(a day late) Where I Live Wednesday: Our House, in the middle of our street...

"Where I Live Wednesday" will feature a different place in Michigan each week.  It will start out very local, with the immediate area in which I live (different areas of town, my house, stores and restaurants, etc. etc.) and expand over time to include adventures to other places in the great state of Michigan.

Miss last week's "Where I Live Wednesday" post?  Go check it out!

I apologize for being a whole day late on this post... but life got the better of me.  Schoolwork was out of control and I just couldn't find the time to get this post up until today.

I knew that I wanted to talk about my house here in the Eastown community of Grand Rapids this week, and show you around it a bit.  As I was planning the post, I started having anxiety about the current messy state of the house and trying to clean it up for pictures.  Then I realized that I wanted to give you a true portrait of where I live - so I abandoned any extra cleaning and just took some shots!  I hope that's okay with you!  : )

Here is my lovely home... 

This picture was actually taken last Spring.

We moved into our FIRST (owned) home in October of 2008.  It is a 1920's craftman-style home on a one-way street.

It's not perfect, it needs some TLC, and its sometimes a lot of work, but it's ours and I love it.  I know that no matter where we go, I will always love this house.

This summer we turned our back yard mud pit into a lovely area for entertaining...

After living in an apartment for years, it was so lovely to have an outdoor space of our very own.

This is our (slightly fuzzy) living room... complete with sleepy dog on the couch, and shredded TP rolls (aso courtsey of the dog) on the rug.  One of my projects for this year is to completely re-do the curtains, I'm going to try and MAKE them.  We'll see how that goes.

Here is our dining room.  When schoolwork gets crazy I bring the computer downstairs and take over the dining room table, where there's more room to spread out than in the office.

I looooove this leaded glass built in, and the windows.  And I'm extra proud of the chair in the corner... I covered it myself!

 

We haven't made any changes to the kitchen since we moved in.  I plan on painting it yellow.  Eventually we'd like to completely remodel it.  It's a good size space, which is nice.

We call this the blue room.  It's technically a bedroom on the first floor.  We have a futon here that converts into a bed, the piano and all things musical reside in there, and this is also where we watch movies (the big TV is behind the door out of sight).

The downstairs bathroom is super tiny.  It's a jack and jill so it connects the blue room and the kitchen.

We're lucky to have this HUGE jet tub.  It was completely unexpected when we were looking at the house.  Unfortunately it hardly ever gets used, and we're currently discussing if we want to keep it or not when we re-do this bathroom sometime in 2010.  Taking a long bubble bath always SOUNDS like a great idea... but I hardly ever do it!

So that's it, the first floor!  Next week I'll share with you the upper floor, and some shots of our street and neighborhood.  In the meantime -- why don't you tell me what you LOVE (or hate?!) about your home?  : )  I'd love to hear about your place!

First Week of School

Remember when you were a kid and the first week of school was exciting fun, colorful, and easy-going?  At what point did it switch to a week of fear, panic, and overwhelming workloads?!  Ha!

Last week marked the beginning of another semester of graduate school for me at good ol' WMU.

Having done my undergraduate work as well as my master's classes at WMU, I do love it.  What I don't love about this semester is that both of my classes are held at the Battle Creek Campus.  That's a good hour and a half drive from my house.  Yowser!

The good thing about this semester though, is that it's sort of my final semester taking classes.  You see, during the summer all my classes are online, and then in the fall I write my thesis.  If all goes to plan, I will graduate next December.  Woohoo!

I have a class this semester that meets every other Saturday from 9-4, a total of 6 times.  It's a budgeting and accounting class, and I'm actually kind of liking it.  My professor is fun and very down to earth and I think I'll learn a lot.

My Wednesday night class is another story.  It's going to be HARD.  Hundreds of pages of reading each week, three to four page papers per week, and I have to declare my THESIS TOPIC two weeks from now!  Yikes!  I know I bitched about my statistics class last semester, but this very well may be WORSE!  Wish me luck!

Weekend in Review

(top to bottom, left to right) 

1.  Watching the Golden Globes (yea, Glee!) 

2.  Teaching and old dog new tricks (FINALLY taught Bella to consistently "sit pretty")

3.  Six hour graduate school class on Saturday

4.  Comfort food - chili with noodles, Hill Family style!

5.  Stampin' Up! Open House (Read more about this on Tuesday HERE )

6.  Homemade Chicken Tikka Masala

7.  Valentines M&M's -- sooo pretty!

8.  Dinner and cards with Justin and Kristen.  A TON of delicious to-go Chinese food!

(yup, we certainly ate well this weekend!)

Happy Monday to you all!

 

Piano!

I know I said I wasn't planning on posting on the weekends, but here I am nonetheless!

On Thursday we welcomed a new addition to our home and family...

Isn't she pretty?

Trav's parents are getting rid of some things in their home, and were gracious enough to pass on their piano to us (which, as I understand it, has been in the family for years)

I am beyond stoked to, for the first time since I was a very little girl in England, have a piano in my home.

Yup, that's me as a wee one.

I majored in music you see, and as the years go by I find myself moving further and further away from all things musical.  If it's not your career (I never intended to be a professional musician) then it's hard to find appropriate outlets for it, and squeeze it into a busy schedule.

So when the piano arrived on Thursday night I spent an hour plunking out poor chordal accompaniments (yeah, despite my music degree I'm actually a downright poor pianist!) and singing my little heart out.  And it felt good.

Thanks, Kim and Phil!  We will take great care of it!

 

Critic's Choice Friday!

Welcome to the first edition of Critic's Choice Friday! 

My weekly "Critic's Choice" post will always feature a review of some sort.  Could be a movie, book, product, TV show, whatever!  And I'll be looking to you, dear reader's, to share YOUR reviews as well!


This week, I've got two delicious food items to recommend to you!

No matter how yummy and satisfying my dinnertime meal is, I'm almost ALWAYS left craving something sweet to finish it off.  In my half ass effort to slim down a little before our trip to VEGAS in May, I decided to search out some low-fat ice cream while grocery shopping last week.

Edy's ice cream was 2/$4 at Meijer (apparently Edy's and Dreyer's are the same company -- I was confused by the differing names on my container and the image below I pulled off of the internet.  Good ol' Wikipedia can tell you more HERE) and I picked up some of this...

Yup - black cherry vanilla swirl!  I was a little hesitant, because usually anything that's frozen yogurt-ish tastes less ice cream-y and more sorbet-y, but this was rich and delicious!  And the best part?  100 calories per serving!  Now I just need to stick to one serving!  : )

And here's my second food recommendation... Folger's Gourmet Selection Creme Brulee coffee.

 

My addiction to taste for coffee has only come into play in the last couple of years.  Before then I wouldn't touch the stuff, and couldn't stand the taste!  Even now I'm one of those girls who likes the froofy drinks at Starbucks that are actually very little coffee and lots of other really high calorie sugary stuff. 

That being said, when we buy coffee for home I insist on something with a bit of flavor.  A lot of times we'll buy bagged coffee and it will smell delicious but you can't really taste the flavor when it's brewed.  This stuff is quite the contrary!  It smells AND tastes yummy!  It's so good I can drink it with only a little bit of creamer.  Yum!

Want to do a review for me on Critic's Choice Friday?  E-mail me at joanneroehm(at)yahoo(dot)com and we'll get you on the schedule!

Have a wonderful weekend!