New Goodies

I went out on Saturday morning to get the major items for the bathroom remodel. I spent a little more than what I had figured from my price finding trip to Lowes 2 weeks ago. I ended up buying a more expensive bath fan and shower head/tub faucet set. I also decided to get some silicone tile grout to repair the cracks in the master bath floor and tub surround. I think I made some good purchases. I usually lean towards the most expense items whenever I have a choice. This time my picks were not the most expensive or top of the line items.

The medicine cabinet I choose has a top molding that matches the sink and vanity profile. It is also half recessed in the wall and half sticking off the wall, so it is extra deep.

The bath fan is the decorative item. I had originally picked out the traditional fan with a light, but I decided to go the fancy route. It looks just like a regular light with a hidden fan.

I needed to get a longer towel rack than the existing 18” rack I have right now. I decided to get two 24” racks in addition to the 18” rack. I got luck that Lowes still carries the style and brand I bought when I first moved into my house. I also bought the matching robe hook. I used to have a hook that stuck to the back of the door, but it fell off and won’t stick back on. Now it’s time for the screw in kind.

Here is the shower head/tub faucet set. I didn’t get to get the one I really wanted that matched the one in the master bath because the only box was opened at the store and it looked like pieces were missing. This one is a little fancier than what I need, but I’ll live.

I added the task of installing a light above the kitchen sink. Since the kitchen sink wall will be exposed when I take the bathroom wall off, I’m hoping it won’t be too much work to install this light and a light switch. Chad, I hope you’re not mad. :)

I brought home some color palettes to see which color might work best in the bathroom and be something that could go with almost any décor. I’m still thinking about the pale lavender and now I’ve added the lightest green. Cream is out because I think it’s too boring. Color suggestions are always appreciated.

It's been awhile!

Ok. I know it has been a really long time since I've posted anything to my blog. I am going to post my bathroom remodel project. Here's a picture of my bathroom as it looks today.



I have until Tuesday, November 24th to remove the toilet, sink, light fixture, medicine cabinet, built-in linen closet, the floor, and drywall from the walls and ceiling. It looks like a big task. I really want to try to remove everything as clean as possible, but I have a feeling and been told that is impossible.

This weekend I'm going to go to Lowes and buy the new medicine cabinet, shower head/tub faucet set, bath fan, more towel racks, and a robe hook. I will go look at new tile for the floor and tub surround, but I don't think I'm going to buy them yet. I'm going to save buying drywall and drywall supplies until Beth & Chad get here so that Chad can tell me exactly what to buy.

I have a feeling that when we are all finished, the hall bath will be nicer than the master bath. I guess I will then have to do something to the master bath to make that a little fancier.

I will be posting pictures of the progress when ever I have something to show. Monday morning I should have pictures of all the stuff I bought.

I am stuck on the paint color. When I first moved into the house, I had picked out a light lavender color to match the flowers in the shower curtain, but I don't know if that would be a good color for when I put my house for sale. I would probably have to repaint that room. I want the tile to be a light gray; so lavender would look real nice with it. I guess I will have to go get some more paint samples.

I am so far behind on my blog entries, so I’m going to list everything I’ve done since the middle of March.

Trip to Stennis Space Center, Mississippi
About a month ago I was given the choice to have my annual performance review either through video conference or in person at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. I didn’t hesitate at the chance to get out of the office for a couple days. On Sunday, March 22nd I flew out of Huntsville, AL to New Orleans, LA. The supervisor over the Education Specialists and my Supervisor was and still is traveling to each NASA center to see the Specialists in action and to meet with the education Directors, Center Project Leads, the Project Assistants, and anyone else the Project Assistant at that center thought would be a good person to meet with. The trip to Marshall is not until the middle of May and my performance review had to be done by April 10th, so that is why I had the option to travel to Stennis or do it over video conference.

Once in New Orleans, LA, I met up with my supervisor (he flew in from Penn State Univ) at the airport to wait for the Specialist’s Supervisor to come pick us up and head for Slidell, LA to our hotel. I actually take care of all the admin stuff for Steve (Education Specialist) at Stennis along with everything at Marshall. I had never been to Stennis Space Center before and it eerily looked just like Marshall (my center). After Steve took us around the Center showing us all the places he frequents, he took us to his office and we parked our stuff, toured the museum, and got some lunch. After lunch I had a 3 hour performance review. That may sound bad, but it was really good. My Supervisor is new as of November and doesn’t know much about what the Project Assistants do, so we all have been telling him about what we do from our perspective. I came out of the review with the highest marks. It felt really good! Tuesday morning I was headed back home to Huntsville.

Wednesday was my only day in the office for the week. All I did was catching up on entering expense reports in to the system and getting ready to be off for Thursday and Friday.

Sinus Surgery #2
Thursday, I had some outpatient sinus surgery again. This time it was minor and very quick. I have some scar tissue on the right side of my sinuses that was making me get frequent sinus infections again. This surgery was hopefully going to take care of that, becuase I’m tired of having sinus trouble. I didn’t have any pain with the surgery even though I had lots of sinus pressure that made me off balance. I was given some pain medication to help with the pressure, but it made me very hungry, shaky and disconnected. I went back to work on Monday and had to take my medication so that I could take my mind off the sinus pressure. That was very interesting to deal with since I wasn’t suppose to drive while on the medication. It took about 45 minutes to take effect, so I would take it just before I walked out the door. I would have about 15-20 minutes at work before it would start making me drowsy. I had to make sure I brought my lunch so I could take another pill before lunch. That way the medication would be out of my system enough for me to drive home at 4:30. By Thursday, April 1st, my nose had healed enough for me to start blowing it. One side effect of being able to blow my nose is that I started getting motion sick very easily if I got over heated. I would get it without even being in a moving vehicle.

The Great Moonbuggy Race
The week after my surgery I had 3 days to get everything in order for me to be gone for 2 weeks because the Great Moonbuggy Race was Thursday – Saturday. This year I was asked to help with registration as well as be in charge of the 2-way radios. The Moonbuggy Race is an engineering design challenge NASA created for high school and college students to create a buggy that could stand up to the harsh elements and terrain on the moon just like the original one. Once they have their buggies made they race against the other school to get the best time on the obstacle course that weaves around the different attractions outside at the US Space and Rocket Center. Usually the weather is bad on either Friday or Saturday and part or all of that day is cancelled. This year Thursday afternoon was bad and Friday and Saturday was nice so both days of the race went as planned.

Woman’s Leadership Conference, Penn State University
Sunday, April 5 started a 2 week trip. The first 4 days of the first week I was at Penn State University for a Woman’s Leadership Conference and a Professional Development day at the office, and from there I went to Minnesota to visit the family for Easter.

The Woman’s Leadership Conference was really good for the first conference I’ve ever officially attended. My Supervisor decided to bring all the Project Assistants to Penn State for the Conference. The conference was actually only one day, but was repeated the next day so you could take sessions on the second day you didn’t get to on the first. Out of the 7 sessions I took, only one was really boring and fought to stay awake.

The third day at Penn State was a professional development session on how to communicate with difficult people in the morning and a few hours of just talking with our Supervisor in the afternoon. That probably doesn’t sound like a fun day, but it was actually a nice day and very productive.

Easter/Vacation in Minnesota & Wisconsin
When I left from Penn State I was on my way to Minnesota for some relaxation and family time. I got to see my Grandma who is temporarily in a rehab nursing home preparing for some foot surgery. I got to see all of my extended family at Easter – drama and all. Spent Easter weekend at my Sister’s and took care of my niece Morgan the Monday after. I always joy my time in Minnesota.

As usual, I don’t get as much time to spend with my friends as I’d like, but they all have lives and I’m the one on vacation. I always have lots of fun when we get together even though the time flies too fast.

My favorite part of my vacation in Minnesota was all the time I got to spend with Morgan and see how she has grown. I can’t believe that at 18 months she is running around, talking about everything, repeating everything you say, and putting together 3 word sentences. She is full of energy and is nonstop chatter. She pronounces most of the words she says clearly except for my favorite word she says “gibbage”, which is garbage. I’m very happy that she can pronounce my name correctly. Most toddlers pronounce my name as “Tatie”, but she says it like “Kay-Tee”.

The last big activity I went to while in MN was a piano recital for my step nieces Margaret and Mary Emma. It brought back many memories of my own piano recitals and actually has sort of given me a bug to start playing again. I have one problem with this bug, I don’t have my piano – my sister does.

The Blanket is Finished!

The never ending blanket is finally finished. I started cross stitching/embroidering a baby blanket for my niece Morgan when I found out my sister was pregnant. I had the intentions to get it done by her 1^st birthday. Well, summer being as it is here in Alabama, I couldn’t work on it the last 2 summer because it was way too hot to have something draped over me. When I didn’t finish it by her birthday in October, I revised my goal to get it done by Christmas. I even risked my job and brought it to work to do. I started off only at lunch time working on it, but I could only get a few rows completed. I started noticing large blocks of down time for me throughout the day, so I started of slow with just a ½ hour here and there. Then the managers were out of the office for a week and I increased my time to much more. I also dedicated whole weekends to doing nothing but cross stitching (with a break on Sunday morning to go to church). Christmas was 2 weeks away and I still had 3 animas to cross stitch. At the rate I was going it was taking me a week to do each animal. Christmas came and went and the blanket was still not finished. I still had one animal left to finish and a few eyes on some of the other animals. A couple events started popping up on the weekends in January and a few weeks went by where I didn’t work on the blanket at all. February came and I was determined to get it done. I actually finished the cross stitching part around the first part of February. I spent that next weekend making sure I really did have everything done and ironing on the interfacing to give the panels some strength and seal in the stitches. The next weekend I thought I would sew on some letters – the first letter of each animal. The lettering that appears on it now was suppose to wash away when I washed it last night, but it didn’t. My sewing machine decided to not want me to appliqué the letters by puckering and looping the thread as I sewed. I got frustrated and gave up on the lettering and just cut each panel out instead. The rest of that weekend I just sewed the front of the blanket together. Now I was looking at last weekend. All I got around to doing cutting the back piece, quilt the two pieces together, and start the blanket binding. I was going good until I started sewing the binding. *Satin blanket binding is the devil and was created to frustrate everyone that tries to sew it to something.* I ended up ripping the stitches out 3 times before I gave up at 9PM Sunday evening. We are now up to this past weekend. I ripped out the stitching one last time and repined the binding on for a second time. I was determined to get it finished, so I took my time with the binding. Figured out that my sewing machine was not out to get me, but the tension is off and had to tighten it up to get it to even sew normally. Once I figured out the tension issue, it was smooth sailing from there. I finished and washed the blanket yesterday afternoon.

Front

Back

As much as you may like this blanket and want me to make one for you. I’m sorry to announce that I will not be making any more of these blankets for a very long time unless it is for me. They are very time consuming! If you wanted to attempt to do one of these blankets yourself, they are at the novice level. You have to know cross stitch, embroidery and sewing basics. The pattern is from Jack Dempsey. There are actually a lot of patterns to choose from. They also have table cloths, napkins, pillow cases, baby bibs, etc.

A Very Unexpected Week

I have had quite a week. I don’t get real sick too often, so when I think something is really wrong I usually get it checked out. That is what I was doing last week at the ENT doctor. I went from thinking last week that I may be in for some more surgery to being on the brink of death with a sinus infection. I know that sounds a little dramatic, but that is how I felt Tuesday around noon while waiting for my medication at Walgreens.

To back up to Friday’s appointment at the ENT doctor. She looked at the CT scan and said that all my sinuses were clear except for my right side below my eye had a little infection in it. So with much discomfort to me, she irrigated out that side. I believe she really angered it instead of flush it out. I picked up the prescriptions she gave me on Saturday morning from Walgreens. After taking my first dose of medication Saturday afternoon, I started with a cough that lasted until about Monday afternoon and then it went down hill from there. I stayed home from work on Monday because my lungs hurt so much from coughing for the last day and a half. Monday night I went to my second job and ended up agitating the infection even more and left there with a fever, headache, and a lot of congestion. Tuesday morning I got up and went to work because that is where I keep the phone numbers to my doctors. All morning I was cold, congested, every muscle ached including my teeth, had a headache, dizzy, my face hurt, only had about 25% functional mental capacity, and the congestion had moved from my nose to my lungs. These symptoms were every single side effect the medication gave and said to call the prescribing doctor immediately. I called the ENT doctor to see what they would say, but all I got was the nurse’s voicemail. I left a message and waited an hour to get a return phone call. After that hour passed, I called my regular doctor and he got me in at 11:00am. After I made that appointment, I called my supervisor at my second job and told her I wouldn’t be in. By 11:00am on Tuesday I was knocking on death’s door and so he gave me shot in the hip to jump start my recovery. This time I went to Walgreens and waited for my prescriptions because I didn’t think I really should have been out driving around town. Once I got the prescriptions and got home, I ate a quick lunch and fell right to sleep. I didn’t even wake up to watch my new favorite show, which I only get to watch when I get to go home early, the Doctors at 4:00pm. When I woke up at 5:30pm, it was like a brand new day. I could breathe out of my nose again, wasn’t achy and I didn’t have such a headache anymore. I felt like a new woman. Yesterday, I went to work with a horrible cough, but I felt about 90% better. Today is about the same. I should be back to 100% by this weekend. To end the story, my regular doctor thinks I am allergic to something; which is why I keep getting sinus infections even though having the sinus surgery was supposed to prevent that. So finding out what I’m allergic to requires eliminating things. He told me to take out my ear rings, clean my house really well, and even said I should temporarily remove Pepper from the house. Hopefully my Aunt & Uncle in town will be willing to take him for a week or so. He doesn’t really believe my allergist that says I am not allergic to almost everything that grows anymore. He really thinks I am still allergic to cats. As sad as I would be, I think I could get rid of him if it means I don’t get killer sinus infections anymore. It would be even better if my Aunt & Uncle could take him. My Aunt already has said that if I bring him to their house he is no longer my cat, she will claim him as hers.