Lessons in Homeownership: Basement Floods & Weeds

B and I had a great weekend visiting one of my favorite people in Greenville! My friend Myada has a fabulous new apartment downtown which I have been dying to see, and we finally had a chance to make it up to G-Vegas for a visit. We got to enjoy her company as well as sushi at Tsunami, ice cream at Spill the Beans, and cocktails at some of our favorite spots. Then today, we celebrated our dear friends, Sally and Gregg, at a couples wedding shower in Greenville. The food was delicious, the company was great, and the laughs were many. Overall a wonderful weekend!

Afterward, we headed home to Atlanta to get back to real life. Our yard needed some attention, so we'd planned to get straight to work. As soon as we unpacked the car, we changed and headed to the basement to retrieve the yard tools. And then we found this:



Welllll crap.

Where our dry, only relatively creepy basement should have been was our wet and a little bit smelly basement. We quickly found ourselves having yet another "Oh my gosh this is our first house and we don't know what to do or why this is happening!" moments. I am sure lots of friends can relate. You feel a bit torn between running away with your arms flailing in the air, calling your parents and screaming "help!", and thinking about how to rationally handle it on your own like the mature, responsible adult you are (trying to be.)

After staring dumbfoundedly at one another for a few moments, we put on our detective hats and found that the source of the unwanted water was our air conditioning unit, which came new with the house. We called Bryan's handy stepfather who could likely disassemble a jet, put it back together, and make it work faster than it did before. He said it was probably that the filter was too dirty, and that it had caused our condenser coils to freeze over. (Clearly I am asking Bryan, "Now what froze over again? What is that thing called?" as I am typing here...)

Turns out he was right! Although Bryan has changed the filter every few months (unbeknownst to me- thanks B!), apparently our house's air was extra dirty and clogged the thing right up. And then because it was so dirty, the whole thing mutinied and started leaking water all over our cornhole set and beach chairs.

Scorned Air Filter



My Uncle Joe, who lives two streets over and has been a lifesaver on a number of occasions during "Our First House Freak Outs" came over to take a look at things and helped confirm our diagnosis. He helped B check the water meter to make sure that we didn't have a leak.

We did not. SUCCESS!

Super Joe to the Rescue!

After Bryan borrowed our neighbor's wet vac and got over 30 gallons of water out of our basement, the crisis came to its conclusion. Another lesson learned.

Now that the flood was finished with, we still had to work on the yard. Ever seen the movie Ferngully? That's sort of how our yard was starting to look.



Mosquito infested devil weeds and my knight in shining... Dawson's Creek sleeveless tee

Despite our best efforts to plant grass, lay pine straw, etc., the only thing that grows SUPER well in our yard is weeds. We have lots of patchy spots where the grass didn't take and a few hanging baskets which are no longer hanging because I killed the flowers in them, but the weeds- they are thriving! My folks got us a weed wacker and today Bryan put it to use. He attacked, and I followed behind bagging the slain weeds. Once my allergies kicked in and I started sneezing, I even donned a super sexy H1N1-esque mask.

HOT

Despite the heat and the swarms of mosquitoes, we made a lot of progress.

Take that devil weeds!

Bryan gets most of the credit. I eventually went inside and started working on dinner, unpacking from the trip, and sipping on a well deserved Coors Light.





Keep going honey! You're doing a great job! Hooray Bryan!

All in all, this was a busy Sunday! A wedding shower, a short road trip, a small crisis followed by a life lesson, and a little elbow grease. Thankful for my almost husband for baring the brunt of the work outside and thankful to have him as my partner in learning how to be a grown up. 

Like any good almost wife, I rewarded him with bacon for dinner.

Open faced BL's (oops, no T's in the house) and roasted sweet potatoes

While our yard is still far from where we want it to be and at this point we are considering professional help, I have to say that I still absolutely adore our little house.



Home is wherever I'm with you.



Deliciousness and My Random Fiance

I feel compelled to share the recipe I fixed last night that we enjoyed again tonight. I found it on Pinterest among the million savory sounding recipes on my Yummers! board that I have not yet found the motivation to make. I decided to finally give one a go! B and I have talked a lot recently about adding more vegetable based meals to our diets and this seemed like a good way to do so. 

The recipe is for stacked roasted vegetable enchiladas and you can find out how to make it here. I mostly followed the recipe, but doubled up on the cauliflower and cut the number of tortillas in half. Also, I am not chef-y enough to make my own tortillas, so I just bought the smaller whole wheat ones at the Kroger. 

This puppy is time intensive and requires a whole lot of chopping so if you're short on time, this is not the recipe you're looking for. You have to chop all the veggies then roast them for 45 minutes before you even assemble the casserole and then bake it for 30 more minutes. But friends- it is SO worth it! 

Veggie Goodness

After his first bite, Bryan said, "And this doesn't even have any meat in it? Wow!" The concept of an all vegetable meal is a tough one for the guy who has a personal vendetta against portobello mushrooms because they are sometimes substituted for beef in burgers. But, the seasoning and deliciousnes of the roasted veggies made up for it. You could easily substitute any of the veggies in the recipe for whatever you have on hand like broccoli, carrots, etc. 

The leftovers were equally as good tonight, too, so it's a good one to eat off of for the week. We had hoped this meal would last us three nights.... it did not. Too delicious to say no to seconds. Womp womp, cooking again tomorrow.

On another note, here is a glimpse into a happy moment I got to have today. I have an app on my phone that counts down to the wedding by the second. Sometimes this causes me to completely panic thinking about how much we still have left to do (hotel bags and fittings and programs, oh my!), but mostly it gets me really excited. Every day at 2:30 PM, the number of days until I am Mrs. Hill goes down by one. Often times I will text B and let him know about our new countdown number. Today, the number of days went from 66 to 65, so I sent him a text to let him know (because I am sure he was waiting with baited breath for the update!) Here is how that exchange went:

If you don't know Bryan, you probably think this is a very strange conversation. If you do know Bryan, you know that this is completely normal and it probably doesn't surprise you even a tiny bit. 

Strange? Yes. Did it make me laugh out loud at my desk and bring a smile to my face? You bet. 

Thankful for an almost husband who blows a pretend conch in triumph because we are getting hitched in 65 days. 

Here we go!

Alright folks! I have finally decided to take the plunge and start a blog! No real idea what I will write about on a day to day basis but it will probably be filled with some funny stories, yummy recipes, and hopefully lessons I will learn each day about life.

The biggest reason I wanted to start this thing now is that there are just so many exciting and crazy things going on that I'm afraid if I don't document them somewhere, I will forget the little details that make them so wonderful. From Bryan and I buying our first house last January and all that that entails (yard work, doing a boy's laundry, failed herb garden, etc.) to our upcoming wedding (66 more days!!!) to preparing for marriage (the good and the bad)- life is very sweet and very full these days.

Oh, and I am going to London and India ten days after we get back from our honeymoon for two weeks and I want to have a way to document every morsel of the trip!

Hopefully this will be a place to laugh and reflect, and will be a way for me to remember these moments years from now.

In case anyone is wondering (assuming anyone reads this), the name Peach Beach comes from my almost initials and my almost husband's initials. As of October 13th 2012 I will be Paige Callahan Hill (PCH) and Bryan's full name is Bryan Christopher Hill (BCH). Thus- Peach Beach!

Hope you will visit again soon.

PKC