Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie

Oi oi oi

Every Sunday Jillian and I's American family get together to for a good old fashioned Sunday dinner. We chat about our weeks happenings, debate topics, laugh, hang out and celebrate bdays, holidays and so. Which brings to my point on this past Sunday dinner we celebrated Australia day. We did so by having bangers and mash with veggi's and with my sister inlaw Amy baking cookies with Ozzie flag on it. It was such delight.



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Odd Jobs jobs jobs

As most people know when you buy a house the odd job list is long times that by 7 when you add a remodel, times it by another 12 when you have to creatives minds who have an urge to move forward at all times and add a few more for the heck of it.
Well Jillian and I have been more than just chipping away at this odd job list. We have been taking it down like a lumber jack.
We have painted a wall completely in black chalk board paint, put a picture of Fremantle, a black keys poster, an old painting, a cork board that we made out of an old burlap sack, put in a new light fixture and all this was in one weekend or so.





































Well much love to all.
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My micro mini ramp

It's been a while since my last confession. Cough . Ah I mean post.

Jillian and I had a very Merry Xmas and a very Happy New
Year. We were once again spoilt with many greatly thoughtful gifts. Jillian and I did splurged on each by getting an elliptical (a low impact running machine ) . We are now living the high life with our own work out room.



Over the Xmas holidays Jillian and I both had 10 days off. My work is so great it gives us those days off and Jillian had vacation built up on a use it or lose it by the end of the year type deal. So we had it off together. We our time we got to share a lot of family and friend time while also doing some personal projects.
Since moving into the new house I have been wanting to build a mini ramp and over the Xmas break I got to do just that.
I built it 4 foot wide so we can still fit the car in garage and that size also made materials easier to work with 1 3/4 foot tall because of and length restrictions and roughly 11 foot in length.
Other than a few helping hands from mate Mikey G, Big Poppa (Jillian's dad) and Jillian herself I made it myself.
Here is picture of the finished product.



I think is a long enough post for now.
Peace
Matty

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Holiday Parties and Holiday fun

As I sit here writing this Seattle is holding true to it's name wet, rainy and cold. But that has not dampened Jillian and I's Holiday spirits.

With Thanksgiving always falling on a Thursday both Jillian and I were lucky enough to have both Thursday and Friday off, making it a 4 day weekend for us. With these four days off Jillian and I stayed very busy with Thanks giving Dinner, xmas tree shopping (even though we didn't get a real one we went up to enjoy the experience with the family), some live theater for Jillian, a few house projects and a whole bunch of rad family time. It was a really rad weekend.

With Thanksgiving kick starting the holiday season off with a bang. Jillian and I were excited. Our next Holiday season date was a friends of ours festive party called Chrismakwanzikah a blend of Christmas, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah. It was quite a fun night.

The next night Jillian's grandmother took the whole family out for a beautiful x-mas dinner. It was a delicious meal with great company.

Just a few days later than that on December 9th Jillian and I hosted my work Holiday party.

Oh Man, were we excited for this. Not only were we excited to be showing off our newly remodeled house. I had made t-shirts for all my fellow co-workers. Each shirt and a co-workers face on it but I didn't give the everyone a shirt with their face on it. Where is the fun in that? I gave everyone a shirt with a different co-workers face on it. See the picture below. Everyone had a good laugh. 

All the employees received some great gifts from Jay and Dave (Bosses).It was great night,

We still have a few holiday parties to attend and are looking forward to them all.

Hope you all are are enjoying the holiday season.

Matty

Tis the start of the Season.

I must admit it is easy to get wrapped up in the festive season here in the NW of America. Even when you get stuck on a bus for 5 hours on what should be a 40 min drive home on Monday night because of the snow. It seems like the classic American Festive story sometimes all we are missing is a grinch and/or jack frost. 

Jillian and I are always pushing forward on life and currently Jillian is the one to make huge push forward with deciding to get her MBA(Masters in Business). Jillian will starting on January 3rd and will be attending SU Seattle University. It is a part time program and will be lasting roughly 3 years. I am very excited to see Jillian take full advantage of that crazy smart brain of hers.

Jillian has once again been jet setting around the country and spent a week in Denver for work. 

Here is a site that my boss and I worked on Moprise.com . This site evolved alot over time and we are very pleased with what we ended up with.

Happy start of the holidays 
Much Love Matty

Here is a little shot of our house with a layer of snow.

OH Remodel

Oh Remodel, how we love and hate you...

Jillian and I moved into our new residence on July 15th 2010 and within two weeks the fun had started. We were tearing down walls, changing counter tops, ripping floors up, changing doors and the list goes on and on and on and is still going. Jillian and I added a touch to the house today that we feel is up to standard to share now.

Jillian and I ran into many bumps along the way. From uneven flooring, electrical problems, leaking sliding door, waiting on oven and contractors. Overall we changed the counter tops from hideous tile to beautiful slab granite, the floors from linoleum and gross carpet to fantastic red oak hardwood floors. A new slider door for the back door. A new five burner gas oven and a brand new gas fireplace. All of which was done by contractors. Jillian and I tried our hardest to do as much as we could and we ended up painting the cabinets a slightly matte black, with Jillian's Dad's help we did the electrical needed, we painted,  we put in a corrugated iron back splash for the counters, we added handles to the cabinets which all nobs but each one is different and our latest feat was adding some texture to two of our walls in the living area. We did this texture by staining 40 fence palings pearl gray then we attached brackets on the wall and screwed the wood in. Jillian and I are very very happy with how the house is looking and are excited. Enjoy.

The first photos are of the before shots of the house.

Above:
Looking from the Kitchen out the living room to the backyard

 

In the above photo the wall on the left was taken out to create an island and a more open space into the living room.

The below photo is a better view of the wall.

 

Notice the gross carpet above.

Above: The wall goes down. At this point we were were thinking it would be completed in a week or ...Hahahahaha the fools we are.

We lived with no oven for two months. Luckily we lived next door to Jillian's parents.

The projects are not complete, But the big stuff is done. Hope you cats like it.

Back to blogging

Okay I have been off my blog game lately and I know all three readers I have are devoed ( Australian for devastated ). So over the next few days I will try and a few new tid bits. First one is a little something I added to my office. I have been lucky enough to be able to start collecting skateboards And few weeks ago I got a chance to put some of them up.


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