Michigan Vacation + House & Wedding Updates

There's been so much going on, I haven't had time to stop and update the blog so this will probably be a long post - forewarning!

Joe and I headed to my parents' house in Oscoda, Michigan for July 4th and took some much-needed time off of work to enjoy the nice weather and good company. The house sits just off the Au Sable river, so we canoed up the river for a few hours on our first day there and jumped out right into the back yard. Despite our canoe buddies tipping their canoe over, we had a good trip up the river. Saw a few bald eagles, too!

View of the river from their backyard, with Bailey photo bombing

We also took the pontoon boat out for a few trips which was a blast - Joe even got a semi-tan! We had a great time out on the water relaxing and soaking up the sun.

View of the Au Sable river near one of the dams

We stopped by the new house on the way back from Michigan to see what progress was made while we were gone. They had all of the drywall put up, and this weekend they finished patching, taping, and sanding the walls which will be ready for texture and paint this week. Yay! We have our final walkthrough on August 9th, and our closing date is August 12th. Less than a month til we have a new house!!!

Front of the house

"AYO!!!" it's a staircase!

Dining room

Morning room

Living room looking at the office

Kitchen

Pantry and stairwell to the basement

Basement under the morning room

Basement under the living room/kitchen

Upstairs guest bathroom

Master bedroom

Looking through master bedroom to master closet

Master shower

Master shower

We also took pictures for our Save the Date announcements for the wedding while we were in Michigan - we got my mom to take the pictures for us. We ordered them last week and they should be in on Tuesday, so I'm excited to see how they turned out! Here's the proof -

Still have a long way to go on the wedding planning, but at least we're making progress! 

Drywall is in the Building + Wedding Updates

We had our pre-drywall walk through at the new house on Wednesday, and aside from a missing second shower head in the master bathroom, everything looked good! We headed back out to Beaver to see if any other updates had been made, and there were stacks of drywall laying throughout the house so hopefully that means we'll have real walls next week!



Garage

  

Kitchen + Morning room


 

Basement egress window





Basement finished area + storage

 

Looking through kitchen to dining room



Living room



Looking through living room to office



First floor powder room

 

Drywall in garage


We've also had progress on the wedding front - we have picked a date, color scheme, and location! I originally wanted to have the wedding in early September because we knew the ceremony would be outdoors, so after looking extensively at daily temperature and weather averages in Oklahoma City I landed on early fall for the best chance of good weather. However, after literally EVERY person I spoke to had the reaction that next fall was a really long ways away and supplied a different reason as to why I shouldn't wait that long, I caved and decided to go with a June 7th wedding. June gives added factors of additional heat, greater possibility of bad weather, and the worst (for me) - JUNE BUGS. But, oh well. After several complications in this area, I have decided that this will be the first and last decision that I cave on in this process - the planning and decision making for this wedding have already been complicated and if I spend the next year trying to please everyone else, it's not going to turn out well. Okay, I think I'm done ranting about that :-)

The colors we chose are mint green and poppy red, which I accidentally happened upon on Google and fell in love, but I found almost no examples of that color scheme used in weddings up til now so I was afraid it would be hard to find things in those colors. But, every wedding website imaginable has predicted that mint green is going to be the "it" color for weddings this year, so I hope that translates to lots of choices for me. I had no idea I was so trendy :-) Here's the idea:

I was really into the idea of having the wedding at the Harn Homestead in Oklahoma City, which is a working museum in OKC that is meant to provide visitors with a glimpse into life during the early 1900s in Oklahoma. The Harn family built the house and barn in the early 1900s, and the buildings, land, and appliances/housewares of the time have been preserved as a memorial to life in those times. The barn is really neat and it fits right into my vintage-y theme, but it's a popular place and we were worried that we wouldn't be able to book it on the date we wanted. Plus, we initially thought we'd like to do a back yard wedding at my parents' house, but they don't have any buildings on their propery besides the house that would allow people protection from bad weather and they live a ways out from the city, so we didn't want to put people in danger. But, we liked the added flexibility you get when having the ceremony and reception at your own place. So, Uncle Smokey to the rescue :-) My step-dad's uncle has a large bit of land in north Edmond with a large building meant for parties and a pond equipped with a waterfall. And the best part - he's letting us host the wedding there for free! And because he hosts parties out there regularly, he already has the hookup on catering, bartending, and valet parking services so that makes the decision process a lot easier for me and Joe. The next big decision is how many people to have in the wedding party... I still don't have an answer for that one. Oh well, at least I have plenty of time! We should be taking pictures for our Save the Dates this week, so hopefully I'll have some to share soon!

Mark your calendars - June 7th, 2014!

Adventures at the National Aviary

Summer is officially here in Pittsburgh, and I'm LOVING it! Joe is hating the heat, but I'm soaking up as much of it as possible since I know I'm only going to get a few months of warm weather before it starts turning cool again. The Beaver farmers' market has started offering some really good produce so we're stocking up on the home grown stuff while we can get it. Makes me want a yard even more so I can start growing my own fruits and veggies!

We went to Beaver on Friday to see what progress had been made on the house. They had run all of the ducts through the ceiling and some of the electrical wires, but it didn't look like they had finished all of it. The project manager also called and said that our closing date had been pushed back to some time around August 12th (used to be mid to late July) but we don't have an explanation yet of why that happened. Our pre drywall walkthrough is scheduled for Wednesday of next week, so hopefully we'll get some answers then. I'm so ready for the house to be finished!!!

While we were in Beaver, we grabbed some dinner and visited a carnival that was in town. They had set up camp in the main park at the center of town - the combination of the carnival music, warm breeze, and fireflies made for the quintessential summer night :-)

On Saturday, we went to the national aviary in downtown Pittsburgh. The penguins were my favorite - they were so friendly!

Here are some of our other favorites :-)

We ran into this cute pair of Scissortails! Made me feel like I was back in Oklahoma

Now it's back to the daily grind! Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Progress!

There was some major progress going on at the new house last week! We headed out to Beaver on Saturday morning to meet with the representative from Guardian. They will be wiring the house for an alarm system, and they also run all of the electrical and communication lines for the house. He wanted to meet with us before his crew started running wires this week, so we figured that meant that at least the two by fours were up on the second floor. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the outer walls had also been put up and wrapped, the roof was on, and the basement floor was poured!

Front of the house

Morning room

Looking through the living room to the office

Dining room

Master bedroom and bathroom on the second floor

Back of the house

It's really starting to look like a real house now! Hooray!

We're also trying to narrow down what colors we want to have in the wedding. We're leaning toward having the ceremony in early October of next year, but we haven't completely nailed that down yet. I'm not a huge fan of the typical "fall" type color schemes, so it seems like we may have a spring/summer color scheme instead. I think I've narrowed it down to these three color combinations - what do you all think? Which is your favorite?

We Have Walls!

Some progress is being made at the new house site! We ventured out to Beaver on Friday and the first floor walls had been set up. It's finally starting to really look like a real house now!

View of the front

Standing in the kitchen, looking into the morning room

 

Joe standing in the dining room

Standing in the living room, looking at the office

View of the back of the house

Very exciting to see progress! We also ventured out to Garrison Days in Beaver this weekend, which is a lot like "Affair of the Heart" for Tulsa folks. It was really fun - lots of neat things to look at and more inspiration for me to get my Etsy shop finished and open! I've made some progress on headbands, but I still have a ways to go on the mineral makeup :-/ I also have wedding planning to do, so hopefully I'll get it all done some time in the next century :-)

Egyptian Bread Recipe + House Updates

I had a great trip home to Oklahoma to visit the family in OKC and all my friends in Tulsa. I got some long overdue catch-up time with everyone (and got to see how big miss Collins is now!) and I can't wait til my next trip back :-) Thanks to everyone in OK for making it a great visit for me!

As promised, here is the recipe for the Egyptian bread that Mom and I made last week!

2 cups Semolina flour - (found at Reasor's for Tulsa folks, or at certain specialty grocery stores)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt
1 teaspoon yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water

Please ignore the cluttered counter - ready to be out of the tiny apartment!

Step 1: Pour the warm water into a large mixing bowl and add the yeast and sugar. Stir until well mixed and let the mixture sit for 5 minutes. When you come back, it should look something like this:

Step 2: Add the semolina flour and all-purpose flour to the yeast mixture and stir together (it starts getting sticky pretty quickly, so you'll probably need to mix with your hands after the first few stirs). 

Step 3: Knead the dough for 10 minutes - it should be smooth and not sticky. 

Step 4: After 10 minutes of kneading, mix the tablespoon of salt with one tablespoon of water and add to the dough (we made an indentation in the dough and poured the salt water in it). Knead the salt water into the dough and continue kneading until it reaches the consistency it had at the end of Step 3.

Step 5: Separate the dough into six balls, then let them rise covered for 5 to 10 minutes.

Step 6: Flatten the balls into 1/2 inch tall circles. Cover and let rise for 1 hour.

Step 7: Put oil in a skillet (we used olive oil) and set to medium-low heat (I put my burner on "4"). Once the skillet and oil are ready, place one dough circle in the skillet and let it brown. After making several of these, Mom and I decided you should let the dough brown on each side as long as possible before burning it because the middle will stay uncooked if you turn it too soon. Once the bread has turned a nice golden brown, turn it with a spatula and let the other side brown. Remove from the skillet and let cool, then cut and serve!

We found some cranberry pepper jam at Whole Foods which is really good with this bread, and we added cheese and strawberries to the mix as well. It's very tasty! Apparently it's also really good as sandwich bread, but we haven't tried it yet.

Also - lumber, windows, and a shower/tub have been delivered at the new house! We're hoping that we'll have some walls up sometime this week!

View from inside the basement