June 30, 2014

Weekend Basics: Birthdays, Bookcases and Vacuums — Oh My!


Folks, how is it the last day of June — who's with me? We've been savoring the weekends lately and made little plans for venturing out in order to relax, which of course meant we ended up tackling a bunch of things around the house. Such is life.

It all started with a mattress swap. My parents brought over a pillow-top mattress they'd been storing to replace the older mattress on Stephanie's bed since she's here full time now. Sorry dad for the bum shot, and you thought Mary was not taking pictures...

In doing so, they also brought over a queen bed frame they'd been storing to set up in Brandon's room. He's always slept on the full size bed frame that I actually grew up with, but now that he's about 6'4" it just isn't working out as well as it used to when he was younger, ha. There was a lot of swapping and moving of mattresses and furniture, which of course means we kicked up a lot of hidden dust, leading up to our next weekend adventure...

In what Mary would probably call the highlight of the weekend, we ended up getting a new vacuum cleaner. We've had bad luck with vacuums in the past — they have a way of losing suction or breaking all together on us (it's happened to at least 3, maybe more). We've also pretty much stayed in the $100 or less vacuum territory, so we've been looking into what the next step up might be (outside of going all out on a Dyson).

While picking up some cleaning supplies at Target, we stumbled across the vacuum aisle, where everything happened to be on sale, nice! We liked the overall look and features of the Hoover Air Vacuum, UH72400, and noticed a sign that mentioned price matching. After a quick phone search on Pricegrabber, we found the same model listed on Amazon for $40 less and would you believe that Target slashed that price for us? Let's just say a snoopy dance happened in the aisles of Target!


Needless to say, we pulled the trigger and have a new vacuum. Mary is calling it her new best friend and wants to know if it's wrong to love an appliance this much. After initially opening the box, figuring out the setup and taking a couple quick "test swipes" on the living room rug, she promptly grabbed it from my hands and persisted vacuuming throughout the rest of the entire house, ha (definitely not complaining!). Coming from the more budget-friendly side of past vacuum ownership, we were both surprised at just how much better this step-up was in terms of cleaning. We consider ourselves tidy for the most part and were shocked at just how much dust this vacuum removed. I'm sure this all sounds like a giant ad for Hoover, but I can promise nobody at Hoover even knows we exist — we just love our new vacuum and are so glad we took the plunge. Let's just hope our unlucky streak has come to an end. If you need some vacuuming done, now is the time to hit Mary up before the newness wears off.

All the mattress swaps and vacuuming sparked a bit of a cleaning spree in the both of us, so we went with it and ended spending much of Saturday giving the house a good summer deep clean. Even though we'd originally planned to relax, it always feels good after a deep house clean.

Another highlight of the weekend was attending the 2nd birthday party for our friends, Josiah and Jocelyn's, son Alexander. It was a welcome break getting to drive out to the farm and we even made an impromptu stop at a roadside farm stand to pick up fresh local peaches, peppers and (you guessed it), sweet corn:


We got to enjoy a farm picnic with fresh veggies, watermelon, smoked pork and rabbit, and homemade punch. The birthday boy was in full spirit, and it was a great chance to hang out with friends.


Even the heritage pigs got to enjoy a taste of the local corn we picked up:


To close out the weekend I helped Stephanie unpack the black bookcase she picked out for her newly painted room. It's been fun watching her decorate to her own style and tastes.


Tomorrow we'll be sharing the final details on how we repaired and painted the plaster walls in her room, so this little sneak peek will have to do for now (so glad to be on the other side of that project).

In other more relaxing moments we did find time to finish season 2 of Orange is the New Black and catch a few World Cup matches — who's ready for tomorrow's USA game? We're both looking forward to the upcoming long weekend even though we don't have major plans for the 4th as of yet — how about you?

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