i did TONS of house shit

its true. ive been sucked into a vortex of house cleaning and repairs. if you were wondering how many times ive been to home depot this week, the answer is five. yes. five. its an insane amount of times to go anywhere, let alone the middle aged mecca that is, home depot. but, i gotta say....my house is lookin SNAZZY!

we decided to paint gray and after days of pouring over color samples, we finally picked one. my concept of colors is pretty much limited to what was available in my crayola crayon box, and the fact that there were over 40 shades (maybe even 50 lol) of gray was daunting. dont get me started on color names because thats a whole other rant of ridiculousness. we settled on fashion gray (see?). fashion. look ma, im fashion-able :)

hindsight is definitely 20/20, because if i was on my A-game, i wouldve taken before pictures to go with my after pictures. but im a spazwad and didnt, so i had to go through shanes facebook like a stalker and steal photos that showed the room. good news was that i found some great before photos, but they are primarily of weezy jumping to get treats haha. i recommend pausing to look at the cute puppy, and then looking behind him at the sponged peach walls, and the love-l-y maple leaf decoupage wall.

we spent lots of time prepping and getting ready. look how handsome he looks painting!

and after three days of taping, mudding, sanding, vacuuming, wall washing, and painting....we finished! and it looks fantastic! now if i could only muster up the willpower to start painting my bedroom....

i thought we were over the big hurdle of home remodeling after the painting was done. yeah turns out, the devil is in the details. and its those damn details that made me go to home depot for more stuff. you know youre getting old and lame when buying new outlet covers is cool. we also found a wicked cool plant at the depot (you can see ole planty in the background of the bottom photo. pretty snazzy eh?). since most plant life chooses to wither and die under my care, shane offered to take care of it. long live the ficus!

during my initial cleaning (exorcism) of the kitchen, i found mouse poop in some of the cabinets. by all means mouse, feel free to use my cabinet as your personal toilet. NOT! ugh so gross. after convincing shane that the poop was recent, and that mice were likely cavorting all over our kitchen, we went back to home depot and got all the supplies for an official mousepocalypse. we bought 5 different types of traps and got these fancy things you plug into your outlets that emit a high frequency sound that repels rodents! how cool is technology these days? it was highly entertaining to watch shane bait the traps. if i could recreate the scene, it went something like this...peanut butter for me, peanut butter for the trap, peanut butter for me, peanut butter for the trap. peanut butter: delicious for boyfriends AND mice lol. his baiting skills worked like magic cause we caught not one, but two! apparently mousevegas was underneath my kitchen sink. but not anymore! mwahahahaha

my crazy cleaning and organization have not been limited to the inside of my house, but have been inflicted on the backyard as well. shane built this amazing stone path up the hill to our patio, but after 5 years of dog dirt frolicking, it needed a little bit of love. look how good it looks!

aaaand....indy got a present from shane....a swimming pool! (for those of you who havent met indy, he loves water almost as much as he loves sniffing butts). we spent the evening with the hounds and basking in our backyard. i have to say, life is pretty good :)

i felt like a mormon housewife

ahaha. okay let me clarify. i did not turn mormon, nor did i become a housewife. but being home during the day sure makes you feel like one.

my photoshop skills are quite poor. but it still made me laugh

 my days have gone from surveying in the field and writing reports in the office to random domestic activities.

i was drinking my coffee yesterday and flipped on the tv. i was just looking for some mindless entertainment (keeping up with the kardashians is my usual poison, but sadly it wasnt on), i settled for "i didnt know i was pregnant". HOLY HELL! its a train wreck that sucked me in for three episodes and i didnt even realize it. i think i was horripnitized (horrified and hypnotized). 

it was when i was yelling at the tv that i paused for a moment of reflection and realized how ridiculous i was being. the dogs were looking at me like i was insane, and i decided that maybe daytime tv isnt for me lol. it also had this amazing ability to instill a fear in me that maybe i was secretly pregnant too (let me clarify that i am NOT). but my irrational mind has well, a mind of its own and i made a mental note to put pregnancy tests on my grocery list haha. 

• related side note: i am very gullible/easily convinced. as a result, i am not allowed to watch any infomercials of any kind. they sell me within the first two minutes and im convinced that i cant live without a magic shark steamer or the wonder salsa maker. id lose all my money and have a house full of useless crap. i am also not allowed to visit webmd.com EVER. i'll look up something like a headache and then magically diagnose myself with incurable tuberculosis of the cornea or something ridiculous and go into spiral panic that im dying. aaand after today, i think i am going to add this tv show to my list of banned things. 

we are remodeling the house and its a bit of a mess. so, being the good domestic gf that i am, i decided to tidy up. i pulled out the old yellow vacuum to suck up some junk. after running it over the same spot 20x, i paused for reevaluation of my methods. turns out that old yeller was not sucking (which is paradoxical since i would say that it did indeed suck. but thats neither here nor there) and was in fact, shooting random debris out its behind and spraying me in the legs. please dont read any innuendo into that last sentence. that was what was really happening lol. i decided that maybe it was time for a new vacuum. my dad helped me pick out a new one and even bought it for us as a housewarming present! score! thanks pop!

turns out that assembling a vacuum is a pain in the ass. the directions are worse than ikea ones (for all you who have assembled anything ikea, you feel my pain). after 20 min of swearing, and jamming at things with a screwdriver, i got it all set up. and ive just got to come out with it......i had SO much fun vacuuming! the new parts and gadgets were intoxicating. i mightve vacuumed everything in sight. hopefully its a one time thing. i mean, who actually likes vacuuming? (besides the lady below haha)

• related site note: the vacuum came with a warning not to use any of the attachments on your pets. i didnt know if i should be horrified that people were out there shop-vac-ing their dogs, or bummed out that i didnt think if it first. 

shane and i have also been getting our walls ready to paint. man its a process. furniture moving, mudding, sanding, baseboard washing, wall washing, taping, priming etc... its going to look amazing when we're done. even indy is helping. sort of :)

and i dont wanna jinx it, but it looks like our mutts are FRIENDS!!! i bribed them with cheese to hold still for a picture.

 and this morning i was getting my brekky when i smelled fun. sure enough, i peered around the corner and spied these dirty little fun-havers. it warmed my icy heart :)

i moved back to salt lake

yep. its true.

a lot has happened since the tragic loss of my laptop in australia. the short version of whats happened since then? i moved home from perth and am back in salt lake city.

see?

ive traveled over 14,324 miles (23,052 km) to get back. ive taken squillions of photos. i visited places most of you will never go to. i did it all with this guy and couldnt be any happier <3

turns out that i really like writing. which is really quite lucky for all you internet stalkers. i plan on retroactively word vomiting all my experiences since my laptop's untimely and tragic death. but until that happens....here are some big things that have been going on:

i got a new phone number!
which is totally weird since ive had the same one since 7th grade. i keep messing up and giving out the old one, or pulling the ratarded response where when asked, i completely blank and mouth breathe all while desperately trying to remember my new number. #spaz

i bought a car!
its a 2006 nissan xterra and i LOVE it! i can haul my mutts around, go camping with the bf, kick ass up the canyon in the snow, and freely run over any curbs that might get in my way. 

i moved in with shane!
yep. we live in sin together. and as far as sinning goes....its pretty wicked awesome. 

indy got a brother!
meet shane's dog weezy! such a sweetie. turns out, that our dogs didnt like each other. at all. haha. but after several "getting to know you" walks, park dates, and parent-forced play time on leashes, i think they love...er, i mean tolerate each other. i give it a month before they are dog bff's, sniffing butts and digging holes together.

i dont have a job!
not sure if that one warranted an exclamation point or not, but i put one up anyway lol. end of summer is a bad time for an archaeologist to look for work. cant say i was too put off today looking at everyone's facebook posts about how much mondays suck. that might be the best part of being unemployed...mondays dont matter. they just sorta blend into a smear of days. the only downside (aside from being fashionably broke) is that i dont get the friday fuzzies. you know, where you're beyond stoked that its the weekend? everyday is a weekend. anyway, the job search continues. wish me luck :) 

all exciting things. im in the middle of moving/cleaning/painting and i really should be doing something productive instead frolicking on the internet. dont be jealous, you know you want to wash baseboards like me. all the cool kids are doing it?

excited to be back!

 xoxo