Ahh...the joys of homeownership

New House + New Home Buyer Credit = Taxes, Yay!!

Really, I am feeling well, no fever.  Just thrilled to find out that I did qualify for the New Home Buyer tax credit.  I was pretty sure that I wouldn't, but definitely had to ask my tax accountant to be sure I didn't miss out on any tax refund goodness.  Thanks for being the expert Jaimee, you are awesome!

If you want Jaimee's contact info, just let me know, she really is great, knowledgable, reasonably priced, and willing to do my taxes from all the way over in NJ.

Celebrated the good tax refund news with Corrie (from Cleveland Knits West) at Angelo's.  Hawaiian Pizza and Mr. Pibb, make a great celebratory lunch.  BTW, if you ever get to Lakewood, go to Angelo's, the pizza rocks (1/2 price when you eat in on Monday's), it has great atmosphere, and is a locally owned business.

In other good news, the weather continues to be spring like here in Cleveland.  Today's sunshine inspired me to trim my nasty car eating bush.  It sits right next to the driveway, OK until about 4 pm this afternoon, hung into the driveway and regulary tried to attack any car that came close.

Here's a view of the house from my driveway.  You can see the offending bush, well its branches at least, hanging out into the driveway.

Given the nice weather, I saw no reason why I shouldn't attempt to win back my driveway today.  The bush  before I trimmed it.

When me and the hedge trimmers were through, the bush had lost its ability to eat cars in the driveway.  I'm not sure I'll like the results of my trim job when the thing actually has leaves on it, but that remains to be seen.

Bonus: I had no problem backing my car into the driveway tonight since I didn't have to watch closely for the bush.

During the pre-purchase home inspection a few things were brought to my attention.  One, the fake green astro-turf like stuff on my front porch and steps should be removed.  This will help cut back on moisture build up in the crawl space below.  No problem, I don't care much for the stuff anyway.  Thanks to one of the more recent wind storms, part of the carpet started to pull itself from the concrete.  I was thrilled to find out that I could just pull up the rest of that piece and send it off with the trash yesterday.

Today, I moved the welcome mat to see if I could see a difference in the concrete, since the welcome mat had been holding in moisture, I could.

I'm going to venture out on a limb and say, that concrete is probably not supposed to look that it is shedding rocks.  I know that sanding (Fun with power tools  :) with the proper tool will remove the carpet glue from the concrete.  But I'm definitely curious what sanding will do to the spot that looks like it was patched, and certainly needs to be patched again!

The most disturbing part of this, is I'm actually looking forward to either borrowing or renting the correct equipment to sand concrete.  I'm sure that ear plugs, a face mask and gloves will be involved and I'm still quite thrilled to attack this project.

More to come soon...I've got a progress report for Epic Knitting Project #1 and hope to have pictures of Craft Room V1.0 to share before the end of the week.

Why I love living in the city

When I decided to walk to run my errands today I didn't expect to travel quite as far as I did.  I thought that Dollar General or Kmart would certainly have the colored printer paper I needed.  I was wrong.

After around 3.5 miles (estimated using a great mapping program called "Map my walk") of walking today I got some of what I expected to buy, some good finds, and no colored paper.  Fortunately I enjoyed my walk and now know that I can walk to Kmart, Kamm's Corners and the Westpark Library from my house no problem.  I don't foresee going to all 3 on the same trip next time though.

I do look forward to running more errands with my feet instead of my wheels.  It was nice to get outside and I know that if I keep this up, I will certainly see good results when swimsuit season arrives.  I hope that the weather here continues to cooperate.  Maybe I'll walk to get my groceries next shopping trip.  Giant Eagle is even closer to my house than Kamm's so it is certainly a viable option. 

Walking to get groceries and the like is something it took me a while to appreciate doing in college.  But without wheels living in downtown Milwaukee I had 3 options.

1. Use my feet
2. Ride the bus
3. Bum a ride

The bus came in handy sometimes.  But really who likes to have to act according to someone else's schedule; not me.  Bumming a ride was fine, but most of the friends I had in college preferred walking around anyway so the feet were used more often than not.

Now I really enjoy the idea tha I can walk places like Kmart, grocery store, library, etc.  Admittedly this is the first time I have done so since I moved to Westpark.  I blame the weather for that.  Now that I've done it, I feel more confident that when the weather is reasonable I will be walking more places.

Happy Walking!

I'm out and about this week as a Chocolatier

If you have time to stop by at "YWCA of Greater Cleveland Women's Leadership Conference" or "Diva Night in Medina" of these events, please do.  I'd love the company and each event has tons to offer.

I'll be wandering the Leadership Conference from around 11:30 am to 1:30 pm and then working the Dove Chocolate Discoveries booth, sharing samples and chatting it up with all the great conference attendees.

I'll be at Diva Night, with the Dove Chocolatier hat (well really an apron) all night.

See you there!

The Chocolate-Covered Sweet Life

For every $25 of chocolate purchased before March 26th you will earn a ticket for a spectacular gift basket worth over $75.  This basket will have everything you need to host a great Chocolate-Covered extravaganza.  It includes a variety of Dove Chocolate Discoveries products, entertaining guides and a gift certificate for $1 (for every $20 sold before March 26th) up to $50 in Dove Chocolate Discoveries product.

Just use the link above to choose your selection of Dove Chocolate Discoveries products.  Send me an email and the sweet life will arrive in your mail box in no time.

My challenge, your treats

So less than 30 days ago I joined the Dove Chocolate Discoveries team.  I feel like I'm starting to get my chocolatier feet under me.  I've got a challenge, sell $1000 of chocolate in 20 days.  My goal is to do this in 18 days, just to give myself a bit of breathing room.  If you help with the challenge, a chance at a spectacular SWEET treat will be headed your way in addition to all the great chocolate you order before March 25th!

Details on the SWEET surprise treat to follow.

I don't belong in the kitchen

I really do enjoy my new home. I really don't enjoy cleaning the kitchen floor in my new home. The kitchen floor in all of its black and white checkered glory, is covered in vinyl textured tile, yes it really is black and white checkered.

I think the checkered floor adds a nice modern touch to the original kitchen design from 1938. But it is truly a pain to clean.  Because it is both black and white everything shows.  Because it is textured, a scrub brush is occasionally required in addition to regular mopping.  For reasons I cannot explain, only a Magic Eraser will get the white squares completely clean after they have been walked on for a few weeks.

Exhibit A: My floor, pre-cleaning spree

Exhibit B: My floor, after cleaning spree and use of magic eraser

 

I really haven't a clue how the magic eraser works and this sort of bothers me.  But on the other hand, it accomplishes what no amount of scrubbing does, so I like it.

The weather here has been damp, coldish and grey.  So I decided it was time to make soup, a modified version of carrot soup.  I learned a few good lessons today.

1. It is in fact possible to burn soup.  The carrots at the bottom of the pot burned before the pot stopped steaming due to my desire to cook quickly.  I will never try to boil carrots on high again.

2. Despite the fact that the hand mixer does not get the soup as smooth, not having to get hot carrots into a blender may be well worth a few chunks.

3. Adding celery (in effort to use the vile green stuff) to carrot soup does in fact change the color.

So I made carrot soup, with a few bits of burnt carrot, and a slightly brown hue that surprisingly enough still tastes good.

I still think I do not belong in the kitchen.

Help!!! I've fallen down the social media rabbit hole

I do not like social media...I do not like social media...I do not like social media...

Yes, I know I'm blogging. I just had to make it clear, that I do not like social media before I got started with this, my first blog post. I'm a bit of an introvert, I share freely about myself with those I know, but appear to be a closed book to those I do not. Or at least that is how I see myself.

Social media is not evil, but definitely can be freaky, scary, crazy. You will not see posts from me hourly (not even daily if my guess is correct). I won't be tweeting all day long about all things I'm doing and not doing. But I have decided to share a little bit about myself and some of the new adventures I've under taken.

First, in November of last year I became a proud resident of Cleveland, Oh. Yes, this city has many nick names (most notably “mistake by the lake”) but really, its a nice, little city. Very different from Philadelphia. The skyline is tiny, but there are numerous cool touristy things to do and an awesome outdoor music venue called the Blossom Music Center. Ok, Blossom is outside of Cleveland, but it is truly a venue worth visiting.

I've been working in engineering for almost 10 years, wow. I'm currently looking for full time work in this industry, but like everyone in this economy, I'm finding it to take longer than I had hoped to land that next great career.

Because it sounds like great fun and can be rather rewarding, I've decided to join the “Dove Chocolate Discoveries” team. I officially became a Chocolatier on February 11, 2010. Sounds exciting right, well it is! I will be sharing the joy of all of the luscious Dove Chocolate Discoveries (DCD) products. This is really great chocolate. I've tried lots of chocolate, and all of these products are versatile while being absolutely delicious in their simplest form.

So far my favorite product is the Chardonnay Caramel sauce. This sauce is so creamy, with smooth California Chardonnay folded in just before packaging.  The chocolate baking mix is extremely versatile and will always be on hand in my pantry.  Its hard to believe that chocolate mousse can be prepared in just 5 minutes; but DCD makes that possible.  I've tried it, it is a fantastic chocolate mousse.

Finally, there is more to come.  I'm working on many different things right now, and will be sure to have more announcements soon.

For now, take care and have a sweet life.