Wish I Could Say...

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I wish I could say that I had an update on the home-buying situation, but we still really haven't made much progress. It always seems like two steps forward and one step back. 

I did get a few more papers sent in, but otherwise we are still waiting. Right now, specifically, we are waiting to get a verification of my employment. I don't see why it's been so hard, but apparently they need a special report. They got hubby's report done and out of the way last week. 

We did narrow down our homeowner's insurance choice to one company though and will be calling them tomorrow to finalize all of that stuff. But at least we aren't moving backwards, right? And we're now down to one week and one day until closing... so hopefully there isn't much that can go terribly wrong in one week, right? Right!

Ok, moving on. 

We didn't have much time to sit and twiddle our thumbs while worrying about the house this weekend. We went to visit hubby's mom. It was hot and humid, but we had AC, so it wasn't so bad. Turns out that her dishwasher decided to die right in the middle of our visit. So hubby yanked it out and installed a new one for her. I helped. I read the instructions. Men don't do that, ya know. So someone has to keep him straight! ; ) 

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I do have to say that I have seen salesmanship at its best... or worst... depending on how you look at it. He was cheesy and kept changing his story. I don't even know how many times he told us something different. First he had the one she wanted in the color she wanted, but showed her a more expensive one. When he saw she wasn't interested, he suddenly didn't have the color she wanted in stock. Then she opted for a second color. He had it, but then suddenly that one wasn't in stock either. And then he started showing her a completely different one. 

When the other salesman started showing off the dishwasher that hubby's mom originally had liked, our salesman said that their salesman was not smart and that the other salesman didn't know that the one our salesman was promoting was better. He was slimy. If you followed all of that, I applaud you. It was hard to keep up with it ourselves. And he tried to make it seem like the third option he showed us came with wonderful free installation. Well, she already told him that hubby was putting it in ... so they ALL had free installation. We decided it was time to go. The second store was MUCH better. The guy answered our questions, didn't try to talk us into a different model, got it done in about five minutes. It was great. And it was about a hundred dollars cheaper than the other store too. Double win! : ) 

The installation was not all that easy because it seems the handyman who arranged the kitchen to begin with did not intend for people to take the washing machine out. There was just a clearance of a couple of inches to work with and a dip in the floor at just the wrong spot and let's just say it was an interesting night, lol. 

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And then...

I do have to say that hubby and I followed the rules of our Whole30-ish living very well ... until the last night. We were tired from wrestling with the dishwasher and starving because it took much longer than anticipated, so we went out to eat with hubby's mom and one of his good friends. So we splurged a little bit. It was a mistake, and we paid for it, headaches all around! But we are back to our good foods and speaking of good foods, I made one of our favorites for dinner tonight: salmon cakes with dill sauce and sweet potato fries. I'll post the recipe for that tomorrow! : )

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Oh, and another little bit of awesomeness from this weekend... Hubby's friend is into cameras, and I'm just getting into cameras. I just had the one lens that came with the camera and he had just bought a nice, new, huge, lens ... so he gave me his old lens. Gave it to me. Didn't have to pay at all. He tends to do that with things when he no longer has need of them, lol. I don't mind though! He wouldn't take payment, so I said I'd cook him a nice healthy meal when he comes up to visit next time. He accepted! So now I just have to figure out what to make! He'll be up in a couple of weeks to help us finish moving. 

Hope you all had a fun and safe and enjoyable Labor Day weekend! See ya tomorrow! : )

How I Kept Myself Busy On Vacation

This vacation was a different kind of vacation for us. We've always gone camping or taken biking trips or something in the past, but this year, with my job situation being so unpredictable, we felt it would be best to save as much money as possible. So we visited our families and stayed home and worked on projects we've been wanting to do for a while.

My husband is big into ham radio/amateur radio. So he was working on building a new platform for one of his antennas. We're in an apartment so we are limited on where he can set up antennas, but we do have a balcony so he's always looking for creative ways to get a better range. That has kept him pretty busy the last few days.

My project was a bit shorter. It did take me about 5 hours to complete, but that's just because I've never done anything like this before.

First of all, I should say that I like to take pictures. I don't know how to take great pictures, but I enjoy it. My husband got me a camera for a wedding gift and then this Christmas he ordered me a Groupon for a photography class through Flying Photo School. It's Digital 101 and it teaches me all about the buttons on the camera and how to manipulate them to get the best pictures possible. So far I've only done Week 1, but I've already learned quite a bit to improve my photo quality and I'm excited to see what the other 3 weeks will give me.

One thing that has always bugged me, however, was that when we go to family gatherings there are about 4 cameras lying around, all Canon, and it is somewhat confusing to me to find my own camera easily, lol. I said I liked taking pictures ... I did not say that I know anything about photography or cameras. But I'm learning. Anyway, my solution was to get a fun camera strap so I could identify my camera quickly. After searching around online and in a few photo stores, I didn't find anything I liked that was reasonably priced. So I decided I was going to make my own strap. I've put it off for quite a while, but I finally got around to getting some fabric and thread and got out the sewing machine that I have had for years but used maybe a handful of times, ever.

This was the very first time I've ever used the thing that I didn't feel like chucking it out of the window, haha! I finally figured out why it was getting snagged every other attempt at pushing the pedal. That helps so, so much. I still managed to prick myself with needles more than I care to admit and I realized some big mistakes in the project that were too late to fix, but I'm confident my next attempt will be easier.

So, here it is, my finished product. I love grey and yellow, so the fabric choice was pretty easy for me. And I included a pocket to hold my lens cap. The ends are the parts that I realized I had done wrong. I should have finished them before I sewed the strap together. But I'll work on that next time. I thought about just sewing the cover to the actual strap itself, but didn't want to have to throw the whole thing away or try to cut it out if I decided to change the pattern or if it got dirty. So I can now take it on and off easily and once I get a few more made, I'll have options on color and pattern depending on my mood. I'm excited and proud of my first finished sewing product in years! : )

I've included some of the pictures I took during Week 1 of my class, learning about White Balance and ISO. Hopefully my pictures will keep getting better. I finally figured out why they were all so grainy before. Apparently I had it set to night time shooting, lol. Oops. We'll see what I find out in Week 2! : )