Paint Colors

The paint colors we picked out are Glidden brand paint. If you are interested in seeing them you can go to the Glidden website. If you go to Color and then Color Pallette then you can find them. The name of the blue we picked is Sea Spray, the green is Soft Sage, and the tan is Water Chestnut. We may not use Glidden paint because Ryan's uncle owns a painting business and gets a discount with Miller, but those are the colors we found and liked initially. I think we may take the samples to the Miller store and find their versions of the colors we like. Also, you would be amazed at the amount of "different" white colors. I thought white was white, but apparently it's much more complicated than that.

Life is Good

Well I made the Balsamic Glazed Chicken dish and it was only okay. It was not bad by any means, but it definitely didn't wow me. I don't plan on adding it to our regular rotation, but at least we tried something new. Also, I have realized that Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals take longer than 30 minutes. I think it only takes her 30 minutes because she knows the recipes by heart and doesn't have to keep referencing the cookbook and because she is much better at multitasking than I am. The glazed chicken took close to an hour to cook. I have made some of her recipes that take real close to 30 minutes, which is nice. I just think that I take a lot longer preparing the more complicated ones because I do have to keep looking at the recipe.

Other recent news is that Measures 66 & 67 passed. Although these measures passing has upset many people, Ryan and I are obviously very relieved with the result. With the measures passing we get to keep our jobs and get our house. So, I apologize if you feel that these measures passing is going to cause the world to end, but Ryan and I, it kept our world together.

Onto the house. We will close on the 8th of February, which is just a bit over a week away. Today we went to Home Depot and picked out some paint colors that we liked for the bathrooms and bedrooms. All of the colors are nice neutrals. The color we picked for the majority of the house is a light tan called Water Chestnut. It will cover all three bedrooms, the hallway and eventually the living room. I say eventually the living room because we are planning on knocking out a large portion of a wall in the living room, so it would be silly to paint that wall. We have two colors picked out for the bathrooms and don't know if we will do the Master bath one color and the main bath the other, or if we will do both bathrooms the same. We picked a blue color called Sea Spray, which is very soft and neutral and a green color called Soft Sage, which is a very soft, neutral green. I think we will paint the trim white, but we have also considered replacing the trim as well. I believe it is in good condition, but it's just not all that modern. We also looked at some outside doors because our entry door is hollow and could easily be kicked in. All in all, we are getting really excited to move into our own place and to have a yard for Hank.

And now to revisit a topic in a previous post. Hank turned on the TV again today while we were out. You can once again see the slobbery, nose smears all over the corner of the TV. Ryan refuses to believe that Hank is doing it, but deep down he has to know that's the only way it's happening. Our doggy is so smart. Also, Ryan had to carry Hank home on the last leg of our walk. Hank started limping and walking really slow and then not wanting to walk. We checked his paw and it appeared that he had cut his pad, not a bad one by any means, but one that annoyed him. Usually he wiggles away when you try to pick him up, but he just let Ryan do it this time. Poor guy, at least he is inside on the soft carpet now.

Recipes

I have been getting sick of making the same recipes over and over. Although we do have a good list of regular recipes and it's pretty long, I am still getting bored with it. So, lately I have been keeping my eye out for new recipes and going through my cookbooks. I made an enchilada casserole the other day, which was delicious. I then made a spinach, provolone and Italian sausage pizza followed the next night by a spinach, white bean, and Italian sausage casserole. Both of those recipes turned out really good as well, and Hank got a whole sausage to himself on white bean casserole night (I dropped a cooked one onto his drool covered place mat, so I let him have it).

This week I am making some recipes from my Rachel Ray cookbook. On Monday I made something called Salsa Stoup with Double Decker Baked Quesadillas. It was soooooo good! It really tasted almost like warm soupy salsa and dipping the two layer quesadillas was delicious. It was so easy to make as well. Ryan and I decided to add it to our regular recipe list it was so delicious. Tonight I am making another Rachel Ray recipe called Ginger Vegetable Chicken Noodle Bowl. It will be like an Asian noodle soup pretty much and it sounds delicious. I will have to report back and let you know how they turn out.

For Christmas I got a kitchen scale and a food processor. I use the kitchen scale a lot and it is so helpful for making sure you have the right amount of chicken or ground beef for your recipes. Tonight I am going to be using the food processor to shred the carrots, and grate the garlic and ginger. I used it the other day to try and julienne some veggies for stir fry and it went okay, but had a hard time with some of the veggies. The julienne blade is also called a french fry blade, so I think it would work best with heftier veggies. Either way, I am having a lot of fun using my new gadgets and trying new recipes.

Next recipe on the docket:
Balsamic Glazed Chicken with Smoked Mozzarella and Garlic Rice Pilaf

You won't even believe this

So a few weeks ago I ran out to the store to grab something real quick and when I got home the TV was on. I figured I had just forgotten to turn it off, even though I was positive I had. Well, just a few days ago Ryan and I get home from running errands and the TV is on again! That is when I realized that Hank must be turning on the TV and I told Ryan that obviously is what was happening. Ryan, of course, said that I was crazy and that we must have just left the TV on. Fast forward to tonight. We went to dinner at Aunt Kerri's house and left the house with nothing on, no lights, no TV, no computer, nothing. When we got home a few hours later the TV was on again!!!! So, I checked the TV and sure enough there are Hank slobber marks fresh and old. Our TV has touch sensor buttons and Hank has apparently learned that if he presses his nose all over the bottom corner of the TV it will turn on. I cannot believe it, but the evidence proves it is so. I suppose that maybe we need to start turning on our night light when we leave Hank home alone at night and maybe some music or something. He obviously is feeling a little lonely or scared of the dark. I just had to share that though because we thought it was hilarious. Two posts in one day, we're back in the blogging game!

Apparently we are not so good at this blogging thing.

So, it's been a few months since we've given an update. It's not even that we don't have stuff going on, I just forget to blog about it. We do have a some rather big things happening as I think all of you know about.

Ryan decided that since the first time home buyer credit was extended that he should really pursue buying a house. We started looking at the end of November and were having a really hard time finding a house in SW Portland that we liked and could afford. We really wanted to be in this area because it is a halfway point between our schools. To give you a point of reference the house on 54th is in SW Portland. In December we did find a house that we really liked AND it was pretty close to the area we wanted, but unfortunately we decided to not put an offer on it due to the budget issues in Oregon right now. To summarize, if Measures 66 and 67 don't pass there is a good chance that Ryan and I could lose our jobs, therefore we didn't want to be jobless with a mortgage. Only a few days after Christmas I saw online that the house had liked, went pending. Ryan was very sad and convinced that we wouldn't find a house he liked as much as that one, but he told me to see what was out there. After some searching I found some houses in Milwaukie (where Ryan's school is) that looked like they had potential. We went out that weekend and drove past them and peeked in windows and decided that we didn't like them. On our way home we saw a for sale sign and decided to follow it. We picked up a flyer and saw that it plenty big enough and reasonably priced and immediately scheduled a showing. After walking through the house we realized we really liked it, a lot. It was older and needed to TLC, but overall it was a great house. After talking to our realtor he said we could put an offer in and do a 45 day closing and that would give us time to find out if we will have jobs or not before closing. If the measures don't pass, then we can walk away with no penalty and if they do pass then we will close on February 15th. So, now we play the waiting game. We are still negotiating what we would like them to fix from the inspection, but really the only thing keeping us from getting excited is the unknown result of the measures. The last day to turn in ballots is the 26th, so we only have about a week left of waiting. It is really hard to get excited about this though, which sucks because this should be an exciting process. It sucks even more knowing that we may lose our jobs or suffer pay cuts due to lost school days. Either way, we are going through the motions and just holding our breath that everything will work out. I believe everything happens for a reason and if this doesn't end how we want it, it's because there's something else planned for us that we don't know yet.

Other than buying a house my computer died. Derek's over the phone diagnosis is that the motherboard went six feet under. Thankfully, Ryan has an old laptop that I can use. After we find out what happens with the house we will look into buying a new computer, but for now the laptop works.

We have also enrolled in an Advanced Reactive Rover class. You may remember that this summer we did a Reactive Rover class with Hank to help him be less reactive to other dogs. The class was great and Hank has made a lot of progress. I saw that they were offering this new class, which is pretty much a continuation of the summer class. This class will focus on actually getting our dogs to great others and learning recognize when they have reached their limits and need to exit the situation. In this class all the dogs have muzzles, so that when we work on sniffing and greeting other dogs we can do it safely. Our first class went really well and like this summer, Hank was the top student. They used him to demonstrate all the activities because he's so awesome. He did really well sniffing the neutral dog and only barked twice at her. I think he has a bit of a crush on her ;) A lot of the other dogs showed avoidance behavior, which means that they pretty much want nothing to do with the other dog and there is no hope for them to have dog friends. We were so pleased to see Hank show interest and demonstrate positive greeting behavior. Next week we are going to be walking next to a neutral dog, which Hank will do great with because we did that this summer and he rocked it.

Ryan and I are also realizing that as grownups it is a lot harder to make new friends! I am developing some friendships at work and will be starting softball again in a few months. I have considered joining a volleyball team, but all the games are played in NE or East Portland in the evenings. I am not sure if I want to make that drive yet, since I already am one day a week for Hanks class. Ryan signed up for a bowling league, but has yet to be placed on a team. He is hoping to hear something soon though. One of my friends at work is going to a house warming party for her friends on the 30th, and it is also an everyone invite everyone they know so we can all make new friends party. Ryan and I plan on both attending that in hopes of meeting new people and having a good time with new people.

Alright, that was a lot of typing. I don't have any pictures to put up because they are all on my broken computer, so look at Alicia's blog for those. I sure do have a cute niece and nephew :)