**picture heavy post coming up**

Saturday was dreary and rainy – so that meant renovations!  We are just trucking along right now. Floor tiling is all done:

Still need to grout.  Nice change from this:

To this:

Even without the grout it is [...]]]> Happy Easter for those that celebrate

**picture heavy post coming up**

Saturday was dreary and rainy – so that meant renovations!  We are just trucking along right now. Floor tiling is all done:

Still need to grout.  Nice change from this:

To this:

Even without the grout it is sooooo much better!

New lighting fixture that worked the first time we put it up there.

Easiest lighting fixture ever to install.  This room used to just have a light hanging by a cord and a hook that we had to switch on and off.  Now we have a wall switch like real people!

Painting is done in the pantry room.  All this room needs is the wall backsplash and doors for the pantry!

We purchased the sink and terlet for the bathroom.  It’s one of the eco friendly ones that has 2 different flushes for less water usage.  Yay!

We were a little worried about clearance space for the back toilet tank as our plumbing moved a bit during final installation, so we were sweating a little bit.  This isn’t exactly where it is going, but close.  I can taste the end of the project!

Food was spot on for Saturday.  I’m in the zone now, which I will take and ride for as long as it lasts!

Sunday morning the rain broke and the temps were warm enough at  48 degrees to ride to bagels!

I did run over a broken beer bottle about a  mile in and ended up with this:

Fast flat. Sigh.  We patched it and kept going.  It did delay us quite a bit and I was about bonking by the time we got to Panera Bread!  If I had known I was going to get a flat, I would have eaten a bigger snack.

We take the main roads on Sunday rather than the path because it is quiet on Sundays and quicker to get to breakfast that way.

Unfortunately, they are building a Walmart on this road, so that might impact our riding on it anymore.  There probably will be too much traffic.

Breakfast time!

The ride home was really fast without having the flat and a nice tailwind to boot!

16 miles round trip.

My Easter treat today?

I can’t have these in the house as these are my very, very favorite candy.  Any chocolate/PB combo.  I bought a single egg so I wouldn’t even have the 6-pack in the house.  It was really good!

My parents invited the family to dinner on Sunday.

Guess who brought the big bowl of fruit?

I also brought the coconut bread biscuits, but I think only my dad liked them besides John and I.

My plate:

Yum!  We had dessert later.  There was a vanilla cake with frosting.

I did not have any cake, but I ate a bunch of the little malted eggs.  I like those.  I did have some ice cream and coffee.

I would give myself a C for eating today.  A few too many nuts and the malted eggs, but I am not stuffed, which feels great!

Came home to Pixie all snuggled into pillows.

She’s so cute!

Now for a nice relaxing evening!

Question:  What was the best thing you ate this weekend?

We had our usual Sunday [...]]]> Productive weekend on the homefront.  No so great on the eating front.  The weather was kind of yucky for biking. Saturday was cold and kind of drizzly.  Sunday was a little sunnier, but really windy.  I don’t mind biking in cold so much, but I detest biking in strong winds.

We had our usual Sunday bagel:

Both of us were up too early.   Always spells snacking later on.

We did have a nice leisurely breakfast and talked about or vacation plans for 2012.  We don’t really get a long vacation this year, but I am going to start saving up now for a nice vacation for early 2012.  Disneyworld!

We got a lot done on the rooms.  They are now 2 separate rooms. We can now officially  call them the pantry/entry and the half bath/laundry.  This included skim coating and sanding the walls.  John really hates doing that, but I don’t mind so much.

We also got the ceiling painted in the pantry room.  It looks so much better just doing that, too. Amazing what a coat of paint can do (haha – I just corrected coat of pain).  We are now into the part that I find fun and rewarding. Tiling has begun. Note the tile isn’t this dark, it is just the lighting.

Again, we have to work on this a little oddly for space reasons.  It is annoying to have to move stuff around to work, but you do what is necessary, right?

I will be glad when this is done and we can have the house back to normal.  I am hoping another couple weeks ought to do it.

Pixie will also be glad to have her bathroom back to normal.

Thanks for that link, Shelley!

Lunch time!

This was a chicken burger from the smokehouse.  They do a mix of breast and thigh, so the burger doesn’t get dry!  Topped with some buffalo wing cheese, hot sauce and a drizzle of blue cheese.   It was * good*!

Tiling of the pantry area – view from inside bathroom:

We went out for some coffee for a break

Cookie dough has entered the house.  I never buy girlscout cookies, but I do buy cookie dough when my nieces have a fundraiser.

They are portioned out into individual cookies, which is nice instead of a bucket of dough, but I will just eat plain dough balls.  And did.  I think someone was trying to be as wheat free as possible this month.  Was that me? You wouldn’t think so…

More painting to do tonight and some relaxing.  We got so much done.  Guess that will happen when no biking.

I did eat like I would have had I biked 40 miles.  Fighting the tired snackies.  Oh well, Just back on track again tomorrow.

We got a lot of things accomplished with the half/bath laundry.  We are getting the drywall up.  The pantry is closed up.

The opening is where the folding doors will go.  We now have to remove these racks to do the flooring.  [...]]]> Sunday is my sister’s birthday!  We did a sister lunch today

We got a lot of things accomplished with the half/bath laundry.  We are getting the drywall up.  The pantry is closed up.

The opening is where the folding doors will go.  We now have to remove these racks to do the flooring.  They come apart, so no problem getting them out.  Now it is just finding somewhere to put this stuff while we are working in there.

Plumbing and electrical closed off.

Underlayment/backerboard down for tiling in the laundry area.   We can do our laundry at home now!

The big opening is for the pocket door.  Our kit was missing the bottom kick plate, so we can’t finish installing that and the drywall around that until the missing piece gets here.  That is why the huge opening.

We decided to go with ceramic tile.  I love laying tile (why yes, I am a dork, thank you).  These are the 3 choices for tile, and I am pretty sure we are going with the middle one.

Pixie has been good with us messing with her litter pan a lot. Thank goodness is all I can say.  I am so glad to have the ugly floor at least half covered up now.  We still have to lay the underlayment/backerboard in the pantry area.

It’s nice now because whatever we do now looks like progress instead of all the plumbing and electrical.   Seen enough?

How about lunch today?  John is out of town for a few days starting today. My sister came up so I could take her out for lunch (I have no car with John gone).  We stopped at Orange Cat.  I had a pear, caramelized onion and brie sandwich on ezekiel sesame bread.  I don’t think this is gluten free, but for some reason I thought it was.  I looked at ingredients at home and it has sprouted wheat.

After eating lunch, we walked over to the Chocolate Mill and picked up a couple desserts to take home.  Chocolate Mill had 4 different gluten free items. I had this gluten free raspberry chocolate torte.

Very good.  It’s nice to know that I can find wheat free products in our small town.

Happy Birthday to my sister!

Not sure where the weekend went.  I have a very busy couple of days coming up with watching the business and doing my own job!

It was soooo bright!  I took this at a little before 6 am.

We spent Sunday early morning at Panera for breakfast (later than 6am, though).

We were up early.  I was up at 5 am on a [...]]]> Dang these weekends go by fast!  And how many of you could see the moon?

It was soooo bright!  I took this at a little before 6 am.

We spent Sunday early morning at Panera for breakfast (later than 6am, though).

We were up early.  I was up at 5 am on a Sunday.  How sad is that?  I know it is because I didn’t make the best food choices on Saturday (too much chocolate) and I have found that I sleep poorly on those nights with constant waking and overheated.  You would think that is incentive enough to not do that, right?

We then went to our home away from home (aka Home Depot) to pick up this weeks’ workings for the half bath. We should be able to have the inspector come this week to laugh at us and tell us to start over check out our plumbing.

Made up some lunch.  I did some coconut flour bread, which I will post the recipe for this week.  Kind of like a cornbread biscuit, really.

Plus buffalo style chicken breast with just a drizzle of blue cheese dressing on it.  I am almost out of hot sauce!

Yesterday brought a new addition for our home that was kind of spur of the moment.  A little background here: John and I both have music degrees, but we don’t play our original instruments anymore.  John started playing piano a few years ago with an electronic keyboard.  (We were going to wait until we moved into what will someday be our permanent home to get a real piano.)  He then bought a very nice full span electronic keyboard, which started having issues one year after buying it.  He contacted the company and they replaced the keyboard, and the same thing started happening with the new one.  Obviously a defect in manufacturing.  Now the company is of little help.  Lame.

So, he stopped playing.  He really misses it and especially with me playing the guitar a lot, he was going to buy a new keyboard for $300.  Well, I figured why not get an upright to have in the house, as many of them are for sale for not too much used.  I checked out on Craigs List and sent John some links.  Lo and behold – there was a baby grand piano for $200 a few towns away.  Friday we contacted the guy and looked at it yesterday.

It needs a serious tuning, but it is in awesome shape and a complete steal at $200!  Even with the cost of moving it will be awesome and John can play. The man who owned it needs to room and just wanted to recoup his costs to move this piano.  What a deal!

Now we just need to get the piano movers out to retrieve it. My real ulterior motive for getting this is that whenever we do move out of  our current house, we will now have to pay for movers to do everything instead of doing U-Haul and doing it ourselves like we have always done in the past (which I keep saying I will never do again).

Latte love this afternoon:

Almond milk.  I use the unsweetened, plain almond milk.  I added some whey protein and it almost tasted like milk that way.  I have sort of thought about trying a dairy-free challenge just for kicks, but I don’t know.

Dinner time!  These are apple chicken sausages that are quite good.

Tonight is some relaxing!  We can’t do much more in the half bath until the inspector gives us the okay, so we can goof around now

Did you do anything spontaneous this weekend?

That meant to go down here:

I thought for sure my butt wouldn’t go down that hole.  I still have that distorted [...]]]> I can’t believe how fast this weekend went by!  We got quite a bit done on our half bath installation.  Saturday marked the day to put down the main drain line.

That meant to go down here:

I thought for sure my butt wouldn’t go down that hole.  I still have that distorted view of myself. But, I was first to go down and hang the pipe – and I fit!

That hole would have had to have been a lot bigger if I was still 250 pounds.

It was kind of icky down there, but exciting to get so much stuff done.  We dry fit a lot of the plumbing:

I found a newspaper down there from 1935!

Pretty cool.

Took some time to make a good dinner last night – palak chole!  It is actually quite easy and quick to make.

Sunday was also filled with things.

The usual bagel (and my mom came with!):

Then a little more work on the pipes before heading out to Raptor Fest!

This was so cool.  Most of these are rehabbed birds that were injured and cannot be released again due to their injuries, so are now used for education purposes.  A couple are captive-bred birds. Of course, now I don’t remember what some of these are.  So, help me out if you can.

Red Tail Hawk:

Eurasian Eagle Owl (obviously not native)

The owls are so focused and their eyes are amazing.  Descended from dinosaurs?  I can see it.  We then watched some more owls in a small presentation (pictures not so good there).

Video of the Eurasion owl. They are licensed by the DEC to have this owl.

Very cool.  Notice how the owl’s ears are asymmetric? I didn’t know that almost every owl is like that, presumably so that can tell  if a sound is coming from above or below.  This owl can hear a mouse under the snow at 100 yards away!

Definitely and enjoyable weekend (and the snow is starting to melt – yay!!).

Question: Did you have a great weekend?

Then it was time to hit Orange [...]]]> It’s Wednesday, or Bagel Day at casa Finding Radiance.  Both John and I rode the bike trainers before breakfast today.  Usually I ride in the morning and he rides in the evenings, but he happened to be up.  I got in 10 miles in 41 minutes this morning.

Then it was time to hit Orange Cat for breakfast.  They were out of my blueberry bagel – wahhh!  But I did have cinnamon raisin:

Love these signs:

We spent a nice morning chatting as well.  Lots of decisions to be made around here.

Lookie what I found growing!

Sprouts!  So happy to see these. Happy enough that John proclaimed me a geek. These are my snapdragons.  They sprouted much sooner than expected.  Obviously I need to cull, but the seeds are smaller than poppyseeds and hard not to get too many in there.  I need to winnow these down to 36 plants.  I will plant some other seeds this week.  Grow strong little seedlings!

Lunch break included some of the new SeaPak Popcorn Fish.

You must find these!  They are made from chunks of fish, not pressed and formed minced fish.  You know I am not a big fish lover, so me really liking these says something.  Maybe it is the hot sauce, though.

Update on the half bath.  Our washer is now disconnected and pipes cut, so that means laundry down the street.

Here is the scary hole I put in the floor:

Crew forekitty is inspecting the job.  This is where the toilet drain is going to go.  We are running pipe underneath, which means we have to go down in this hole!

The framing around the pantry area:

I am standing in the area that will be closed off for the bath. Don’t laugh that the shelves are still in there.  We just need to work this way for now.  John did most of the framing.  I cut a hole in the floor and then was doing wall repair.

Enjoying the process so far!  The most awesome thing about this project to date is that John rooted out some old work pants and found his wedding ring in the pocket that has been lost for almost 2 years!  Now we match again.

Wonder twin powers – activate! (anyone else remember that?)

Latte time.  Showing John doing his husbandly duty instead of the finished product

With a new item.

These are Special Dark buttons.  Found them at K-Mart last night.  They are like M&Ms, only with a crispier coating.

I might have had more of these…with some peanuts…

Dinner time included some cooked chicken and broccoli with some coconut rice.  I am testing a recipe for someone’s Iphone app, otherwise I would share it right now.

Tasty.

John is out for poker, so I have some soap to finish up, seed planting, and some walls to work on.  I sure know how to have fun!  Here is some red clover tea that I made today:

Question: Anything sprouting in your area yet?