The other day decided to jump in and sign up to the blog Eating Rules‘ “Unprocessed October” challenge. It’ll be good to get back on track and also maybe be a little bit of a processed food detox heading up to the half marathon on October 16th.

I’ve been thinking a lot of what this will mean for October.

• no Kashi cereal for breakfast
• finding a new soy milk (or not using it)
• no eating out for lunch at work
• more excessive menu planning than I already do

So the plan for the weekend, besides the stick shift driving lessons, is to make some granola and plan out next week’s meals. I checked and the bread we buy from a bakery in Saline certainly passes the kitchen test, no weird or unpronounceable science ingredients at all. I could bake it at home, that is, if I wasn’t horrible at baking.

We had a pretty “mreh” looking raised flower bed on the side of our front lawn and since I wasn’t sure exactly what type of flowers/plants/weeds were in it, I decided just to get rid of all of it and start new.

Stray kitty likes to hang out in our neighborhood. This was probably right before kitty ate a grub and I was thoroughly disgusted.

Right now all that I have planted in it is a very tiny Alberta Spruce which I was assured by my mom and Grandma that it would not become gigantic.

This afternoon’s big project was building raised bed garden boxes for the backyard. I had originally mapped out four 4′x10′ beds however once we realized exactly how big 10′ is, we called a friend from down the street and changed the plan to 4′x8′, and the 8′ boards fit almost perfectly in his car. We used 2x12x12 since I wanted to make sure it was deep enough for any carrots or other root veggies.

The end result—

I’ve given up on weeding the lawn this year, it’s just all weeds and I don’t think there is much I can do to help it. If I pulled them up it’d probably be all dirt.

Last weekend my Mom and Gramma stopped buy and brought me a weed whacker they bought for me (battery electric, no cords) and she is letting me borrow their power washer so I can get the front porch cleaned. I didn’t notice just how gross it was until we got part of it done!

For now though, I will leave with some pictures of the to-be living room and dining room. Hopefully unlike most living rooms there will be at least a bit of living done in mine. At least, there will be living in it once there is sufficient seating.

We came out with two deadbolts and some house numbers.

It took forever to try to change the lock on the front door and it was impossible to change the side door since the deadbolt was bigger than the hole that was cut in the door. Needless to say, I have a large Ziplock baggie full of keys right now in my bag.

We didn’t plan to attempt to put up house numbers since we only had two screwdrivers and I know we’d need some sort of drill and level for those.

Little by little though, we are moving in boxes and bikes and clothes, and on and on.

We have a finished, but not quite as finished as the rest of the basement room and we’re making that the bike room.

However, our apartment is an awful mess.

I swear, I’m packing things up. I’m not trying out for Hoarders.
We’ve moved the futon, bed frame, some side tables, the dining room table, and some dining room chairs over. The apartment is gradually emptying and getting less convenient – I had to put the ironing board between two kitchen chairs last night.

Today we tested out our first house warming gift.

Our lawn is still full of weeds but at least they are shorter weeds…

Keys have been passed over and we got our first congratulatory house plant from the mortgage company.

Hopefully when we run by there tonight the SOLD sign will be out and we can take some sweet pictures by it… ya know, like with me in a mid-air jump.

My husband and I will be closing on our first home in a matter of days and I’ve got a lot of plans for it and so does he.

Since 2003, the longest I have lived in one spot is a little under a year and a half. Study abroad in high school happens, university happens, study abroad happens again, and then three different post-grad residences happen.

We’ve finally got a place to stay for twenty-some years and I fully intend to use the space I have to the fullest. We’ve got a lot of plans on the To-Do List, from small items like simply putting numbers up on the house to large items like building a whole garage.

For the record, the closest thing I’ve build that resembles a garage is a bird house. Just saying, it could get interesting.