We've Moved!

The Deines Family blog has a new home!

http://thedeinesfamily.wordpress.com/

Black Thumb

The Deines Home: Where plants go to die.





Just keepin' it real.

Summer Sprinkler Fun

Genius

Play That Funky Music White Boy

Poll

Our carpentry job, which we were originally told would only take 1 day, has now turned into a 4 day job. So I don't have any pictures of completed work yet. Let's just say that some of the work was not done correctly, and they are coming back to redo it. Thanks, Daddy, for pointing out all of their mistakes!

Now, on to my first poll. We're going to get laminate flooring in our living room, hallways, dining room, and study. We can't decide if we should also get it in our 3 bedrooms. (Or maybe just the master bedroom?) We have a large dog, 2 cats, and a toddler. The carpet in our bedrooms will need to be replaced soon if we don't get laminate flooring in those rooms.

George and I have never had anything other than carpet in our bedrooms, so we don't know if we'd like laminate. What do you think?

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Comments are welcome too.

Changes

Something very exciting is happening to the Deines home today! This morning 2 carpenters will come to remove the eyesore that is our living room wetbar. I don't know what people were thinking in the '80s. I can understand the need for a wetbar if your home is 4,000 square feet and you have to walk a mile to the kitchen. But our kitchen sink is literally 10 steps from the wetbar, so there's really no need for a sink in the living room.

Before

The carpenters will also remove all of the outside wood siding that Rudy ate when he was a puppy, and will replace it with durable Hardie board. Hopefully he won't be able to eat it, but we've learned to never say never with that dog.

Getting rid of the ugly wetbar is the first of some other big changes to our house. You know the saying that you can't change anything in your home without it leading to several other changes? It's true. We've wanted to get laminate flooring for a long time, but our living room already has wood paneling. In order to avoid complete wood overload, we need to get the paneling painted before we get the laminate installed. And before we can get the paneling painted, we have to get the wetbar sink removed, so it can be painted to match the paneling.

That's why it's taken us 7 years to get all of this work done. That coupled with my fear of making an irreversible change to the house that I might end up hating. Plus, all of these changes are pretty costly.

The wetbar and outside job will take 2 days, so I'll post after pics when it's all done. Can't wait to see it!

Wordless Wednesday

Real Simple Bargain

Deal alert: Amazon is selling 1-year subscriptions for Real Simple magazine for $5.00! That's only $0.42 per issue. What a bargain!

Flashback Friday

UNT friends:
Kevin, George, Tim, and Steve
I see Elsie the dog in there too!
Not sure what Kevin and Steve are doing,
though it looks like typical behavior.
This was taken November 9, 2007, which I believe was
the night we told our friends we were pregnant.

It's a Date

Last week our friend, Matt Blackmon, was in town teaching a class at DTS. We had dinner with him while he was here, and I guess he sensed that we needed to go on a date, because he offered to keep Reese for us one night. We took him up on his gracious offer, after we realized it had been 8 months since we'd been out alone.

This is a picture of us with the Blackmons in the summer of '07 when we visited them at their home in Pennsylvania. Valerie was about 2 months pregnant (I think) with their son, Calvin. I was 1 month shy of being pregnant with Reese.

Valerie, Matt, Aliza, George, me

Matt teaches a class at DTS each summer, so we saw him exactly one year ago. It was especially fun to see Matt this year, because he's lost about 80 pounds! Here's what he looked like this year:

Jenny LOVED Matt!

Matt is working on a book about his weight loss, so if you want to know his secret, you can read about it sometime around January.

George and I decided to eat dinner at Posado's for our date. He especially loves Posado's, because of the free frozen yogurt. George has the special "talent" of making really tall ice cream cones. I made him stop at this point:

The little girl coming out of the door said, "Whoa!

Look at that ice cream cone!"

And here we are enjoying a quiet drive after dinner. No screaming coming from the back seat!

After dinner, we drove to a neighborhood in McKinney called Adriatica. It's a beautiful replica of a Croatian village. I would love to live in one of the unique houses there. It's still under construction, but I took a few pictures.

I love this door!

Tower

An occupied home with a lot for sale to the right.

Look at that huge front door!

There was also a quaint chapel in the neighborhood that I didn't get on camera. It overlooked a pond, around which Adriatica is built. I plan to go back in a month or so to check on the progress of the neighborhood.

It was wonderful to have a date night with my hard-working husband. Thanks, Matt! I hope we don't wait another 8 months to go out again.

4th of July

This 4th of July was a replica of last year's. Reese and I went to my sister Stacy's party, while George worked 8 1/2 hours. We've missed out on fireworks the last 2 years, and I love fireworks. I hope we'll get to see some next year!

Reese and Jessi in the pool. I was having allergy
issues, so I didn't feel like getting in to swim.

This is the banana split cake I made for the party.
It was yummy! (By the way, Blogger decided the
picture should be vertical. Arg!)

Last 4th of July - Look at Reese's fat cheeks!

This year - sitting in the same spot
(different chair now). What a big boy!

Reese 's First Swim

Despite George being a former competitive swimmer, lifeguard, water polo player, and all around aquatics guru, it took him 14 months to finally get Reese into a pool. We took him swimming a few weeks ago at Jini's house. Jini was George's boss when he worked in Plano.

Reese was cautious at first, but loved the water. Jini even scooped Reese underwater to George. There were at least 6 people in the pool who work in aquatics, but I was a nervous wreck! You see, even though George vowed to never date, let alone marry, a non-swimmer - I am just that. I can keep myself afloat, but that's about it.

Here are some pictures of Reese in the pool.

Shannon (Jini's daughter), Reese and Jini

George, Reese and Shannon

George had just put Reese's face in the water.

Just chillin on a raft.

Hey, this is fun!

George has to work on the 4th of July, but if I can muster up enough courage to put on a swimsuit, I'm going to take Reese swimming at my sister's house. I haven't been in a pool in at least 7 years. I told you I'm a non-swimmer!

Thrift Store Remix - Mirror

My sister, Jessi, has been working on redoing her bedroom.

Nope, that's not Katy Perry. I promise.

The walls of her bedroom were painted in colors similar to the ones on her shirt. Each wall a different color and even the ceiling was painted. It was LOUD, just like her. : )

Now she's thinking about redecorating with black and white, and Jessi spotted this pretty frame when we went to Ikea. I convinced her we could find a similar one at a thrift store for much cheaper.

A few weeks later we ran across this mirror:

It's much smaller than the Ikea frame - this one is only about 8 inches tall. I think it was only $3.99. It turned out really nice with a coat of black spray paint:


Spray paint makes everything look better. Now I've decided I need to find one like this for myself!

Flashback Friday

Me in my Michael Jackson shirt around the time
the Thriller album came out. I was a HUGE fan and
am so sad about Michael's final years and his death.
I'm looking for another pic and will post more when

I find it...

Wordless Wednesday

Thrift Store Remix - Frame

Before:

Goodwill find that someone probably spent a lot of time on.

After:

This hangs in the hallway between Reese's room and my
craft room. I'm working on adding pictures, quotes,
and other fun things framed in black and white.

Flashback Friday, aka The Goldfinger Riot

In June of 2005, George and I went on one of our many vacations to Los Angeles. As soon as we landed at LAX, we rented a car and drove 7 hours to San Jose so we could see our favorite band, Goldfinger, perform a free concert. It was a concert experience we'll never forget.

We hit traffic and were running late to the concert, so we had to park and RUN through downtown San Jose. We made it to the concert just in time. Goldfinger took the stage and everything was wonderful.


Except for the fact that after about 15 minutes people started jumping onstage with the band. Now, this wasn't a problem for the band, as they like for fans to jump onstage with them.


But it was a problem for security. The concert was put on by the city of San Jose, so several police officers made the band stop the show for safety reasons. Well, John Feldmann, the lead singer of Goldfinger, has a bit of an issue with authority. (Isn't that a prerequisite for the lead singer of a punk band?) He was not happy being told his fans couldn't get onstage and that he had to stop his own show. He yelled, "F--- the police!" and all sorts of *fun* mayhem ensued.

We were a tad bit uncomfortable, as we're normally fans of the police, and we worried about how this would all end. We stood around for what must have been 20-30 minutes, thinking that we'd wasted the past 7 hours of our lives in a rental car for no reason. Finally the show continued without further problems. George even got his picture taken with Feldy after the show.


The next day back in L.A. we ate at our favorite vegan restaurant, Native Foods. George learned about Native Foods from an interview he had read with John Feldmann. Besides being the lead singer of a punk band and music producer, he's also a vegan and animal rights activist. We had visited the restaurant on previous trips to L.A., and each time we hoped we'd run into Feldmann. When we're in L.A., we always eat every single meal at Native Foods. I'm not joking. It's that good.

We sat down to eat our food in the tiny upstairs eating area, and George ran to the restroom. I looked over to my right, and there sat Feldy and his wife! I was so shocked to see him I could barely contain myself! I was grinning ear to ear when George came back to the table. He said, "He's here isn't he?!" We knew we had to say something to him, and I could barely eat the rest of my yummy Native Nachos I was so nervous. What if he acted like a jerk because we were imposing on family time?

When they got up to leave, George stopped Feldy and told him we were huge fans. We talked about the good vegan food in L.A. and the lack of it in Dallas, the crazy concert experience in San Jose, and his wife took our picture.


He wasn't a jerk and it made our day whole trip.