Rug Help Needed!

Around lunchtime, you'll never believe what showed up. My second new computer! They totally overnighted it!! Win. I was told over and over again that the soonest the computer could get to our office would be Wednesday. I guess my anger and insistence actually worked? Anyways,  I didn't want to bother with installing/updating and having it die on me again today. I'm saving that for tomorrow so I could actually get some real work done today. Hopefully this one doesn't crap-out on me! I will seriously have a nervous breakdown if that happens. 

Yesterday Sketchy and I sat down and first bought our tickets to the Wizards vs. Magic game tonight! Excited. Haven't been to a game in a while. Magic usually plays Wizards when I'm out of town. 

After we bought our tickets, we looked at area rugs which are a serious thing we want to get bought soon! Area rugs will help pull the whole color scheme of rooms together. We're going to get one for the living room and one for the mancave for now. 

First, here's what the furniture in the living room looks like (I plan on getting throw pillows to match color scheme): 

 

I'm thinking earth-y tones for rug. Really can go with a lot of color schemes here. I'm really liking the maroon, gold, brown, dark green situations lately. I specifically really like really rich maroon curtains with gold details. But then I also like teal, brown and silver scheme.

Here's what the furniture in the Mancave looks like:

I'm thinking a maroon wall or something darker in the mancave. Sketchy likes VT maroon, black and glass tables and entertainment center furniture pieces. 

So between the two of us we came up with these rugs:

Top left and top right and bottom left are options for mancave (yes I realize I could have done a better picture of just mancave options and just living room options but that'd just be too easy for Nalini)

I think it's safe to say we like the modern-esque patterns. I'm really only in love with the top left for the mancave. The others I don't think I love yet, but i also think I have to see them in the house to really know how I feel. 

Thoughts and/or suggestions?! 

When left to his own devices, Sketchy found these rugs that I absolutely veto (lol): 

Life's Little Things

Thing 12: Continuing with the theme of minor things that make a difference -- shower curtain rods. If the bathrooms have been recently renovated, pay attention to the bathtub tiling and presence of curtain rods or spaces in the tiling for the curtain rod to be placed. We did not have curtain rods or any slots/holes for the rods. Sketchy's thinking there are specific drill bits for ceramic tile. I'm scared he's going to crack the shit out of ceramic tiling. We're still needing to get our master bath curtain rod installed -- hopefully Friday! For now, we're using a tension rod that goes in the downstairs bathroom. Another thing to pay attention to is if there are doors for stand-up showers. Our downstairs bathroom is a stand-up shower. I did notice that there was no door but couldn't really do much about it. Would like to put in a shower door down the road, but for now we'll just tension rod and shower curtain that shower. 

Off to the suckfest that will be the Wizards/Magic game! 

Lazy Sunday and it Feels So Good

I can only hope everyone had as wonderful sleep as I did last night. Definitely slept until 2:30PM today. On the one-hand I was unbelievably happy to sleep in so late but on the other hand I was later informed that I slept through some serious shit. 

I completely missed my opportunity to buy girl scout cookies from our first neighborhood door-to-door fundraiser! Sketchy evidently opened the door and said, "maybe next time" to a little girl! 

no.heart. 

I LIVE for this time of the year when I can finangle girl scout cookies out of Sam or some little girl at a grocery store! Sketchy doesn't understand life or how good girl scout cookies can be. I kept asking if he knew where she lived or if she'd be back. It was pretty pathetic how sad I was to have missed her. Also, I don't want to be that house that doesn't support anyone's anything!

Had to do it. Girl Scout Cookies always remind me of Corky Romano.

Sketchy's parents made a surprise visit to the house. His dad helped install a bunch of things while his mom helped me unpack and sort a lot of odds and ends. It was a really nice lazy day at home where we could GSD (get shit done). 

Last night we went out to DC for a "Goodbye Foggy Bottom Bar Crawl." Completely made up by Diana. Meet Diana: 

Clearly confusedicus in life, but always a fan of beer and America (sunglasses). These pictures side-by-side are actually kind of hilarious. Anyways, I've known her since my Freshman year of college and people who know me generally know most fun life shenanigans include her. 

The Goodbye Foggy Bottom Bar Crawl was a night to hit every great bad foggy bottom bar to celebrate Diana leaving foggy bottom. After many years in her apartment in the heart of campus, she has finally made the move to Virginia! We made our way from Tonic to Lindy's to Froggy to [[funny story]] then-Marshall's which is now some random Indian restaurant all to end at Bottomline. Yes, I'm aware that Bottomline is not a foggy specific bar but it is the greatest twilight zone of fun ever. 

I loved the theme. It was yet another fun night with friends. 

Life's Little Things

Thing 11: Closets can be deceiving. Our closets looked tiny when they were empty and we first looked at the home. After unpacking, I'm pretty impressed with just how much clothes can fit in our bedroom closets and how truly large the linen closet is! I've also bought some storage bins (storage bins are the BEST) for the linen closet which look pretty good and also allow for organized storage! Don't have a picture right now, but will show before and after closets as soon as they're organized properly. Probably sometime after Superbowl Sunday!

Going to start doing only one a day to try to make these posts a bit shorter and more readable. 

Super solid weekend. Hope everyone's weekend was just as fun. Blahhhh, why do weekends fly by so fast? 

Privacy and Piece of Mind... Well, Sort Of

So we finally got all our measurements together of windows and went blind shopping. Sketchy installed one white and one brown so we could figure out which we liked best:

At first, I thought I'd be a fan of the white, especially for the large living room window, but after seeing them hung up, We're all team brown! We're going to pick-up blinds for all windows in the house and hopefully have them hung sometime mid-week! Want bedroom blinds so badly so i can stop freaking out in the middle of the night. 

Last night was f a n t a s t i c.  La Tasca for a couple pitchers of Sangria, Vapianos for dinner and topped off with many rounds of awesome beer at RFDs. The perfect and classic chinatown night. Last spring, this was the gameplan fairly often. For whatever reason, we haven't done this in far too long. I honestly can't express how nice it felt to just relax and enjoy things I genuinely love with good friends just like old times. 

Yesterday I failed on Life's Little Things.

Life's Ltttle Things -- Things to Pay Attention to When Looking for a Home

Thing 9: Something minor that people don't really pay attention to when looking at a home for the first time are window treatments. These are really important though. You should make a note of: 

1. whether there are blinds. 

2. whether there are curtains/curtain rods.

3. whether those blinds, curtains and/or curtain rods come with the home.

Bare windows, as you all know. freak me the hell out! Blinds, curtains and curtain rods are also little things that tend to add up. You may not realize how many windows are in your home until you're buying blinds for them.

Thing 10: Another minor thing that you should pay attention to when looking for a home. Light fixtures. You should make a note of

1. whether there are light fixtures on the ceilings

2. where the outlets are in rooms in case there are no light fixtures on ceiling (so you'll know where lamps will have to go)

3. whether the light switches actually turn on/off outlets. If they don't you'll have to rewire things which can probably get tricky. 

Didn't really look closely at light fixtures. We're halfsies. There are light fixtures in the hallway, dining area and basement but none in the rooms or living room. We just bought about 5 lamps to light up the house! One issue I now face is the fact that since there is such a lack of light fixtures on the ceilings, it's difficult to add fun light fixtures throughout the house such as track lighting in the basement/man cave and such. Such is life. 

I'll leave you with a little funny which you may relate to: 

I know this was true in the house I grew up in and I'm sure it'll be an issue here. I basically flip on all three on the same panel before I turn on the correct light. 

Productive day. Now off to a fun night in the city!

All the Wrong Buttons and All the Wrong Turns

This morning I finally received my new computer!

Old work computer blue-screened over the holidays. I've been using my personal computer with no access to any of my old files for the past 1.5 weeks. It's been frustrating and I'm slowly getting way behind! Not the way to start a new year.

So anyways, I've been staring at this on my desk:

So you can only imagine how excited I was to see this foreign screen: 

(says Setup is preparing your compute for first use)

Imagine my life, two hours later when the [[brand new]] computer installed all initial start-up crap, told me I needed to reboot for changes to take place and then THIS screen happened:

(no bootable devices)

Technology hates me. I then spent some more quality time on the phone with Dell Customer Service (story of my life the past 1.5 wks). This time, I wasn't too understanding. How do I get sent a broken new computer?! The techy I spoke with informed me that there 'must be a manufacturing defect or hardware issue' 

REALLY?! You don't say. 

He told me I'd have to wait 3-5 days for them to mail me a new computer. I guess I shall just sit around and wait for 5 o clock as my to-do list continues to escalate. Hopefully I have a computer next week sometime.

In more ridiculous news, last night was interesting. We've been in the house since Saturday, but yesterday (Thursday) was the first day I've driven home from work. Clearly, I've subconsciously been avoiding the work to home commute in rush hour. 

The trip home was downright ridiculous. First, let's take a look at these:

This is how far and how long it should take from home to work with some traffic (as you can see the crawling tortoise avg speed pace)

This is how long I managed to make last night's trip home. 

How? Too many highways in NOVA + confusing road signs + HOV lanes that only have select exits + this situation: 

I took a nice drive out in the opposite direction past National Harbor (always so pretty at nighttime), crossed over a couple bridges, took a second and then third wrong turn which led me to stupid accident traffic and then finally managed to end up south of my actual exit. Adventurous day. Won't be driving home today. We'll see how Monday goes. 

Happy Weekend! 

James and Kaitlin Play Host

Flashing back to Florida again. After a few days in Miami, Varsha drove us up to Orlando and dropped us off with Kaitlin and James. We stayed in James's new house (!!!) for the weekend.

Meet Kaitlin and James:

I have way too many pictures of them to choose from, so I'll go with this one I made around their first anniversary! 

Many of you know that I've known Kaitlin basically FOREVER. Since we were around 11-12 years old! I've only known James for a couple years now but I obviously approve. =)

We first went to Kaitlin's parents on Friday night for their holiday snacks and games party. Her parents are always a blast to hang out with! We had lots of tastey appetizers and then played some games with her parents and their friends and then ended the night in the hot tub. Successful night! We spent the night at her parent's place. Then the next day we checked out some venues and finally got to see James's new house!

It's so very cute and put together and the neighborhood is very pretty with water fountains and ponds everywhere. There are a good mixture of little subdivisions within the bigger community. I didn't take any pictures (boo) so I'm stealing from his facebook. 

It's so super cute and I actually really like the color of his house -- it's different. 

Okay, so I love everything about his house but if I had to pick my two favorite things they would be: 1. I love how his house is kind of tucked away, there's a longer driveway (which is badass to have more space for guests and such) and his amazingly large, flat and fenced-in yard! Also, love his french doors that have built in tiny blinds. They are pretty damn badass. Didn't get a picture of those, but just trust that they are badass.

Long Driveway.

screened in porch that leads to patio and yard!

amazing patio/backyard

yard. love. 

They were still in the process of decorating and such since he basically had just moved in! Kaitlin was going to be moving in the weekend after we were staying there. I can't wait to see it once Kaitlin and her mom have put all kinds of decorative touches on the place! It's such great space, even though those psychos keep calling it small! 

Life's Little Things

Thing 7: Having lived in carpeted apartments/dorms for the last 5ish years, I haven't really had to deal with wood floors. What I've learned is that my little feet are delicate and don't like hard surfaces. It literally hurts to walk up and down the stairs! My feet also get super cold super quickly. One of those little things I just didn't think about. I always made fun of people for house slippers, but here I am dying for some! As I was perusing some stores, I found these badboys: 

Yes, I realize these are not house slippers, but they were so funny and interesting that I did it. I bought them. I haven't used them for their cleaning purpose but I have found that they offer great support to keep my feet warm and happy on the wood floors!

Thing 8: When we began looking at houses, I started to distinctly like the Split Level houses because they had multi levels but did not have huge long traditional staircases. I was trying to avoid staircases like the plague. This was my number one gripe about townhouses. So then I started thinking of all kinds of reasons why stairs are horrible. 

"Oh, what about when older relatives visit, they'll hate it." 

"Oh what about if you break your foot, Sketchy, how are you gonna get up to your bedroom? IM NOT CARRYING YOU!" 

"Oh, I AM NOT going to be chasing children and lucy up and down stairs nor do i want kids falling down stairs!" 

I said all of these things to talk Sketchy out of townhouses, not because I thought they'd be a real concern. Fail. We don't have one large stair case, but we do have stairs and boy does Lucy love them. She loves running up and down them (maybe it's good because it tires her out?) and has definitely found her way around the house already. I never thought about the fact that Lucy would wander and I'd have to constantly go looking for her! Time and time again i find myself looking around and realizing she's missing. The good thing is she's never doing anything bad, but I like to know where she is at all times! She has a spot in the basement that she loves. Just sitting there. And then when we're in the basement she loves just being on the couch upstairs. I have found her many-a-time in this position:

 

Friday, you're so close, yet so far away!

Business Cards and Cold Feet

Hump Day. 

Today I walked into my office and there on my desk was a lovely little box filled with our new business cards that I designed (I'm becoming such a fan of Illustrator!): 

Top old business card front

Bottom new business card front

Top old business card back

Bottom new business card back

The new cards were designed to match our marketing theme. You'll notice the wave, tagline and runner picture are prominent on all of our materials. 

The wave (as I call it) all started about a year and a half ago when I was designing our web site look. We liked the wave and decided we'd run with it and our runner logo/athlete tagline. It's our goal to brand MSSC with these colors and this theme. In the past 1.5 years we've come so.very.far with our marketing materials and it makes me extremely proud! 

I also had designed the old business cards. You can really see a difference in what we were and are now. The old look was very professional, clean-cut and traditional. Our newer look is more modern, sleek and a bit edgy but still maintains a professional and conservative look with our dark colors. 

Hooray for new cards but I'm a little disappointed with print quality. While the card stock is thicker and heavy which is nice, the edges are a bit rough. Meh.

Anyways, enough marketing coordinator speak. 

Today we finally got cable and internet hooked up at the house. Evidently was a 4-5 hour situation but finally feeling a little more like home. 

Finished off the day grabbing dinner with Sam and Brenna at BTS in Foggy Bottom. Nothing like a delicious Lemon Chicken Burger to complete your day. Their chicken burger is amazing, which can only mean good things for their real burgers. No picture, was too hungry! 

Life's Little Things

Thing 5: We've been taking miserable luke warm and cold water showers for the past few days. Sketchy finally decided to get to the bottom of it. So we all know that the hot water heater is what makes our water hot. Yes. Great. BUT what we did not know and what we learned is that there are simple settings on the hot water heater. "Pilot" is NOT the setting one wants or needs when they like hot showers. Evidently, when your water heater is installed for the first time it's generally defaulted to Pilot. Anyways, we finally have hot water! Sketchy looked like a kid in a candy shop when he fixed it! He was so excited to show me that he fixed it. This is the first thing other than his new TV that he's been excited about regarding the house. Boys are so weird.  

Thing 6: While looking at houses, it always bothered me that vents were placed towards the bottom of the walls almost on the ground (some are even IN THE GROUND!). I did not understand this and hated it, because it causes lots of grief when trying to place furniture in rooms (don't want to block the vents, or maybe you can but I just feel weird doing that). Also, they're just ugly when they're at the bottom of the wall. What I discovered yesterday is that these low placed vents are diamonds in the rough. 

Pictured below is a vent by our front door where I've been leaving my shoes for now. 

The heater was on and warmed up the inside lining of my moccasins. I almost died and went to heaven when I slipped those on in the morning. So warm, fuzzy and cozy. New found appreciation and helpful tip if you don't already do this. I suppose it might be harmful for certain shoe materials that can be destroyed by heat but the comfort the warm shoes bring me definitely overrides any care of deterioration of the shoes! =)

Two more days 'til Friday!

A Miami Winter

Today I'll take a break from house speak and packing updates and flashback to the holidays in Florida. So much happened in those two weeks. I'll definitely need to break the trip up. We first flew into Orlando and headed down to Miami for a few days. We stayed with my cousin Varsha who has recently started Med School in Miami. Meet Varsha:

one of my favorite nights in DC -- Chinatown -- making friends with the PoPos.

sunglasses indoors. typical Varsha antics 

We spent three days total in Miami. She was a great host. Even skipped class to hang out with us on south beach -- ah, the tough sacrifices she made for us. 

We went to The Carlyle (right on South Beach) for happy hour... at about 1pm. 

We had extra large delicious drinks. Sangria for me and frozen margarita for Varsha.

Then we walked around the beach for a bit while I took lots and lots of pictures. 

We hung out with some of Varsha's med school class at an ugly sweater party and again the next night for a drinking games party at Varsha's place. They're definitely a fun bunch. Makes me question the future of our healthcare profession just a little, lol (completely kidding). I was happy to see her making lots of friends and having fun while being away from home. Trying to convince her to leave Florida for her residency. I've got three solid years to convince and hoping Miami is a good baby step. =) We had a lot of fun in Miami and then headed up to Orlando to hang out with friends and begin our marathon of visiting family! 

More on Florida time tomorrow! 

Life's Little Things -- Appliances Edition

Thing 3: So how many people does it take to get a refrigerator water dispenser to work? Evidently 3. I had been trying to figure out why the water dispenser in the fridge was not working. I could hear ice being made which would lead me to believe that a water line was working. Sketchy and Kerry played around in the back of the fridge making sure lines were connected. I continuously pressed the button to make water come out. Finally Kerry had the bright idea of reading the manual. I know, genius. Anyways, this led to some magical code for how to get the water to work. Evidently for brand new appliances, you have to hold down the button for five second intervals and continue this until water decides to come out. I guess this is some form of warming for the first time? Either way, it was a ridiculous situation of three people staring at a fridge like it was some kind of foreign item. 

Thing 4: As if I didn't feel dumb enough about not knowing how to operate a water dispenser on a fridge, I found myself confused by the stove. In an attempt to cook a meal in the new kitchen I was faced with a knob that had two highs and two low settings. After playing around with the knob for a good while, I realized that there was a burner within a burner! The knob was for two burners in the same area (bottom left). It blew my mind and also made me verrryyy happy. While it seemed confusing at first, I now think it's an amazing range with five burners but looks like four! 

I'll need to upload pictures to give you a better idea of how this was confusing to me. Just find it funny that I didn't really know how to use any of the appliances in the kitchen. 

Here's to hoping I can find my way around the sink and microwave without consulting a manual.