rested and refreshed

We've fallen silent on the blog for one of the best reasons ever: Vacation!
We got back from a whole week at a cabin on a lake in the middle of nowhere (seriously, the nearest town didn't even have one horse). No agenda for 7 straight days - sleep, swim, read, eat and play cards. Just what the doctor ordered.

Before we left we made some progress on the house.

One of those projects that you don't talk about it until it's over - the busted lock on the front door. We went about two weeks without a functioning deadbolt (just the handle lock). Obviously this was a priority task for before vacation. I wish I could say more about the process, as it was a process to replace the thing, but I have no idea what happened because J labored away on it while I took a nap one day after work.

We also pushed to "finish" the bathroom (I still need to re-paint the door and window trim, but since we don't shower in this bathroom, it is now fully functional for us).
Complete with beautiful new, hard-to-find 11" on center tub supplies:

The bathroom has about 12 different shades of white in it - the tub, toilet, sink, ceramic wall tiles, plastic wall tiles, shower curtain, floor tiles, caulk, grout, air vents and shades on the light are all different shades of white. J picked out the very bold color for the walls, which I think is fantastic and has the unexpected bonus of drawing the eye away from the aforementioned shades of white:

We also have a new gas stove. The house came with an old (but not ancient - read: cool) electric stove, complete with oven that never fully turned off. We were planning to buy one "soon" anyway, but J got a fantastic deal on a last-year-and-floor-model clearance Jenn Air, which is about 2x as nice as the stove we planned to buy and was only 25% more expensive. There was also the happy surprise of an existing gas line - saving us $$ on the gas company service call. (J will do water pipes, but not gas pipes):We do not normally decorate the stove with bamboo.

There have been other big changes in our household. We are officially 1/2 way to poor grad students. J's final day at his job was a week ago last Friday. He starts the MBA program tomorrow morning.

This, combined with the fact that we are sick of living with the two rooms of boxes, has moved the completion of the office to the top of the priority list. We have a busy week (getting my car ready to sell), so it will be our project for this weekend.