whatnotness

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. ;)