Love Thy Neighbor?

The best part of living in a basement suite, is that you get to share a house with another family! If you're lucky you might develop some sort of neighborly relationship with them. This relationship may only be exchanging a few words every time you see each other, or it might develop into the type of relationship where you feel comfortable enough to borrow a cup of sugar from them.  I think we've developed a pretty special relationship with our upstairs neighbors.


1. Every time we see them out on the front step having a smoke, we smile and say hello and they give us a blank stare.


2. This winter, Ian kept the pathway shoveled (the pathway that leads to both separate doors), the neighbors made their own path on the grass and never touched the shared pathway, I guess we have cooties?


3. When I had to wash a quilt at 10 30 at night and it accidentally got tangled in the washer which made a loud sound, we got a big, hard stomp of the foot from upstairs which wasn't necessary since I had already untangled the quilt from the washer.


4. Today, I think we reached a real milestone in our relationship. It was a typical morning, I was heading to work, the neighbor was on the front step having a smoke. I turned and gave a friendly smile that was almost reciprocated back and then I stepped out into the street towards my car. I had to cross a small patch of icy snow (the only snow left in the whole neighborhood) I had a big pan of cupcakes in one hand and a purse in the other and then the icy snow had it's way with my. I went down and my cupcakes went all over the road. I was mortified, the neighbor had seen the whole thing, but instead of coming over to, you know, see if I was alright or help clean up the cupcakes, he took one more drag of his smoke, put it in the ash can, and went inside. It was as though he didn't see my chaotic fall happen right before his eyes. 


So ya.... we have a pretty special relationship with our neighbors. 

Living in Peace and Harmony

First off I'm going to give you a little history about myself. I was raised in a family with 2 sisters, 1 brother, a mom and a dad. Growing up, the women basically dominated the house. So these 2 wonderful boys in my family adapted to shaving over counters full of make-up, only get a "two-in-one" shampoo/conditioner combo to fit in the shower among our oodles of shower supplies. Both men were trained to unclog the hair from the showers, and never leave the toilet seat down. If they wanted to watch their T.V shows, they went downstairs. Sadly, our house was a women's territory that 2 men somehow learned to thrive in. Then I moved out and lived with girl roommates up until I was married.

One the other hand, Ian, my husband had one brother, a mom, and a dad. So he, unlike me, lived in a male dominated home where boys could be boys. When Ian graduated, he served his mission for 2 years and came back and lived with only boy roommates up until the point that we were married.

These two complete opposite upbringings have created quite the unique dynamic between man and wife. So here are some things that I found that come with living with a man.

1. They fart and don't get embarrassed.  Not even in front of guests (not including family, he does mind his manners then) 

2. They all come with little anal habits. For example, the toothpaste squeeze. I don't care how I get the toothpaste out, as long as it comes out. Ian pushes the paste from the bottom to get rid of any dents. He likes his toothpaste to always look nice and dent free. 

3. Men don't need much storage room. In our room we have 2 dressers and a big closet. He gets two drawers and 10 hangers and the best part about it- thats all he needs! I also have claimed the bathroom cabinets with most of my hair stuff, but he does have a little basket to provide a place for his razor blades and hair gel.

4.  One day I will clean the bathroom, within a few hours there are little pee droplets on the toilet seat rim again, and its always up so they are hard not to notice.

5. Our typical week day night is spent by Ian watching endless basketball games and me in the other room creeping on crafty blogs or actually attempting the crafts (which is a whole new can of worms to be discussed in another post another day)

6. My point being a man can never watch enough sports. And many women fall victim of that

7. Along with Ian, tons and tons of books also moved into our tiny little house. (This isn't bad thing) but  our house is always covered in little piles of books in every nook and cranny.

8. He educates me on toilet paper. Firstly, a good toilet paper is worth the extra dollars, nothing less than 2-ply unless you want a chapped hinney (I just usually grab the cheapest). The second lesson, I've been informed I use way too much toilet paper in one sitting. I usually don't think anything of it, I unroll and healthy amount scrunch it up and use it. He assured me 2 or 3 squares should do the job... he was right.

9. For some reason he can't understand the concept of decorative pillows for the couch and bed. How hard is to understand they serve no purpose, they just look pretty. But in his defense he does have some good points, one being they get tossed on the floor everynight and provide no use to anyone and they take up a lot of room- but he humors me by making the bed with them on most mornings and is slowly accepting decorative pillows day by day.

10. Counter tops... I don't know what it is about counter tops but men never bother to touch them. Once again to Ian's defense he is a very tidy man and does the dishes every time I cook without ever putting up a stink and I do appreciate that tons- but every time he cleans the kitchen and does the dishes, the counter top goes untouched, and this isn't just him its every man i've met so far.

11. One of the biggest changes i've had to face living with a man is t.v. time. Im slowly learning that he has zero interest in watching say yes to the dress, intervention, heavy, hoarders, I didn't know I was pregnant, 57 year old twin living in old man, or pregnant and in jail, or any type of girly TLC show which are all my favorites.

This list is not a list of complaints- Ian is a great roommate. Boy roommates are just sorta weird at first.

Love This!

This might be old news ... but I found this song and I absolutely love it! It makes me want to be a free spirit and drive a beat-up car all over the United States while wearing cute floral dresses and braids! It's a totally a feel good song! Check it out if you haven't already heard it. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HNY0rx2fw4

If you love that song check out this adorable version. It pulled on my heart strings a bit- But in a good way!

G.U.S

Meet Gus!- My new Puppy. Given to me by the best husband in the whole world! 

We got this little bundle of joy on December 21st as an early Christmas present. The second I saw that face on kijiji I knew I would do anything it took to bring him home with me and I did.  When we picked him up in Diamond city, we were fortunate enough to meet his father... 

He brightens up our lives and we love him like a child. Even though potty training is going horribly and he chews everything in sight, we take one look at that little smooshed face and we just can't resist him...Then we gave him a bath. Turns out, "natural" Gus is not much of a looker. Underneath all his luscious fluffy locks is this-

Needless to say, we couldn't wait to get him dry. In my haste to dry him off, I may have over done it with blow dryer on his head, because instead of the spiky hair he used to have on top of his head he now looks like this. 

But we love him all the same. Thats the thing about family, you stick together during the good, the bad, and the real ugly!

Why Tulip?

I've read enough blogs that I've seen the generic "First blog post" which tells the story of why that person decided to start a blog and they are usually all the same... but i'm doing it anyway. Anyone who knows me knows that I love to read blogs but i've never had any interest in starting my own. Mostly because my life is super normal, great, but normal. Then one night I came across this website called shabby blogs, here I discovered all the wonderful floral blog backgrounds and cheesy little blinkies and I was hooked, I had to have one of my own to spruce up. This is how my blog was born... all because I wanted to make it cute. I was hesitant at first because I didn't want it to turn into a cheesy love fest, but Ian assured me I was funny and creative enough to make a good blog so here I am. Also I named it Tulip because i've always wanted to name my first girl Tulip but Ian put his foot down... so I tried using it as a pet name, no luck their either. Since this blog is ALL mine! I finally got to use the name Tulip. Tulip: The Blog.