Kitty Deschanel

Sexy Nerd and I have a tradition of turning our travel photos into canvas prints for our home. We lounge in our loft across from a photo we took underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. Our guestroom greets visitors with a colorful print of the picnic lawn and duck pond near my favorite museum. As far as a souvenir goes, you really can't top it. However, when you travel at every opportunity like we do, your trip photos can quickly outnumber your wall space (and budget!) Las Vegas Motor Speedway, 2014 Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, 2014 (Or was this the Grand Canyon?) This was taken...ummm...somewhere, 2014 (in Utah, maybe...?) As you can see from my ramblings above, it's crucial to organize your travel photos while the trip is still fresh in your mind. Before my location details got any sketchier, I ordered a photo canvas from canvaspop.com to surprise Sexy Nerd. I've used several photo canvas companies over the years. The thing that makes C

Remember all those terrible rocks I told you about? Well, right after my last construction post, we stopped having to worry about digging up giant sandstone boulders. Because once we got through all that annoying, expensive sandstone... ...we hit a solid sheet of GRANITE. (*sob*) But guess what? Just a few days later, the world's best construction crew had everything taken care of. Whew! I know I should be a home-building expert by now, but that's at odds with my naturally cheap frugal ways. Sexy Nerd has explained to me again and again why we couldn't just build the house on top of the granite and it makes sense every time he says it...but it's not like the giant slabs of granite were going anywhere, right?? I understand...not really. At the beginning of the week, we had mountains and mountains of dirt. But by Saturday... ...they'd all disappeared! Sayanora, you &*%#ing rocks. During week 4 of construction, I also g

Everything went so smoothly during our first week of construction, clearing trees and dirt faster than we'd imagined, that we began to expect the entire process would be much easier than everyone had said. People have been voicing their concerns to us ever since we purchased our lot. Clearly, though, everyone else was wrong. Ha! First, the good: (Keeping with the theme of our last two weeks of construction, this part is brief.) Five years in, we finally brought Pica and Biscuit to see their future home. After many attempts to get them both to look at the camera, this was our second best result. Small dogs = small attention spans. Close enough.  Thus ends the "good" portion of this construction update. On to the bad. Oh, it's so bad. GIANT ROCKS!!! (Oh no!)  There were barely any rocks found during the first week of construction, but with only a small section of earthwork to go, the crew hit rock, rock, and more rock. Special equip

Or will we kill each other in the process? Last night was a lazy night, as was the night before. Every day and night has been lazy, with the exception of me researching tubs for our guest suite, which Sexy Nerd took no part in. So, imagine my frustration this morning, barely awake and getting ready for work, when a certain someone frantically demanded that I drop everything and choose a tub right this instant. Apparently, I'm holding up the entire project, and being late for work is a small price to pay for not causing any more problems. *Grumble* Oh, and that part of the drawing that says "matching ceiling plane"? I might just insist on changing that, just to irk you-know-who.

Construction on our mountain dream home, week one: (This is post 2 of 2. Click here for post 1 of 2 .) See that fence? Don't get too used to it. The neighbors will be moving it onto their property any day now. If only we'd caught them before they'd paid someone to build it...and before the posts were cemented into place! (There's that neighborly guilt again.) Here's a weird question for you - what do you think of this part of our lot? I call it our dry riverbed and Sexy Nerd calls it our canyon (it's hard to tell from this photo, but the ground dips down here) and we like it so much we've designed the hot tub in the master retreat (hee, hee) to look out over this area. However, the last time we both thought something on our lot was really neat (a gnarled old tree trunk), every person we showed it to was like, "That's really ugly and stupid and what's wrong with you two?" The construction crew was just going to

We broke ground last week and have been amazed by how quickly everything is rolling along. Within only 4 days, the crew created a driveway, cut down all necessary trees, removed all the waste (including a pile of wood from when our crazy neighbor cut down a bunch of our trees, much to our dismay, but that's a story for another day), dug a pit/created a mountain, and more! Photos from Week 1 of Construction (post 1 of 2)( click here for post 2 of 2 ) Can you imagine how disappointed our neighbors must have been when they drove home and discovered a porta potty next door? Even worse, the neighbors on both sides of us just moved in and neither family had any idea construction was about to begin! I know there's no way around it, but I can't help feeling guilty. There are doorstep goody bags (with balloons!) in their future. Truth be told, I don't look like I feel guilty at all in this photo. On day 3, the ground was flat. The next day, we had our ve