4 GB

I added some more memory just now to the trusty Macbook, since I have been doing a lot more "work" in AI with logos and such. I bumped it from the stock 2 to 4 gig. The poor thing is beat to death already, I've had it only a few months, and it replaced my older Macbook. It looks like it has cigarette burns on the bottom of it (I've never smoked a cigarette in my entire life) and I've taken it sledding. I beat the death out of these things, I have them on nonstop basically 24/7 chugging away.

Today has been good for Stickers That Stick and AHP. Picked up some new clients, one is Zesti which is a new site in Canada for music and ebooks, does Canada use iTunes or are they behind the ball on that?

The animal kingdom

So this morning I fed the ducks/chickens as I do every morning, and changed the water in the ducks pool, as I do every few mornings when they fill it up with mud and it needs to be dredged. I was then able to witness this amazing spectacle of the animal universe... she seemed to know it was coming as well. I may have some ducklings before winter hits.

Made dinner tonight using one of RR's awesome recipes, modified to my own liking and time constraints of course.

Chicken sausage, pepper and onion MINUS the fake bake

Super good and fresh tasting especially since I used basil and tomatoes from the garden and organic veggies and pasta. Paired it with super cheap local wine which tasted great! Mazza Wines - Niagra

Now, for your and my after dinner pleasure a video of an antique chicken popping out eggs, just go with it.....

Garden Munchies

Went over to the family garden and picked some basil and tomatoes for the dinner Jess is making tonight, some sausage from Wegmans with an organic pasta. I found a tomato with a small rotted spot on it, so I cut it up and threw it into the coop for the ducks and chickens, after dinner snack for them I guess!
Note that the zoom feature on the iPhone 3GS is not the greatest as can be seen by mr blurry duck. I'm going to have to get that Hipstamatic app, so these pictures I will be posting aren't too lame.

Nice to meet you

Mark and I relaxing after he put in some gnarly SX motos at Evansville

I feel obligated as I am writing this first post to introduce ourselves properly. (Its been two years since we last blogged and things have changed). Mark is an entrepreneur slash country renegade running two businesses while I am a full-time cubicle jockey by day and a action sports loving photographer slash pseudo housewife extraordinaire by night. We are in our mid-twenties, married two years ago as of next month and have been best friends for the last 11 years or so. We maintain a house in the not so bustling, quiet country area of Bangor, Pennsylvania and spend most of our time on do-it-yourself projects meanwhile chasing after two over active shelties and several kinds of fowl. Play time usually involves the starting the motors on our dirtbikes, boat or tractor and once in a while my sewing machine haha.

Our most current projects are getting my photography business off the ground, growing a sticker business and installing solar panels to add to the green factor. We'll keep you updated!

Footer frame in place

This morning the footer frame was put in, and we received some infamous construction worker trash, yes! When we walked back there we heard them say "here comes the kids." haha

Snapped a few pictures and this will be inspected tomorrow and then poured on Wednesday. We will also be picking out the exterior siding cover, window trim color, and front door on Wednesday.

Hole for the foundaton is dug!

The hole was dug over this weekend (April 5-6) where the foundation will lay. We even have up some black mesh construction area flagging around the site, its really happening! Tomorrow BVB is coming over with the cement guy, I guess they will get ready to and pour the footers and let them set over the first few days of this week and then the foundation will be poured!

Here are some pictures of the work/celebration from breaking ground this weekend.

Day 1 of construction!

Well today was the first day of actual work for the house!! A machine came in to scrape the top soil off, Larry and I set the markers for exactly where we wanted the house and that was that. Tomorrow or Saturday they will dig for the foundation and I believe our first footer inspection is set for next Tuesday so it should really start moving along now. The only thing that will hold us up at all will be rain.

There are some nice piles of dirt I'd like to use for the track... I am told they may need them to make our yard though :)




Oh yea, Snaps and I dug the first hole last night before it got dark haha

Can't forget about the porta potty..

Just a quick entry to note that we had the closing with the Bank yesterday, so everything with the funds is set to go. There has to be some changes made over the weekend to some of the final plans by BVB, and then the township will approve the building permit for the house! Here's to hoping that there will be a hole in the ground next week and the foundation will get going!!

Flooring and some lights

This past Tuesday Jess and I went shopping with Betty to nail down our flooring choices and move onto lighting selections. We were really eager to see how hard it was going to be to try to update the kitchen and nook flooring to the vertical Bamboo flooring that we really wanted. It ended up that we ditched the french door setup on the nook in exchange for a normal wooden sliding door and took that credit and with it were able to get the Bamboo flooring in the Kitchen, Nook area, and even in the Dining room! We also were able to upgrade our foyer to multi-colored slate in exchange for the pergo style stuff we had in our contract so were really excited that we stepped it up on the flooring downstairs, its going to be make the whole house become a lot nicer. Carpet was also picked out within about 20 minutes on the same day, we got the normal mocha colored carpeting style throughout the house where it gets carpet. Our stairs are Oak, so we wont be getting any carpet on those.



Tile was up next and Betty took us to a new place since we couldn't really pick something at the first place we really liked. Were getting the tile in the master bathroom, on the floor, the jet tub and were getting a tiled walk in shower. The shower tile is a bit darker than the flooring/jet tub tile. The picture of both are here, but they will both have different sized tiles but the same style. They will be bigger on the bottom seperated by a deco tile strip and then smaller on top.



After we picked out the flooring we grabbed a bite to eat and moved on to Stokes electric. The lights actually weren't that difficult to pick out since we (read Jess) knew the style that we were going for. We got some modern lights mixed with Tiffany style lights, should be sweet. I wish I took more pictures while I was there but for some reason I didnt, we looked through some books and saw some of them right in front of us in the showroom. Were basically at our budget on the lighting now but will end up going a bit over because were going to get a bunch of recessed lighting, oh well. The picture below is of the lights we will have hanging over the island where people can sit to eat and chill.




As of today our septic permit is done, our grading plan is approved, the building permit is being reviewed and will hopefully be approved this week (they only have 15 days from the 19th of March to get it done which is nice.) Our construction loan/mortgage closing is scheduled for the 27th of March, so were on schedule for a late March/early April start, cant wait!!