Look! It's Draco Malfoy!

I found a video of the kid who plays Draco in the Harry Potter movies playing guitar and singing. While is voice isn't all that great, his cute accent and upbeat guitar playing makes up for it.



Pete and I are off to the Caribbean bright and early tomorrow morning!

10 Things to do Before I Die

I was perusing my amazingly talented, hilarious, and wonderful mother's website which she recently updated, and came across a list she made of things she wants to do before she dies. For all you blog-stalkers out there, her website is right here. I thought that was a pretty neat idea, and since all my kids have gone home early today I'm gonna give it a shot. I didn't really have time to think up this list, so I may add some more stuff later.

1. Have at least three babies...preferably four. And of course, my first girl will be Juliana. The boys will all have manly cowboy names like Ike or Eli or Wyatt.

2. Spend a month cruising around Europe. I've wanted to go ever since Dad took Melanie when she was 10. I was so jealous! He took me to Hawaii though, so he's off the hook.

3. Write a kids book and have it published. You can illustrate it, Mom.

4. Get myself back into single digit pants and stay there. Now that I'm trying to reproduce it's the worst possible time to diet. But once the babies are here it's on!

5. Have more foster kids. We're actually thinking about doing it sooner rather than later. It's been discussed briefly. I'm not sure Pete is completely ready to do it again, but I am! This time I want a 2-4 year-old though. I can live without the 9 year-old sass! I rock with the terrible two's.

6. Get rich, buy a private sailboat, and sail around the world over a couple of years. See EVERYTHING. I actually know somebody who did this with her husband and three kids. She is my hero. This is one of the items on this list that is more of a dream. This may be a little harder to make a reality. Pete agrees it would be amazing, though. I'll just keep buying those lottery tickets!

7. Learn (or re-learn) to play an instrument. In high school I took a piano class that I loved. I learned to read music, and could actually play quasi-well. I've completely lost my ability to read music, and can barely play chop-sticks. Now that Pete and I have a decent sized house, I may just get my piano back from Melanie and start taking lessons again. I've also been thinking about taking up the guitar.

8. Learn a foreign language. I took four years of French only to forget 98% of it. The problem is that I have absolutely no use for it in New Mexico. I want to learn Spanish so I can keep my hand in over the years. Dang, I wish I was as smart as I was in high school! I also wish I took Spanish.

9. Learn to juggle. This has been on my list since Junior High.

10. Have an amazing garden. I'm really awful with outdoor plants, especially. I plant them, take care of them for a couple weeks, and then completely ignore them and they die of thirst. Or the dog digs them up and drags them through the yard. I guess what number ten should really say is "have self-control and will myself to take care of outdoor plants." Even the local, low-water plants seem to die in my care. My indoor plants are doing great, though.

This was fun. Now I need to get off my double-digit badonk-a-donk and make it happen!

Today, your awesomeness is not going to be a ridiculous video. Instead, I'm going to make you aware of an amazing product that I believe everyone needs. It would come in really handy if you're ever stranded on a deserted island. It's The Most Incredible Knife. That's the actual name of it. Click here to check out its 85 features. (I covet the 300-foot laser pointer and golf divet repair tool.)

We're Baaa-aaaack!

I finally unpacked the desk stuff today, to include the cord to the camera. Which means we can post a couple of house pictures. Hooray!

We've been constantly working on the house since we moved in a few weeks ago, and we're still not even close to being done. I'll post a few before and after pictures so you can get an idea of what we're talking about here.

Let's start with the exterior, shall we? When we moved in, the outside of the house was in awesome shape as far as the roof, stucco, and anything costly was concerned. But the front yard was full of dead weeds, random big rocks that didn't really belong, and two half-dead agaves. It had zero curb appeal.


Now that I'm done with it (for now) the agaves have been cut back, the trim was painted, the weeds are no more, and I planted a couple small plants that will grow pretty and add color in the next couple years. I planted a Russian Sage which has purple flowers, and a Spanish Broom which blooms yellow flowers. Here's the result of my labor:


I'm still not so sure about the green. It may be a little too green. It was easy to paint, so I'm still considering changing it. What do you think?

Moving on to the kitchen. When we moved in , it was what I like to refer to as "baby poop orange". All of it. To include the cabinets and the small tiles on the back splash that used to be white.


At first I thought it would be really cool to paint it dark blue. I wanted to do the tiles in either all different shades of blue, or different shades of green with a little turquoise thrown in. Once I painted the kitchen dark blue I realized what a mistake I had made. It looked like a garage!


I really hated it. Pete thought I was crazy, but the next day I re-painted it. When we lived in Flagstaff, our kitchen was lime green and I loved it. I decided to stick with a classic, and I went with the lime green. I still haven't painted the individual tiles yet. Also, we're going to change out the sweet 70's counter tops, but the ones I want will cost about $1,500. We're gonna have to wait on that for a few months. The tile, and the tile in the nearby dining room are getting changed out as well. Here's how it turned out so far.


I don't know why, but I didn't take any "before" pictures of the living room. Therefore, I will describe what it looked like. Tan walls, dirty fireplace, and my favorite, concrete. It was just plain concrete in the living room, but it was orange down the hall. What is with these people with the baby poop orange I will never know. Anyhoo, we decided that we really liked the wood at our old house and that we'd love to kill ourselves laying 500 square feet of wood, so that's what we did. It was really hard work, and our friends Kyle and Megan came in and saved us at the last minute by helping us out. They were like angels of mercy swooping down from the heavens in work clothes ready to assist in any way they could. They literally shaved at least 5 hours of work off the job. I love them! Our hard work paid off, and our floors look really great! I also slapped a coat of paint on the walls.










We still have to lay down tile in the dining room, so we're waiting to do that before we tackle the molding that goes along the floor. We figure we'll do it all at once.

The carpet comes in on Thursday for the three bedrooms. I can't wait! I hate waking up and putting my feet on the cold, orange concrete. I am dreaming of Friday when I awake to some lovely, soft carpet to greet my tootsies! Yay!

Incidentally, on the day that I was outside doing all the yard work and painting the house, I completely slathered myself in sunscreen. I burn really easy and my freckles get darker (yucky) if I'm out in the sun too much. However, there was one place that I didn't think to put sunscreen that got toasted! That's right...the coin slot.


And on that note, we cue the moment of Zen.....