Welcome 2011

It's almost 2011, and I'm looking forward to the new year. 2010 was good to me and I have no complaints, but I just have a feeling 2011 will be great.

After much thought and internal debate, I decided to take a new job and will be starting it in the new year on January 4th! I loved my co-workers and clients at my current company, but had been there 5 years and was feeling ready for a promotion and a new challenge. I'll still be working in media... at another advertising agency in Seattle... and it's a small industry so I'm happy that I'll still get to see people I know and old co-workers now and then.  Wish me luck!

I'm also looking forward to 2011 since we already know of 3 good friends of ours that are getting married next year. I love weddings and getting together with friends we don't always see often to celebrate. And one of these weddings will be up in Whistler in July (which I can't wait for)... That will be a beautiful wedding and such a fun getaway.

The house of course is always on our list of things "to-do"... and fingers crossed all the electrical, dry-wall, cabinetry & carpet will be done in the next few months. Then I can finally start picking out fun paint colors and looking for neat furniture/accessories/art/etc. Our goal is to finally have it all done by May (which would put us about 1 year from when we started)!

Finally... Matt and I are also hoping to sneak in a vacation away at some point this year. Going to Egypt last year was amazing and we definitely have the travel bug. Hopefully we can get away for a week to Greece or maybe somewhere in South America this year.

So much to be thankful for, and so much to look forward to. Wishing you all the best for your families in 2011 as well. Cheers!

There's just something about snail mail

Although email is always nice and the easiest way to communicate it seems these days... there is just nothing like the excitement of getting real letters in the mail (not junk mail... but from actual people you know)!  Maybe I'm old fashioned, I don't know. It clutters up our fridge a bit, but I love seeing the photos every day when I walk by. The holidays are the best for this (along with weddings and graduation cards) and I love seeing the new holiday cards each year from friends and putting them up.

Images from Christmas

We spent Christmas Eve this year up at the Whitfield house, with all the typical festivities.... drinking wine, hanging out, dinner, church service, and movies. We even got in a little Xbox Kinect that evening. Matt and I stayed the night and enjoyed the morning with my family, and then headed over to his Mom's for Christmas day and dinner.

I managed to capture a few pictures while up at my parents house (and somehow with all the festivities we didn't get any this year at Matt's mom's house).

 The Whitfield's Christmas tree

 My Mom's Santa collection  =)

Making hot spiced wine

Mom

Matt on his phone

Sarah & Kieran 

 John, with all the fixings for a fun evening.

Electrical

That's right, we are doing the electrical in our basement ourselves. Luckily all the electrical that was already in the basement wasn't too old, so it's mainly just adding new lights and outlets, and moving much of the wiring around so that it works better for our needs.

The first thing we had to do was map the electrical in our whole house. Since this house had been remodeled so many times over the years and new outlets and things added, the notes on the panel were outdated and there was no good way to know which outlets or lights were hooked up to which switches on our electrical panel.

We are reading a book on DIY electrical, and the way they suggested you do this is turning off every breaker on your electrical panel and then turning on one at a time to test which outlets and lights are "on" connecting to it.  After you find out which switch goes to an outlet, you right that number down next to it on the map of the house and then on to the next.

 This handy tool, you stick the metal end into an outlet (or up against a loose wire) and if its "on" the little tool buzzes really loud (kind of like a smoke detector sound).

For some outlets we were having a hard time figuring out... here is another strategy we used. This tool we borrowed from a friend, and you plug the black piece into an outlet which is "on", and then you go to the electrical panel and put this yellow piece next to each switch until it buzzes loudly. This was a much easier way to figure out which outlets went to which switches on the panel. Unfortunately it didn't really help with ceiling lights... so for those we were back to the first strategy.

The whole process only took maybe 4-5 hours, although I'm sure someone skilled could do it more quickly.


On a side note... you know how you tell kids not to stick their fingers in outlets? I also learned you should never touch the sides of them if they are exposed. =)  Those little round metal pieces on the sides of this outlet (hanging from out ceiling) gave me quite the shock when I went to grab it so I could stick the outlet tester in it. One tingling arm later and now I know...