groppi girl blogs

Some progress is better than no progress. While we wait for the Building Permit to come through, the lot has been cleared and the trees and stumped removed.

We have quite a bit of land so the clearing was only about half of the depth of the lot. This is really nice. We back up to a Town owned lot so there will be some additional privacy.

We are a little closer to the neighbors on the left than I wanted to be. The houses will be about 75 feet apart. But the lot to our right is still undeveloped. If they do develop it, we wanted to leave more of a buffer on that side so that they didn’t build right on top on their left line. Not that I want neighbors right away. hehe.

You can kind of see where the house is going to go in this picture. It’s piles of the dirt with the stakes shoved in them that are the “house box.”  I should be more excited but I’m not. The whole lack of permit thing is frustrating. The town says they’ve had layoffs and things that used to take two days are taking two weeks. I’m going to cross my fingers for a permit by next week.

Two posts, two days in a row.

Today’s post is not too exciting. I spent some time playing with my Cricut the other day. I put the Cricut cartridge Tags, Bags and Boxes to work. It’s definitely my favorite cartridge. I cut the flower box and then cut the flower tag in blackout mode to make the flower pop. I found these cute little totes and had to buy them!

I filled them with a bunch of little goodies. It was fun cutting away on the Cricut. I used the Design Studio to make sure the things were the size I wanted. The software made it very easy to determine the size of the object I needed to  cut.

I have to get these all in the mail!!! I plan on breaking out the yudu this week. I have a belated birthday present that I must finish. I’ve been so far behind.

I’ve missed blogging. In addition to planning the new house, I’m not adjusting to the temporary apartment well. It’s just not conducive in space or lighting to make crafting easy for me. But I managed to suck it up last night and do some projects that have been neglected while I spent my extra time taking in episodes of Holmes on Homes and Sarah’s House and researching appliances. I didn’t feel truly inspired but I managed to make a scrap half sheet of 12×12 American Crafts patterned paper work to my advantage.

I had this flowered American Craft scrap paper sitting in the stash just begging to be used.  So, I decided on a simple layout and went to work. I would have never thought this in a million years but Papertrey Ink’s Friends Til the End stamp set is one of my most loved and used sets of all time.

I made these card with all different bows. I managed to use up the rest of my Papertrey Ink Sweet Blush Satin Ribbon. The colors match the gift tote that I will be sending out to a few of my girlies. I’ve meant to sent them out for the 4th of July but ended changing it up because well, we are almost one month past. I hope everyone has been well. I can’t wait to make the rounds and see what everyone has been up to!

Yeap…another race report. Don’t worry though. They will be back in full effect in the fall. This race report concludes the sixth half marathon I’ve done in as many months. The WDW Half (as part of the Goofy Challenge) in January, the Princess and New Bedford Half Marathons in March, the Run to Remember in May, and the Old Sandwich Road Race and 13.1 Boston in June.

The 13.1 Boston was supposed to be a great day. My friend Katie had made the pilgrimage up from Baltimore to participate and we were disappointed. First of all, the race wasn’t even in Boston. It was through Canton and Milton. The course was nice but the hills were almost tortuous. My friend Ann Marie, who raced with us, said it best…it was more like mountain running.  The water stops ran out of cups so 50% of the runners had to either drink out of communal jugs or get water poured into their palms…not how it should be for a half marathon at the end of June…however, I digress.

It was pretty cool that the photographers got us at the starting line. Jill is in the pink tank and I’m in the blue. The weird thing was that to get to the start you had to climb over a rock wall….hmmrff.

The course was challenging. It was up steep hills 50% of the course. My sister Jill is trying to bounce back from an IT Band problem and this wasn’t a good race for her. So, instead of running alone, I decided to jog it slow with her and get her to the finish line. She was amazingly strong to tough it out and finish!!!! Now, she is on a strict rest schedule until Sunday, when we’ll take a test run.

Here we are at the finish…it was by far the worst half marathon we had ever run (over 14 minutes of our next worst time ever). It was disorganized, injured laden and tough. But it’s finished and it’s in the books. I’m so proud of Katie, Jill and Ann Marie for their strong finishes. The race committee tried to pull up the timing mats early on Katie and Ann Marie. But they made it to the finish just as the clock was being taken down. Jill and I were able to get their medals for them and award them at their finish.

The food after wasn’t that bad. There was plenty of it and Katie was proudly showing off her muffin at the finish.

It was a good time with great friends. I just wish that 13.1 Boston would get their act together and put an organized race out there. I look forward to the Philly Rock’n'Roll Half Marathon so I can put another decent time back on the books.

Crafty posts are on my mind…I promise some very soon. However, I have been very busy designing…just on something different. I would like the introduce the LGKG Dream Home 2010!!!

Kenny and I both set out to build something different than a typical New England Colonial. So, we meshed a Traditional layout with a Farmhouse. f/n architects designed the house from scratch with our input. I have to give Gordon a big hand…he made our crazy wish list reality. It’s been fun designing the house that we will be placing on the land recently purchased by our builder. YAY!

We are very excited to begin making the LGKG Dream Home a reality. It took us awhile to sell our old house but the wait was worth it!

The first floor has everything I wanted to take from the old house, like a mudroom and a huge kitchen, and added somethings we have wanted, like a fireplace, a garage and MY CRAFT ROOM!!!! See that little room on the front to the right labeled “Office/Hobby”?????? That’s my new craft room!!! I’m so excited to finally have a space of my own. It’s just over 12′ x 12′.  I will have room for a yudu and Cricut station. I have been looking for inspiration on the web. I am dying to get designing it.  

The second floor is fabulous. Kenny will finally get my mess out of his closet. He also gets to establish groovy Man Town in the room above the garage. He and his buddies can have their own space to play poker and host fantasy football drafts while I enjoy my craft room or the nice big tub in the master bath in peace. LOL.