Attack of the killer...

...Bamboo?? So, Shane planted a new bamboo plant in our front yard. It's in a little patch of dirt between our driveway and sidewalk. Anyway, it's definitely thriving.

Last weekend, we noticed two new shoots coming up out of the ground. Yesterday, Shane noticed that the shoots had grown quite a bit so he got out his tape measure (yes, we lead very boring lives when we have to measure our bamboo shoots...). We are now tracking the growth, just for fun. Here are the measurements so far:

Day 1 (10/09, 6:00 pm): 34 inches
Day 2 (10/10, 7:30 am): 38 inches

That's right, it grew 4 inches in just over 12 hours! I don't have any pictures to document this phenomenon, but I'll have to add some once I take them. Until then, we'll keep documenting the measurements and keep you all posted... I'm sure you're just dying to see how fast it grows!

Changes...

So, time flew by and it's been a month since we last posted. I know, I know, I'm a slacker. I have been taking pictures with real intent to update our blog. I'm currently on a client where we conveniently have to leave around 5 each day, so I'm loving the free time!

Anyway, a lot has changed around our house, so here are some before and afters.

First, you may remember how excited we were when Shane's bamboo sprouts were about an inch tall...
Well, now the two that survived have 4 shoots each and are a couple feet tall!!! Happy birthday Bamboo...I think you're about a year old.
Next, our mismatched, inherited couches (which we loved and appreciated greatly) were donated and sold (one each)...
...so we could make room for our new couch, Sinclair, and a rug.
Then, with the help of some granite scrap from Excel and some mis-ordered sinks from Linkasink (and a lot of work on Shane's part), we transformed the master bathroom from this:
To this:
Finally, I got a bonus for passing my certification exam, which we decide to invest in some new wood floors (bamboo, of course) for the master bedroom. Here's our old carpet, which looked really nice when we bought the house, but we have since made it quite dirty...
Here's our new bamboo floor (and the installation progress--I needed to give Shane, Tom, and Roy the credit they deserve for all their hard work)...
We haven't cleaned them up quite yet due to another project Tom suggested while we had our room emptied and messy... Can you figure out what it is? Look closely at the pictures above. Still nothing? Here's an old picture from the same place to help you out.
We took out the door and put in a window! One day, while we were waiting for the vapor barrier to dry, Tom, Shane, and I were standing in the doorway looking at the room. Tom asked if we've ever used the door. Honestly, the only time we used it was when we were putting in our other wood floors and could only get into the unaffected portions of the house (the kitchen and our bedroom) through the back doors. We realized it was a waste of a wall and decided that if we took out the door, we'd be able to put our bed in that nook and have tons more space in our room. So we took advantage of the mess we'd already created and did it all at once.

So, those are our changes in the last while. Really, the sink and counters in the master bath have been done for a while and we've had our couch since the middle of August, but I haven't gotten around to blogging about it.

Sorry that we bore you with our house updates. It's just exciting to see how far we've come. It's funny, I keep saying "we" but really the credit goes to Shane and his wonderful father and brothers for everything. I just supervise (i.e. make them crazy with all of my questions and concerns since I don't understand the process...).

Anyway, that's all for now. I promise our next post won't be all about the house... Hopefully we'll have something more interesting to post soon!