I've crossed off several more items from my to-do list. After two weekends and multiple nights after work, my household is finally coming to order.

I sanded and stained my outdoor wooden patio table; stained the wood behind my outdoor lights connected to my house; finished spray painting two outdoor chairs; downloaded pictures I took in May onto my computer and sent them to friends; bought patio chairs for around the table and an outdoor umbrella; and started my wedding website.

Pure satisfaction! Who needs a handyman or a personal assistant? Not me. Who needs a break and a masseuse? Me.

Angie's List loves to hear about your indoor and outdoor projects. Let us know what's going on around your house at mailbag@angieslist.com.

So, I’m planning my re-wedding. Yes, I’m getting married twice to the same guy, and no, there wasn’t any kind of confusion of sexual orientation that annulled the first wedding, in case you were wondering. Nope, my first wedding was of the shotgun variety, sans baby — we had immigration hoops to jump through so my husband could escape the captivity of our rental home and enter the American work force, which required us to get married in a hasty fashion. This meant I had two weeks to plan my wedding and minimal availability of vendors/officiants/locations, etc… (We ended up getting married in a strip mall behind a Mexican restaurant on a rainy November afternoon; it was lovely despite the despondent backdrop.) The biggest negative about the whole affair though, was that, because of the short notice, only one member of my husband’s very large family (he’s one of six children) could make the trip.

I was hoping that my advanced planning would remedy this nuptial ineptitude the second time around — as well as my bridal shortcomings of not donning the white dress and my father missing the chance to give me away.  But, while I’ve found the dress, and my dad is already working on finding the perfect music to play while walking me down the aisle – I nixed Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” much to his dismay — the direct impact of gas prices on airfare has made my third obstacle insurmountable.

No one from John’s family is going to be able to make it this time around. Round-trip tickets from Dublin are fetching a hefty $1,500 at the moment, and that seems to be a bit steep for a weekend trip across the Atlantic. But, while both John and I are devastated that no one from his family will be there, we’re still looking forward to having a ‘proper wedding.’ With the added planning time, I’ve had the chance to look at excellent resources to make sure that no aspect of this wedding is amiss. We’ve hired an amazing photographer to ensure that each moment is captured so that his parents won’t miss a single instant. I’ve found a great vendor and location on Angie's List, and, with the brilliant suggestion from Staci to incorporate wedding pictures of our parents and grandparents, John’s family will have their own two-dimensional representation. I'm not cutting many corners this time around, and I figure it’s all worth it. After all, I’ll only get married twice…

A popular topic of conversation here in the Blue House is our pets. Not only do we talk about them, we blog about them.

I have a dog, too, but she's not very playful. At the age of 15, my beloved Cocker Spaniel mix Penny, rescued from the humane society as a puppy, spends her days eating and sleeping (that's her picture, taken 13 years ago). The arthritis in her back legs prevents her from bounding up the deck steps these days, so she needs assistance when she goes out to do her business. She generally moves very slowly, but there's still a strong wag in her tail and a shine in her eyes.

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but I now know an old dog remembers old tricks. As I said, Penny moves at her own, slow pace. However, last week during a cookout, one of the guests absentmindedly tossed her a piece of a hot dog. In a flash, the old girl spun around and caught the meat in her mouth before it hit the ground!

And that reminded me: As Penny grew up, my children and I used to toss her pieces of popcorn and she never missed. It had been so long since we did this that I forgot about her incredible ability to catch food in mid-air. She moves so slowly now that it never occurred to me the spirit of the black and tan puppy was still inside of the old, black and gray dog. We laughed as my dinner guests continued to toss hot dogs her way. Again, she didn't miss a single chunk. The old dog was feeling quite spry.

I know there will come a time in the near future when I may have to decide Penny's fate. I don't want her to suffer in her old age. But as long as the food is flying, I think she'll be just fine.

Last week, I had my driveway replaced with concrete. I must admit I was nervous at first. The permanence of the concrete sort of freaked me out. But when it was complete … I was in love. A few days after completion, the gray concrete turned into a heavenly snow-white. It just makes everything look clean, and clean is good.

Now that our driveway is paved, I’m moving on with my obsessions (I promise).

My next target is cleaning all of our windows that faced the driveway — since they are absolutely caked in gravel dust (crud, I’m talking about gravel again, aren’t I?) I’ll make sure I find a window cleaner on Angie's List, because my personal list of fears includes not only gravel, but heights as well.

The world can be a scary place. You don't have to go looking very far in the newspaper to find out about the latest toxin, plague, or general crisis that's going to keep you up with night terrors for a few days. (Worse still is if you hear about it on TV - c'mon, how many times have you heard the anchor intone 'Is there a poison in your home that could be killing you RIGHT NOW? Check out our report at 11!' And you just want to yell, '11? I might be DEAD by then! Feed me information!') And if you work IN the media business, you hear about it pretty much nonstop. Mold in the basement. Lead in toys or your home's paint. Horrible side effects from children's cold medicine.

And of course, this all multiplies exponentially if you're a parent. (Not many new college freshmen were terribly concerned when it turned out Sarge from 'Cars' might be poisonous if you chewed him, but parents of toddlers were frantically picking through their little ones' car collections trying to find the offending Jeep.)

But the point to all this - the point of media in general covering this sort of thing, and certainly the point of Angie's List making such an emphasis on it - is not to be AFRAID, but to be INFORMED. Knowledge is power, so they say, and the more you know about what you're getting into, the better chance you and your loved ones have of making it through intact. Because most of these things are controllable. You can be the parent of a toddler living in a 1955-built home loaded with lead paint and still sleep peacefully at night if you're aware of the danger and take the appropriate steps to contain it. It might not be easy, but it can be done. Admittedly, some things are easier to contain than others, but in all cases it's still better than blissful ignorance.

So, yes, the world's scary and sometimes it might even be as dangerous as you hear. But helping deal with that is what we're doing here at Angie's List, every day, pulling together as much information as we can to give the best guidance and give you a fighting chance to make it through the next crisis, whether it's scrambling to get that alternator replaced or finding someone to repair that basement leak RIGHT NOW.

My chief goal this summer was to rip out my unsightly, peeling and warped deck, and replace it with a paver brick patio. Working at Angie’s List, I’ve learned a lot while interviewing home-improvement specialists for our magazine’s Comparative Shopper column and other stories. Advice on how to improve my home’s resale value always gets my attention. So, that said, I knew replacing the deck with a patio that not only looks lovely but is also maintenance free was the way to go.

My husband, however, chalked the idea up to a womanly impulse to spend our hard-earned money and nearly chickened out at the last minute. He hated the deck, but he said, “I can build a new one… installing a patio can’t be that difficult, I can do it myself.” Now, that’s a manly impulse.

Luckily, he stepped away from the power tools and let me hire a landscaper off the List to do the job. But I didn’t win the entire battle. He decided we could at least tear out the old, oversized deck by ourselves. Fair enough.

That turned out to be a lot harder than we expected. (Big surprise there!) And why he didn’t invite over other manly men to help haul the splintered boards — complete with sharp, rusty nails — I’ll never understand. Maybe he just wanted some quality time with the wifey.

Armed with a crowbar and sledgehammer, the first half of demolition went painfully slow. He finally got a brilliant idea four hours into the project (yes, four hours and we were only halfway there), to grab his saw and go to town. The second half took a brisk 30 minutes.

Next came the conundrum of where to dump this mess. He apparently didn’t know it’s very much illegal to drop it off in a random dumpster. We finally located the local transfer station, after getting lost a couple of times over several days, only to find out they charged $50 per truckload — and we had three.

I’m guessing it would have been cheaper to have someone who knew what they were doing get rid of the deck for us, especially when you figure in the amount of time and energy we put into it. I asked my husband, “How much is your time really worth to you?” Lesson learned. Good luck to you women whose husbands choose to complicate matters instead of referring to the List!

Regardless, we ended up with a fantastic patio that we’re both very proud of. Even our dog, Buddy, loves it: the bricks get nice and cool in the evening, and he fits perfectly on our new stoop. That’s a big relief, considering how ticked off he was when we tore out the deck. We left him a little section of boards to lay on while we sawed away, but the dirty looks he kept giving us let us know he wasn’t thrilled with the destruction.

I can’t wait to host a summertime cookout on our new patio. Before that, we must shell out a little more money to get some new outdoor furniture to replace our $9.99 camping chairs that are adorning it now. Let's just hope my husband doesn’t want to try his hand at furniture fabrication!

I experienced one of those “not lasting long enough” moments this past weekend when my son celebrated his first birthday. Like any other woman getting ready for a party, I busied myself with the prep work. Cleaning, organizing, grocery shopping, setting up, cooking … the list goes on. There didn’t seem to be enough time to get everything together before the guests arrived. But in the end, the hectic planning was well worth it as I got to watch my babe devour his first birthday cake. It was a perfect moment that completely erased the frantic mode I had been in all day.

Time is a funny thing, but I know in the end it all has a way of balancing out. Like when you’re a kid and summers seem to last forever but as an adult there's never enough sunny days of fun. The same was true with my son's birthday party. I spent all day worried there wouldn't be enough time to get ready, only to wish that time would stand still while I watched him smash cake all over the place.

When it comes down to it, there will always be time crunches. I’m glad the List offers hundreds of service providers that can do my busy work for me. Because I’d much rather spend my time having fun with my family than completing the mundane chores of life. Now, if only I could find a sponsor to underwrite my summer of leisure …

I don't know about your job, but I love mine. The people are great, the job is demanding and rewarding, and the atmosphere is unlike anything I've experienced anywhere else.

Our recent Soapbox Derby is a great example of this unique atmosphere. It's an annual event at the List, and we've blogged about it before. It's a great event filled with food:

And family:

I'd have to say the best part of events like this at the List are the friends one makes. While constructing a soapbox derby car, eating roasted pig and drinking free beverages, one also gets to know their teammates. It's a great opportunity to network or just make friends.

But this good thing brings one negative aspect: it stinks when these people move on to other chapters in their lives. For all the fun we can have, eventually we'll all move on.

While reviewing pics of the Derby, I noticed two friends that have moved on from the List. Dan (he's the one with the purple boa) recently moved to Phoenix:

And DJ moved on to Harvard Business School:

Not a great pic of DJ. Sorry.

And soon another friend will leave. Eric Hartz, my fellow associate editor, will be attending law school, and this Friday is his last day.

They may move on, but they are certainly not forgotten.

Most Angie’s List members, when checking the List, look for a company to hire based on their prices, punctuality, and quality of work, and most reports reflect on these same factors. But there’s more to a service company than what’s in its report.

Members may not realize it without visiting the company’s website or hearing it from its employees, but many companies, when they aren’t painting, installing windows, or remodeling kitchens, are involved in their communities.

For example, the companies that participate in the Angie’s List Wishmakers program volunteer their time, skills and materials to make needed improvements to someone’s home — for free. Talk with these companies or read their stories online, and you’ll soon see that, in many instances, it wasn’t the first time they helped. In fact, some companies, such as In Your Home in Portland, Ore., often work with the elderly or disabled, according to partner Dave Dickinson.

Another company, Browsers Welcome in Columbus, Ohio, is helping younger kids. The store’s owner, Melvin Satterfield, meets weekly with neighborhood teens to provide some guidance and direction and teach them the trade of furniture refinishing.

So, the next time you hire a company off the List, take the time to talk to them and find out what they do when they’re not on the job. You may find that the work they do off the clock is just as — if not more — important. And, you may discover that many may have won communities' awards — not just for being good businesses, but for being good neighbors.

Ever since I was hit by a car while delivering newspapers when I was 10 years old, I've been very mindful of my teeth. The car struck the back wheel of my Daisy Dirtbike, which launched me into the air. I ended up landing on my left knee and chin, breaking two of my newly formed front teeth. Countless dentist visits later, I had shiny new porcelain chompers (that I've broken out a few more times since, but those are stories for another time ... )

Sitting through root canals and dental dams and hours in an uncomfortable chair while a masked man with a flashlight on his head poked at my gums made quite an impression on the 10- to 12-year-old me. That impression: Take care of your teeth to avoid going through anything resembling this experience again!

So I'm a diligent tooth-brusher, and I floss frequently. I get my six-month dental checkups like clockwork. I won't chew on straws or pens and I don't even think about resorting to use my teeth to open pesky packaging like some people do.

However, none of my religious dental hygiene was a match for an obsession I've developed in the last six or seven months — Altoids. Last week at my most recent check-up, my dentist told me that I, yes I, have a cavity. A cavity?!?! Me???

I point my finger squarely in blame to the mounting pile of Altoids cans at my desk. They create a tower reaching about a third of the way to the ceiling (my goal was to go all the way up). Construction of this mindless project has ceased.

As I'm sure you've figured out by now, I fight a daily battle with this thing called 'moderation.' It only stands to reason that my newish obsession with those delicious jolts of peppermint would — and did — stymie my long-standing obsession with keeping my teeth decay-free.

Now I'm on sugar-free gum and fruit (respectively), as I can't be trusted with Altoids. I'll remind myself of that when I get my cavity filled.