Beige the Bane of my Existence

I love color! I have always been obsessed with color and very color specific. So can you imagine a person who loves color living in an apartment with beige furniture, a beige couch, a beige rug AND beige walls! Yes, it is sad but true I lived in that sorry state for TWO years. I don’t know how I survived.

We just got our new sectional (which I have only mentioned a million times in this blog) which we picked as a neutral beige since I plan on splashing a TON of color onto the walls. But I just looked over there today and our walls our beige and our couch is beige and even OUR bloddy dog is beige! Ugh! Have no fear I have a color plan that will drive away the beige! And being the nerd that I am, I threw some photos into photoshop. Here is what I am thinking!

Hmmm. Now that I am looking at them here I think that blue needs to be bluer and that green needs to be toned down a bit....but you get the idea. There is one thing that I am really unsure of....what to do with our fireplace wall. The fireplace sits right in the middle between the dining room area and the living room area. I can't decide what color it should be. Should I leave it the beige as it is now, choose the green or the blue or different color altogether? Would love to know your thoughts!

Oh and I have to mention Ron brought home a surprise for me the other day....paint rollers! Ha! I was so excited...I will take paint rollers over a dozen roses any day!

Purely Random Thoughts: Spazziness

Here are some random Jakki thoughts for your Saturday morning

So I have been extra spazzy lately. I have burned myself twice on the oven rack this week (something I have never done before). I nicked myself with the knife the other day; Although I managed to get through 5 years of architecture school without cutting myself once! I also have been walking into everything lately…you should see the bruises on my legs (I blame all the new furniture)! Oh and to top it all off I got poison ivy all along my right arm. Yeah….I truly look a mess! And then I got to thinking that thank god I only have four limbs! I can’t imagine being a caterpillar and having to coordinate 16 legs or more! Can you imagine someone as spazzy as me having to coordinate all those limbs?! All I can say is I certainly would never survive the animal world!

Charlie: The Pied Piper

You never know what is going to happen when you go on a walk with Charlie. Today we had another toddler incident (yes we have had this happen before) where the toddler runs off to meet Charlie while their parents aren’t looking. Apparently Charlie is just irresistible to toddlers. But boy oh boy did my heart stop this morning when I turned around and saw a little one running across the street to greet us (with no parent in sight). Thank our lucky stars that we weren’t on a busy street! I brought the child back to his house but you should have seen the father’s face! Can you imagine looking out your front door and seeing your precious child holding a stranger’s hand?! I thought the guy was going to punch me out! I quickly explained the situation and backed away. Ohhh Charlie why do you have to be so cute?!

A whole lot of Hoopla: Our New Sectional

Ever notice that all things happen at the exact same time? Our house magically turned into a zoo on Saturday. We were having some of Ron’s family over for our first real “dinner party” and our sectional was supposed to be delivered the same day. Friday I get a call from Bob’s furniture telling me that our magnificent new sectional was supposed to be arriving at 4:30 while Ron’s family would be arriving around 4. Great! Ron and I spent a good portion of our Saturday moving all our living room furniture onto one side of the room. Normally, we would just move it to the basement, but our guests needed some place comfortable to sit! So our house looked ridiculous with ALL of our furniture shoved onto one side and a huge empty space on the other. But what can you do?

4 o’clock rolls around and the sectional has arrived early AND before our guests. Wohoo! Ron and I breathed a sigh of relief. The men get it unloaded and started to set it up (amongst all of the furniture we left upstairs) when we see Ron’s family arrive. Ha! You could see them sitting in the car with eyes wide pointing to the huge moving van sitting in our driveway. Ron goes out to greet them all and brings them all inside. So we had all of our old furniture on one side, the new sectional shoved on the other side, 3 movers, 5 family members ,charlie, Ron and I ! It felt like one of those old Marx Brother’s movies…

Charlie: The New Bobble Head Attitude

Charlie’s new haircut has gone straight to his head. He has been misbehaving and running around like a maniac ever since that fateful day! I am pretty sure he is running around thinking, “Wohoo! I am naked! Look at me!” Although, my sister-in-law pointed out that he is probably just getting back at us for getting him such a bad haircut! Hmmm…there may be some truth to that. Either way we have had to retrain Charlie because along with losing ALL of his fur he seems to have lost his obedience too. This week, Ron and I have been focusing on getting him not to jump on the furniture since we are (finally) getting a brand NEW sectional Saturday! So I am keeping my fingers crossed that the sectional doesn’t have paw prints all over it by Sunday!

What attitude?

Ding Dong The Steaks are Calling

Sometime last week our doorbell rings and I find a stranger on my porch with a brochure in his hand. Yep, you gotta love those sales people! So, I start to prepare to morph into mean Jakki, when he asks me if I am interested in any steak. I falter a moment and asked him to repeat that last part. “Do you want steak?” he asks. Steak? Someone is on my doorstep asking me to buy steak? At this point I must have made a ‘what are you crazy’ face because he suddenly says, “sounds sketchy doesn’t it”. Ohhhhh yeah it sounds sketchy. As it turns out it wasn’t that sketchy. He was from the OMAHA steak company, one of those online stores where you can buy frozen steak in bulk. He was selling some steak half price because someone had canceled their order! At this point my husband materializes out of thin air and is rushing outside with his wallet! Ron manages to get the guy to come down in price a little bit and we ended up with a package of NY strip steaks and a package of peppercorn steaks. So now our freezer is currently filled with zucchini, zucchini, zucchini, 5 cartons of ice cream and some steak shoved in between! Life doesn’t get much better than that!

Labor Day

I hope everyone had a great labor day! Ours was a bit of a world wind. Ron had to work Saturday but was able to get Sunday and Monday off (Horray! Two days off in a row!!). Once Ron came home from work, we packed up the car and drove down to my in-laws house. All of the family came over to celebrate Ron’s birthday (belatedly). We had a blast talking, eating, laughing, eating, smiling…did I mention eating?

We spent the next day moving furniture back to Connecticut. Ron’s Aunt and Uncle gave us their old dining room set! We are thrilled to have a matching set of furniture. The table seems so large now! We actually have to pass each other things during dinner! Total Craziness!

We celebrated Labor Day by doing some much needed yard work. We spent all day clearing vines off of this one tree. Unfortunately, you can barely tell we did anything out there since it is so overgrown. Oh bother. While Ron was hacking away at the vines and I was performing my Tarzan impressions, we came across the most unusual caterpillar (turns out to be an American Dagger Moth). So of course we had to stop our work and take a bazillion pictures.



I have never seen anything like it. It is definitely the punk rocker of the caterpillar family !

Be Happy: Kingsford the Pet Piglet

I saw this on todaysbigthing.com and it is the cutest thing I have ever seen! I hope this puts a smile on your face!

See more funny videos and Cute Animals Videos at Today's Big Thing.

The Attack of The Zucchini

Yes, the zucchini saga continues! I spent this morning baking some yummy zucchini muffins! I just shoved them in the oven. Only eleven zucchinis left sitting on our counter! Good grief!

I bet you thought I was exaggerating!

We have been more than happy to share our zucchini abundance with all of our neighbors. Since Ron and I have recently moved into Quaker Hill, the zucchini has been a nice ice breaker. It turns out we live in a great neighborhood with very generous neighbors. Perhaps too generous! It feels like every time we see a neighbor we have to try the new zucchini dish they made or try the zucchini bread that just came out of the oven. I swear the zucchini keeps coming back to us but disguised in different forms!!!