The 20/20 Experience

We purchased the tickets last MAY.  February felt so far away but it is finally time!

Tonight Loriann, Molly, Karri and I are going to see Justin Timberlake!!

Stacey and I saw him the last time he was here, maybe 5-6 years ago, and he was awesome!

One of the best concerts I have ever been to,  Hands down.

But before our night started we had to take a trip over to the house.  Greg, the floor guy, was there this morning putting a few finishes on the floor for us to look at.  We need to make a decision by Wednesday for the floor color.  Natural or stain?  That is the question.

It was nice to see the siding in the daylight.  I LOVE this color!  So happy to not be another one of the light beige houses in this neighborhood.  I love how bright the trim is compared to the siding color.  Exactly the look I was going for!  Now gotta cross my fingers that the front works out and pulls it all together.

Here is our dining room light.

Most of our light fixtures are in.  All except for the one I am most excited to see...the pendants that will go above the center island.  I am super excited to see those!  Here is a picture of the lights in the hallway upstairs and looking into the loft.  I love the way they brought the ceiling down- it was Dale's idea.  He said that way if someone wants to finish it into a bedroom later it will be easy for them.  Great point!  It gives the room a ton of character.  

We have two patches of floor to check out.
On the left is the natural oil-based finish and on the right is the water-based finish.
There is no stain included in the finish which means that the contrast between the dark and light patches in the wood will be pretty bold.  Brian has wanted a natural finished floor since we started this process and I have wanted a darker stained floor.  I love the look of walnut the most but after many conversations about how soft walnut floors are we just couldn't bring ourselves to do it.  We went with hickory which is a much harder wood.   So now we have two choices.  1.  Natural finish- what you see in the picture here  or  2.  Stain the floor.  If we stain the floor we would be adding color to the lighter boards and although you would still see a contrast in the boards from the light to dark, they wouldn't be as bold as with the natural finish.
I wanted darker floors but need to give the natural finish a chance.  I have only seen it in pictures and felt like in order to make an educated decision we needed to explore our options.  

Both of the finishes looked good although I am not totally sold on the natural finish. I don't mind the medium and darker boards, I am just not a huge fan of the really light parts.  I don't know.....this decision is hard!

We are going to ask Greg to try a few stain colors too. More to come.

It's time!

Archivers is closing and yesterday we received an email that everything is now 75% off so we decided to meet there before dinner.  It was sooooo sad.  The store was empty.  Like hardly anything left empty.  It was actually surprising that they were staying open with what little stuff they had.  

We made our last purchase :-( and then made our way to the Machine Shed for dinner.

I have never been there so I didn't know what to expect but when I walked in I was taken back a little.  This was REALLY NOT what I was expecting.

It was like a cross between Perkins, Cracker Barrel and your grandma's house.

We sat down anyway and started looking through the menu.  Fried chicken, country fried steak, mashed potatoes, BBQ ribs and chicken pot pies were just a few things we found on the menu.

It was weird there. Although nobody hated it there, it would have been better to end up at a bar-n-grill style place.  This was way too family/low key.

After supper we were on our way!

The concert started right at 8:30.  The lights went out, the stage lit up and the countdown started.

10...9....8....7...6...5....4....3....2...1!!!

And then there he was!  (instant goosebumps)

He started with Pusher Love Girl, which is one of my favorite songs right now.  The music was a little loud and sometimes drown out his voice but there was no denying that this guy knows how to entertain.

True story.

photo from his concert site

photo from his concert site

photo from his concert site

photo from his concert site

photo from his concert site

Half way through the concert there was an intermission.  A 10 minute break.  There are mixed reviews about this type of a break but honestly I would prefer this over a drum solo or an instrumental montage.
The house lights came on and the concert would resume in 10 minutes.
10 minutes later on the dot the lights went down and the concert started again.

A few minutes in the stage started to transform and then right before our eyes it started to move.
A part of the stage came up and over the crowd and planted itself on the other end of the arena.  Most of the second half of the show was performed on the other side.  He sang, he danced, he played guitar and piano.  He sang old stuff and new stuff. He sang some Elvis and Michael Jackson.

He was fantastic!