And the name shall be...

Surely no one thought I would actually give up names for the baby. Those, along with gender, will be a secret until the child gets here. However, Andrew and I are being good parents-to-be and doing our best to figure out what we'll name the child even though we have five more months to spare.

I should say for those of you who don't live in Mass, our baby does have a nickname floating around right now: Baby Floyd. Our dear friend Caleb decided on that. My cousin Steven also provided his choices when I told his family I was pregnant--Thurston Franc for a boy and Helga for a girl. I'm just gonna leave it at that.

About a week ago, I went to bed around 8, and Andrew stayed up to start his next batch of beer. I failed to remember from the last time how bad it smells when the wort (what beer is before it's been fermented) is brewing. I woke up around 9:30 or 10 to a horrible smell and made Andrew open doors and windows despite the fact that we're close to winter temps around here. I continued to wake up every half hour to an hour, and around 12:30 woke up to no Andrew in the bed. He never stays up that late. So of course I freaked out momentarily.

When I called for him, he answered from the living room. I asked what he was doing. His reply? I'm looking at baby names! Seriously? Up past midnight looking at baby names.

Now I feel this was a momentous occasion for him because, while he still likes to share outrageous names with me, he is actually thinking seriously about what we'll name our child. (His previous suggestions were names like Porterhouse.) He left me a note with some of the ones he liked, and then we checked out some websites together that night. I thought I might share some of the more ridiculous ones we found through our search.

Please don't name your child this...or if you do, know that I will laugh


Banjo: Andrew could not get over this name. Turns out Rachel Griffiths (celeb) has a son named this.

Yaakov: we giggled over this for a bit.

Anson: not really a humorous name, but it is if it's late at night and instead of reading "anson" you read "arson," it has potential.

Ballard: same as anson. I saw "bastard." Maybe I should get my eyes checked...

Xanadu: simply a fun name to say!

Baby: yes indeed, naming your baby what it is was on the list.

Rafiki: even if the Lion King is your fave movie ever, naming your kid after a baboon is probably not a good idea. What's more, this name was listed as appropriate for a girl or a boy.

Hades: need I comment? We also found Lucifer in a book the other day...

Fairy: listed as gender neutral...

And there are always those names that make you say, yeah yeah, that's a joke right? Like everyone has had twins at their school named Lemonjello and Orangejello. But those names are on lists! The one we found on the website we were searching was "Abcde," pronounced ab-suh-dee.

So of course, we decided if we have a boy, his name will be Abcde Banjo Holloway. Now stitch that on a sampler.

The year of natural disasters

What a year it has been. On April 27, the place I called home for 6 years (not to mention several other places around my home state of Alabama) was hit by several tornadoes. I didn't get to see the damage in Tuscaloosa until October, and by that time most of the crumbled buildings had been leveled for rebuilding. It was still crazy to see all that had taken place in a matter of minutes.

Then in June a tornado hit Springfield, Mass.--about 15 minutes from my house. While this was nothing compared to the ones in Alabama, a lot of damage was done. People are still recovering here--and most of these people have never been near a tornado.

Moving on to August, Hurricane Irene made her way up the East Coast, downgraded to a tropical storm and swept through New England. That was an interesting weekend. Our dear friends Aaron and Amanda tied the knot about an hour from where we live. Several members of their wedding party got stranded at the wedding site as the storm hit the night and day after the wedding. A&A made it to their honeymoon location in the Berkshires safely, but had to do some plan-changing due to weather and power outages.

I was working for a paper in Connecticut at the time, and Monday morning I had to drive around my towns taking pictures and talking with people about what they experienced. The damage was mostly in downed power lines, but flooding was a major problem in parts of Mass and especially Vermont. We usually take a paddling trip with Brett & Jenna over Labor Day weekend, but we decided to change our plans slightly and do some relief work that weekend instead. We borrowed a friend's condo at Sugarbush Resort and worked in two nearby Vermont towns.

One of those was Waterbury where a fabulous restaurant called The Alchemist is. Andrew and our friends like it because they brew good beer. I like it because the food is great, and it's fun to see my friends and husband get really excited about things they like. Because of the flooding, the restaurant lost everything. We cleaned out a house next door, so we stopped by to grab some pics at the end of the day.

We didn't get any pictures of the places we worked, but we helped out at one home and one restaurant. At the home, we did things like pick up glass, spray mud off wood, rebuild a woodshed, clean floors, etc. At the restaurant, Andrew and I worked under the foundation to shovel mud from around the structural pillars (can't think of the correct terminology for this) so they could dry out. We were pretty nasty by the day's end.

If all of those events weren't enough, we then get to October. If I am remembering correctly, on the Thursday before Halloween we got a tiny bit of snow. You can see it here on my car:

But then on October 29-30 we had a nor'easter come through leaving at least 10 inches of snow in our town and tons of downed trees and power lines. I took some pics of when it started on Saturday, then Andrew and I put on our snow clothes and went to take pictures Sunday morning. Here are some pictures from our neighborhood:

 Saturday

Saturday

 Sunday morning

Our street

I took nearly 50 pictures that morning, so if you want to see more, check out my Facebook page. We had so much damage because the trees hadn't lost all of their leaves yet. Where we live, the snow was very heavy and wet, breaking tons of branches. I think most everyone in Mass had power back by the following Saturday, but in Connecticut some people went 10 days or more without power. We were lucky enough to be without it for only about 48 hours, and we had friends with power who let us crash. 

I almost forgot--somewhere in there (end of summer, maybe?) we also felt a mini-earthquake! What will the last month and a half of 2011 hold for New England?

Kitchen Update

Alright, at long last, here are details of what we've done to the kitchen in the last however long. This post will mainly include pictures...hooray if you hate reading, and boo if you like witty banter :)

We got new floors!

A note on the new floors: we chose to go with Dura-Ceramic. We initially thought we had hardwood under the many layers of carpet, but that turned out to be false. There were a few more slats of hardwood between the kitchen and living room, but not many. We then moved on to tile. We figured we'd tile the kitchen but first put in a radiant heating system so the floors wouldn't be cold in the winter. After some research, we (by "we" I of course mean Andrew) decided those systems are expensive and often heat only a direct area--meaning the heat doesn't spread out over the whole tile. Our neighbor installs floors for a living, and he pointed us to this Dura-Ceramic stuff that looks like tile but is lighter, easier to install and warmer to the touch. Sold!

Andrew installed the recessed lighting and hanging pendants. Still on the hunt for globes...

We started building and placing cabinets. 

Credit for building the cabinets goes to: Brett & Jenna, Aaron and Andrew. Yep, I never touched a one. I don't think. Brett & Jenna built the first one on July 4, after which we decided it would be really fun to bring engaged and married couples over to the house for a rousing game of "Marriage Challenge." The idea would be that each couple had to put together one of our kitchen cabinets, according to the instructions and in a condition acceptable for install. We envisioned a few arguments, some wives walking away from the project, some husbands breaking our cabinets...so we nixed the idea. Then in August, our friend Aaron lived with us for three weeks before his wedding. Most mornings he woke up, ate breakfast, put together a cabinet or two, then headed out. We rarely saw him, but man, those cabinets got done! Andrew put together some with Aaron and did a little on his own.

 Aaron and Andrew determining where the bottom of each upper cabinet would sit. They nailed a board in to keep them all level. The holes will eventually be covered with backsplash, though I forget they're even there.

 The boys building and gluing.

 Two cabinets are up!

Confession: Some of the cabinets may look a bit off to you in the final pics. Or you may have no idea what I'm talking about :) Our cabinets are where they are because our house was built with an interesting structure. Studs are where they shouldn't be and aren't where they should be. Not sure how it happened, but the cabinets had to hang where there were studs for them to be screwed into. Because of this, they are not centered around the window. I've dealt with the issue and moved on. Mostly. At the time I just left the house until the project was done, and I couldn't do anything about it!

 The first countertop delivery came!

 Andrew and Brett checking out the countertops. Unfortunately, they were bowed by a quarter-inch and had to be sent back. Three-ish weeks later we received another delivery.

 New countertops! Andrew installed them alone (I did help...by sitting on them to hold them in place!) He then drew on them with Sharpie (eek!) to mark the cut-out for the sink.

Sink note: So glad we chatted with Brett before ordering the countertops. We were going to order them with the sink hole already cut out. If we had done this, the hole might not have centered up under our window. By doing it ourselves, we were able to get it exactly right. Otherwise we would've been out of luck if the placement was slightly off. Most sinks come with a template to help homeowners do this, but you can also measure the sink and draw it out like Andrew did. The good news is, you can be off by almost half an inch and it's all good since top-mounted sinks have an overhang.

 Cutting the sink hole

 Now that's focus...

 Home stretch!

Empty hole for our new sink!

Now for some after pics. Remember, the kitchen is nowhere near "done." But it is in workable order--minus the fact that our pantry cabinets have yet to be secured to the wall. So our food is crammed in on one shelf per cabinet. And strewn on our counters. 

Also, I debated on whether to clean up the kitchen before taking pictures. I decided that since vulnerability is a good quality, I would just give it to you like it is. Plus, I wouldn't have gotten this post up for another few weeks days if I had taken the time to clean. Andrew brewed beer last night (which is now on the list of things not to do at night/pre-bedtime due to the smell and pregnant wife combo) and he hasn't quite finished cleaning up. I'm being a good wife and leaving it for him when he gets home from work :)

 The fridge/pantry combo. Another cabinet will go above the fridge. 

And yes, Sherpa's ears made it into the pic as well...

 Living room side: the trash can will eventually be in a special cabinet. For now it helps keep Sherpa blocked into the kitchen/mudroom when we leave the house.

 The other side. Those holes in the sink cabinet will have drawers "glued" in place.

The view from the living room. The bar will be in place and barstools will be where the camping chair, microwave/toaster and buckets are. That big box is also used to block Sherpa in the kitchen. We currently have two microwaves--neither of which work 100%. The buckets hold cider that Andrew and his BFF Caleb are making and the beer Andrew brewed last night.

So hopefully that brings everyone up to date! Maybe one day I'll show you the inside of the cabinets...I should probably do that sooner rather than later while they're still organized. My lovely friend Sarah (who is a math teacher and crazy-organized about nearly everything) came over one day to help me fill them up. I still have one empty drawer and two big cabinets with lots of room left! So excited to have double the space of the previous kitchen...maybe even more!

Mixin' it up

You may have noticed in my last post that I detoured from the usual renovation posts to talk about something else, in this case, my pregnancy. I also recently changed the blog header and tag so it reads "home renovation + life along the way." I decided I'd like to write more about the things we do, trips we take, good recipes we find, crafts, sewing projects, etc. etc. And since I knew we were going to have a baby when I redesigned the header, I figured some of my family might like to be kept up to date with the kiddo once it gets here. Thus, you will begin seeing more posts that are non-renovation related, as well as posts about the house as we complete more projects.

Speaking of projects, this week I'll have pictures up of our "almost finished" kitchen--90% of the cabinets are in, the countertops (minus the bar) are in and the sink works! Woohoo! We also completely cleaned out our garage on Saturday--to the point my car can actually fit in there! Besides more little things in the kitchen (think backsplash, trim, installing the bar, securing the pantry cabinets), we have a laundry list of projects to accomplish by the time the baby gets here. We'll see how far we get. Things we'd *like* to complete include: finishing the ceiling in the living room and hallway, painting those areas, maybe redoing the floor in the mudroom and, of course, repainting a room for the nursery. Unfortunately, I've been told I can't paint (can't say I'm terribly sad about that!), but stay tuned as I try to find ways around that...

Ready, set, approximately 25 weeks to go!