dust. Then re-clean it all once again, then do the last coat of varnish. Then let it set and dry for 24 hours.

I failed to get some working phot's of Gar staining and varnishing. I was at PB working while he did it all. It was quiet the workout,from what I hear. I also failed to get some good AFTER pix... So the ones below will have to suffice!

Here are some finished pix. I stayed home from work one day to do some deep cleaning before we moved and Ang and the kids stopped by. Here you can see the finished product. Don't the floors look so freaking good.

We are so happy with the finished product. I can just cry.

We got all moved in, of course, so here is a pix of the floors with the furniture on them... Gar did such a great job. I must say that I seriously have the BEST husband ever. What a crazy job to jump into head first without every doing it before.

Aurora has been here I have not had time to take some really good pix of the house. I will do that next week after I clean and get things in their proper place.

What a BIG year this has been

It has been a crazy whirl-wind 2 months, well, I really should actually say, a whirl-wind year. I really can't believe it is AUGUST already.
(Just FYI August is my birthday month and only 27 shopping days until the 28!!)

2007 has turned out to be not as planned. Gar and I have wanted to get a new car, buy a house and perhaps even get Gar a motorcycle.

Well, in April, both cars took a huge crap on us and we had to trade them in for Vader.
May came around and we get a call from our realtor called with the perfect house at the price we could afford.
None of these were planned, they really just happened. Just fell in our laps. Kinda crazy the way that happens with me and Gar.

While Vader is a GREAT vehicle, having one car while Gar and I both have 2 jobs has been very taxing on us. What a puzzle trying to figure out that if i bring my change of clothes Gar can pick me up, drop me off at PB, run home to take Toby out to relieve himself, run to the theatre, do his show, come pick me up and then, finally, go home and literally, CRASH. Then wake up and do it all over again...
Well, to make a LOOONG story short, (too late), we desperately needed a second mode of transportation...
This is what we came up with...

Ummmm, can you say H.O.T.?

Let me just tell you that I have always been a HUGE fan of motorcycle. Gar has been around them his whole life and we have wanted to get one for a while, but it never seemed to be in the cards. Well, 2007 is the year for big purchases... So why not...

We have been looking for a couple of months, but nothing was working out. Then, one day we were both looking at KSL.com and saw this bike. Gar called and told the guy that he was interested and that we would come up on Sunday if it was still available. This was on a Tuesday... We kept our fingers crossed that it would not sell until we could get up to Ogden and look at it. It was EXACTLY the type of bike Gar has wanted.

A Honda Shadow. Nothing older than a 2000. And he had a price that he wanted to pay. This was the exact bike.

So, we call Sunday morning... it was not sold yet. Some one came to look at it but the battery had died, so he didn't end up getting it. And people didn't want to come see it until the battery was fixed. We were the first to call!!

We take a drive up there and Gar takes it for a spin and fell in love at first sight...

This is a Honda Shadow 2001 A.C.E (American Classic Edition) and the price was PERFECT!
To make another LONG story short (too late), we bought it!!!! We went and picked it up last night!! FUN!

Aurora and I followed Gar home. It was fun to watch him ride.
Man, he looks good on that bike!

I just can't say enough how freggin HOT Gar is on this bike!! I'm in heaven!

That has been taking up most of our time this past week...
We have the Internet hooked up at the new place now, obviously! DUH... So I will be able to post pix of the house, Bubba's visit, and all that fun stuff.

It is SLOWLY getting back to normal... It is nice to be be settled in the house and back to two vehicles (I got my car back... I missed Vader!)

Gotta run and take Bubba shopping! Good times!