r.i.p bear

Poor Bear was found un-stuffed and de-rattled last night after a rambunctious round of tug-of-war. 
He will be missed.

good eats

Just a few of the meals we have enjoyed in the past week or two:

Chicken Pot Pie

Not the definitive pot pie recipe, but a solid option. And the nice part is the recipe makes enough for 2 pies, so you can throw one in the freezer for a few weeks down the road.

Chili and Jalepeno Corn Bread

Chicken Gyros and Homemade Pitas

 The pitas were definitely not very picturesque, but I thought they tasted delicious, even if they didn't puff up. Also I may have gone a little overboard on the tzatziki sauce. Don't judge.

Roasted Cauliflower and White Cheddar Soup

No pic of this one, but don't worry you aren't missing much, it's not much to look at. Despite that fact, and the fact that I improvised quite a bit with the seasoning David seemed to enjoy it.

 

progress report

I wanted to give you all an update of how I'm doing with my 2013 goals, if for no other reason than to hold me accountable. But maybe it will motivate you a little bit too.

Goal #1: Blog 4 days a week. Clearly I am struggling with this one. Three might just be the magic number now that we are back in session.  

Goal #2: Run a half marathon race. Eh, I was running, until we had 4 days in a row where the weather did not get above zero. Even now it's only 15* out and my general rule is 20* to go on a run (unless there is absolutely no wind). But once the weather gets a little better, and the days a little longer, I'll be back on track and starting to add in some long runs.

Goal # 3: Go on two dates a month. January = success. First date was to the neighborhood cheap theater to see Flight. Second date was dinner at First Course. Of course it's during the Twins season where this goal becomes a challenge.

Goal #4: Read 30 books. I'm off to a good start. I have read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe  and Prince Caspian so far. And have started The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Anne's House of Dreams, and The Presidents' Club (admittedly I started this one a long time ago, but if I finish it in 2013 I think it'll count).

Goal #5: Keep nails nice. Hmmmm... they were looking real bad, I mean, it's pretty unavoidable when it's this cold. They were cracked and bleeding, with hangnails everywhere, and so brittle they chipped every time I bumped my hands. Luckily I got a gift certificate for manicure for Christmas, so at least currently they look all fancy.

Goal #6: Host garage sale. I clearly could not have completed during January, but thanks in part to another goal of getting organized, I have purged more stuff from the house and added to the pile of things to sell.

Goal #7: Make wedding album. Haven't started.

Goal #8: 1 organization project a month. I still haven't filled you guys in on this one, but so far so good. I finished January's project of organizing the bathroom closet.


I'm off to a good start I'd say, let's hope I can keep it up during February.

cuddle buddies

Maybe it's because this weekend temperatures hovered in the negative teens (-31 with windchill) or maybe it's because they are now BFFs, but Winston and Frankie have finally started cuddling. I use the term "started" loosely- it's only happened once unprompted, but I am sure they plan on making co-napping a regular occurrence now that they realize how nice it is.

How precious is this?!

drillin'

Finally charged up the drill I got for Christmas and decided to tackle a few projects around the house. Nothing like a three day weekend to light a fire under my butt.

Project 1: Fix Shelf Bracket

Project 2: Install Towel Ring

Project 3: Hang Towel Hooks

Project 4: Hang Iron/ Ironing Board Holder

Project 5: Upgrade Bathroom Baskets (no drilling required)

This project is actually part of one of my new years' goals: to tackle one organization project around the house a month. January's project was the bathroom closet. Unfortunately I forgot to take a before pic for you, so I decided it didn't need it's own post. I clearly need one more basket on that middle shelf, but it still looks lots better, hopefully $65 better. And for some reason there are no towels on the top shelf right now, normally it's overflowing, fyi.

So five projects tackled this weekend- just think how productive I would be/ how good the house would look if I had a three day weekend every week?!

quick question

Do these pictures suggest that our sidewalks are in bad enough condition to be issued a $105 ticket plus pay the cost of the removal (approximately $300+) to the city? Keep in mind this is January in Minnesota?

   Okay, I'll give you this one is a little bad, but we had 2 days of rain followed by a week of

 temperatures in the low teens- ice could hardly have been avoided.

Well, we will soon find out, as we were issued an official warning last week, right before I took these pictures, and had 2 days to fix the situation before the city would give us their verdict, aka a bill. 

If we are found guilty I might start taking pictures of all the completely unshoveled sidewalks- both private and public- to send into the city. Because shouldn't everyone have to suffer like we did? And shouldn't the city be held to the same high standards?

no vacancy

Two weeks into the New Year, and I am already not meeting my goal of blogging four times a week, but these past two weeks have been incredibly busy, and at the same time still pretty boring, and thus there doesn't seem to be anything worth sharing. The only thing mildly newsworthy in my life right now is that Session started last week, which of course is the reason I have been so busy as everyone gets back in the swing of things at work.

So after racking my brains for something to tell you all and coming up empty handed, I decided to rummage through my drafts for a post idea last week. That's where I discovered this untold story- the story of how we rented out our duplex. I had meant to tell it earlier, but I wanted to wait until we had received our first real month's rent so I didn't jinx it, and then I kind of forgot about it, and then it kind of took me forever to finish writing it- trying to find a balance of telling all the parts to the story, but not going into detail overload. But because of a lack of anything else going on, now you get to hear all the riveting details of how it all happened- almost 3 months after the fact.

We posted the online ad that I slaved over on October 23- with the intention hope of having the apartment filled by November 1st. We knew one week was a little ambitious to find someone AND have them move in, but we remained optimistic. I created the ad through Postlets, and once I finalized the ad, Postlets published it on Craigslist and Zillow as well as two other real estate websites.  We had found our apartment online and figured that is where most people would do their apartment shopping, or most of the type of people we wanted to rent to, anyways. We got two emails with inquiries about the apartment, but both were looking for Section 8  housing, which our apartment is not licensed for- so no luck. We were starting to get discouraged, after all, everyone we had talked to who knew anything about rental properties, property management, or real estate was sure we would have it rented out in a week.

After a few days of this we discussed, again, putting up "for-rent" signs in the yard, but we really thought that would draw the wrong kind of crowd. It wasn't until David talked to our realtor/coworker who also is a landlord in the area who has filled all 3 of his duplexes via signs that we finally decided to bite the bullet and go buy some front-yard advertising. And, low-and-behold, as soon as that first sign went up we started getting mass amounts of inquiries. Of course many of the people who called were not interested once we gave them the specs, but we probably set up showings with over a third of the people that called in about the apartment. David was in charge of this part, while I just spied on them from the upstairs window, but from what I heard our apartment showed very well. David repeatedly reported that people commented on how big and how clean the apartment was- which or course made me giddy, knowing people were appreciating the months of hard work we put into the apartment. Unfortunately this is where our luck started running out- even though we were scheduling lots and lots of showings, and we were handing out lots and lots of applications, people were just not turning them in.

We discussed if it was the time of year, the rent we were asking, the application requirements, and couldn't quite figure it out. Families had come through who said they were going to turn in an application, and seemed like they would be a good fit, only they never showed up again. After a few days of showings and lots of false hope, we finally got our first application: a family of 12 (and remember this is a 3, maybe 4 bedroom/ 2 bathroom apartment). The family fit all the financial requirements and after talking to them extensively we really thought they would be responsible and respectful tenants. The problem was no matter how responsible they ended up being, 10 kids would wreak havoc on the apartment and our water bill (which is the only shared utility, thus we pay the entire bill). So after giving it lots of thought, we had to turn them down.(Luckily, we have an "owner-occupied" duplex (obviously), so this was a legal option. If we did not live in the upper unit of the duplex, legally we would not be able to discriminate against an applicant because of their familial situation, and would have had to find another reason to turn them down, or be forced to pay the water bill and have our apartment suffer the abuse of 10 kids.) I felt pretty bad about saying no, they were a nice family, who needed to quickly find a new place to live due solely to the actions (or rather, inaction... not paying the mortgage) of their previous landlord. But we decided, especially since these would be our first tenants, that it was worth waiting to find the perfect fit. So we went optimistically back to scheduling more showings, confident this next batch would give us our tenants.

Within the week we had another application: a middle-aged man, his fiance, and his 90 year old mother. On the surface, they seemed like they would be a good fit: low- maintenance tenants, who took care of the apartment, and would be staying for a long time. Without going into too much detail for his sake, lets just say, they didn't work out due to a lack of honesty on the applicant's part. We had gained an appreciation for the background check we decided to do, but now we began to worry and question letting the first applicant go. But of course at this point we had no choice but to go back to scheduling showings, the problem was the calls weren't coming in quite as frequently as when we first put up the sign...

Lucky for us it didn't take many more showings and third time proved to be a charm. Only a few short days after turning down the second applicant, about 2 weeks into November, we received another one. A single mom, and her adult children, who brought her pastor as a reference. There were a few minor questions raised by her application (one of the reasons her pastor came with), but overall she seemed like she would make a responsible tenant. We decided to pull the pin. And at this point, 2.5 months into the lease, we are still satisfied with our decision, and our tenant seems truly pleased with (and grateful for) our apartment.

So all in all, the process wasn't that bad. I mean, it wasn't great- it took longer than we expected. But we got lots of interest, even nearing the winter months, we were able to rent it out at the upper end of our rent window, and so far (knock on wood) we have had no issues with our tenant. 

Even with our success the first time around, we decided next time we would do things differently- namely do as much as humanly possible to be filling the apartment in the spring and summer, when the people who want to move are moving (as opposed to the winter, where it is mostly just the people who need to move, often for unsavory reasons).  Luckily we realized this before signing the contract, so we were sure to offer only a 9-month lease so if our tenant decides to move out after the lease expires, we are filling the apartment in August. Now this just raises the question of what time of year do we buy our next one?

shakshuka

The temperatures here in Minnesota have not gotten out of the low-teens for a few days now, so our weekend remained pretty low-key: we watched movies, cleaned, and spent a lot of time cooking (but still did not get the Christmas decorations put away!) Besides the two-hour pot-pie-athon on Sunday, I made one of our favorite meals on Friday: Shakshuka, a spicy tomato sauce with poached eggs and feta. I originally found the recipe, of course, on Smitten Kitchen. I usually just follow the recipe if I have the ingredients around, this time however I  had an extra bell pepper and some cilantro floating around the house, so I decided to throw those in there as well.

One word of warning, three jalepenos is pretty spicy for me, especially if you let it sit and have it as leftovers another night, so either pare down the peppers, throw in extra feta to cool it down, or make room to eat it with a lot of naan... I usually opt for the extra feta and naan. Also, don't be like me and touch your eyes/nose/ chapped lips after you dice up the jalepenos. I do it every time.

I promise there are 2 poached eggs in there, it's not all feta!

You all really should really try out this recipe, it is quick, cheap, and goes perfectly with some homemade naan (also a quick (for bread) and cheap recipe).

playtime!

winston's litte bro!

Meet Franklin**, the newest addition to the Hauge family! 

We adopted him a few short days before Christmas, and besides the jealousy from the older brother (Winston) everything has been great (and that might have been harder on me than on Winston). He took a few days to adjust of course, but for the most part Frankie made himself right at home with our family. He is a 1-year old, male, 4 lb 8 oz Chihuahua who was found as a stray on the streets of Minneapolis. He is a little more high maintenance than Winston- dislikes the snow more and thus has to wear booties (but of course he is 2.5 lbs smaller than Winston), gets into a little more trouble around the house (but is almost 4 years younger than Winston, still practically a puppy), and isn't 100% potty trained (although we are mere days away from this being crossed off the list!!). On the other hand, he is more laid back than Winston when meeting strangers, is a lot more fun/ silly to play with (but don't tell Winston I said that), and has a lot more entertaining personality quirks. And in the short time we have had him, he has already gotten rid of his musty dog smell and developed a softer coat, most likely thanks to the better food we are feeding him. 

All in all we already love little Frankie a lot, despite his awkwardly long legs (but hey, he has to have something to compete with Winston's bat ears) and are looking forward to many adventures with him!

And in case you were wondering yes, you were paying attention and he already had his blog debut here in two of the pics, but I thought he needed a formal introduction.

**Name subject to change (thus the non-committal title). At this point we are 99% sure we are going to go with Franklin, or Frankie for short, for the new pup's name- but we are still testing it out before we make it official at this point, and we have already tried out, and bounced around quite a few names over the past few weeks.

2013

Tucked in the front folder of my planner- which I take everywhere with me- I keep a list of goals jotted down on a piece of notebook paper. The list starts out a calculated set of goals for the year, a modified list of resolutions, but as the year goes on I continue to add, cross off, and edit as necessary. Some of these goals are lofty and noble, whereas others are simple or silly, and others are merely projects I want to accomplish during the year.  Here is a sampling of some of the goals I accomplished during 2012, in no particular order. There were many, many others on the list. Some I part-way completed, others I never even started on, and still others I just failed to mention here on the blog:

-own and wear red lipstick
-add at least 1 accessory every time I leave the house
-run a half marathon (OK, the race got cancelled, but I ran 11.5 miles on my own, so I can halfway cross this one off)
-read 20 books
-make earring holder
-sew skirt
- get rid of 5 things a month (admittedly, not all of the items have left the house, but they are in a get-rid pile!)

I have done this method of goal-making for at least 4 years now, and I find it to be quite motivational. For starters, I enjoy the mix of serious and seemingly trivial goals- it keeps me trying all sorts of new things to better myself for an entire year, without getting overwhelmed by one or two big, life-changing goals. Throwing in some easy-to-accomplish goals is also quite encouraging as it allows me to be able to cross something off the list and feel productive, ready to tackle the next project. I also find it helpful to carry the list everywhere with me. Whenever I think how fast the year is flying by, I can whip out the list and see what I have accomplished and what I need to work on- it keeps me focused. 

And now, after revisiting 2012's list looking for some stragglers to carry on to 2013, and after giving it much deep thought, here are a few  of my goals for the upcoming year, which of course will probably be added to and/or edited by tomorrow:

- blog 4 times a week
- run a half marathon race
- go on 2 dates a month 
- read 30 books
- keep nails nice
- host garage sale (aka, actually get the purged stuff from last year out of the house)
- make wedding album, and either family "yearbooks" or trip albums

What goals, resolutions, or projects do you want to accomplish in 2013?

did you miss me?

So I had completely lost all motivation to blog there for a week or so, but I'm back now, and even though I am still lacking motivation, I figure I better just put something on here so I don't forget how it's done and you all forget about me. So...is it too late to talk about Christmas? Probably, it's been over a week, and meanwhile we have also celebrated New Years and gone back to work (some of us, cough, not David). But I am going to tell you about our Christmas(es) anyways.

We had a total of 5 celebrations to attend- Christmas Eve at my aunts (mom's side), Christmas morning formal breakfast just David and me, Christmas afternoon at David's parents, Christmas dinner at our place with my parents, and then last Saturday Christmas on my dad's side. I enjoy the busyness of the holiday, and luckily I had some time off from work to enjoy it. But I know others, cough, David, would prefer if we didn't have to run around like crazies for a week. Regardless, we both had a wonderful week full of family, friends, and good food. Without further ado, here are a few pics of our festivities:

the Wii was a hit!

 puppies, not interested in present-opening shenanigans

 

 messy Christmas morning

 salmon eggs benedict Christmas morning, just us two

 fam pic on Christmas night

at grandma's after Christmas