Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!  These aren’t really the best pictures, but considering it’s only 8AM, they will do

Pinot is spending her first Halloween with us dressed as a rooster, and Cashew has lost the braids this year to dress up as a pig.  Welcome to the Rutar farm in MD. 

As far as Nick and I, we’re part of a group that is dressing up as characters from the board game Clue.  Nick is going as Mr. Green (with the wrench), and I am going as Mrs. White (with the candlestick).  We found all of the elements of Nick’s costume yesterday, mostly at the Salvation Army- and it’s awesome.  Mine, we found a few new accessories to go with the dominatrix (2003) turned french maid (2006) ressurected (2008).  Can’t say I haven’t gotten any use out of that little pleather black dress!  Pictures on that will have to be forthcoming.

Yesterday we also took a trip to the orchard to pick out pumpkins – the crisp chill to the air this week has deepened the colors in the trees and there isn’t any mistaking that it’s fall!  What a great season.  We went home and carved our pumpkins last night while watching Slither, and then around midnight we were enjoying all of the roasted pumpkin seeds.  Autumn is such a wonderful season.  Our pumpkins turned out pretty cool this year – my spider and Nick’s haunted cemetary, along with standard small pumpkin faces for Cashew and Pinot.  Pictures of that will be forthcoming too.

The housing projects are still in full swing…  more on that later!

Have a spooktacular halloween!

Congratulations to Neil & Kristen!

Finally, a wedding in DC!    Congratulations to Neil & Kristen for putting on a fabulous celebration.  The ceremony was on the longer end, but it combined the two traditions very very well, and the church was beautiful.  Reception in Virginia was the awesome – food was great, the red wine was flowing a bit easier than it should have been – for me anyway – and noone was shy about getting out on the dance floor.  Full album linked in the photo sidebar.

The remainder of our weekend was pretty cool.  I’m still going strong on the household projects – I was excited to have potentially picked a color scheme for the kitchen….and the project for this weekend was to paint & add hardware to the vanity in the guest bathroom…since we are now using that as our full time shower (with two shower heads, who wouldn’t?), the shower in our bathroom was cleaned and locked down.

Sunday was the perfect – with a wonderful husband, 60+ degree weather, a cool dog and a football, being outside made for the perfect fall day.  Cashew’s antics inside were quite entertaining, and Trilogy of Terror was cool to watch – didn’t close my eyes once I may add.

Things I would miss from this area…an ongoing list…

Just a couple of things that I would miss – I’m sure that this list will get longer,  if I think to update it…

The awesome friend base that we’ve established down here

Teaism – especially the broccoli side dish, salty oat cookies & chai – but those taken out of the atmosphere aren’t quite the same either (save for the cookies!)

Hard Times – grilled Texas wings

Three (3)! airports to choose from

Walking the National Mall, especially at night

Being a bit sheltered from the rest of the country in terms of the economy

Lately…

Wow, I’ve been really bad at updating this lately.  We’ve actually been fairly busy.  Lots of around-the-house projects (fall-spring cleaning, if you will), in the past 2.5 weeks.

Storage- we’ve been meaning to go back for a few months, but it was a daunting task that we’d been putting off.  When we (ok, when I – NJ was much more organized) packed for storage originally, it was right after Easter and I pretty much went around the house throwing things into bags haphazardly because I thought that we may be moving in the next month or two, and would therefore be UNpacking everything soon enough.  Alas, the house is off the market, and it’s time to sort through everything and get it organized.  So we did.  We’ve been to storage, sorted through storage, brought back lots of stuff from storage & taken things back to storage.  Can say now that storage is actually in pretty good shape  -the stuff that is in there that we won’t ever need to access (at least not that we can foresee) is in the back, and things like “snowboarding gear” are now all in one place in the front so we can grab that one big bag and go.

With all of the stuff that came back from storage (especially holiday decorations) – we were in need of some space to stash all of this stuff without  making the house look too cluttered.  Nick was looking at the place before we even brought things back, and said “hrmm – sure would be nice if we had shelving in this closet!”  And thus, the seed was planted – we were off to Home Depot to get lots of lumber & saw horses to use with our circular saw.  Nick built these awesome shelves in our spare closet, I helped, but he is a much better driller/saw’er than I am – got to love the smell of new wood!  Now the extra closet has room for all of the things that we brought back from storage and then some!

One of the shelves that was built is large enough to house all of the kitchen appliances that we have, so this lead to the kitchen reorganization project.  We used to have a lot of the appliances on that bookshelf in the kitchen, but them now accessible in the storage closet, that bookshelf was taking up a lot of room for nothing.  So we’ve moved things around and reorganized and changed the pot rack location (gasp!) and been to iKea for possible new kitchen solutions and….  well, I think that the kitchen looks a bit more open now, and with a bit of fresh paint (I can’t stand the hospital white we had to use for on the market) and maybe some new DIY flooring, we’re good to go.  Maybe.

As if those changes (which of course spurred complete reoganization of stuff under the bed and in other closets) weren’t enough, this past weekend I decided to try sanding down and painting the medicine cabinet and the vanity in our master bathroom white.  It looks better-  really brightens up the room, and tonight I’m planning to add hardware to the doors, which I think will be a nice touch.  There is some metallic silver painting we can do, but I think that is getting put on hold for the time being.  I am sort of floored to keep moving on the house repainting effort though – was going to do the hallways next originally, but I’m sort of leaning towards wanting to do the master bedroom next.

So yeah – house stuff, combined with football (Go Huskers!), Oktoberfest dance classes, work, school, and NJ’s intramural sports, and planning trips – it’s been a busy couple of weeks.

Oh!  And we tried a new Thai restaurant near us last night – a ma & pop sort of place.  Food was good, but the big names probably won out in food & ambiance categories.  With that said, it was good enough to go back to in the future. 

Happy Birthday to Cashew!

Our little kitty turns 2 years old today – it’s hard to believe we’ve had her since she was just a tiny kitten!  From the minute she stepped out of her kitty crate and explored the entire house for the first time, to playing fetch better than any dog, being a good sport about sharing the house with a canine, enjoying road trips and learning to drive, spending big weekends without us in Bmore & DC, and supporting the Huskers – Happy birthday to the best kitty in all the land! (We will be celebrating with party hats and songs and happy hips chicken kitty treats in lieu of a kitty cake!)

NKOTB!!

Thursday night, we went to see New Kids on The Block (NKOTB) at the Verizon Center in DC.  And it was….in my opinion….the awesome!! We met up with about 15 or so other blockheads at Clydes restaurant before the show, where they were running NKOTB themed drinks – so fun.  I loved how much people were into this – I thought I was silly leaving the house with rolled jeans, slouched socks, a flannel around the waist c. 1990, and my original 1989 NKOTB buttons – but these folks outdid me, handidly, and it was awesome.    Nick got to wear my one and only Joey Joe pin – something that I never even let Melanie wear growing up. Our camera was low on batteries, I forgot to charge it – but everyone else took some great pictures. 

Before the show even started, Nick made me feel like a rock star by heading out to the bathroom, and returning with a Cover Girl tank top, which he promptly threw up to me before he climbed back into our row.  What a sweetheart

The show was a lot of fun for those of us that knew most of these songs in and out – the new stuff was fun to listen to.  For folks like my wonderful husband, who knew maybe 3 songs going in – Nick said he had a good time, and was really open-hearted the entire time, with one liners that only he could come up with and dancing around like the best of us.  Let me assure you, it was NOT easy to get up this morning – as it was, I woke up 35 minutes after I should have been at work, flew out of the house in 5 (you can imagine how I look this morning), and I’m completely exhausted – but it was worth it.  Great time

Oktoberfest Dance Classes

Nick and I are getting cautiously excited about heading to Oktoberfest next year in Germany.  In leafing through the Montgomery County class lists at the end of the summer, lo and behold, check out this class:

Dance-Dances of Oktoberfest
Adults:Learn the dances of Herb Fredricksen’s German Dance Group ‘Bairisch und Steirisch’ the official performers in the Germantown Oktoberfest. Landlers: Austria’s orginal Waltz forms; Scohottisches:German time honored Twostep/Onestep combinations; Czech Polkas and Polish Mazurkas and more. Then be surprised as Herb interprets how their elements became part of Swing, Disco, Hustle, County Western and Salsa.

And so – of course, I threw it out there as something we should take, and now we are taking Oktoberfest dance classes on Wednesday nights through mid-November!  We are so going to be ready to dance at Oktoberfest next year.  The class description sounds awesome – with Czech and Polish backgrounds heading to Germany, we’re getting a bit of everything.  (NJ’s parents put us to shame with the polka skills at our wedding – after this we can potentially give them a run for their money )

Our first class was last week, and it was, at best, a bit shady?  Not sure if that is the right word for it, but it wasn’t really what we were expecting.  Possibly because we were the only two ’students’ in the class, the rest of the group was comprised of Herb’s actual German dance group. And we essentially spend the first hour counting to 3 and marching around the room.

Our second class was last night, and I have to say, I think it was the highlight of the day for both of us.  It was worlds different from last week – we were doing less marching, more dancing.  The same dance through the class, till at the end it was a bit more comfortable to do.  We ended the class by making the dance social (changing partners around the circle) to the mexican version of the czech ‘roll out the barrell’, and then put a polish twist on it and did the same moves in polka time.   I actually worked up a sweat by the end of the night.   Fun fun fun

We may go check out the Germantown Oktoberfest this Saturday to see our dance teacher and his group (our ‘classmates’ – ha) perform.  It was pretty cool!    I think we’re both a bit relieved that last nights class was cool, because now it’s something to look forward to in weeks ahead.