Wild West

We just got back from a trip to the wild west visting Missy's parents. We got to go to Cheyenne for 2 nights and then we spent 2 nights in Estes Park, Colorado on the edge of the Rocky Mountain National Forest. We got to see beautiful scenery and some really cool wild animals, as you'll see in our pics:

If you look closely you'll notice a big horn sheep that we saw on the roadside: And here are some coyotes.

We saw about 200 Elk on our drive through part of the national park, here was a large group just chilling out in the road.


And of course, here's the fam in our little cabin we stayed in

Here's a mule deer we also saw standing in the road
It was a nice 4 day vacation but we are very tired from the red-eye flight home. Maybe one of these days we'll visit Wyoming in the summer so we'll get to actually get out of the car and hike a little.

Christmas Tree 07

This saturday the house went out to hunt down this years tree. Since the Christmas Tree Farm we went to last year was turned into soccer fields we had to travel a little further to Haverhill. Here's us getting ready to leave, it was about 20 degrees out with lots of wind. We learned when we called the tree farm that the biggest trees were half price because they were trying to get rid of them. The first tree we saw was one of those and we had our eyes on it from the beginning because it was perfect:
It sure was monsterous, though, measuring in at 11.5ft tall and 9ft in diameter.

We voted, and by a vote of 5 to 2 we chose the HUGE tree. After much sawing, the tree was brought down.

Theo was very interested in this whole process.

We got it in the truck and I think it may actually be bigger than the truck :-)

And finally we got it home and decorated, and cleaned up underneath with Theo's help.

And finally, after all that work we have a beautiful tree :-) that takes up half of our study. Isn't Christmas great?

First House Picture

I'm not sure why it took so long, but we finally got our first house picture! It was really fun, and I am so so so so tempted to post it, but I've decided to use it as a christmas card instead, so watch your mailbox come December :-) (or email me if you just can't wait that long).

Politics

Yes, today is Election Day, and I'm actually campaigning for someone, isn't that cool? Ever since going to a city council meeting and trying to get our parking changed (see previous post) we've come to realize that we NEED different city councilors if we are going to get anything accomplished in this city. So, for the past 4 weeks we've been involved in a group of neighbors campaigning for a new Disctrict B councilor: Ruth Rojas, and some new and one old Councilors at large: Carlos Matos and Nilka Alvarez-Rodriques. And today, I actually spent about 1.5hrs making phone calls reminding people to vote. I think city elections are fun because you can actually make a real difference (and we are happy to contribute 8 votes from just our house :-). Here's what I got to say today on the phone: Me llamo Melissa, Yo vivo en Lawrence y estoy haciendo llamadas para recordarse a votar. Yo quiero pedir por su apoyo por Ruth Rojas y Carlos Matos. Gracias :-)

Nature vs. Nurture???

Austin and I are trying our best to prove that nurture is stronger than nature. Take Theo for example; he obviously has been handed genetics by his parents that should make him completely unhandy, not able to hang a picture frame, let alone complex home repair tasks despite their biggest efforts. But, Austin and I are changing his future: "Theo can you hand me the hammer" and "now use the drill right in this spot" are common phrases we use when imparting him our home repair knowledge...and well...I think it just may be working...see for yourself:

Bathroom

We finally finsished our last major project, our 2nd bathroom on teh 2nd floor. We decided to tile the tub ourselves and I made a cool mosaic in the middle. The blumber was sure there was no way we could fit a full tub, sink, adn toilet in a 7ft by 5ft room but we did it and it looks great...so see for yourself...

Clean-up Weekend!

We had our first House Clean-Up weekend this weekend. Nathalie, Deb, and I spent all day Sat cleaning up our craft room and study and re-arranging so that we can soon fit Austin's piano. We also successfully created what is known as the "man-room". What we mean by that is an area in the basement where there's a couch and a TV and playstation. And, I finally took some pics and got them onto this computer, so here we go:

First, our newly arranged study and craft room:

And a BEFORE picture of the basement:and an AFTER picture of the man-room (in use with men and chips!):

Successful Freecycle

So,
I've been subscribing to freecycle for about 3 months but yet have to actually participate. But I had my first successful give away today :-). We have this box of random computer stuff as well as 4 computer "brains" (as my mom calls them, you know- desktop computers but without monitors). These have been sitting in our hallway and study for many many months while we tried to figure out what to do with them. We had the best of plans to take them to the recycle day at the next town over only to find that they just throw them away!!!! So I decided to post them on Freecycle (for those of you unaware of freecycle, check it out at www.freecycle.org - it is just an email list by town for people giving things away who don't want those items to go into landfills). I listed the box of random stuff and got 3 responders within 3 hrs!!! The asked the first one if they also wanted the computers and they said yes and came to get them this morning. Now I want to go looking for more stuff in my house to "freecycle" What a great way to get rid of stuff you don't want/need without throwing it away! People list the strangest things that may be of any use to anyone and people always want them.

So, I just had to share my excitement about this. I want to post about our new bathroom but I lost the cord for my camera so am tryin to figure out how to get those pictures onto my laptop so i can post them, cause what good is a post about a new bathroom without pics???

Basement Clean Out

Austin and I did a little basement cleaning, it was pretty amazing what we got done in about an hour. But even more amazing is how much additional stuff has accumulated down there since people have moved in. We decided to make a little area in the basement that will look like where some 35yo guy who still lives with his mom hangs out and plays video games- complete with an old couch we'll pick up from the salvation army and a tv with a playstation hooked up. This way we can get all the video games out of the living room, which will be nice. But, we have to convince some people to get rid of some stuff first cause we've managed to mostly fill 1000 square ft of open space with junk? Why do we accumulate so much junk? hmmm...

Full Up

Well, our house is all full. It has been since June...but an interesting thing has happened now: we have a waiting list! Back in January we had some friends ask if they could be a part of the house this August and sadly we had to tell them no, but that we should have room summer of '08. And there's another friend who is commuting 1hr45min to work in Lawrence until October and I wish we could offer him a place. And now we have more friends who WE would love to have move in...not sure if it would really be an option for them, but if it was it's too bad we had to say, "we'll probably have room in a year, and definately in 2 yrs". So, I just find it interesting that while many people say we're crazy and they could never live in a community house, we seem to be overflowing with people who'd like to be a part of it. I actually think it's pretty sad that there aren't more of these cause think about how much people could benefit from sharing resources and saving money by sharing rent and gaining deeper relationships. So, why aren't there more? After some contemplation, I think it's just because no one wants to take the initiative to start even a small community house, like buy a multi family house and rent some units to friends or even ask some friends to rent a big place with them. Maybe it's that pervasive fear of buying that seems to be prevalent around here. But, I just wish we could expand and make 3 more places like ours, and I know they would fill up fast.

So, any brave souls out there? There just happens to be a 3 family huge brick house 2 streets up from us that is for sale for $179K (too bad there wasn't a deal like that around when we bought). It sure would be nice to have the "Garden St House", the "Summer St House" and maybe even the "Orchard St House" and oh wait, and yes, the "Jackson Terrace House" (which partially exists already, but another would be nice)....well I can always dream :-)...and hope someone out there decides to do something crazy...

Water anyone?

I’ve decided I need to be more “green”. That is I need to start reducing the amount of resources I use and how much waste I produce that goes into landfills. Not an easy task, but there are some simple things I can do that are not difficult. I was inspired the other day when I read a news story that the mayor of San Francisco has banned the purchase of water bottles with city funds. I looked into this a little further and found these facts about water bottle usage.

*8 out of 10 plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or end up in a landfill (Container Recycling Institute)

*The energy we waste using bottled water would be enough to power 190,000 homes. But refilling your water bottle from the tap requires no expenditure of energy, and zero waste of resources. (PBS Point of View 2004)

*Making all of the bottles for the US requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually. That's enough to fuel 100,000 cars. (Earth Policy Institute)

*In the United States in 2006, bottled water consumption reached a record 8.3 billion gallons, 185 million gallons of which was imported. The total amount spent on bottled water was over $11 billion. (Beverage Marketing Corp.)

*In contrast to tap water, which is distributed through an energy-efficient infrastructure, transporting bottled water long distances involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. Nearly a quarter of all bottled water crosses national borders to reach consumers, transported by boat, train, and truck. (Earth Policy Institute)

*It costs more money to drink bottled water than to put gas in your car--up to five time more--due mainly to its packaging and transportation.(Earth Policy Institute)

*Bottled water companies do not have to release their water-testing results to the public, whereas municipalities do. (Natural Resources Defense Council)

Well, That was enough to convince me. I purchased a Nalgene bottle (I lost my previous one) and got it in the mail today. I’ve also taken the Refill Not Landfill pledge to not purchase or use bottled water for the next year (and hopefully never again). Will you join me????? (check out http://www.refillnotlandfill.org/ for more info and to buy yourself a bottle)

Finally, a plumber, hooray!

Well, we officially have a plumber, and he's coming next week to get us a new bathroom :-). This is very exciting since with a few changes in some of our schedules in the last few weeks, now four of us like to get up and take a shower around the same time (but ony two bathrooms for that!). This guy came highly recommended so I hope he's as good as I've heard. As long as he doesn't let my cat outside (to be missing for 3 days), I'm happy :-)

Coffee anyone?

There's another strange and CRAZY idea rolling around in the heads of Austin and Missy. I don't know if it's my deep drive to do things people think are crazy and them prove them wrong? Or my LOVE of projects? But, there's another project on the horizon, and I think it really just might happen. But, let's review the crazy decisions Austin and I have made: Buy a condo when you only make $28K combined a year? Are you crazy? Sell your condo when you don't have anything else lined up? are you crazy? Buy a house in scary Lawrence? are you crazy? Buy a 2 family, and convert it to 1 doing all the work yourselves? Are you crazy? Live in a house with 11 people? Are you crazy? Get rid of a paid off car cause you can get by on one? Are you crazy? etc... and all of these ones have worked out...so why shouldn't another one? hmm... well, I don't want to reveal too much cause I'm still working out my plan...but if you want to know what our crazy idea is, just ask, and maybe we'll let you know :-)...maybe if YOU're crazy enough you can be a part of it with us.

Adventures in Cleaning

Well, this is the second time for me to write this post. The first time I did it I clicked on Publish Post during teh 5 seconds my internet was down and so I lost it :-(. But, I'll try to remember everything I just wrote.

This morning I went cleaning crazy. My chore for the week is bathroom cleaning so that got me started. The catbox was overflowing again, EWWW! so it took me 30min just to clean that out (with 4 cats in the house our automatic box needs cleaned about about every other day).

Anyway, first I made some countertop kitchen cleaner. I had made one before with baking soda and water but it left white streaks, so I made a new one with 1 cup vinegar, 3 cups warm water, and a pinch of dish soap. It worked really well (see my clean countertop :-).

I then decided to try making dishwasher detergent (since it's cheap and easy and we do about 2 loads of dishes a day in this house). That one was 1 cup borax to 1 cup washing soda....and my dishes came out great!

Next I decided to try out the laundry detergent. This was a little more of a process, I used the following blog to help me out: http://heartkeepercommonroom.blogspot.com/2006/03/laundry-soap-our-recipe.html So, I made 2 batches. One as recommended above using borax, washing soda, and Fels Naptha soap (a laundry soap). But since the Fels Naptha had a scent and I wasn't really sure what was in it, I decided to try out the recipe using Dove Soap (sensitive skin). I'm not sure how that one will work out, but I'll let you know. With my front-loading washers we only need 1 Tbsp of solution per load, pretty cool!

Oh, and I also used my water and tsp of baby shampoo solution for mopping the bathroom. The tile came out looking great and I was able to use the water to pour over the plants afterwards (although it did rain shortly after so they didn't necessarily need it).

CUTIES!

What cute little men we have in our house!

Cleaning :-)

So, lately I've been on this kick to get rid of all the hazardous chemicals in my house. I read somewhere that there was a study showing that stay-at-home women had a 50% higher cancer rate than those who worked full time and the study attributed that fact to being around and using household cleaners all the time. So, I did some research to find out how to make a lot of my own stuff (after I read on our bottle taht said "kitchen cleaner" that it should not be used in food preparation areas!). I found there are recipes out there to easily make your own laundry detergent, kitchen cleaner, dishwasher detergent, floor cleaner. So, I had the chore of floor mopping this week and I tried one out. I went with a simple recipe: 1-2 tsps of Johnson's baby shampoo to 1 gallon of hot water.

Here is my finished floor, it came out great: shiny and clean and not sticky at all (like the lysol cleaner often leaves it)
For many of the recipes I needed some materials I didn't have on hand: washing soda, borax, and fels naptha bar (specifically for laundry detergent). Here's what I got, I'll let you know it goes when I make and use the laundry detergent.

AHHHHH Parking

So we have a problem with parking. Our house, and almost all the houses in my neighborhood were built around 1900 before many people had cars. Therefore, they do not have driveways and people have to park on the street. So, you know, that's not all that bad, it's not like we've ever had a garage anyway. BUT....the City of Lawrence has an ordinance (and henceforth street signs) stating the following:

Sign on the odd side of the street: No parking, even number days, 12:01AM to 6:00AM, MON-FRI, STREET SWEEPING.

Sign on the even side of the street: No parking, odd number days, 12:01AM to 6:00AM, MON-FRI, STREET SWEEPING.

Yes, very confusing. But the summary is that every night we must all park on only one side of the street, supposedly for street sweeping. Well, as you can imagine, we rarely have actually seen a street sweeper. We called the city to see when our street was being swept and these are the answers we got: "there is no schedule for street sweeping", "Thursday nights", Wednesdays", "there's a big white board with all the street names on it, and they sweepers work their way through the list until they are all done and then start over".

Hmm, interesting. Meanwhile, for those of us who live here, if we get home before 6pm we can usually find a spot on our street or the cross street on the correct side for that day and be ok. But, if we get home after 10, there is next to no spots left, and if you get home after 11:30, forget it. And, if you forget one time, or even if you remember at 1:30am and go move your car, there WILL be a ticket, EVERY TIME. So, pay up your $15 to the city. Or, if you park within 10 ft of a hydrant (which I've done), pay up your $100 to the city. Or, if you park within 20ft of the interesection (or even 22ft away as Spence and Steph did once), pay up your $20 to the city. Or, if you move to the opposite side as last night and forget tomorrow is the 1st but today is the 31st so you weren't supposed to switch, pay up your $20 to the city. And, this whole system continues in the winter for "snow removal" for every night of the week. But if it's 60 degrees out (like this past winter) and you're on the wrong side, obviously the plow couldn't get through, so pay up.

So, needless to say, we all are a little frustrated that we have to move EVERY night and our street is swept once during the week if we're lucky. So what to do? Well, we discussed this issue with our neighborcircle- a small little group of people that live within a few blocks. We were all frustrated so we did some research. We found out the problem was an ordinance written in the 70's. So we thought, well, let's change it. We did some more research and found out that most reasonable cities have a 4 to 8 hr block of time per week where cars can park only on one side and they sweep then...amazing! What logic! We wrote up a proposal to give to the city's ordinace committee to propose we make the same changes. We also got the signitures of 80 people on our street, and one street up supporting this change. We went to the ordinance commitee (which has 4 city counselors) and got put on the agenda. We got about 25 people to go to the first meeting and all of the counselors seemed supportive, they wanted some opinions from the department of public works and police so they agreed to discuss it in 1-2 meetings. We thought we were golden. We then talked to the police chief- he was supportive. We talked to the head of DPW- he was supportive, we talked to one of the city counselors- he was supportive. We tried to reach our district counselor, but she did not return our calls or emails. There was another meeting- many of us were busy that night so only 3 people could go. Then the winds changed. I wasn't there, but what I heard about it was that our distric counselor was not supportive and we couldn't really figure out why, another counselor said the trash on the streets was the residents faults cause we are sit around watching tv and we should go buy brooms and clean the streets ourselves (hmm, do I even have to talk about how rediculous that statment is?), the one counselor that had supported us crumbled under the pressure of those other two, and the 4th didn't say anything. Also, the DPW director also caved and then said maybe he wouldn't be able to clean the streets that way cause he doesnt have the man-power. So, the tabled the proposal.

We had another neighbor meeting to see where we should go from here. We feel we will get no-where with this city council- there are elections in Nov, so maybe we can vote some of them out since they obviously don't care about the residents. We also decided we needed to go back to the neighbors and let them know where things are and and try to get a larger group so we can be more effective. So, Wednesday night we went out in pairs and 3's and knocked on doors of people who had signed the petition to let them know where we are.

This was a terrifying experience for me. I am so uncomfortable in situations like this, but it actually went really well. I didn't have to do all that much talking since I went with 2 others that speak spanish much better than me, and everyone was very receptive. Several neighbors invited us in to sit and talk and were just very happy that we had stopped by. We got many people who said they'd like to get more involved and would go to city council meetings and other meetings about it. We were also able to invite people to a neighborhood cookout that is happening in 3 weeks so that was cool, we have planned to go out again in 2 weeks go knock on more doors to let people know about the cook-out and the parking and then have a table at the cook-out where we can talk about it more.

This is a new experience but I think it was really great. It's pretty fun trying to fight for something and to join with others in that fight. We feel like we're trying to start a little movement here and we know it is going to take longer than we thought, but I really think we can do it.

Here's the flyer we gave out