Jennifer's 365 Project

Yesterday was another moving day and today was going to be general "get things done" and "prepare for Easter" day. First up? Buying some drapes for the living room.

In the afternoon I started baking some things to take to my parent's place tomorrow. I decided on mini-cheesecakes (a regular staple at most family get togethers)

I also decided to try a hot cross bun recipe (after being recently inspired by a tweet from an awesome person). I was originally going to make it by hand, but after all the moving I decided to give my wrist a rest and use the bread machine.
the first batch came out a little lumpy. I'd cut down the recipe since my bread machine can't make such large batches, and I may have messed something up. The obnoxiously direction of putting "2 eggs into 2-cup measuring cup. add enough water to measure 1 1/3 cups" didn't make me too happy either. Why exactly aren't we on the metric system? Gah.
While I was messing around in the kitchen Chris assembled the lawn mower and decided to mow the lawn. The cat enjoyed watching out the front door.
Unsatisfied with the first batch, I decided to make another batch from a different recipe in the bread machine.

While I was waiting for the bread machine to churn out another batch of dough, I made a small basket for my parents and a bag for my brother. I don't usually do anything for Easter but I dont know. This year I wanted to. I was probably partially motivated by a desire to have a bunch of candy in the house.
When 9pm rolled around, the second batch was finally ready. This time I think I overcooked them slightly, but they were not as dry as the first batch. To the first batch's defense, Chris really liked them.

Next time I'll have to remind myself to start cooking yeast recipes earlier in the day. Mid-afternoon is probably not the best time to start.

I dropped Chris off at 7am to pick up rental truck, grabbed a tasty drink from Biggby, then headed into work for a few hours.


Chris ran a truckload from the apartment to the house while I was at work. When I got home later that morning we headed out to our storage units (yes, units) to grab some stuff.

Most of my stuff has been in storage the last several years. And I have a lot of stuff.


Three truckloads later (we probably could have done it in two, honestly) we had living room furniture, another bedroom set, dining set, exercise gear and more. Basically another house-load of stuff. We completely emptied my storage unit. Which is awesome.

Chris and I could both easily furnish a house. Finally integrating everything is proving an interesting experience.

We are going to need to have some kind of garage sale soon.

We live within two blocks of three trails and two parks (two of the parks have nature trails). That's pretty awesome! It also explains why last week we saw a fawn darting through the neighborhood.

Most of the kitchen stuff has been moved to the new place, which means it is time for some home cooking!

I made a tasty, modified version of bruschetta chicken (as in, more veggies, less chicken). It came out good and I'm happy to report the oven in the new place works perfectly.

This house has a laundry chute on the main floor, which is all kinds of awesome! I've spent the last several days tossing dirty laundry from the bedroom down the stairs and into a pile to be tossed down the chute.

Each time I toss a piece of clothing down the stairs I think of how unamused my mother would be.

Look mom! I still bite my nails and toss things down the stairs. Bad habits die hard.

As I went to Leki's food dish tonight I noticed there was a massive cluster of small ants crawling around his food.

His food dish has only been in this house since Saturday night....

So I got rid of the ants, scrubbed the area, and we took a trip to the store for an anti-ant solution...

Oh well, at least it isn't mice, right?

Today is round two with the truck rental and my wrists are screaming at me to stop using them. Oh god we have a lot of stuff between us....

Because we just have the car, Chris did a quick shopping trip yesterday with the rental truck to get some heavy duty shelving for storage in the basement. He also picked up a few other things that we can't fit in the trunk of our car.


We went back to the apartment in the morning to get more stuff and to dismantle the dining table I was using to pack stuff on.

Mostly I sat on the floor and tried to nap while Chris hauled boxes down into the truck. I helped him with the heavy TV stand we have but he pretty much did everything else. He is so awesome.

At the end of the day we ended up with the majority of things we need. That's not to say there isn't a ton of stuff left (Chris has three massive bookshelves stuffed full). But we can get that stuff in increments and, since we have the apartment for several weeks, we certainly don't have to kill ourselves moving everything in one weekend.

I really didn't like that plan at first. I wanted to move everything in one weekend. But after seeing how long it took to move what we did, there's no way we can empty that apartment and our storage units in two days. I'm way too wimpy for that.


Back at the house the cat seemed to be settling in nicely. The garage door scares the crap out of him, but other than that he is almost 100% back to normal. That includes griping when you try to push him out of your way.


And we have already started to load up some things on the shelves Chris assembled this morning.

Now to munch on some brownies I made in our "new" oven!

Chris got up at the crack of dawn to finish the last painting task. The accent wall in the living room was red....


But we changed it to a dark green to match my couches. Now we just have to get them out of storage!


We rented a truck and took a few loads over to the house. Unfortunately we have a 3rd floor apartment, so by the end of the day I was ready to collapse. As Chris puts it, I'm a ranged fighter and the hauling of heavy things down the stairs is more like tank work. I love it when he references video game stuff.

The last thing we moved was the cat. Now, Leki has moved 3 times already with no issues, so I assumed he'd handle this move just as easily.

Not quite.

Leki has never lived anywhere with a basement, so when he heard Chris walking above him, he freaked. He cried on and off throughout the evening. Hopefully he settles in quickly.

This green room was a kids room previously. We, however, are going to use it as a TV/video game room. So we decided to reprint it to something more toned down.


Chris spent his second day off enjoying the inner confines of this room smelling paint fumes. The color is a warm gray which, I am told, will work well for the midieval video games and TV shows like.


Chris painted the next room after he picked me up from work. I unboxed some stuff, went back to the apartment to wrestle with the box-loving cat, and brought another carload over.

I really appreciate that Chris is willing to do the painting. I would have just left the rooms as is and shut my eyes when I walked in. I'm no lover of painting. I get frustrated with it easily.

The colors in the dining area right next to the kitchen are bright, cheery, and unfortunately the green doesn't match anything we have. So although we kinda like it, it needs to go...



So Chris spent his first day off painting the green area of the dining room yellow. The plan was if it turned out to be too much yellow, we would paint the section below the border. So far though, I think it looks good. And fresh. It's making the rest of the dining area and kitchen look old. But I don't think either of us love painting enough to reprint the rest of the rooms just to make it look "fresh" again.

Maybe I'll rub my hands in some dirt and smear it around on the new paint so it gets a more worn, lived in look... Hmmmm....

Awesome thing about having a house? Ability to do laundry while doing other things in the house.

Yay for clean clothes!

We did some running around after work today, picking up painting supplies and what not. We also picked up a car-load of stuff from my storage unit.


When everything was unloaded we were sure to take a short break and enjoy the strong cell phone reception.

Then it was back to hang out with the cat and give him some much needed attention.

He was really excited to see us, so he could eat (he doesn't like to eat alone). Weirdo.