Basement Apartment: Before and After

We put up our baseboards yesterday! It's so exciting to start getting close to the final product. We're still not all the way there (I'm pretty sure the list of little projects we still have to do never actually gets any shorter... as we finish one we realize there is another to be done), but I figured I'd take pictures while I was thinking of it. These are of the Kitchen/Living area of the basement apartment.

Living Room Before

Living Room After


Kitchen Before
(this is exactly how it looked when we moved in. I do wonder why there were those pool noodles in the kitchen...)

Kitchen After

It's been so fun to have a house and actually get to choose what things will look like! I actually surprised myself yesterday. I had a coupon for the garden center at Home Depot and figured I should take advantage of it and get something to help make our yard look little nicer. I picked out two hydrangea bushes and spent the rest of the afternoon daydreaming about where I'd put them! I honestly think I thought of at least 25 difference scenarios, and we really don't have a very big yard. I really never thought of myself as a gardener, but maybe I just had to buy a plant to get myself started! Let's hope I still like it once I've been trying to keep those bushes alive for a while.

I'm so excited to move upstairs (where we plan on living a bit longer than we did in the basement!) and pick paint colors that we actually get to live with. I've been daydreaming about those colors for much longer than an afternoon and am so very very excited to get working on the real thing.

Pretzel Day-- well, I like Pretzel Day

To fully understand this post you must know two things:

1) Doug and I aren't big TV watchers. I can prove this by the fact that when we were in our last apartment our cable went out. Our managers were really surprised when, after it'd been out for about three weeks, they called to see if the problem had finally been fixed and I didn't know what problem they were talking about.

Our disinterest in television is beaten only by two shows; The Office and The Suze Orman Show (ha ha ha.. Yes, that's right. A financial planning show. We're the biggest nerds I know, but we just can't get enough of it!)

We have been counting down the days until the Season Premiere of The Office for months!

2) There's something inside of me that just loves free things. I don't think it even matters what it is. If I was walking down the street and someone was giving away free garbage I'd probably be excited about it.

About a month ago I heard that Coldstone would be giving away free icecream on Sept 25. I immediately wrote the date on our calendar and hung the newspaper ad next to it so I would be constantly reminded of the wonderful upcoming event.

The best part of it all- they fell on the same day! Nothing like getting a free cup of ColdStone icecream and then sitting down to enjoy the long awaited engagement of Jim and Pam!

More Projects

Whenever my life gets super busy I always find myself creating more projects. I know it seems like bad idea, but there's something about being really creatively busy that helps me better deal with life. (I think the only person in the world who would understand that is my sister Marika. We seem to have inherited the same crazy creative genes... )

Above is the latest puppet I made for my nephew Luke, and a sign I designed for my car (ha ha, I know, I'm such a nerd!) One of my old design classmates bought a professional vinyl cutting machine that can cut anything from an Adobe Illustrator file (I'm soooo jealous!) and I just had to take advantage of the opportunity! I still find myself thinking of all sorts of things I'd like to print out in vinyl...

Our Crazy Month

We've finally moved into our house! We're so excited and SO glad to have had so many friends come and help us load and unload everything.

For memory's sake I'd like to take a moment and write down what happened before we were about to move in. It was pretty crazy- we've pretty much just been laughing the whole month!

So, we bought our house, which is a duplex (front entrance goes to an upstairs apartment and a side entrance goes to a downstairs apartment). We planned to move into the top and keep renting the downstairs apartment to the current tenant.

First things first. We scheduled a closing date on the house and informed our landlords when we would be leaving our apartment. We didn't end up closing on the house until a month after the scheduled closing day and we had to convince our last landlords to extend our contract even though they'd already been showing the apartment. We were really thankful they didn't kick us out (those storage units and motel rooms we'd been looking up just didn't look too appealing).

As soon as we actually bought the house we found out that a) the last owner never informed the upstairs tenants that we'd be moving into their home and b) the downstairs tenant had been arrested and would be spending the next 6 months in jail. It was one of those times when you just have to laugh at yourself for actually thinking you could plan out how you wanted life to work.

We were able to get the old tenant to sign a paper to have her family come and move all her stuff out. (just so you know, if you ever have to have someone in jail sign something for you, just go to the jail and go into the 'booking' office. It took me FOREVER to figure that out!) We then decided to take advantage of the situation and live out of our old apartment (since we'd extended the contract) while we fixed up the basement apartment of our house. The plan was to move into the basement apartment of our house when our contract expired, take our time finishing the renovations, and eventually move upstairs when we were done and find a new renter for the basement apartment.

The plan was sped up by the fact that the upstairs tenants, upon seeing the house inspectors and appraisers and not receiving any word as to what would happen to them, began to look for a house just in case they'd get kicked out of this one when it sold. They found one and gave us their 30 day notice- so the upstairs apartment will be free for us to move up there at the end of next month. So much for taking our time with the basement! We're really excited for November to come so we can be done moving our stuff and living out of boxes! (though we're now smart enough not to actually plan on anything!)

House Projects

I've been really excited for a while now to post 'before' and 'after' pictures of the basement apartment in our new house. We've pretty literally put every spare moment of the past month into tearing out old flooring, painting every wall, closet and doors (bet you wouldn't guess a two bedroom apartment to have FIFTEEN doors in it. Yeah. We should totally win a prize for that or something.) and putting in new flooring. Unfortunately... the 'after' shot still isn't ready and I'm getting impatient so instead I decided to put up some 'process' shots. We'll post the finished product after we get around to remounting all our baseboards...


Before we officially moved into our new house (which we did last week!) we were spending out waking hours refinishing the apartment and going home to a practically fully packed apartment(the picture below). So home-y, I know. We were so excited to at least have some closets to put our boxes in until we get to move upstairs.

Preach My Gospel

I turned my mission papers in right as Preach My Gospel was introduced into the LDS missionary world. As I did, my brother Andrew pointed out how great it would be that I could learn how to really use and apply this amazing new resource through daily missionary work and the guidance of an inspired mission president. He mentioned that when I returned home I would have to share what I'd learned with all my return missionary siblings.

We had Stake conference a couple weeks ago. As I sat there listening to one speaker stress the importance that each of us use Preach My Gospel in our personal and family scripture study I realized that I have not done my fair share in explaining what I learned in those first few introductory months when Preach My Gospel changed the missionary world. It has been a resource that has really changed my life and that I reference almost daily. I very firmly believe that it was created as much for every day people as it was for missionaries.

I know what you're thinking. 'I don't have a copy' or 'It's 'really' just for missionaries' or whatever your excuse is. I'd like to point out that countless times General Authorities have asked the members of the LDS church to study this book. It was made for everyone, not just missionaries. Of all it's 13 chapters, only one of them includes the missionary disscussions. The rest are devoted to helping individuals grow and develop stronger testimonies and understandings of the Gospel. And most importantly, I've seen it change the lives of so many people. I know, have a testimony of the fact, that you will become a better person by studying and applying the principles in this book. If the only thing keeping you back is that you don’t own a copy, you can download it for FREE on LDS.org. You can just click here to download it.

If I wrote everything that I love about this book in one single blog entry it would be entirely too long, but I'd love to start pointing out my favorite part today and hopefully continue to point out more of the resources available in the future.

My all time favorite, and the part that has literally changed my life on several occasions, falls at the very end of Chapter 6 (p.126)

Chapter 6 is devoted to information on developing Christ like Attributes. Several attributes are listed each with an explanation and several scriptures or activities to help with the learning process. This is all good, but what makes it my favorite part comes on page 126, the last page of the chapter. Here you'll find a quiz with about 60 short questions. Each question is written specifically for a Christ like attribute (ex. 'I believe in Christ and accept Him and my Savior" falls under faith, "I am dependable, I do what I say I will do" falls under virtue etc.) You rate yourself on a scale from 1-5 on how you feel you're doing with each question.

It seems simple, but it's really amazing. Each time I take this quiz I am surprised at which category I am struggling with. Often, all I know is that there is a problem with my spiritual progression and it is not until after I take this quiz that I can clearly see what I am lacking.

After rating yourself on each question and seeing what category you're struggling with, you can then go back into the chapter and study from the appropriate section. For example, if I were to realize that faith was my current weak point, I’d turn to page 116 where I could read a few paragraphs explaining faith and then study the scriptures provided to help me understand what faith is, how I can obtain it and what I can do with it. If I needed further assistance I could turn to page 124 and do an activity under the ‘Personal Study’ list, or I could ask Doug to help me understand it better and we could reference the ‘Companion Study’ activities also featured on page 124. (on the same page there are also ‘district meeting and zone conference' activities that would make perfect FHE lessons)

I remember taking this quiz for the first time in the MTC. Before that day I had always grouped faith and hope into the same category, never realizing that I had to develop them separately. It made such a difference to how I studied and I was able to see my testimony take a huge leap in growth. It was like there had been this huge obstacle holding me back and I had never even known.

I try to take this quiz every few months. It’s amazing how the more you know about a subject the more you realize you don’t know much about it! Because of that, every time I do this to see how I’m doing, a completely different area turns up as my weak point. I feel like it is something that has really helped me to not just study the scriptures but to actually better myself in the process.

In the spirit of missionary work, I’d like to challenge each of you to set aside some of your scripture study time and try out the tools in Chapter 6 of Preach My Gospel. I assure you that the tools available in this chapter were inspired to not only better our missionaries but to help each one of us reach our Christ like potential.

Big Judd's One Pound Burger

On the way home from our family vacation we stopped at Big Judd's. I'd heard a lot about this place. Mostly the story of my brother Andrew eating an entire 2 lb burger and getting his picture on the wall. Disgusting you might think, but any of you who know my brother wouldn't be surprised at all.

Doug and I decided to share a one pounder. It was still really big with two of us eating it! (Just for reference, the two pounder just has one more one pound patty on it. ) Luckily it tasted amazing, so there was no problem getting myself to want to keep eating!

Here's Doug's sister Alice and her family with one of those enormous things. It fed their entire family plus Doug's dad with no problem!