This is a terrible picture of water infused with bell peppers and rosemary I took while at a conference I’m at this week. I’ve seen lemons and cucumbers… But never bell peppers. Have any of you? And it tasted like pepper water, in case you are wondering.
Hey folks, over at Gen*HER we figured out early on that we definitely wanted to bring in some guest bloggers to talk about the things that generally don’t come up on the radar of our little group. So without further ado, I’m happy to introduce our first guest blogger, my wonderful husband Branson, who is here to share some of the tips he has gathered over our first 2 months of home-ownership. Enjoy! -Jessie
You can do it. That’s the best piece of advice I can give any budding handyperson like myself. As you
may know, Gen*HER’s own Jessie, my loving wife, and I just bought our first house. It’s a cute, little 1950s rancher and while it’s not like Tom Hanks and Shelly Long’s place in ‘The Money Pit’, it’s a legitimate fixer-upper.
Not our house. But sometimes it feels close.
I was initially asked by my wife to post up the tools anyone should have on hand to make home repairs and improvements. However, that’s been done over and over and over. I’ll readily admit that my home improvement endeavors are a little more Tim Allen than Bob Vila but even I’ve been able to do a few things. Here’s my advice for all of you looking to take your destiny into your own hands and venture into the world of DIY home improvements.
My Hero.
1. Research: Google is your best friend before any project. If it’s been done, someone’s bragged about it on the internet. Also, you probably have a coworker, friend, of family member that’s pretty handy and more than willing to give advice (my coworkers taught me to clean the carburetor on my mower this week). I also follow a few blogs. My favorite is OneProjectCloser, but there’s plenty out there. Also, it doesn’t hurt to hit up the thrift store and get as many handyman books as you can. They’re cheap and loaded with tips, tricks, and invaluable information.
2. Have confidence: Anyone can make improvements to their home. Whether it’s painting walls, caulking a shower, or repairing a subfloor, you’re capable of doing it. For major things like electrical or plumbing, you may wanna call in the professionals but for most things, you can do it. Just have a little faith in yourself.
Holmes on Homes: The best/scariest home repair TV show you can watch.
3. Take your time: The old adage measure twice, cut once rings true. Spend a little extra time to do it right the first time. You don’t wanna rush things and realize you’ve cut your sheet of plywood too short, and that you’ll have to do yet another run to Lowes.
4. Take lots of pictures: I’m not good at this, but it’s really rewarding to have before and after shots. It’s good for bragging to family and friends about just how handy you are. Make sure people give you your props.
But again, the best piece of advice I have is to have a little faith. There are bigger idiots out there than you that have made their own home repairs. So, what’s your advice for home repair type stuff? Got any tips or stories? This DIY guy wants to know.
As I mentioned before, my Pop Pop passed away a few weeks ago. This Saturday was his memorial service and my family was really touched by the amount of flowers that were sent to the funeral home. From the service, the flowers made their way back to my Granny’s house where they sat during the reception as my family ate cold cuts and exchanged stories about my Pop Pop. Eventually everyone left and we all trickled home to sleep after the long day.
Sunday morning my Granny called first thing- “Come get these flowers out of my house, it looks like a funeral home in here!”
My mother and I came to her rescue, walking into her house and realizing she was right.
“Take some to your house” I urged my mother.
“Funeral flowers creep me out” she replied.
I LOVE flowers. I love to have flowers in my house and I hate how much flowers cost. Knowing how much flowers cost, I wasn’t comfortable just chucking these beauties, so I thought why not try to reuse them?
I began with a spray with flowers of pink, red, orange, and yellow. The funeral-ist looking of the flower arragements, the spray is a big round flower arrangement on a stand. One by one I plucked the flowers out of the spray, rinsed their stems of the floral foam, and sorted them by type of flower. Some of the stems were extremely short from the way the flowers were arranged, but I did my best with what I had. Once I had plucked the spray clean of flowers I tossed the form and grabbed a vase. After filling it with water I began to arrange only the orange and yellow flowers in a bouquet in my hand and once I was pleased with the look I plopped them into the vase. And they looked much happier.
“There we go.” I said, handing the vase to my Granny.
She looked at them approvingly and said “Very pretty, set them on the side table over there.”
Once I had Granny’s approval I knew I was good to go. I continued to dissemble the arrangements and reassemble them into vases with different color and flower themes. Before I knew it, my grandmother’s house had gone from looking like a funeral home to looking like Oprah’s office (have you ever seen Oprah’s office? she keeps fresh flowers EVERYWHERE). I had a pretty purple vase where I had collected all the white flowers with some baby’s breath and a tall vase on the kitchen table where I had collected some of the colorful flowers with the longer stems. It was really a lot of fun- because these flowers were doomed anyway I felt no pressure and it was really like a flower arranging experimentation time for me.
I was about to start plucking one of the last baskets when my mother stopped me and said “WAIT! Save some for my house!” so I knew I must have been doing something good.
The moral of this story is that even though funeral flowers are arranged to look good sitting in front of a casket doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. So before you chuck those beautiful flowers give flower re-arranging a try! The worst that can happen is that you fail and you chuck them anyway, and nobody will ever know.
Before.
After!
I found my last race for 2012. The reality is that come December there is no way I’m going to want to get up in the cold, dark morning to go for a run at 8am. My last race is going to be another 10K, notice that the race emphasizes “flat course”. Sounds perfect. It’s November 18th in Columbia and you get a long sleeve t-shirt.
http://www.columbiaturkeychase.com
My boyfriend says he heard somewhere that the last refuge of the pushy car salesman is the mattress store. And he’s right.
At some point in time, the aggressive, condescending sales tactic must’ve worked on someone, somewhere. Otherwise I have to assume it would’ve gone extinct by now. “You don’t know what you want, you’re waiting for me to let you know.” That whole dance where the salesman doesn’t persist on convincing you of the superiority of the product, but instead pushing you until you’re uncomfortable enough to have to leave the store by whatever means necessary. Even if that means buying whatever he’s selling. Personally, I can’t take this method. It makes me feel annoyed, mistrusting, and worst of all gullible. And like whatever reason I have for NOT believing what the salesperson is telling me is MY fault because I’m stupid. Not because he just didn’t do a good job of making me believe.
The particular sleazeball we encountered today was sequestered in a Sleepy’s. I have long hated Sleepy’s just on the principle of their obnoxious commercials. But I was willing to give them a try, since I DID need a mattress, and it was Labor Day so there should be sales, and hey, let’s put their obnoxious commericals to the test, shall we?
We were barely in the door when the salesman pounced and peppered us with innocent enough questions. We laid on some mattresses, he gave us some spiel on which ones were different and why. But as soon as we said, Thanks so much for your time, we’re going to go think about this purchase, his tune changed. “Wait, I can’t let you guys leave the store! Why you wanna go anywhere else? It’s the same deal you’ll find elsewhere, guaranteed.” If that’s true, why was he so insecure as to not let us leave the store and see for ourselves? “Let me know what I can do to get you to make this purchase right here, right now.” Lower the price? “Oh, well this particular mattress isn’t part of the Labor Day sale.” He got rude, trying to berate us into convincing HIM why we didn’t want to buy from him. Finally we were able to excuse ourselves. The experience left such a bad taste in our mouths I wasn’t ready to enter another mattress store ever, let alone that day.
Eventually, after running some other errands, we ventured into a Healthy Back Store, just to test the waters. Instantly the difference was noticeable – the salesman was attenttive, not predatory. He listened to us, offered us options, and most importantly – LEFT US ALONE FOR A SECOND. No helicoptering salesmanship here. In the end, we walked out with not only a new mattress, but a lowered price, free pillows, and a reduced rate on the installation/removal of the old mattress. We were so relieved with the second experience we had to tell the salesman so. The dude at Sleepy’s didn’t realize it, but he was playing bad salesman good salesman with this guy at HBS, and losing out as a result.
I think the lesson we took away from this experience was, in the era of Apple and other companies with great confidence in their product and respect for their consumers, it’s about time for the Old School Salesman to go extinct already.
I love making plans, schedules, weekly calendars and the like for my workouts. Do I ever follow said plans, schedules, weekly calendars and the like? Rarely. Darn life gets in the way too often. Part of the problem is that I get too ambitious. Work out six days a week for the next six months? Done! Scheduled, that is…
One thing that does help me stay on track is cold, hard greed. If I pay for a class or session I show up. Period. I hate the idea of paying for something that I don’t use. There are of course plenty of other good reasons to work out on a regular basis. It makes me feel good, helps maintain my weight, gives me energy, better sleep, and on and on. I’m not awful about missing workouts; I do a minimum of at least twice a week and usually more. However, I do too often (for my goals) skip workouts to save time in packed day. You know how that goes, right?
I’ve decided to try a new app that appeals both to my cheapness and my efforts to improve my fitness. You use GymPact to track your visits to the gym and if you integrate it with RunKeeper, you can count walks, runs, and bike rides towards your weekly goals as well. If you don’t meet your stated goals each week, you have to pay a penalty. You can set your goals and your penalties for missing workouts. I’m trying four workouts a week to start and a penalty of $5.00 if I miss one. If you complete your goals you get a monetary reward. GymPact takes the penalties from those who did not complete their goals that week and divvies it up among those who did. It doesn’t average out to much, probably a dollar or two a week but for an additional motivation it’s not bad.
I’m off to do my first workout since making my pledge. Wish me luck!
Today is the beginning of the Labor Day weekend and the start of the Grand Prix of Baltimore and I could not be more excited. I went to the inaugural race last year and was completely blown away by how awesome it was. Literally, a race through the streets of Baltimore.
Let me get this straight. Although I like sports in general, I have never been interested in auto racing. At all. However, this race was a huge deal for Baltimore so I thought it would be fun to check out. Support my city, civic pride, blah, blah, blah. And on the first day I soon realized I could even hear the cars from my house two miles away! That’s a lot of power.
Courtesy of http://raceonbaltimore.com/grand-prix-of-baltimore/
Although I’ve never been into auto racing, I’ve always been one to appreciate a powerful, fast car. My first car was a 1973 Chevelle with a 350 V8 engine and I’ve always had a soft spot for a car in which you can feel the power just coming up through the floorboards. Times this by a thousand and you might get an idea of what it feels like to be anywhere near a Grand Prix race. It was amazing. Primal, raw power.
1973 Chevelle. Mine looked exactly like this except for maybe a big dent and some rust.
If you’re in the area, check it out. You do not need to buy a ticket to experience the awesomeness. You can hear the cars (and feel them in your bones) outside the track. Last year I split my time inside the fence and outside in a bar that was right on the track and both locations were great. And the beer was much cheaper outside the fence.
The worst part about blogging is coming up with the titles, the best part is sharing things that make you smile. My husband is very particular about his undergarments and was just telling me about a new brand he’d like to try called Mack Weldon Underwear. I briefly became distracted looking for the specified drawers when I came across this website that I thought our readers would find useful called the Underwear Expert. You don’t have to thank me 
This past weekend my boyfriend, his sister and her husband and I ventured into the gorgeous hils of Virginia wine country. Normally we take these kinds of trips in the Fall Fantastic Foliage season, so I was a little trepidatious about taking this time to exlore the gorgeous mountainside in the historically sweltery August instead of the chilly October. But luckily it was breezy, rainy, and there was enough beautiful cloud action that I could pretend it was an overcast Fall day.
This year we set out to Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard, Barboursville Vineyards, and Cross Keys Vineyards out of the 200 wineries that Virginia has to offer.
Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard was the most fun to get to – down a long, winding, one-way, bumpy gravel road that made us question several times if we were headed the wrong way, about to get murdered, etc. Luckily this sign appeared when we’d almost lost hope:
And not long after the road opened up to a beautiful valley, nestled between some impressive mountains (no pictures because I’m a doof, and I only brought my phone and not a camera with me – there was zero reception there). We visited an hour before closing time, so we got the full attention of the tasting staff, a wonderful intimate tour of the tiny winery, and got to hang out with the vineyard dogs. There is really nothing I want more than to sit outside amongst beautiful scenery with a bottle of wine and a plate full of cheese. Sigh. We particularly were enamored with their Vidal Blanc. Fun fact I didn’t know about: the smaller vineyards employ Bottling Trucks, that simply pull up to the vineyard and set up the assembly line to help with the bottling/corking/labeling process at the end of the harvest, so the vineyard doesn’t have to store that equipment onsite. Crazy!
Barboursville Vineyards is one of my favorite spots to go in Virginia. If we’re lucky, we’ll nab a spot in one of their cottages, like we did this year. Complete with a view of the vineyard, a bottle of wine each day, morning breakfast, and an afternoon cheese plate (see what I said earlier about cheese & wine = heaven).
Ghostbusting, winery style
This year we took the tour, which enabled us to learn more about the fermenting process. For example, I thought with Chardonnay you had two primary choices – fermented in oak versus fermented in steel. Turns out, you actually get both! They stick the grapes in oak first for a variable amount of time, then finish off with steel.
At Barboursville, I’m always a sucker for the Chardonnay or their Merlot. Neither which I would normally choose when out and about.
The last vineyard we hit was Cross Keys. This was located in a truly gorgeous part of Virginia, so I would even recommend visiting for the drive alone. Rolling hills of farmland, looming blue mountains in the background – perfection!
Unfortunately, I found the wine and the service to be a bit awkward. Cross Keys was established in 2001, the same year as SugarLoaf, but for some reason they didn’t seem to have their act together quite as well as SugarLoaf yet. And if you’re tempted to get something off the menu while you’re there – just don’t. But hey – I can’t say enough about that view!
Thus ends my quasi-educational trip to just a few of the wineries Virginia has to offer. How about you guys? Has anyone else checked out some of the 197 others?
You may (or may not) have noticed my blogging absence these past couple weeks. The reason behind that was the my family was experiencing the sickness and eventually the loss of my wonderful grandfather. I thank our faithful readers for their patience with me, and my Gen*HER gals for their endless support and amazing friendship.
But really, the loss of my Pop Pop Jack has been the cherry on the top of the craptastic sundae of this summer for me. Nothing is as bad as the loss of my grandfather, but the past summer has been riddled with low enrollment at my dance studio, a stressful house buying and moving experience, car issues, family drama, crazy cases of poison ivy, and two planned vacations that never came about. Not a good summer in my household at all, so obviously, I’m looking very forward to fall.
A nice peaceful fall is what I’m looking for. (source: adifferentforest.com)
I feel so lucky that fall, the best season, comes right after summer, which has sucked. In fall the air gets crisp and clear, and the colors outside get beautiful. Fall is the season of perfect flavors- pumpkin, cinnamon, vanilla, brown sugar, nutmeg, butternut squash. That means pumpkin lattes, pumpkin chili, apple pies with cinnamon.. mmmmm. Fall is the season of good TV- football season is back (GO Ravens!), all the shows are new again (Once Upon a Time is one I’m particularly looking forward to).
Once Upon a Time AND Apples! (source: herocomplex.latimes.com)
So what do you think, am I jumping the gun? When is the right time to get excited about Fall? I’m guessing there will be more on this fall-lovin’ topic from fellow Gen*HERer Monica, who just MIGHT be looking forward to fall more than me.
