I've been meaning to upload this photo for a few weeks now. I found this the last time we were up at Poppop and Grammie's house and snatched it up before Mom could destroy it. Check out Mom's short skirt and skimpy top! Not to mention Dad's skinny leg jeans! I'm guessing Poppop Eckard took the photo. I think it's great, and I knew Theresa and Laura would enjoy it too, although I'm sure Mom will be mortified that I'm posting it...hehe. :-)

Look who showed up on our deck this morning. I hope he's only here for a weekend getaway, and then plans to fly back to where its warmer for another month or so. We still have a good amount of snow on the ground and more in the forecast, so I dont think he'll be finding any worms around here for a little while yet...

Wow...was this a huge project! Somehow it didn't seem like so much work when we were just talking about it!! But it was totally worth all of the splinters, sore muscles and scraped fingers from the carpet backing and tack strips. Dad used over 400 screws trying to get rid of all of the squeaks in the floor.

Amanda and Jason came up to help on Saturday, boy were we glad to see them!


We lived like rednecks for the weekend, with lawn chairs for furniture, and the tv on the floor~


Well...someone had to oversee that dad was screwing the floor down right!!


We crammed the furniture anywhere it would fit....

I especially liked the sofa in the kitchen. After I washed the dishes, I didn't have to go far to lay down and take a nap!!



And the finally the finished product....

I love the new carpeting, it's sooo plush, and feels good under your feet.


Now for new furniture to go with the new carpet?! :)

The storm's over. Poor Jason was out at 10pm shoveling and everyone must have felt bad for him because all of our neighbors came out to help. The guy across the street brought over his snowblower and did our driveway, and the neighbors on either side helped with our sidewalks. Needless to say I'll be doing a lot of baking today to thank everyone for their help! Merck's asking everyone to work from home again today if they can, so that's what I plan to do. Kimmel and Silverman had a "2 hour delay" so Jason just headed into work now. They finally ploughed our street and he has the subaru so I think he'll be fine. Here's how things look this morning...

Sadly the pine tree in the front of our house took a bit of a beating in this storm. The snow was really heavy and stuck to the branches, and one of the big branches in the middle of the tree snapped off yesterday... :(

This was as close as I could get Piper and Pippin to the snow. If I put them out on the deck the snow would be over their heads!

It's 7:30pm and still snowing here (though not as heavy as earlier)...I think Laura's right, our deck is going to disappear if it doesn't stop soon! :-)

I've been waiting for a good snowstorm, and boy did we get one today! We have 19 inches of snow as I write this, but it's still snowing and we're expected to get a few more inches before it's all done. Dad and I were out in the snow earlier, and we took some pictures...


Dad thought the mailbox was so funny with the snow piled on top. Once the winds start to pick up, the snow will be blown away.



School is closed today and tomorrow, so I'm off now until next Tuesday because of President's Day weekend! Yay!


Unfortunately the downside of the storm is the clean up... but dad likes getting out and riding around on the tractor!


I love snowstorms!!! We may be getting another one on Monday! :)

We're breaking all kinds of snow records in the Philly area this winter. Between the Christmas storm, last weekend, and today, we've smashed the record for snowiest winter ever! It was pretty sunny on Sunday and Monday, so some of the snow from Saturday melted, but with the extra snow coming down now we're definitely up over 2 feet total. It's still supposed to snow for another 5 hours, so I'll try to take more photos in the morning when it's all finished. Here's what it looks like out our front door right now...
Jason did shovel before lunch, but you can't really tell anymore...

And the back deck...

Our picnic table is disappearing...
Everything is closed today. Jason had off of work, and even Merck told us not to come in unless we absolutely had to. I'll post more photos later...

Once again we had one of those weird snowstorms where you got more snow the further south you are, so we ended up with more than Mom and Dad again. Our grand total is about 20 inches. It's difficult to tell exactly how much because it's been so windy that the snow is really drifting. Here are a few photos of our big storm...doesn't everyone miss PA winters??

I've had multiple requests to post photos of the living room with the new rug. I was hoping to get the curtains up too before I posted the photos, but I just learned that my curtain rods are on back-order until the end of February! So, you'll just have to imagine some maroon curtains on the windows for now. :-) I'll post another photo when they're up. I'm also going to look for some endtables to go on either side of the couch...

Pippin loves having all of our furniture back...

And in case you didn't hear, yesterday was Christmas with Uncle John and Aunt Linda! Jason and I hosted it here at our place. It went very well, except for the fact that I made a dessert with cool whip in it, but that's a whole other story. Anyway, here's a photo of our Christmas present from Aunt Linda, which we have hung proudly in the foyer...
And, one more thing! We only have room for one endtable in the family room, and we really didn't want to put a coffee table in there because we like the open floor space, but we felt like we needed something for people to put drinks on. So, we found this perfect solution. This square ottoman is easy to move around, it provides extra storage inside (for blankets and things), and the top flips over to be a tray when you need it. I saw them in a Crate and Barrel catalogue first, and then we found them in Target for half the price! They work great...

That's all of the updates for now. I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Hi everyone!

I found a few spare moments tonight to snap a few pictures of my new room and kitchen. The house is a gorgeous home, built in the 1930s I believe. This means lots of interesting architectural elements, and nice, solid building materials, along with a lot of quirks (i.e. doors that take an extra push to get them to latch)



Currently, my desk chair is that rather small balance ball...a la a suggestion from Manda. It's really a terrible chair, but it'll tide me over til my new one arrives!

My favorite part of the room...these gorgeous built in little step/shelves (my room is over the front entryway downstairs, hence the stair outcroppings. I'm quite the fan, however. The blue parasol up in the top corner was my Christmas present from Stephan :)



Love the tile work in the kitchen, and all the dried herbs and plants from the garden..

And here is the infamous washer/dryer. I tried to use it last night, and it took me 2.5 hrs to wash/dry a small load of jeans...well mostly dry...and the jeans came out so wrinkled I had to iron them anyway. Damn! Guess I'll be putting in some quality iron time for a while ;-)

I'll put up pictures of the outside of the house and the garden soon!