Complete!

Sort of. There are still obvious mistakes in the wall, so I think at some point this spring, we're going to re-paint with a texture paint to hide the mistakes, then paint over that with the brown....Oat Straw to be exact. We may also end up painting the whole room in Oat Straw, and going a touch darker on the far wall. Or not.

At any rate, this part of the project is complete. I love the new lights...they make it look like such a modern house. Let's review again how this thing progressed, shall we?

This was how our wall looked up until 13 days ago. Let's disco, baby! This picture was taken in June 2004 when we first looked at the house.


The first day I was on vacation, I started bringing down the wall. "Tear down the wall! Tear down the wall!"



On Monday of this week, Andy came over to help me hang sheetrock with the suppies that Gregg graciously brought over.


And finally, today. The finished product.


Here's a more dramatic, "While You Were Out" look at it, with out the fan in the way...

Mud wrestling

In my haste to make a post the other day, I forgot the thank Gregg for brining over the finishing supplies so that my wall didn't look like a jigsaw puzzle. I mudded up the wall, put some tape down, and since I'm not a pro at this, left bubbles in the tape, but I put primer on it anyway (thanks again to Gregg), and then it really didn't look right, so I went back today and re-mudded the spots that looked bad. It looks much better now, and I'm just waiting for it to dry so I can sand it and re-prime it, then it's off the Home Depot to get some paint and a new light fixture.

I "painted" the wall virtually so we could try out the colors. We'll see how it looks compared to the real thing once it's all said and done.

And on the 9th day, he said "Let there be a wall," and a wall was built and it was good

Not too shabby of a job for amateurs. Much thanks to Andy for helping me out. Tomorrow...the mud.

When the Saints go marching in...

Since I left my camera at home, I had to use the phone cam. Evidently, it doesn't take far-away pictures as well as it takes close up pictures.





We left the game with about 90 seconds. The Saints had a 2 point lead when we left, and as we were walking throug the stadium, the Lions were stopped cold for 3 downs. Evidently, though, the made a huge connection on 4th down and won the game by 1 point. Go figure.

Getting the entire family in the Christmas spirit

He wears the "Santa's Helper" bandana with pride. The antlers...not so much...

It's 10 degrees somewhere...

Yesterday I went shopping. Most of the shopping was done online, but I did have to go to some real stores and deal with real people for some of it.

And that just served to hammer the Christmas spirit right out of me.

I hate crowds. The reason I hate crowds is because there's always stupid people in crowds. You know the kind...the ones who walk slow and take up the entire walkway while gesturing wildly with their hands or stop every 10 feet to look at something? The "slow and wides" as Mom and Dad call them.

Well, here in San Antonio there's another kind of stupid, along with the slow and wides. They're the "I'm-trying-to-be-fashionable-in-my-winter-clothing-even-though-it's-almost-sixty-degrees-outside" stupid. They were everywere. The typical ITTBFIMWCETIASDO stupid person is a teenaged girl, although I did see some 20-somethings too. They're so easy to spot, too, because they're wearing a scarf and possibly a stocking cap, although not down over their ears like people do when it's actually cold outside.

But what really gives them away are the boots. You know the ones--the Uggs that Oprah likes so much. I think they're called Uggs because they're frickin UGLY. These are the kind of boots that you should be wearing if you're in the Arctic or Chicago during the winter (because there's really no difference between the Arctic and a Chicago winter, except...no penguins in Chicago), but you sure as hell shouldn't be wearing them when it's 60 degrees outside!

I recall Oprah (yes, I watched the other day...I'm on break, remember?) saying how warm they kept her feet, and all I could think about yesterday when I saw these teeny boppers wearing them around in the mall was how badly their feet must be sweating, and what a lovely aroma that must produce.

Very fashionable, indeed.

Phase 1: Complete

And I didn't even need any help from Andrew Dan Jumbo, or Ty Pennington. Just over three hours from start to finish, and that included clean-up! Here's the evidence:

The first hole in the wall was made just before noon...


The obligatory "before" shot...from summer '04 when we bought the house


During...I went a little nuts with the masking tape...


Finished with demo, just after 3 PM.


I left the top because there's nothing on the other side of that wall except attic, and I didn't feel like leaving our house exposed for the next couple of days. We'll get it done when we're ready to drywall.

Now I just need to get the crew over here and we'll drywall and paint!

Be prepared to call in some backup

I think I may have been watching too many home improvement shows. This weekend, I'm going to take on the task of destroying the "wall o' mirrors" in our house. Hopefully, the rest of our house will still be intact after I'm done.

Of course, destroying is the easy part. After that, I have to put the wall back up, sans mirrors. This is going to prove to be interesting, as I've never put up a wall before. I can only hope that it doesn't look like a totally amateur job. I'll post pictures as the process moves along.

Just to prove that I can and do update my blog more frequently than my sister...

Some cute dog and wife pictures for you...

I published my first book!

Yes, you read that right. I published a book.

Seems like the whole Laleman family is getting into the book biz. Maybe I can get my mom to sell my book at her store...maybe not.

I became interested in trying my hand at book publishing after reading this post on Dooce. I never realized that publishing my own work could be so cost efficient. I've created photo books through Apple's iPhoto before, but they were really expensive, and I wasn't all that impressed with the quality.

I still haven't received my copy of the book yet, but I'm expecting it sometime this week. It's a collection of photos from our honeymoon this summer (no, not those kind of pictures...landscape pictures). I already know one thing I need to revise in the book--I didn't give Monica credit for the photos she took, and I just know I'm going to hear about it.

Anyway, you can check it out (and buy a copy if you want!) through Lulu

Its' beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Well, it's officially Christmas at the Laleman household.

We've purchased...rather, I've purchased our summer sausage and cheese ball.

I remember those times when Dad would purchase these items from kids at school, or receive them as gifts from staff members. It always marked the true beginning of the Christmas season, with Dad cutting pieces off the sausage and Sarah and I peeling the casing off and popping them in our mouths.

We never seemed to be able to get enough.

Since Monica is pregnant and can't ingest the tons of preservatives present in the meat and cheese, I get to eat these wonderful Christmas treats by myself.

That's right, Sarah, they're mine...ALL MINE!

A Magical Christmas Palace

When we got home from our trip to the great, frigid north last weekend, I decided I had better take advantage of the 90 degree weather to put up Christmas lights. This was a much easier task than it was last year, as I already knew what I was doing and didn't have to put any new nails in the side of the house like I did last year.

It was sort of like teaching the same lesson two years in a row.

What we didn't do last weekend, though, was put up our Christmas tree and other decorations--mostly because that would have involved us cleaning the house.

We did that this weekend.

So now we have a lit fake Christmas tree and all of our Christmas knick knacks decorating the living room, and as the song goes, "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas."

I'm looking forward to not having to travel this Christmas, but I am going to miss being with my side of the family. It was just going to be too much driving for one year. I think just with our road trips, we've traveled close to 15,000 miles in the past 12 months.

We're listing Monica's truck as a second home on our taxes this year.

The day after...

Well, we all got completely stuffed yesterday. We had entirely too much turkey and just enough mashed potatoes and stuffing. Today, the Carters are coming.

Dad left early to go pick up Grandma Jean, and Mom is at work, so it's just Monica, myself and Sarah here before everyone starts arriving. I'm looking forward to everyone getting here--Monica and I haven't seen anyone since July, and I'm looking forward to meeting Kendra and Tom's newest addition, TJ.

Tomorrow, Moni and I head back to San Antonio, and I think we're going to try to drive it straight through. It will be difficult, but if I can manage to sleep as much in the car as I did on the way up (which never happens), we should be able to make it back to SA in one day. That will be nice, because then we'll have all day Sunday to recover, instead of having to drive another 5 or so hours just to make it home before we can relax.

Here's hoping for peaceful slumber in the car.

Who let the dogs out?

We're at Mom & Dad's this week. So far, it's been pretty lazy, which is just what I like when we leave San Antonio. It seems like so many times we try to do too much when we're on vacation, and end up needing another vacation when we get home (and I'm sure you can figure out how our workplaces feel about that).

Since Monica isn't feeling so hot right now, we've decided to forgo the trip to Chicago and the trip to Indianapolis, and just hang out here and be veggies, and that's just fine with me.

We had to bring the dog with us, of course, and he's having a grand old time playing in my parent's big yard with Rhett. The only problem is that he knows there's another dog in the house and now when he wakes up in the morning, instead of waiting patiently for us to get up, he starts whining because he wants to go and play.

This means that, even though I'm on vacation, I'm getting up at 7 AM or earlier to let the dogs out.

So I guess that answers the question, doesn't it?

Howdy, ya'll

This is the first post on the Laleblog...you place on the web to keep up with the Lalemans. For those of you who don't know us, my wife Monica and I got married back in July and are expecting our first child in June.

If anyone else from the fam wants to join in the fun, just let me know and I'll add you to the list so you can blog here too!