The Joys of Being a Home Owner

I remember vividly the days when I was looking forward to buying my first place. The excitement of decorating it and fixing it to my style and liking. After living in London for 3 years in a rental where you can't really do to much except sit and stair at plain white walls in EVERY room we were excited to move home to color.



This morning I woke up and made breakfast, took a shower and went to the basement to throw a load of laundry on. When I opened up the basement door I quickly realized one of the downfalls to home ownership, we had a flooded basement. Yes I know some of you are saying, hold on you just re-did your whole house. Yes we did and there were no issues with that. The issue was the damn sump pump. It was being slightly caught up on its cover (code for the town so people can't fall in it) and therefore wasn't going on. After I starred for 5 seconds at the water, I said to Scott, "We have a flood". We walked downstairs to 4 inches of water. Lukily we don't have much in the basement since we are going to finish the basement and lukily the workshop didn't get any water in it, but I was not looking forward to the next few hours since I was just going to put a load of laundry in and then head out to the Short Hills mall. I guess that will have to wait for another day now.



Oh the joys of home ownership! I am sure there is something good that I can blog about another day, but today I hate owning a house.

2 years

2 years ago today our little baby girl was born! While at the time we didn't know we would be buying a dog (we were in Italy actually), we were in discussions about getting a dog. We knew we wanted a Chocolate Labrador and we wanted an "English" Chocolate Lab. We searched high and low and got a recommendation through the Kennel Club, rented a car and drove up to Newcastle for the weekend. On Sunday morning, we picked up our little girl and it has been history ever since.

A little walk through 2 years of life with Bailey:

First day "home" with us. She is 7 weeks old here.

8 1/2 weeks old here



10 weeks old and first day of puppy daycare (aat http://www.waggytales.com/) she loved her year there!

6 months old and wearing dad's tie....she is a daddy's girl. 2nd photo of her at daycare in the field they ran in in Richmond.



8 1/2 months old. At the park in Chiswick, London after enjoying playing with a soccer ball.

And here she is on Monday (not the best photo)

alma mater

I would start to sing the Iona Alma mater song but I don't know the words even though I have had 9 years to memorize it, yeah right.

This past weekend was packed with events with my in-laws down from Buffalo and also Scott's Aunt Judy. The most important event though of the weekend was GRADUATION!!!! My brother-in-law Ryan graduated from Iona College in New Rochelle, NY on Sunday. Commencement was held at Madison Square Garden in the WaMu Theater (or should it be Chase Theater now??). The procession was led by the President of the College and the educational procession. After all the graduates to-be processioned in, the Iona College Bagpipe band marched in, the highlight of the ceremony in my opinion.

Here are some pictures from graduation...not many since they came out dark or blurry.

On Saturday, my in-laws, Aunt Judy, Scott and I went to the city to walk around and enjoy the sights. Here is the only picture I have.

We then headed up to Iona for Graduation Mass. Ryan was a gift bearer which was "bricks". The bricks resemble expansion of the college.

Here are some other misc pictures from the weekend:

Congratulations Ryan! May the next Chapter in your life be a successful, prosperous and enjoyable one!

There is this woman

I have started coming at night to this woman at my house. She is a complete and utter rude bitch. She sits there and yells at me for 45 minutes and rarely tells me anything nice. I don't know sometimes how I do it, but each night I continue to get myself into this mess.

Yes I am talking about Jillian Michael's Boot Camp for Wii. It is intense and the next day I can't walk but it feels great! Hopefully this along with walking the dog, going for a run and having Lean Cuisine will help me jump start my weight loss goal.

Here is to her awful voice yelling at me to keep it up and the rare "Good Job". My body feels the pain and hopefully the results will start to show in a few weeks.

A new me

Today I am making a pledge to myself. I am at my highest weight I have ever been at in my life and I hate it. I can't fit in some clothes and it drives me nuts every morning when I go in the closet to find something to wear to work. I only have like 4 pairs of pants that fit and 2 skirts so you can imagine that doesn't get fun and with that I REFUSE to buy new clothes.

I, Libby, pledge that I am going to start running 5 days a week and will allow Jillian Michael's Boot Camp to kick my ass 5 days a week. I will choose heathier options for eating and will no longer be a fat lazy ass every day. My goal is to drop a total of 39 lbs. and my first goal is to drop 15-20lbs by June 6th. The rest of the goal it to loose it by the end of the summer. That is an average of 3 lbs a week which I think in the beginning is gonna be ok but will get tough in the end.

So say goodbye to the old Libby and a slow hello to the new one!

Call me...

Tina Taylor the tool woman!

In our spare bath upstairs we never had our contractor put in shower doors since at the time we were on a strict budget and the renovations were costing us enough that we figured we could do it later down the road. That time has come now, only a month in the house, with guests coming to visit on Saturday. We had guests stay over already, my brother and my brother-in-law but they just used the master bath. There is a bar for a shower curtain but I am not really a fan of them so refused to waste money to buy one just for guests this weekend (which happen to be my in-laws).

On Wed after work I set off to Home Depot while waiting for Scott to get home. When I arrived back home with the shower doors, silicone and drill bits to go through tile, I was off on a mission to get them installed by the end of the night. Scott thought this was going to be great so grabbed a beer popped the top off and sat on the couch to watch some hockey.

Starting time: 6pm

Everything started off good, all the parts were in the box! I lined up the bottom rail and it fit perfectly on the bottom however then reading I needed to saw off 1 1/4" so that the side wall jabs could fit on the bottom too. Time to run out to Sears Hardware for a saw now and a metal file.

Got home with that and it was time to start making dinner. I made a Whole Wheat pizza with Turkey pepperoni on it and put it on our pizza stone and let it bake away. Got the bottom rail cut and the side wall jabs up and marked the 6 holes where they would get attached to the side wall. Everything was going great, couldn't imagine why people don't do DYI more. Stopped to have dinner, except the pizza wouldn't come off of the stone. Scott headed out to the local pizzeria and got us pizza while I continued to work.

The instructions said to use a 3/16" drill bit for glass and ceramic tile and I had just that. My dad told me to put masking tape on the tile which would also help the tile from not cracking. So I drilled my 6 holes and there was no cracking! Next I needed to put in the wall anchors and those little devils would not fit so I used a 1/4" drill bit and made the holes larger. They still wouldn't fit and so I used the largest drill bit I had in that tile set which was a 5/16" and that seemed to do the trick. An hour later all of the wall anchors were in. Scott came up and helped me hold up the wall jabs while I screwed them in.

The rest was easy peasy.

And so may I present to you our new shower doors in the spare bathroom:

Here is the before:

The during:

The finished product:

The ending time: 10:45pm

I did all of the silicone work so that it would dry for our guests and so we are officially ready for company!!!!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my Mother-in-Laws birthday and while we don't get to see her much since we are in New Jersey and they are in Buffalo we will get to see her this weekend to celebrate.

To a wonderful mom on her birthday

Mom, you have raised two beautiful, loving sons, been caring and loving to your whole family, always putting others first, ensuring that your family is taken care of, a kind and loving woman, a down to earth soul and the best mother-in-law that any daughter-in-law could ask for.

People always dread in-laws and I can say that I am truly blessed to have a wonderful 2nd mom. Today, I hope that you have a wonderful, relaxing birthday. Looking forward to seeing you this weekend!

June 2, 2007 - London, UK

October 2008- Head of the Charles

May 25, 2008 - Anne Hathaway's House

October 7, 2006- our Wedding