My brother and his girlfriend just closed on their first house. He's a carpenter and GC by trade, so of course this is a fixer upper, or in his words 'a dump'. I have often wondered why he didn't do this earlier, but it turns out they've been looking for a while.
He had an open house on Saturday, and although he warned us old fogies to arrive early before the craziness happened, his friends were surprisingly well behaved. Nothing was burned or broken by the time we left, and it was pretty much contained to the house. (That may have been due to the weather, we'll see how their house swarming goes in a couple of months).
The property is a more run down part of town, and the house had been rented out for a number of years, so is in dire need of TLC. They have some pretty big plans for renovations, and have about 2 months to do it. I can't wait to see how it turns out. They'll be taking a 3 bedroom and changing it to two, and moving a bathroom from one side of the house to the other.
I'm certainly going to get my fill of playing in gardens this year, my sister bought her house last fall, and is looking for assistance with her extensive perennial beds, and my SIL has a big yard and wants to add gardens. My SIL had her back operated on this December, she had a couple of compressed disks. She is feeling much better now, but I'm worried that she'll overdo it with the packing and renos.
I spent Sunday baking and cooking, I've got a bunch of stuff stored in the freezer, will get it out to friends as soon as possible. One of the items I'm not too sure of, so I made an extra batch and will give it a try this week. I don't want to give away horrible food. Some of the baking made it over to another friend's for a treat during the Superbowl...which was awesome to watch in HD with the digital projector. His screen is something ridiculous like 80" I think I've almost got hubby convinced that out '85 Sony Trinitron has GOT TO GO. We don't have a dark enough room for a projector, but a 42" plasma will suit me just fine.
Back to the Superbowl. I'll admit it, now that there is no CFL in the city, I have no interest in NFL. And I generally find the NFL to be a boring game. I think it's the extra down. There just isn't the same urgency. But I am almost always entertained by the Superbowl and this year was no exception. I watched the last half of the Colt's Championship, so they were the team I was rooting for, but I really had no other reason to pick one over the other. Prince rocked, and I'll admit I snickered at his silhouette with the guitar. I actually started snickering as soon as he picked the guitar up, I'll admit it, I'm mentally 12.