A lot has happened for just two weeks! But I can't remember what happened when. :P So here goes:

First, got rid of the refrigerator! A guy and his wife came with a dolly and a pickup and paid $40 for it cause they had a third boy on the way. lol Clearing that out of the dinging room got DZ and I excited about clearing out the junk. :P So we took this living room:

...added this bookshelf we picked up at the Salvation Army in Manassas:

...spaced the couches out so the arms didn't touch at the corners any more, cleaned out the extra lamps, the lumber hiding behind the big couch and the unwanted cords and cables left over from when we had Verizon Fios, and voila!

perty, yes?

Also, yes those are new peacock toss pillows that perfectly compliment the coral ones that came with our sofas. ;) I know it's like...decorator geekdom, but if you've ever tried to buy toss pillows you know that they run $25-$40 a pillow for absolutely no reason. These, however, we fond at a thrift shop in Fairfax called Unique for $4.99 each. 0_0 And they've got real feathers in them and everything!

hehehe...being proud of yourself is a fun emotion.

What else did we do...oh! We went for a picnic at Burke Lake park in Fairfax. We set up our picnic blanket right next to the golf course and watched people tee off. A rather soulful park ranger pulled up halfway through our lunch to inform us that getting hit in the head by a golf ball hurts a lot, and then drove away on his little cart thingy. lol

After lunch, we lounged around for awhile and watched a bunch of guys play ultimate Frisbee in the field across from us. We were pretty sure they were playing shirts vs. skins starting out, but it was so hot that afternoon that by the end of it, it was skins vs. skins and DZ and I pondered how they knew who was on which team anymore. :P

When the Frisbee guys left, DZ and I went over to the foot of the hill where they'd been playing, where a park bench was sitting just close enough to the tree line to be in shade. We played Rummikub. He won both times. As you can see, it's clear the double orange 3s that did me in. :P

...somewhere in there we made quesadillas and fried rice. lol By the way, those salt and pepper grinders the Middendorfs gave us have been quite popular with our guests. It's like having giant ballpoint pens that shoot spices out! :D

PAINT! I totally painted a bathroom. lol All the bathrooms, like most of the house, is a sort of non-committal shade of almost-white/close cousin of yellow. So I painted it "Gentle Rain" which is Behr's version of a very mild gray. <3

It was a rainy day, which was a perfect time to be inside for most of it anyways, and I just painted and painted and ate Butterfingers and watched Gilmore Girls. I don't know if it was the paint fumes or the chocolate, but I had the most fantastic time. lol

...took a break to do my "Buffy the Paint Slayer" pose that I didn't even know I had. :P

Also, Stephanie came to visit!! :D We sat in the living room and talked for three hours straight, and then she had to go before the traffic got bad. lol She also brought DZ and I presents, including these Winnie the Pooh-esq little jars with chalk boards on the front:

As you can see, I made them sweetener jars. I've been dying for someone to ask for coffee or iced tea ever since. ;)

Also, DZ and I did some de-junking. Usually, if you have junk that's too big for the garbage crew, you have to haul it to the dump yourself. Which is like...30 min away without traffic. But fortunately for us, the neighborhood occasionally does this thing where right around spring cleaning, the garbage service brings a dumpster to Circle Woods and people get to just throw whatever they want in it for two days! :D

So DZ and I hauled all this scrap building material, no-thank-you busted furniture, an old grill that was so rusted out that when we set down out front, it disintegrated ("I didn't know that could happen. 0_0 Can that happen??") and about 7 cans of old, glompy paint.

We also found a box of doorknobs.

Yup. Doorknobs. :P

So we got it all cleared out, and now we have more of a basement! :D  Awesome. Room for all the rest of my stuff which is coming up in a few weeks. ;)

This last Sunday, DZ and I went to Van Dyke park for the incredibly beautiful warm-and-breezy afternoon. We laid out a blanket, played a few games of Slap (it just sounds fun, doesn't it? ;) and then Dan read the Horatio Hornblower book we got from the library out loud while I relaxed and took pictures...

of the sky...

of the grass...

of the drop of pitch on a nearby pine tree which looked all sparkly...

and of Dan, which it turns out, he doesn't like. Tough. He married a girl with an SLR. ;)

I didn't get any pictures of my adventures in Manassas, but that happened too. I drove all over tarnation and practiced using my GPS while DZ was up in the air getting some flight hours towards his private pilots license. It was fun and adventurous-- I got lost, got honked at, got cat-called by a big fat boombox car...I was very happy to see him when he got back and more than happy to let him drive home. ;)

Oh! Just one more random note on Manassas-- I went to the B&N while I was there, and it is laid out EXACTLY like the one in Biltmore Park Town Square. It was hilarious-- I walked in and I was like, "Um...where am I?" *hehe* In a weird way, it felt like home. ;)

The stores I know how to get to right now:

Basically I can get orange juice, turkey bacon, paint swatches and coffee...I may not need to find anywhere else... :P

When DZ got home, we went to Home Depot and got some wood so we can build our own Corn Hole game! We're thinking we'll play it on the community grass areas in Circle Woods and see if we can lure some neighbors to come out and play with us. ;)

Turns out my car can fit a 24x24" sheet of plywood in the back. Good to know.

And then I stood around while Dan unloaded the car going, "I'm taking pictures of you carrying plywood, haha, I'm taking pictures of yooou..."

...until he got annoyed and hid. :P

Then we went over to The Blake House for an open-invitation dinner thing they do every Tuesday night. SO much fun-- we sat on the back deck and grilled chicken and ate cheesy bread and talked about responsibility in photojournalism and The Avengers. lol I'm glad they're our neighbors. :)

Was feeling industrious, so I put up a shower curtain:

Yay!

Flushed with my success from hanging up a shower curtain, I decided to something brave...

I grocery-shop'd! :D

And if that doesn't entertain you, imagine me getting home and photographing the six grocery items I purchased. :P Then I water the flowers and ran some laundry.

At this point, I was very proud of myself.

   

I looked around at the clean house with grocery stuff in it, and I thought to myself...I'm industrious and pretty much amazing. I'm going to lay on the living room floor.

And NAP.

Woke up automatically around 7, thinking I'd slept in too late. Dan muttered something about "another hour" and "go back to sleep." I lay buggy-eyed for awhile, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of this "get up at 8 o'clock on a Sunday" situation.

And then, if you please, we got up at 8, leisurely got dressed, leisurely made and ate our breakfast, got all our stuff together, and had to actually kill twenty minutes before we left! And DZ was ushering today, so we had to get there "a little earlier."

This will take some adjusting to. :P

Had a fantastic time at church; was nice to see everybody, and lots of people were excited to see us. James appeared out of nowhere and gave us both a bear hug, shouting, "THE ZIMMERMANS!!" He asked how we were doing, we said just fine, he said, "Good! Still together and everything, good sign." :P

Also, I filled out a "keeping connected card" during service (DZ usually does that, but since he was ushering, he didn't sit down till after the offering) and had put it in the little golden tray before I realized I'd written "Chloe Zimmerman" for the first time. I had to refrain from grabbing the offering plate back from the Deacon so I could scrapbook it. :P Fortunately, my nostalgia has its limits. lol

lazy afternoon flowers. <3

Harvest was wonderful. <3 Everyone who had been at the wedding wanted to know when I was going to get my sisters to move to DC. lol I told them I'm working on it. ;)

Shopping day! I don't like shopping. But Dan doesn't like shopping either, so apparently if two anti-shoppers go shopping TOGETHER, it magically transforms into fun. ;)

Our most successful trip was probably the one to Ikea, where we strolled around the showroom picking up ideas for our living room and guest rooms, pretended to seriously consider purchasing everything that came in zebra stripe (that may have mostly been me) and finally, bought two chairs to match the last chairs we bought at Ikea.

Side note: Ikea instructions are funny:

Glowing with our successful shopping trip, we headed to WalMart, where we suddenly and simultaneously decided we were already sick of shopping. Halfway across the parking lot, Dan said, "I'll wait for you outside." at the same time I headed back towards the car saying, "I wanna go home!"

We're pathetic. But we're pathetic together, so it's kind of like romantic.

After shopping, we went to Uncle Jack & Aunt Beverly's in Maryland, where we played Corn Hole (Engels-- we need to get one of these for cookouts! :D), hung out with the fam (including cousin Darren and Charity and their boys) and had dinner, followed by chocolate chip pie. 0_0 Charity makes it. It's kind of like chocolate chip cookies...but with PIE. ...maybe you gathered that. :P

It started getting dark, and since DZ's car was still parked at Uncle Jack & Aunt Bev's house from hitching a ride with them to the wedding, he drove it home while I followed in Kokomo.

My first time driving on the Capitol Beltway!

I didn't know a 45-minute trip could take 2 hours, but narrowing a DC-bound 4-lane to 2 lanes and then 1 lane on a Saturday night sure did the trick. :P It was kind of stressful, and someone tried to merge into the front corner of my car. But a Korean lady let me merge in front of her when no one else would let me in (my lane was ending. thanks, guys.) and Dan was really good at having someone follow him. Plus, I got a well-timed text message from Hannah which reminded me not to sink to the traffic-grousing level of the average DC commuter, and I opened up my windows and shared some Owl City with the BMWs and Benz's around me. ;)

When we got home, Dan felt terrible about the traffic I'd had to drive through my first time. He carried all the groceries in, made me a massive orange-juice-and-St-Germain (a really sweet French liquor made from Elderflower <3 ) nightcap, and then gave me a back rub while we watched Gilmore Girls.

It was the one where Lorelei has to go on a date with Rune. Dan laughed at all the right spots. Honestly, it turned into a really fun evening. lol

Living with just one other person is, at times, hilarious.

Who's going to wash ALL THESE DISHES?

Who's going to wipe down this WHOLE ENTIRE TABLE??

lol...