Window Well Liner

Brianna picked up this window well liner for eighty bucks.

It looks a lot bigger laid out on the ground than it does in the window well.

Looks pretty good!

Geeky Gifts

Tina, a friend from back in Washington State, sent us a package this week, containing a number of geeky gifts. My personal favorite is a burping cloth that says "Star Wars" on one side and "Star Trek" on the other (how does it not explode???)

There was also some bead art, which is fantastic:

Way better than a name plate.

Leaf Blower

Our new leaf blower arrived today:

It runs off the same battery as the weed whacker. Barely. Well, it should do a good job of cleaning up after I use an actual rake on most of the leaves (Hey, it was only $40!)

And we do have leaves. It seems like most of them fell while I was in Washington.

Cloth Diapers for Lincoln

The cloth diapers Brianna ordered with the money from the Medema baby shower arrived today. Well, technically it arrived on Friday, but I didn't pick it up from the post office until today.

Look at that smirk!

And here is a shot of all the fabric inserts laid out in the nursery:

Christmas in October

Jeeper Creepers. Five packages from four different companies, all arrived on the same Friday.

Brianna went from having a hard day at the end of a long week to "Christmas!" is 1.2 seconds flat.

It seems like the baby nearly has as much stuff as I do, now.

Brianna's New iPhone

Brianna's iPhone suffered some water damage back in November, and ever since then she's been soldiering through with my old, busted-microphone, three-year-old iPhone.

Today, her shiny new iPhone 6 arrived:

Now, Brianna will tell you that she doesn't care all that much about technology (and compared to me, there might be some truth there) but she's been on pins and needles waiting for this phone to show up. She unboxed it herself, then I stole it for half an hour to transfer her old phone's data over to the new one (and let me tell you, restoring a new iPhone from an old backup does not "just work", Apple). Since then she's been huddled over the phone, grinning, giggling and occasionally gasping.

I am very happy that Brianna has a new phone with a fantastic camera and lots of storage space for photos and videos. A little over two months from now, I expect the rate of picture taking to go up dramatically.

Jaccard Meat Tenderizer

Picked up one of these meat tenderizers on sale at Amazon, and got to try it out this weekend. It works surprisingly well! I think it's going to be great tool to have around with a pregnant lady (who craves and needs protein) in the house!

SnapRays Night Lights

Remember this kickstarter for nightlight outlet covers?

I had almost forgotten, too. Our ten-pack arrived a week and a half ago. So far I have only installed two - one in each guest bathroom. They work exactly as advertised, and are a good amount of light at night.

Weed Trimmer

Part of the deal when we bought this house, with the big backyard that Brianna loved, was that Brianna would do most of the yard work. And honestly, Brianna has kept that bargain better than I ever expected.

She's been using a lawn mower that we're borrowing from her brother, but we didn't have a trimmer that could do the edging.

This trimmer popped up as a refurbished model on eBay for $65. Worx doesn't have the best reputation for heavy-duty equipment, but our use-case is pretty light - just a pass around the perimeter of the yard. I'm curious how well this battery-powered trimmer holds up long term, but for $65 it seemed worth the risk. It's hanging up in the shed now.

Non-Painting Day

Didn't get much done around the house today.

Stopped by Goodwill and picked up a few button-down shirts that were a little lighter-weight and had sleeves long enough for my arms, then got a haircut that was nearly a month over-due.

Swung by IKEA as-is section on the way home from work. I had found a couple of cabinet pulls of the style Brianna wants in the kitchen yesterday, and was hoping to repeat my luck. I didn't find any new cabinet hardware, but I did find a combination microwave and exhaust fan marked down 40% because it didn't have its original box (it was still in its original plastic, though). It was relatively tempting, because Brianna has been wanting a vent hood over the stove since we bought the house, and I finally have that area empty and painted. The IKEA microwave was still $150 though, and I did not want to spend that much money right now, especially without researching this particular model. When I got home, I was glad I held off: the microwave was the right width for our cabinets, but would have jutted out in the other dimensions by a couple of inches. That money will live to fight another day.

I also had a package waiting for me when I got home: a new lint filter for the dryer. Man, they make you pay through the nose for replacement parts for appliances: Amazon wanted $30 for a bit of plastic and metal - I took a risk and got this one from a less reputable distributer for $22.

No sign of any mice in the garage, and the traps are un-sprung, which gives me hope that Bob nipped that problem in the bud.

New Lights for Upstairs Hallway

Found these lights on woot.com a week ago, and thought they would work well in the upstairs hallway. It's not painted yet, so these will have to wait a bit.

Outdoor Temperature Display

With the crazy weather in Colorado lately (70 and sunny one day, 40 and sunny the next), I have been wanting a display in the bedroom that reported the outdoor temperature so I know how warmly to dress in the mornings. I'm really lazy, so I wanted a hands-free way to check (meaning, not on my phone). I picked one of these up from Amazon for $17.

It's kinda itty-bitty (4 inches by 6 inches, so the screen is more like 2 inches by 4 inches), but it has a wireless outdoor temperature sensor and reports the indoor humidity. It arrived yesterday, but as of last night I couldn't get the outdoor temperature sensor to pair with the display. I'll try again tonight.

Once it's working I'll hang it above the mirror in the bathroom - perfect for checking while brushing my teeth.

RFID Tag for Bob

Once it was clear that Bob the Cat was going to become an indoor/outdoor cat, we needed another RFID (Radio-Frequency IDentification) tag so Bob could use the smart pet door. Of course, they are only sold in two-packs, so we have a spare now.

I reprogrammed the pet door today as well. Previously I had it set so it was one-way: outside to inside, keyed to only let Eva the Dog into the house and not let any pet out of the house. The past couple of days, I left it completely unlocked in both directions, and Bob was quick to take advantage and go adventuring on his own schedule. But Brianna gets nervous when Bob isn't indoors after dark. So now the pet door is in Curfew mode: Bob and Eva can get back into the house at any time. But the outgoing direction is locked between 8 PM and 5 AM. Bob is not amused by this restriction on his freedoms, and spent a good chunk of time after 8 PM this evening meowing at the pet door, outraged that it would not open for him.

If Eva ever figures out she can let herself into the backyard through the pet door instead of waiting for us to let her out through the backdoor, maybe we can trust her to be out of her crate and not pee all over the carpet while Brianna and I are at work.

Weekend Summary

Aside from starting work on painting another bedroom and painting a shelving unit, we did some other work around the house this weekend:

• Our "new" chest freezer got cleaned out and turned on. Now we need to stock it up!
• Changed out the furnace filter.
• Two more boxes were unpacked.
• The pet stuff in the laundry room got organized
• The backyard was cleansed of Eva's "presents" 
• And the main floor of the house was vacuumed.

We also had some deliveries, both from Woot.com:

Brianna has wanted folding step stools in the kitchen since we moved in, and these actually put her right at eye height with me! As for the Pyrex...well, apparently a kitchen can't have too much Pyrex.

After a full day of work (including the inaugural Easter Egg hunt!) we went to see the second Captain America movie (which was pretty great!) and now it is bedtime before spending Easter Sunday with Brianna's family in Colorado Springs.

Bathroom Light Dimmer

I have a pretty decent head cold, and really only got one thing done around the house today. A small box of goodies arrived from Amazon today. It included a power supply to replace the original, buzzy power supply that came with the MusicLite, and a dimmer switch which I installed in the water closet. This way, late-night pee breaks won't have to be blinding. Unfortunately, it turns out this particular dimmer does cause a faint humming with the Cree LED bulbs we are using. (It's the switch on the left. The dimmer function is controlled by the little slider just to the right of the main on/off switch).

Emergency Flashlight

We've had a couple of instances since moving in where we needed a flashlight, and even though I know we have several I couldn't find them. 

I purchased this Energizer Rechargable Flashlight. It plugs directly into an outlet and stays there until it's needed. If the power goes out, it turns on - making it easy to find when all the other lights no longer work.

Unfortunately, it's really not all that bright. So, I like this idea, and will probably get something else like this for each floor.

LED Ceiling Lighting

I bought a cheap strip of RGB LEDs from China through Amazon with the hope of lighting an entire room with LEDs mounted on the ceiling. They arrived yesterday, and today was the first chance I had to play with them a bit.

In this picture, the LEDs are doubled up inside a 6 foot piece of aluminum flashing with a "J" cross section, with the remaining spool off to the right. Unfortunately these particular LEDs were not nearly as bright as I had hoped. They will serve for accent lighting, but not to light an entire room. I do like how well the flashing worked to distribute the light while hiding the (frankly ugly) LED strip. The experiments shall continue!

Ratcheting Screwdriver

I should have gotten one of these years ago.

Haven't had much time to use it, but the ratcheting seems to work fine, and they did an awesome job of storing a bunch of bits in the handle.

Mailbox

Three weeks after we actually paid for the house, and 10 days after taking possession, we finally found the mailbox! It's a good quarter mile away from the house!

We got to it just in time: it was overflowing with letters from business wanting to welcome us to the neighborhood and take our money. There were a few things we actually wanted, too, like the fancy new microchip-reading pet door.

Re-keyed Deadbolts and Push-Pull-Rotate Doorknobs

When we took possession, every door had a unique key to go along with it. Today I installed new deadbolts on three doors, and keyed them to the same key. The back door still has a custom lock on it. Not sure what I'm going to do about that yet.

In addition, the Push-Pull-Rotate doorknobs I mentioned earlier arrived today, and were immediately installed on the front door and the door into the garage.

I had Brianna open the front door by bumping the knob with her hip. Even though she knew what to expect, her mouth dropped open in excitement :-)

Speaking of the front door, it definitely needs to be repainted in the near future: