Tag Archives: house

Nov11

Illuminated!

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Illuminated!

My kitchen is fairly dark because light sources are these tiny little inset bulbs in the ceiling.  Not even legit light fixtures.  In the evenings (and 70% of the day in the winter) it’s a gloomy place to be; especially if you’re in the workspace corner.

Over the past week, Joey and my pops installed some under counter lighting which has really improved my life.

Here you see before:

You can’t really tell how dark and glooms it can get in here because Joey took this at like 11:30 this morning.  Mr. Sunshine was all up in my window’s business so it’s fairly cheerful right now.

The big takeaway I have from this photo is that I have GOT to get that cheesy scallop deal ripped out from above my sink and replace it with just a regular old board.

Country.  UGH.

Anyway, here’s my new and improved (and blindingly well let) workspace.

Looks much better, right?

(Oh look, I’m missing the 1/3 cup which should be hanging on its hook above the stove.  Wonder where that is…)

Aug27

She’ll be a real big help, I’m sure.

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She’ll be a real big help, I’m sure.

We’re having the students over this evening to watch a movie, and Joey needs to get the lawn mowed before they descend upon the backyard.  We were sitting at the table drinking coffee, finishing breakfast and discussing the plans of the day.  We have Big Plans, Internet.  BIG PLANS.

Joey said, “I’m going to go take Analie and get changed into my work clothes.”

He returned with the baby….dressed in his work clothes.

 

Jul21

An update on the ants. Because I know you’re all dying to know.

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An update on the ants. Because I know you’re all dying to know.

The ant population surrounding my sink appears to be drastically dying down.  QUITE LITERALLY.  But I read online that the queen theif ants lays between 50 and 250 eggs a day (talk about some major fertility…) so if one of these little annoying workers would just take the woman some poison food already, we might actually have this problem over and done with.

Ugh.  Do not judge the sink.  I can’t clean it or wipe the water spots off until the ant baits are gone.

Yes, it is driving me crazy.

Jul19

In this case, I hope it gets worse before it gets better

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In this case, I hope it gets worse before it gets better

Upon considering the ingredients of my homemade ant bait, and the massive, MASSIVE swarm of ants around the baits I set out, I am concerned that I may have concocted some kind of bacon grease ant beer powder. With yeast, cornmeal, baking powder and bacon grease…seems like once it all ferments we’ll it’s going to be beer powder.  And because when I woke up this morning, the number of ants all up ons the baits had, like, quintupled.  So much of the baits had been taken that they were starting to erode around the bases, tiny little bacon grease ant beer powder granules dusting the back of my sink.  (The parts that weren’t swarmed by hoards of drunken ants, that is.)

It’s like EVERY SINGLE ANT IN INDIANA IS ON MY KITCHEN SINK.  It’s like the word got out last night and they’re all, PARTY AT THE WOESTMANS!

And I most certainly can’t wipe the back of the sink down or I’ll destroy their scent trails.  So I have water spots, fingerprints, dishwashing splatters, ant beer crumbles, a few strewn ant carcasses here and there (ant beer poisoning casualties perhaps), and eleventy billion ants in hot pursuit of whatever I made for them yesterday morning.

Due to the dramatic increase and not so much at all decrease in the ant swarmage, I would have to go on record to say I am Skeptical At Best about this ant killer remedy.  But I’ll give it another couple of days.

If my baits last that long.

I put out 7 yesterday, SEVEN!!!!, and they are all swarmed and decomposing due to the sheer volume of ant nibblers.

In my imagination, here’s what’s happening in the ant nest within the next two hours: KABLOOEY.  

And then they’ll all be dead and not on my sink anymore.

Jul18

Ants, ants and MORE ANTS

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Ants, ants and MORE ANTS

As previously mentioned, the area behind my kitchen sink suddenly became infested with theif ants on Thursday. Since that time, I have scoured my sink and counters twice a day to try to remove their scent trails, scattered cayenne pepper along the entire length of my sink, put out Terro baits, and been pretty much disgusted with the state of affairs in my kitchen. I haaaate putting Terro on my counters since, you know, it is poison.

Sometimes the ants will disappear for half a day or so.

False hope.

This morning, after finishing my research on what kills theif ants (not Terro, they don’t like it!) I mixed up a non-toxic ant bait from bacon grease, cornmeal, yeast and baking powder.

Eh, you say?

The ants are supposed to love it and carry it back to their nest where it expands in their bellies and they swell up and DIE, BABY, DIE. I set the baits out this morning, scattering little bait blobs all over the back of my sink. The ants did not come. They didn’t seem interested this afternoon, either. Then, after dinner, I noticed reddish brown swarming behind my sink again. The baits were consumed with theif ants (gross and yet SO YAY!!) and the ants were carrying little nubbins of bait back to their nest.

Hopefully they are exploding in their nests right now.  Because this is just so, so revolting.

Jul18

It’s either a really large panda or a very small baby

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It’s either a really large panda or a very small baby

This morning Analie woke up at 7:00.

Does the child not know that it’s “Saturday”?!?

Obviously no one passed the memo on to her, because I got her up, changed her diaper and brought her back to our bed to wake up Joey, and she was all shrieking HI! EVERYONE! I! LOVE! MY! LIFE! and flailing her little hands around indiscriminately; her nails are sharp like talons no matter how much I trim them, and I don’t want to have to get an eye replaced.

And then after 20 minutes of extreme baby joy, she got cranky and the fun was over like yesterday’s World Cup match.  I think she realized she woke up 1 1/2 hours early but she wasn’t quite tired enough to go back to sleep, so she just wanted us all to feel as lousy as she was feeling.  Trust me, Internet, her master plan worked.

I was messing around in the kitchen, maybe thawing her a 1/2 ounce chip of mango compote (GET OUT OF THE WAY for her new favorite food, by the way; she’s all about it) when I suddenly noticed that things were unusually quiet.  The kind of quiet that, if I hear three years from now, I will be wondering where she found the permanent markers.  The quiet seemed to be originating from her bedroom, so I immediately went there.

Indeed, Joey had her all surrounded by her ginormous panda, Cecil, and she and Henry were sharing him.

“Look, she can’t fall backwards and bonk her head,” Joey pointed out.

I’m not even going to elaborate on the previous statement made by Joey.

Because if I elaborated I might have to tell you that Analie’s getting a little bit more mobile.

And apparently we have to watch her EVERY SINGLE MINUTE now.

Because if we don’t…

…I don’t know, something really bad could happen.

Like, maybe (this is just conjecture, naturally), she could somehow go from sitting solidly on the floor one moment…

…to, like pitching forward into a wall (that totally came out of nowhere) and getting three goose eggs and a bloody nose.

But, psssh, that would NEVER HAPPEN HERE.

Nosiree.

We are Extremely Careful Parents.

I feel like we got off topic.  Where were we again…?

OH YEAH – huge panda, right?

In other news, the Woestman kitchen sink is suddenly infested with Thief Ants and Terro does not work on them, so I’m trying this crazy ant killing recipe I, cough cough, found on the internet (hi, Homeland Security!), our garbage disposal is clogged and needs to be replumbed because it’s making the dishwasher back up onto kitchen floor, and Joey has poison ivy and kind of looks like he has leprosy.

And we have a huge panda.

 

Jun16

Today’s Moments

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Today’s Moments

It was a gorgeous afternoon and the sun was peeking in and out of the clouds, so we went outside until I felt a few droplets of rain on my hand.  And of course as soon as we went back inside it became more than obvious that there was no rain at all in sight.

But we still had fun.

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Jun12

Trimming the fat

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Trimming the fat

We’ve been talking about some house projects we’d like to do.  We’ve also been talking about how much the toner I use on my face costs.  (cough, cough, twentydollarsfor5ounces, cough)

I have an Origins problem.

Last night, just for kicks, I loaded up the shopping cart on their website with all the products I’m about to run out of, just to see what the damage was.  The number was not insignificant.  As in, there were more than two digits on the left side of the decimal point.

Over our years down south, I bought into the “I deserve premium products!!” that is more prevalent down there than it is up here.  And it wasn’t such a big deal down there, we were both working and we lived in an apartment.  Sure, we had to pay for Seminary (and we did!) but there was room in the budget for me to drop $35.00 on a jar of night creme twice times a year.  So I did.

But it’s time for me to think differently.  I’m not working at a job that pays me money.  I’m working at a job that keeps me home with my sweet little shrieking eel, and it doesn’t pay in cash.  It pays in snuggles and “kisses” and giggles that I wouldn’t want to miss.

But Joey and I would like to redo the patio.  We would like to get some Swedish shelves from Williams Sonoma for the kitchen.

The cost of one of those projects would be just about taken care of if I found a new skincare line that costs half of what my Origins setup does and we saved up what I was spending on my face.

So when my United State Balencing Tonic runs out in a few weeks?  I’ll be replacing it with Burt’s Bees Garden Tomato Toner.  It costs less than half of what my Origins obsession did.

When I have the Swedish shelving system in my kitchen, I’ll look at it with pride knowing that we didn’t just throw cash at it because we could, but because I gave up something I didn’t need to have in order to get something that will enhance our quality of life.  We want to put a little breakfast nook in the awkward corner of our kitchen once we get the awkward corner freed up!  Won’t that be great?

And when I shop for that breakfast nook table, I’ll be looking at a garage sale.

YAAAY ME!