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Monthly Archives: January 2011

Let the house building begin!!!

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Building agreement – check

Floor plan – check

Lot selected – check

Let the building begin! They came out and cleared our lot earlier this week. Which was a relief, the bulldozer was delayed due to the weather and wind the past couple weeks. But all that cleared up on Monday and they were able to do their work. They did a good job clearing the lot. They saved a lot of the trees in the front for us.

Here is the view up the driveway from the street:

View up driveway from street.

Here is the view from the left side of the lot:

Here is the view from the right side of the lot:

A few days ago they put in the power meter and delivered some supplies to get started on the house.

Here are the building supplies that they dropped off:

The bulldozer was still on the property. So naturally I had to take a picture in it! I mean that’s what it was left there for….right?

The next several months are going to be exciting. Going out to the lot everyday to see the progress. It will be even more exciting when we finally get to move in!

Stay tuned for more pictures and house progress!

Moving, moving, moving

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I learned about a week or so ago that my cozy little office I share with three other project managers is going to be converted into a training room for one of our large-scale projects. We will be relocating to cubicles down the hall. It took a day or two to see the upside of the cubicles. I will gain additional desk surface area and storage space. The cubicles will also provide a little more privacy for phone calls, which is something that has been discussed in our office. It can be difficult to carry on a phone conversation with a project stakeholder while you have other people in the office talking at the same time. When I finally warmed up to the idea, I realized that I am going to have to pack up and move all my papers and project notes. Now that may not seem like too big of a job, but I have stuff dating back to 2006!

Determined not to take all the old stuff with me I have been spring cleaning around my desk. I’ve managed to cut down the amount of paper I had piled up. Then the thought struck me, we are having a house built…we are going to have to pack up and move all our stuff. Oh man! I don’t even want to think about all the stuff we have built up at the apartment that we probably do not need. That is not including our storage unit where we have boxes of books and stuff from when we first moved into the apartment. It is time to start spring cleaning at home too I think. I see several more trips to goodwill in our future. It’s going to be a big job, and we have roughly 4 to 5 months to accomplish it. Two moves in the first part of the year. Looks like this year is going to be an interesting one.

What’s for Dinner?

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As promised, I am ready to announce next weeks recipe. I was a little surprised at how difficult a time I had deciding what to cook. I found several recipes that sounded extremely yummy, it was a tough decision. I decided to start off with a fairly easy recipe. Next week we will make a Simple Meat Lasagna from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. I can’t remember if I have ever made a lasagna from scratch or not. The ingredients have been added to the grocery list, and I have confirmed that I do in fact own a glass baking dish in the appropriate size for the lasagna.

Watch for my post next week to hear how the Lasagna turned out!

Why knitting?

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As you will come to learn more and more, knitting is one of my main hobbies. It is possible that my love of knitting could be classified as border-line obsessive. Since knitting has gained in popularity (again) the number of knitters out there in the world is ever-increasing. Thanks to knitting communities like Ravelry, I have a place where I can go to find other people who share my obsession/hobby.

I’ve been asked a time or two why I knit. This seems like a fairly simple and straight forward question….but to some knitters it just doesn’t make sense to be asked. There are any number of reasons why a knitter knits. The rhythmic clicking of the needles is soothing and comforting. The repetition of the stitches is calming and relaxes the mind (unless you are knitting complicated lace or socks that takes a turn down the wrong lane!). The list can go on and on.

I personally knit because it calms and relaxes me (except for when I turn down that wrong lane). It’s like sitting with a comforting old friend. When nothing else seems to be going as planned (I’m real big on plans)I know that I can pick up a ball of yummy yarn and needles and knit up a beautiful scarf or socks or hat or a warm shawl and all will be well with the world again. Knitting is my therapy. It’s also fun to tell someone that you knitted that amazing scarf you are wearing! Talk about an ego booster!

Here are some of the things I have knitted in the past year or two:

 

Cooking Challenge

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Over the last few years I have gotten a little on the lazy side with my cooking. I talk myself into feeling run down and too tired after work to cook a meal from scratch. Evening meals have become frozen pizza and boxed dinner kits that only require the addition of chicken. Not to be misunderstood, I love the Romano’s Macaroni Grill dinner kits! However, one can only take the pre-packaged dinners for so long before the repetition of the flavors gets to you.

In an effort to spice things up, I am committing myself to cooking a minimum of one meal from scratch per week. On Thursday each week (because my project manager persona is strong, and I like to plan everything ahead) I will announce a recipe that I will cook for dinner the following week. Then I will post the results, hopefully with a picture and tell you how it turned out. Maybe we can get my hubby to comment on whether he liked the dish or not.

If this sounds vaguely familiar; yes I have seen the movie Julie & Julia, and no this is not the same thing. My goal is to get in the habit of making home cooked meals for dinner and I will be pulling from my cookbook collection as opposed to cooking through one cookbook. I did enjoy the movie though!

Tune in Thursday for next weeks recipe!

XO

Jessie

Just me living my life

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After a few pitiful starts at blogging, I have decided yet again to try and flex the creative portion of my brain. Only this time I am going about it differently. Instead of having a dedicated blog to what I knit, I’m going to blog about everyday life and everyday things. This blog will be “under construction” for a little while I get on my feet so to speak. I have big plans for this blog, and hopefully the end result will be something fun to read. Please stay tuned for further developments.

XO

Jessie