'Burb Tales

Getting Organized: Decluttering!

2012-01-26T10:49:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned the other day, I’m dedicating the rest of January to decluttering, cleaning, and otherwise starting the process of getting organized. February will be “Closets Month” so I’ll tackle the organization part later.

A reader brought up a great point in a comment though….where do you start?

Yeah. Yuck. Where DO you start?

I always start with the question “Keep or toss?” I’ll pull stuff out of all the usual hiding places. Then I’ll decide what to keep or toss and group what’s left into categories like décor, cleaning, food/kitchen, office, etc so it can be organized into the right area of the house and not be spread out over multiple closets, etc.

There are three major areas I want to make sure I tackle: décor stuff, electronics, and clothes.

Décor Stuff

Décor items are a pretty big clutter culprit in my house, and they tend to be stored in the weirdest places. I need to bring all the décor together and figure out what to keep. If an item is recyclable (like a glass vase from an old arrangement) I throw it in the recycle bin to make the Goodwill load a little lighter. It gets recycled either way. Here’s the beginning of the pile-o-clutter:

Electronics (aka E-Junk)

E-junk makes up a pretty decent amount of our clutter, too. The guilt associated with throwing out a piece of high-tech plastic means we have a small pile going at any given time.

As far as I know, there are a few options for what to do with old electronics:

1) Sell it to a recycling company online. Gazelle.com and buymytronics.com are both places I’ve tried out. Just find your item in their huge database and they’ll tell you if they want it and how much they’ll pay. They’ll also recycle your items for you if you want to pay the shipping to send the stuff in. Ipods, computer equipment, cameras, cell phones….you name it….they might take it.

2) Put it out on Craigslist or Freecycle, but don’t expect much (if anything) if the websites wouldn’t take it.

3) Recycle it. Our city recycling center takes old electronics, computers, TVs etc for free or for a small fee. We recycled a huge load of electronics last summer and our fee for all of it (which only applied to a couple things) was $6. $6 to recycle electronics rather than throw them in the landfill is fine by me!

Clothes

Last year I turned all my clothes hangers around backwards on the rod. As I wore an item, I’d hang it back up the normal way. Anything still hanging backwards now (a year later!) is going to consignment or charity. If I haven’t worn it in a year, it can go.

I also realized recently that I have several items still in my closet from high school. They’re in good shape….but it’s time to graduate already! Remember the Old Navy fleece “tech vests”? I think that was circa 7th grade for me…..and HERE IT IS!

I’ve kept it because a fleece vest is a good basic to have around…but the truth is I can’t remember the last time I actually wore it.

I also have a habit of never getting rid of threadbare or holey socks. It’s just too easy to take them off at night and throw them in the hamper before you remember how holey they are. But it does get a little embarrassing when we’re hanging out with company and I realize the bottoms of my socks are threadbare. I can afford to buy new socks, I promise.

So I moved all my socks to another drawer. Every day I choose a pair from that drawer (even if it means wearing Halloween socks in January like I’m NOT doing today….Happy Halloween!), and at the end of the day, if one or both socks is holey or threadbare, they go in the trash. If not, they go in the hamper to be eventually put away back in the sock drawer. I’ve sorted out a ton of nasty old socks that way.

Other random areas where I found stuff to get rid of:

Plastic food storage containers: Do you have the same amount of lids and containers? I didn’t. I had a BUNCH of extra lids that went in the recycling bin.
Cleaning supplies: An old bottle of “no scratch” cat spray that hadn’t been used in at LEAST 5 years… extra ratty sponges from the cleaning kit... a flimsy sweater drying rack that collapses with wet sweaters on it… all gone, along with a bunch of other junk.

It seems like small stuff, but it really piles up. As I organize closets in the next few weeks, I’m sure I’ll find more junk. But for now, I’m making good progress toward Step 2: Organization!

I’m already getting excited for organizing…the ideas are building!

2011 Roundup: Top Five Posts

2012-01-23T08:36:00.001-07:00

Happy 2012! For those of you who are new to BurbTales, here’s a round up of the top 5 posts from 2011.

1. Master Bath Renovation

First, we kicked the year off with a master bathroom renovation, and apparently, a lot of master baths are in need of similar upgrades, because those posts have been very popular this year.

We learned how to demolition and install tile, but we hired out the framing, drywall and plumbing to the pros. Some of my favorite elements of our new bathroom are the wood grain tile floors, the “quoin” pattern in the shower tiles, and our custom-made knotty alder vanity (believe it or not, going the custom route was cheaper than what we found at Home Depot!)

2. Cloffice

The next most popular post was about our “Cloffice” (closet-turned-office). The Cloffice was an invention of necessity because we needed to move both our desks out of the old office and into the guest room, so we could turn the office into a nursery. Because our (haaa-uge) guest room is a whopping 9x9 feet (snort!), two desks and a double bed weren’t going to fit in the conventional sense. Instead, we got creative with the closet.

3. Black, White, & Teal Nursery

Another popular post was our black, white, and teal nursery. We thought a black, white and teal color scheme was fun, bright, and neutral enough for a baby boy or girl. We added black crown molding, a black chair rail, and did two-tone walls with one big teal accent wall. Then I threw in a bit of lime and decided to add some plum as another accent color if our baby turned out to be a girl (and SHE did! Check out this post about the plum nursery details to see what I’ve done since the reveal.)

4. PB Knock-Off Wall Art

The number four most popular post was all about the DIY Pottery Barn knock-off wall art I made for the new master bathroom. This was a seriously inexpensive project. I don’t know about you, but coming up with bathroom wall décor is kind of tough! These fit the bill and best of all, they were inexpensive enough that I won’t feel bad when I get sick of them and switch them out.

5. DIY Magnetic Corkboard

The fifth most popular post was actually one posted in December, right before Christmas. I was getting fed up with the junk on our fridge and came up with a little organization solution with thumb tacks, magnetic clips, and a corkboard on the inside of a cabinet door. Voila! A magnetic corkboard.

A Few New Nursery Additions

2012-01-20T10:53:00.001-07:00

Now that our munchkin is here, the nursery’s changed a little bit.

I mean in addition to the cute little baby who now takes up residence there. Awww. The cheeks…..cannot….resist…the cheeks!

Ok. Anyway!

We’ve gotten some wonderful gifts which have spruced the place up, plus if you’ve been following my posts about the little projects I’ve done in there since the “reveal,” you’ve already guessed that it doesn’t look exactly the way I showed you when she was still baking.

You’ve already seen the hamper liner made from an old curtain panel…

And the black thumb tacks replacing the clear push pins on the flag pennants(yeah, HUGE project there, but you know the devil is in the details) …

I also added a bird decal to the end of the flag pennants. It’s cuter to have a bird holding the end of the pennants than to just have them ‘blowing in the wind’, no? (Anyone else having flashbacks to the dress-sewing scene in the Disney Cinderella movie?)

Next, the wall over the changing table has been improved by the addition of a panel of four cross-stitched “clown fish” made for Avery by a good family friend. She’s such a happy baby when she’s on the changing table, and part of it is because she LOVES to stare at these fish. They’re just so colorful, and with that black and white border, how could a baby resist?

…and I solved the problem of the cat “camping out” under the crib with a makeshift rigid “crib skirt” made out of – WAIT for it….. – WAIT for it….cardboard. And duct tape. And fabric scraps sewn together. It was a totally free project, and it works great!

While we’re on the topic of fabric scraps, I used what was left of the crib skirt / hamper liner fabrics to make some rolled fabric flowers. I’ve seen these all over blog-land and they are perfect little additions to Avery’s nursery tree to make it a little more girly. Even though some might say it was girly to begin with…I thought it could use a little extra somethin’ for our baby girl.

Next, Avery’s grandpa (“Papa”) made this amazing stained glass! Notice how Mickey’s clothes match the nursery colors?

I’ll keep adding little plum touches here and there (I have a pillow in mind for the glider), but for now, I (still) love the nursery, and it’s (still) my favorite place to hang out with the baby.

Thanks for stopping by!

Linked up to: Fireflies & Jellybeans, House of Hepworths

January 2012: Project Line Up

2012-01-17T16:51:00.001-07:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about my blog lately and how I want to go about my projects this year. I can’t get as much done now that I have a baby here, but I still have ideas, and there are still those nagging little things that I see around the house and need to make time for (like the door hinge that’s been held in place with a screwdriver for over a year…?)

Then there are the “wild hair” ideas I really want to try, like concocting some “built-ins” for the master bedroom, or building a rolling potting bench/workbench. Actually, these probably won’t be attempted until Avery is a little older. But you never know.

I think the best way to go about the projects I know I can reasonably get done, generally speaking of course – because I love being able to start a project on a whim – is to focus on one concept at a time and then pepper in some fun extras as I go along.

Here’s my plan for the first half of the year:

January: Decluttering and cleaning
February: Closets!
March: Kitchen projects – wall art and lighting in particular!
April: Dining room moldings and wall art. Hopefully also master bedroom moldings as well, since the tools will be out!
May: Curb appeal. Being 9 months preggo at prime yard cleanup time last fall meant that *nothing* got done. Our yard is a HOT MESS! (It’s bad enough that my mom even offered to yank out the dead plants from the porch planters not too long ago.) It’s also now full of blown-in trash and TP from the neighbors getting TP’d a few weeks ago. Yay.
June: Refinish the buffet hutch. I’m giving myself a whole month for this one because it’s a big job and who knows how much time I’ll actually get to work on it each night.

These will probably overlap a bit, but in general, I’m going to try to stick to this plan.

We’ll see how it goes!

In the meantime, I have some updates to the nursery to show you, including a pretty nifty DIY “crib skirt”, some other plum accents (yeah I keep yabbering about the plum stuff), a new gallery wall in our staircase, some other changes in wall art here and there (like, finally hanging some up!) and of course, I’ve got to get to that cleaning and decluttering stuff in the remaining weeks of January.

Oh yeah, and our baby girl is almost 3 months old and smiling away like the adorable little fiend she is! So, I’ll just leave you with one of her famous first-thing-in-the-morning gummy smiles:

Love!

Kitchen Organization: Create a Magnetic Corkboard

2011-12-22T11:05:00.001-07:00

So I decided the magnetic side of our fridge was getting way too cluttered. It was covered with clips full of coupons, holiday photos, random keepsake magnets, and the essential magnetic notepad (or three…).

Some kind of organization solution was in order.

I decided attaching some of this junk to the inside of the adjacent cabinet door was the best solution, so I found a cheap corkboard at HobLob and stuck it up on the inside of the cabinet door with the adhesive squares that come with it.

Then I started pinning stuff to it….and realized I really like having my coupon stacks in a CLIP and not stuck under a thumb tack. I need the convenience of being able to flip through the coupons and then stick them back up and go on my merry way. Stuck under a thumb tack….wasn’t doing it.

But lo and behold….thumb tacks (the standard, boring silver kind) are magnetic! So I pushed them into the corkboard here and there, and then I just stuck my handy Oxo magnetic clips to the tacks.

Ok, so “here and there” really means “carefully measured and spaced so they look nice”. Whatev. More tacks means more options anyway.

Suddenly, the ol’ corkboard became a double duty MAGNETIC corkboard.

SOO much better! I still have my clips of coupons, but now they’re hidden inside the cabinet door, magnetized to thumb tacks.

Since not everything makes sense in a clip, I included a few push pins (the kind that don’t kill your nails trying to get them out of the cork).

The fridge still looks cluttered, though it’s much better. Now it’s mostly just pictures of friends. (With magnets over their faces, for ….temporary decoration!)

And I suppose that kind of clutter is tolerable.

For another kitchen organization / under-sink organization idea, try using Command hooks for a cabinet door basket.

P.S. Pushing the pushpins into the cork (and measuring their spacing…if you’re a Type A freakazoid like me) before you hang it on your cabinet would be easier than pushing them in after the fact – just a helpful hint!

Linked up to: Fireflies & Jellybeans, House of Hepworths

Right Now

2011-12-16T15:23:00.001-07:00

I saw Sara do this and it looked fun. I’m gonna throw some random adorable baby pictures in here too. Just for fun, cause I can’t get enough of her.

Right now I am . . .

Watching: Income Property. I’m aimlessly watching Scott build a basement daycare for a couple with newborn twins while testing out some stocking stuffers. Those babies make me want to go pick up my baby and snuggle her. But I won’t. Because she’s napping, and naps are gold…

Eating: Nothing, but I’m thinking about heating up some coffee from this morning.

Drinking: Maybe that reheated coffee soon?

Wearing: A white long sleeve V-neck t-shirt. A long, gray, chunky knit cardigan. Jeans that I wish were a little skinnier to fit in my boots better. Christmas socks with penguins on them

Avoiding: Wrapping some gifts. Getting laundry out of the dryer. I could probably vacuum/swiff/put clutter away too. Dairy. Which stinks, because I’m a dairy fiend. Milk, cheese, EGG NOG….le sigh. None for me for a while because the munchkin seems to be sensitive to it.

Feeling: Good, but still a little tired during the day. Avery now has pretty regular 3-4 hour intervals between nighttime meals. It seems every new change in the nighttime routine makes me tired for a couple days, even if it’s *more* sleep.

Missing: My dad. I think my dad was made to be a grandpa, and he would’ve loved having a grandbaby to dote on. He looked like Santa and at Christmastime he’d ride around in a Santa suit on his red Harley motorcycle just to see the expressions of all the kids he passed on the road.

Thankful: For a great life, a beautiful, amazing, adorable baby, a handsome, talented, faithful husband who loves me, and a family who values family.

Weather: Cold and clear.

Needing: To eat less sugar and drink more water. I have a terrible sweet tooth. To do the chores I’m avoiding.

Thinking about: Christmas gifts still to procure, a little project for Avery’s room sitting in pieces on the kitchen table, the weekend.

Dreaming: Of staying home with Avery full time so I don’t miss anything.

Loving: Avery and our first Christmas season with her. The joy she brings us is immeasurable. Just looking at her makes my heart swell.

What about you?
What are you doing right now?

Holiday Craft: Burlap and Glass

2011-12-15T10:14:00.001-07:00

I’m digging burlap these days, so I’ve been looking for places to use it.

For a little texture combined with sparkle, I decided to put burlap bows on tall glass hurricanes. But try tying a bow around a glass cylinder….it doesn’t stay in place for long.

Plus, I wanted more than a bow – I wanted them to look like Christmas packages.

So I used packing tape to stick the burlap to the glass. It’s clear, after all!

I just cut some narrow “ribbons” out of burlap and used the tape to stick it to the glass.

It was quick and easy enough to do while sitting on the floor with Avery (all my projects for a while will be this quick and easy! For better or for worse?)

Then I finished it up by Gorilla gluing a burlap bow on the front.

Burlap “wrapped” glass – super quick and easy!

Throw some filler in the cylinders or a pillar candle, and you’re off to the races with a rustic (and easy, cheap, and FABULOUS) new holiday decoration, if I do say so myself.

Thanks for stopping by!

Linked up to:

Chic on a Shoestring, The Shabby Nest, One Artsy Mama, Tatertots & Jello, The Thrifty Home, House of Hepworths, Fireflies & Jellybeans

Thumb Tacks + Nail Polish = Much Better

2011-12-14T11:36:00.001-07:00

Another quick little nursery item I’ve been staring at and pondering was the clear push pins I used to hang up the flag pennants. (Uh, and the threads I never trimmed off the end of the pennants…)

I thought I was doing pretty well to use clear push pins….but they were still really visible – even from a distance.

And it was bugging me.

I’m not sure how easy black thumb tacks are to find, but I didn’t really want yet another box of tacks (how many does one household need? We have at least 2 sets already…).

So I got to thinking how I could just make a couple of tacks black. (Also, I wanted black thumb tacks instead of push pins, since they’re flat.)

Nail polish!

As trendy as I am (not), I didn’t have black nail polish sitting around so I bought a cheap bottle of it.

Verdict? It works great – disguising thumb tacks has never been easier. Now I can move on to dwelling on some other minor nursery detail

Thanks for stopping by! A holiday crafty décor post is coming soon!

Nursery Project: Hamper Liner

2011-12-09T16:08:00.001-07:00

Well, Hello there!

I’ve been so busy with our new baby girl that you haven’t seen me around these blog parts in a while. She’s now SIX WEEKS OLD (holey buckets), and I’m gradually gaining more time to do my own thing.

Like laundry. And swiffing the cat hair off the floor. And putting on deodorant.

Oh yeah, and the occasional project and blog post.

Good thing, because as I sit in the nursery feeding Avery multiple times a day (and night – don’t forget those SUPER FUN 3 am feedings!) I’ve had a chance to look around and see a few things that need some attention.

First up: the hamper. It needed a hamper liner so we can just gather up the liner when it’s full and haul the load down to the washer – leaving the chunky white plastic hamper upstairs and avoiding an Easter egg hunt for random baby socks that escaped from the pile on the way down.

My first brilliant idea was to use an old pillow case.

That didn’t work out very well.

Take 2…

Remember my idea to add some plum to the nursery if we had a girl? Well, I had an old plum colored curtain panel stashed away. I cut it up, sewed the pieces back together in a sort of square-bottomed sack, and threaded a bit of elastic and some cord (stitched together) through the old rod pocket.

Voila! A hamper liner from a curtain panel.

Now it lines the hamper, stays up around the edge, and makes for a quick little laundry bag that goes right in with the load. Oh yeah, and adds some PLUM color to the nursery. Boo-ya.

Also, notice the panda bear night light? It was made for Avery by her grandpa. It’s even cuter at night!

And Baby Makes 3!

2011-11-08T12:53:00.001-07:00

On Saturday, October 29th, after one heck of a whirlwind delivery, we welcomed our first child into the world!

It was a wonderful moment of tearful laughter amidst total shock of the delivery experience and HOLY COW THIS BABY IS OURS! AND IT’S A GIRL! AND SHE’S AMAZING AND PERFECT AND ADORABLE!

Miss Avery Elizabeth was 7 pounds, 8 ounces, and 19 3/4 inches long.

She also showed us her impatient side!

Expecting the normal first-time labor of several hours up to 15+ hours, I wasn’t too concerned when contractions finally started early that morning. We were told not to head to our (insurance-approved) hospital until contractions were 3-5 minutes apart for an hour…so I expected to be home for at least a few more hours before anything really got going.

…the only problem was the contractions went from 10 minutes apart to 3 minutes apart within 90 minutes. After only 2 hours, I felt the sudden urge to push. We weren’t even out of the house yet! We were caught completely off guard because it was SO unlike anything anyone had told us. Call me a wuss, but I was truly afraid I’d be delivering at home, and I wasn’t mentally prepared for that.

Instead, I barely made it into the car and Nick raced us to the emergency room at the local hospital (luckily only 10 minutes away.) Avery was born 8 minutes after we were admitted, less than 3 hours after the first contraction.

The delivery was a wild ride, to say the least. Next baby, you might find us camped out in the hospital parking lot a week in advance of the due date!

But now, a week and a half later, we’re doing great. I’m feeling good, Avery is healthy, happy, and gaining weight, and Nick and I have had some wonderful days at home together learning how to take care of our new baby girl.

Posting may be a little sporadic in the coming couple weeks as I adjust to having a baby and meeting all of her needs, but I’m hoping maternity leave will give me at least some opportunities for blogging.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a warm, squirmy, snuggly week

And more waiting…

2011-10-24T10:54:00.001-06:00

We’re a week away from this baby’s scheduled due date, and I’m already getting a good dose of instruction in patience.

Most of my clothes don’t fit anymore, even the maternity ones.

My back makes a really gross crunching sound with almost every step.

The couch has become the most comfortable (and boring) place to be.

Motivation to leave the house is at an all-time low.

And we’re generally getting pretty good at waiting.

And I’m getting plenty of opportunities to stare at various areas around the house and come up with project ideas….the natural consequence of boredom!

Did I mention we’re scheduled to get a winter storm this week? Baby will probably decide to make his/her entrance that day and we’ll get to finagle the hour-long drive to the hospital in the snow.

That’s the word from Murphy, at least.

Meanwhile, to do *something* (ANYTHING), and get out of the house yesterday, we took a walk and played with our new camera.

We’re getting a little better at using our camera, although I’m not sure a bad picture could be taken this time of year regardless of the camera! Nick took most of these pictures – and at least one was even taken as we were still driving.

Thought you’d like them, you know, in lieu of anything more interesting….like a baby. Or a project reveal. Or a really big project reveal…..like a baby? The last 10% of a project is always the hardest to complete, after all.

Any day now…

Butternut Squash Custard Bake

2011-10-21T10:25:00.001-06:00

I posted this recipe last fall.

But I just made it again, and it knocks my (and hubby’s) socks off, so it deserves another mention.

Just to be clear….this dish is kind of like a veggie dessert. It’s not quite as dessert-y as pumpkin pie, but it’s definitely crossing into the gray area between a sweet side dish and an all-out fall dessert.

And that’s (partially) why it’s so awesome!

I have no idea what to call this. The original recipe calls it “Butternut Squash Casserole”, (blech!) but I think that’s a misnomer because I’ve never had a casserole that tastes so much like dessert. (I also recently made a “yellow squash casserole”, and since we were expecting something as good as this recipe, that version was just about inedible.)

So I’m going to call it….Butternut Squash Custard Bake instead.

Ready?

First, you’ll roast the squash – the original recipe roasts it differently, but I think my way is easier:

Grab yourself a butternut squash. They’re pretty big, whitish-colored squashes in the veggie department.

Slice it lengthwise down the middle.

Scoop the little bit of seeds out.

Put the halves face down on a rimmed baking sheet (flat side down – because we all know where the squash’s face is, right?)

Bake it at 375 for an hour.

When it’s done, let it cool (or not – I’m too impatient), and use a spoon to scoop out the cooked squash from the hard rind. Throw out the rind.

Then you’ll make the filling:

Put the cooked squash in a blender.

Add: 1/2 C white sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1.5 C milk

Dash of vanilla and salt

3 eggs

2 Tbsp flour

1/4 C melted margarine

Blend it all nice and smooth.

Transfer your mixture to a 9x13 pan and bake it at 425 for 45 minutes.

And finally, you’ll make the topping:

While it’s baking,

Mix 1/2 C melted margarine with 1/2 C brown sugar and half a box of vanilla wafers (crushed up please).

After 45 minutes, take it out of the oven and add the topping.

Put it back in the oven at the same temp until the crumb topping is sufficiently brown/crispy, 5-10 minutes.

Watch your family members appear from the various nooks and crannies asking what that amazing smell is, and try not to burn yourself dishing it up before it’s cool!

Now excuse me while I go dish some up for breakfast…

A Scandinavian Table Prayer

2011-10-13T08:56:00.001-06:00

A lovely reader emailed me recently about the Norwegian table prayer sitting on the buffet in our dining room. Since this isn’t the first time I’ve gotten questions on that prayer, I thought I’d just do a little post about it.

My mom’s side of the family is from a heavily Scandinavian part of the country, and although they’ve got some Swedish in them, they seem to identify most with their Norwegian roots. But, you know….Norwegian, Swedish….it all boils down to Scandinavian!

“Welkommen” signs next to front doors, exclamations of “uff da”, and the occasional mention of lefse or the joke about lutefisk are not unusual when the family gets together. (If you haven’t heard about lutefisk, it’s herring pickled in lye, and it seems to be one of those things that you either love or can’t stand the sight of!)

Have I mentioned that I actually find lefse in the grocery store these days!?? Mmmm. We only buy it around Christmas, but yum. Good stuff. (Potato tortillas covered in butter and sugar – how could you possibly go wrong?)

Apparently, my grandma understands Norwegian, and I believe her parents spoke it fluently. One of these days, when Rosetta Stone starts offering Norwegian, I might actually try to learn some myself! (hint hint Rosetta Stone!)

Not too long ago, a large group of extended family even traveled to Norway to see the “homestead” from which our ancestors came oh….five generations ago (or so.)

So. Now that you’re sufficiently dozing off….back to the prayer. It’s a rather large frame, so it’s tough to get the whole prayer in focus (it extends the entire length of our buffet!) Also, I can’t take credit for the translation. It’s written on the back of the frame, and I’ve heard it from family members often enough to have it memorized.

It reads:

I Jesu navn går vi til bords
å spise, drikke på ditt ord.
Deg, Gud til ære, oss til gavn,
Så får vi mat i Jesu navn.
Amen.

And in English, the translation is:

In Jesus' name to the table we go
To eat and drink according to His word.
To God the honor, us the gain,
So we have food in Jesus' name.
Amen.

As for where I got it, it was a wedding gift from an aunt, and I think one of her neighbors actually made it. Sorry I can’t point you to a specific source for it, but I’m sure if you must have one, they’re probably out there if you google around.

Happy Thursday!

A Halloween Treat

2011-10-11T09:36:00.001-06:00

With Baby’s arrival anticipated for the day after Halloween, our Halloween plans are pretty much nil this year.

No annual Halloween party.

No costumes (even though painting my belly like a basketball and wearing a jersey would be SO fun!)

No plans for the trick-or-treaters. Sorry. We’re probably going to be one of the boring, dark, undecorated, uninviting houses this year.

No legitimate reason to make any fun Halloween treats.

Awww…..

But wait! It’s football season!

Football game afternoons with friends are a great excuse for treats, dips, and other goodies, so why not make some Halloween fun a little early???

The hubby and I got to brainstorming what kind of cute, easy little treats we could take to a football shindig this past Sunday.

Lately, I’ve been making and eating peanut butter balls as a “high protein snack” recommended by the doc….and those round little PB balls are a pretty good shape to make into a lot of different things….

Like ….bats?

We just needed some “bat wings”, a way to darken the bats…and some “eyes” and “fangs”…

Chocolate to the rescue!!!

Hershey’s chocolate rectangles cut on the diagonal made great bat wings!

Rolling the balls in cocoa powder made them darker brown… (and wasn’t too bitter.)

And some white icing and sprinkles made excellent bat faces!

Despite being pretty darn cute…..these “vampire bats” were also tasty little critters, and they were polished off in no time.

I guess you can’t go wrong with chocolate and peanut butter!

(I used my go-to peanut butter ball recipe, and I think any recipe would work just as well. But if you really want mine, let me know and I’ll post it.)

Linked up to:

Blue Cricket Design, The Thrifty Home, House of Hepworths, the Shabby Creek Cottage

Repost: Master Bath: Got Space?

2011-10-10T15:27:00.001-06:00

***This post was originally from October 2010! Somehow an edit caused it to repost in October 2011. Sorry for the confusion – this bathroom remodel is all done and here’s a quick jump to the reveal if you haven’t seen it yet! And now back to the original post…***

When we first moved into our house, we anticipated changing a few things. And we also knew that a couple of those things would involve some significant expense, because they’re not things we’re willing to DIY.

One was our fireplace.

It started out as this (after I goofed around with iridescent paint on it)

And now it looks like this

The second major project on the to-do list was our master bathroom and closet. I’ve never shown pictures of these areas before….so brace yourself.

This is what we’ve got now:

The closet has double racks down the right side (you can see our hamper hiding back in there too)

Shelves and hubby’s dresser at the end – both packed/organized about as full as I can get them. I can’t reach that top shelf without the utility ladder, so it’s not a daily-basis type shelf.

And a wall along the left with some hooks. Some of my dresses are hanging from these hooks because there’s no room for them to hang down on the other side. That Safeway bag is my VERY classy storage solution for all my nylons and tights. Nice, huh? If you really want one, email me and I’ll tell you where you can find one ;) Har!

So, in general, a bigger closet would be a huge improvement. I currently have a few long dresses also stored in the guest room closet, which I really want to get out of there because that closet will eventually need to be available for someone else’s things.

Onward to the HUGE 5x8 foot master bathroom

It has the bath/shower with the nice 3-piece vinyl tub surround... a toilet (jackpot!)…and a single vanity. The bathroom door, when open, completely blocks the door into the closet. And on the floor is a previous owner’s admirable attempt at an upgrade….peel-and-stick tile. And yes, it’s the exact same kind and color as used on all those HGTV shows.

I try to keep the vanity top less than 80% covered with my stuff, so I’ve gotten a little creative:

Jewelry storage – notice the push pins (hey, at least I made an effort at using CLEAR ones):

And styling tool storage:

I know we’re lucky to have a master bathroom. I took it for granted until I got the impression from our next door neighbor that they DON’T have a separate bathroom and they share one with their two little kids. I’m glad we have our own. Incidentally, our hall bathroom/cat’s bedroom/guest bath looks strangely similar:

And on the other side of the bathroom wall:

Shoe storage. Hair dryer storage. Space for bedroom furniture or a dresser.

But we have another idea. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow!

*This post was originally from October 2010! Somehow an edit caused it to repost in October 2011. Go HERE to see the next post about our bathroom remodel!*

The Nursery Reveal!

2011-10-10T10:49:00.001-06:00

I’ve been yakking about this “black, white, and teal” nursery for long enough, don’t you think? I’m probably about as sick of hearing about my “half-finished” projects, and “can’t show you all of it quite yet” as you are.

But now that Baby is due in less than a month, we finally got it pulled together!

Anyway, the nursery is pretty colorful these days, but it really is a black and white and teal color scheme. I used lime as an accent, and if we have a girl baby, I’ll add in a bit of plum as well.

First, we started off with paint, the moldings , the (so stinkin’) cute tree decal, and the fuzzy blanket I sewed.

Then we finally got some furniture (big fat thanks to the soon-to-be-grandparents for helping us out!)

And after that, I got a little stuck with décor. I didn’t really want a theme…yet the tree was suggesting birds/trees/nature or something of that sort. Plus, I was having trouble finding cute soft goods in the right colors.

To keep the dresser/changing area uncluttered, I settled on some baby pictures of Nick and I (to facilitate easy comparison of “he/she looks just like you/me!” of course!), and a simple white “bird” lamp plus a decorative box to give it height.

I had a little more fun with decals and put a bird family on the closet door:

…And the wonderful husband put up some floating shelves over the dresser.

To accessorize the shelves, I modified a cute and whimsical craft I saw on Pinterest. It started out as a homemade piece of “Victorian” art in our guest room, and a year (ish) ago, when I put it together, I thought it was the cat’s meow.

Time does wonders for our judgment, doesn’t it?

Needless to say…I was over that little piece of “Victorian” creativity, so it was time for it to go. Down it came out of the guest room, and the frame was repurposed into this guy:

I used fabric scraps to make the birds. (I also had to sew about 8 birds to get 4 that were decent looking. Sewing tiny things is really tough, and my attempts to make the smallest seam possible compounded the problem. Only later did I realize I could sew a nice easy 1/2 inch seam and then <gasp> trim off the extra fabric!)

Then, I found a cool pattern and decided to make the curtains myself. I even special ordered the fabric. But after putting it off to wait for my mom’s help, I ~~got impatient~~ just dove right in and figured it out. It wasn’t completely painless, but it got done, and I’m really happy with the end result.

Next, I modified an inexpensive “hat box” to hide some electronics that have to stay in this room:

And the last project was another use for the fabric scraps: a ribbon of flag pennants. It would be just my kid’s luck to be put in a crib and have some piece of décor (hung by his/her mother no doubt) fall off the wall and into the crib. So I opted for something that won’t do any damage if it somehow falls.

Pennants are super cute, and once I sat my pregnant butt down to actually make them, it was a quick and easy project.

And now…..

We’re ready for baby! Oh yeah, and the black and white (and teal!) nursery is ready too.

Let the waiting begin

Linked up to: I Heart Naptime; Keeping it Simple; Dittle Dattle, the Girl Creative; Thrifty Décor Chick; Tatertots & Jello; The Thrifty Home; Blue Cricket Design; House of Hepworths; the Shabby Creek Cottage

Time Capsule: $10 Transom Window

2011-10-04T14:52:00.001-06:00

Since I admire one of my favorite projects almost daily (except on those days I don’t open the curtains), and since my blogging skills have improved a leeeetle bit since the original post back in March of 2010, I thought I’d do a recap of the $10 “transom window” I made with dollar store supplies.

As much as this picture shows how impatient I was to get the project done (and how excited I was to post about it – let’s be honest!)….

It also really doesn’t do it justice.

The project first started when I moved my “Pottery Barn” drapes higher above the sliding glass door because they were too long for the rod. But then I had a big gap on the wall between the top of the door and the rod, and I just had to find something to fill it. Funny how projects snowball, isn’t it?

I initially thought I’d get some square medallions to put up there in a row, but then I got the idea to use mirrors to replicate a transom window. I thought I’d be buying cheap frames and mirrors, and doing the framing myself.

But the dollar store beat me to it! :-)

A whopping $5 later, and these puppies were in my hot little hands!

While I was there, I also happened to notice a votive holder with a vintage feel, with a little flash of a fake jewel in the middle and some fake filigree. The light bulb went on!

I sprung for $5 more. Got them home, and ripped them apart:

See where I’m going with this??

Next, I needed to paint the frames white in order to make it look as much like a window as possible (and since all our other window trim is white.)

The fact that I had 4 black mirrors and one brown one didn’t exactly help either…

I got out the white trim paint and got to work. (I could be really sloppy because a razor blade works perfectly to get paint off of glass.)

Then I used some Gorilla glue for the medallions, spray painted the rod oil-rubbed-bronze and called it a day.

Before = boring

After = awesome! (and cheap = no guilt if I want to switch it out)

BUT WAIT – THERE’S MORE! (infomercial style )

We ended up painting the kitchen/dining room the next weekend, and it made such a huge difference.

So here’s the current “after” for ya:

To be fair, this picture includes several projects I’ve done since the original pictures, including painting the light fixture, refinishing the buffet, and doing the “faux tray ceiling.”

Everything is a work in progress Maybe next time I take a picture of this room, something else will have changed (yeah, probably.)

Thanks for stopping by!

Linked to:

The Thrifty Home

Blue Cricket Design

A Valance for a Black & White Nursery

2011-10-03T11:38:00.001-06:00

Oh. my. gosh. I can hardly believe what I’m about to say (type?)

The valance for the baby’s room….you know, the one I didn’t think I could sew on my own? (Because black and white nursery-cute valances don’t seem to be available in any stores and my sewing skills are miniscule.)

That one.

Well, it’s DONE.

And the most important part is that it actually looks really stinkin’ cute! Of course, I can find all kinds of things “wrong” with it, but the bottom line is it LOOKS GOOD, it HANGS STRAIGHT, and the elephants don’t look *too* drunk.

In the process of making it, I even learned

How to make my own piping (wow, super easy),
How to use a zipper foot on the sewing machine (not as easy, but it worked well enough)
“Notches” on patterns aren’t there to show you to “cut on the lines”. Apparently, they already assume adults know how to cut on the lines and they’re not just being cute with a variation on the tiny scissor icon that shows up in kindergarten classrooms all around the country. Whouldathunk?
Buying extra fabric (like a yard or two…especially when it’s mail-order fabric) is extremely helpful because…
Following the pattern directions is not always the best policy.

Doesn’t it look CUTE next to our new glider? And that awesome checked blanket I also made?

To be fair, I did have one major incident in which the seam ripper and I became best buds.

It was the pattern’s fault.

That, and my propensity to follow instructions. (I always aced the “following directions” assignments in first grade. They were fun!)

So when the pattern instructions told me to “match up” the fabric pattern….I did.

It took me forever to make all the right cuts so that the pattern would match up *perfectly* after seaming everything together.

And it did match up perfectly.

The only (huge) problem was I started out with a perfectly horizontal line of elephants on the end panel…and I worked to the other end from there.

Confused? Let me paint you a (wonky) picture.

The far right panel was marching in a nice straight line. The middle panel of elephants ended up marching at a 45 degree angle. And the other end panel of elephants was marching straight toward the ceiling.

I couldn’t deal with it. A few tears, a wonderfully supportive husband telling me to just order new fabric and “it’ll be okay”, and some stomping around later….I decided I could disassemble the pieces, put the straight elephant panel in the middle, cut a couple new pieces, and end up with something better. (Note not “perfect”….but better.)

It worked – barely. I used up all my extra fabric with the last cut, which was originally intended for a matching pillow cover etc.

If I did it over again, I’d cut ALL panels to have a horizontal line of elephants and I wouldn’t even consider “matching up” the pattern. Sewing a horseshoe-shaped valance using fabric that has a horizontal pattern means you really can’t “match up” the fabric pattern and have the end result look right.

Silly, naïve me.

But pattern-matching aside, it turned out pretty well, and I’m happy with it.

You can see a few more nursery details in these pictures, but there’s still one small project to finish up before I do the official “reveal”. Stay tuned!

Linked up to:

Dittle Dattle; Keeping it Simple; I Heart Naptime; Thrifty Décor Chick; Blue Cricket Design

Super Quick, Super Easy Fall Wreath

2011-09-28T08:46:00.001-06:00

Our front door was in need of a little somethin’ somethin’.

You know what I mean.

Something….fall.

Something….easy.

(Lately, “easy” also refers to not having to go anywhere – therefore easy and cheap/free are basically synonymous.)

And something….quick.

Enter a tired grapevine wreath stolen from the guest bedroom. Now that the guest bedroom is also an office, removal of some décor items actually makes it feel a little more efficient.

And enter some burlap I hijacked from the “free” box at my mom’s garage sale in June.

And…finally, enter some lovely crepe-paper-leaves found at the dollar store last year and stashed away with the autumn décor.

Throw them all together, utilize the push-pin through the top of the door wreath-hanging trick, and voila!

A quick, easy, and cheap fall wreath.

Thanks for stopping by!

Linked up to:

House of Hepworths

Thrifty Décor Chick

Hiding Electronics–the Cute Way

2011-09-26T13:52:00.001-06:00

Remember this little pile of electronicrap in the unfinished nursery?

Yeah. Awesome. Because the phone jack in the “new office” doesn’t work, the router and modem have to stay in the baby’s room.

Only problem is that this little pile of plastic and wiring is so *blindingly* cute, I just had to find a way to cover it up to keep it from distracting from the other elements in the room.

Hobby Lobby to the rescue!

A small hole cut with a carpet knife…. masking tape to “finish” the edges, a case of hives for the husband who’s afraid I’m going to fry the modem in an enclosed space …

and the electronicrap is tucked away.

If the modem fries, my posting has been sporadic enough you probably won’t even notice my absence for a few days.

But I bet it’ll be okay

Linked up to:

Dittle Dattle

Tater Tots and Jello

House of Hepworths

Of Shelves, Gliders, and Shepherd’s Pie

2011-09-21T12:03:00.001-06:00

Hiya Peeps! Ready for my slacker-blogger-once-a-week-post? (It will get better, I promise.) Hang onto your seats!

So what in the world is up at our place lately? We’ve obviously been doing *nothing*, since I have nothing to blog about. Actually, we’ve been fairly busy, but I’m not great with remembering the camera these days, so how about an update with fewer-than-optimal pictures to go along with it?

Okeydokey!

Let’s see here…. two weekends ago was a whirlwind of activity. We had an “infant care” class, and my fabulous sisters-in-law hosted a baby shower for us! I had no idea so many people could fit in our house!!! It was a smashing success, and I’m so honored they did that. Plus, now baby has clothes to wear. Our collection of socks was pretty good, but in November, socks might be just a little chilly by themselves

I also learned diapers come in different sizes….and how to tell what size they are. I always thought the numbers on the front were part of the design.

You thought that too, right?

I think we’re going to try cloth diapers eventually, but it sounds like the newborn disposables will fit better at first, so that’s probably where we’ll start. Luckily, we got a couple packages at the shower to get us going. I learned WAY more about babies at the shower than I did at the infant class, that’s for sure. (Kind of a lame ‘class’, actually.)

That would be my “look confused!” face. Trust me, it’s not really hard these days to “look confused”…

(Needless to say, that book will come in *very* handy.)

And that cute little blue and white outfit is actually a baby speedo and matching terrycloth top my adorable husband wore when he was an adorable baby. With it was even a photo of him wearing it, and surprisingly, the elastic etc is still in great shape!

Wait – not surprisingly. We’re not that old….

Later that night, Nick was presented with a special “Daddy Survival Kit” chock full of goodies to help him out in the next few months!

Then, last weekend we had a “childbirth” class all day Saturday, which was informative and had a very funny instructor. The fabric baby and fake pelvic bone model were particularly entertaining…

I probably shouldn’t have found them funny. Whoops. It’s always a little awkward when you’re the only one giggling.

In the meantime, our glider arrived!!! It’s still in a million pieces, but it’s here. I also found time to buy some ledges for the baby’s room. The shelves aren’t installed yet, but Nick says the glider and the shelves will get done by this weekend. Whattaguy!

Also making the headlines is the fact that all my pregnant friends (3 of them!) have now had their babies…..and I’m next in line. HOLEY BUCKETS. Butter me and call me a biscuit! Knowing we’ll have a ….baby?… in six weeks (or less!) is such a crazy thought.

I still have a sewing project to complete (and one to start) that have now been winking at me from the to-do list for oh…..at least 3 months. I’m officially starting to annoy myself. Maybe this weekend?

Did I mention the nursery has a few new additions? Specifically, Mr. Panda moved in, looking just a little mystified as to what he’s doing in a crib.

We’re all looking mystified these days. It must’ve rubbed off on the bear.

This bear was a Christmas present when I was about six years old. Clearly, that makes him a WISE ~~old~~ bear, and now he’s a perfect addition to our black and white nursery. That, and my mom probably was sick of looking at him?

This family of bird decals also made itself at home. They come and go….

(Wonder whose clever idea THAT was??) Ahem.

Despite the sewing projects, the to-do list has now also grown to include freezer meals as well. I have to get creative with these, because for every new freezer item I make, zucchini and/or squash must come out of the freezer to make room. Nick is actually frightened at the amount of zucchini/squash we may be eating in the next few months and is trying to convince me to throw some on the compost heap… (especially with the recent DOUBLE batch of yellow squash casserole I just made…..which we both think is actually pretty nasty. It’s almost like a squash quiche? Le sigh. So much for online recipe reviews.)

I think I’ve come around to the idea of composting any additional veggies that might still be hiding in the garden.

Shepherd’s pie (with zucchini, of course!), tater tot casserole, chili, and chicken enchilada casserole are all on the list to be made up and thrown in the freezer – or carefully arranged like a puzzle?, and luckily, I know those will be good.

I’ve also been selling stuff on Ebay to make some room around here. Of the original pile of about 18 items, I’m finally down to 3, so we’re definitely making progress there.

Finally, a few fall décor items have come out to play at our house. Nothing particularly zealous or overly creative, but it’s always nice to have a change of scenery.

Thanks for stopping by! At some point, the nursery will be done, and I’ll finally show you the “big picture.”

Happy FALL!

A Few More Nursery Details…

2011-09-07T17:13:00.001-06:00

Things are coming along, slowly but surely!

All the nursery furniture is here or on the way…

I finished a couple easy décor projects…

(A couple more are still in progress.)

We also found a cute little bird lamp…

…and some creative storage ideas.

Baby even has a few toys already, and his/her first teddy bear!

Like I said, slowly but surely

Kerfluffed

2011-09-02T15:21:00.001-06:00

Wiped. Exhausted. Beat. Pooped. Worn out.

Kerfluffed.

It’s my new word for just plain tired.

When you consider wiping the coffee drips off the side of the trash can to be an accomplishment for the day, you must be 8 months + pregnant.

What have I done today? Swiffed the living room floor. Wet-swiffed the downstairs laminate. Windexed the inside of the storm door and the cat snot off the front window.

…Made a mental note to wash the outside of the storm door and front window glass. Made another mental note to yank all the dried up petunias out of the front porch pots and replace them with mums this weekend. Crusty old flower carcasses aren’t the most welcoming, no?…

Emptied the vacuum canister into the trash – took out said trash – put away said vacuum. Oh yes….

….and wiped the coffee drips off the side of the kitchen trash can.

And now I’m kerfluffed. That is, I’m pretty much useless to do anything else.

Good thing today is finally a little cooler than 95. It helps.

Last night we went to the pool at the rec center so I could float my belly (my family thinks I have a tiny belly, but trust me, it feels big enough. Especially at the end of the day.). We seemed to make quite the ahem- splash – with the teenage lifeguards watching over all the little kiddos in the pool with us. I’m fairly certain they were more interested in watching us than watching the actual kids. Apparently 20-something couples don’t often go to the pool without a rugrat (or 2) in tow?

Something else I’ve noticed is that since being pregnant, little kids seem much more friendly. I don’t recall them ever looking twice at me before, and now they walk right up and talk to me like they know me. Case in point: I had a little boy following me around the pool last night, popping his head up every few feet to say “HI!”.

It got kind of awkward. Not gonna lie. How many times can you say “hi” back to a 6? 7? 8? year old before legitimately wondering if you have a boogie? Or a big smear of mascara running down one cheek?

Five times. Give or take.

That’s when I started wondering just how freaky I must look to be drawing such random attention. (Side note: didn’t have a boogie or mascara issues. Still wondering…)

On a separate note: good news! I think I’ve finally got some ideas for décor in the baby’s room. You know….for the 3 walls that are currently blank. I need to go hit up Jo-Ann and/or HobLob for supplies though. Maybe I can find some energy to shop this afternoon and beat the weekend crowd.

Main objective this weekend: check out some places around town for a dresser. The kind I don’t have to refinish. I already have a buffet hutch that still needs refinishing, so the new rule – as of ….now….is only one refinishing project stashed in the basement at a time. Watching too many episodes of “Hoarders” will do that to a person…just sayin’.

In the meantime…rest assured there are….2 half finished baby room projects downstairs and 1, 2, 3, no FOUR more in my head (not counting the valance which you already knew about.)

And now onward.

Like a herd of turtles. Or a turd of hurdles, as my dad used to say.

The Difference a Summer Makes…

2011-08-30T16:08:00.001-06:00

I thought it was time for a stroll through the backyard. After all, a summer makes a huge difference, and for any plants on their second season, it’s an even hugeR difference!

Let’s just get to it, shall we?

But first, here are a couple “way before” pictures - from 2 summers ago, when we moved in:

And now, starting from the gate:

(The plants are looking a little more tired than usual because 1) we’re still about 10 degrees above the usual temperature for this time of year and 2) my usual trimming and upkeep has fallen a bit to the wayside due to the pregnancy. My watermelon of a belly just isn’t engineered for gardening I guess.)

Remember the Karl Foerster grass divisions I got from my mom earlier this summer? I planted two here along the south (HOT) wall of our house, and they’ve grown up pretty nicely to help camouflage the rain barrel. I’m pretty sure they’re not Karl Foerster grass, too, but we don’t actually know what they are, so Karl it is!

Back in May or so, this bed looked like this:

Since then, it’s obviously grown… the lily (to the left of the watering can) now needs trimming, and I managed to (probably) Round Up one of the three scabiosa (pincushion flower) you see there in the corner. This bed has terrible weeds, so it’s also the subject of this summer’s Operation Annihilation, and it’s possible the flower got a little too much poison and I wiped it out. I discovered earlier this spring that the particular weed in question has DEEP, SKINNY roots that don’t come all the way out when pulled…so Round Up is the next best thing. Almost every weekend! I will win this war…

As we round the corner of the deck:

On the right we have a pink rose bush in need of deadheading, a strategically placed pot that is supposed to get hit by the sprinkler but needs to be moved again because it’s still parched, the massive PITA climbing rose that’s never bloomed and refuses to be trained to its trellis, and the Beast clematis.

To the left is our red twig dogwood, which is in need of serious cutback this fall, a Mongolian Bells clematis (a perennial, not a vine), some adorable shasta daisies planted this spring, and what I know to actually be a Karl Foerster grass (now you can see how different actual Karl Foerster looks from those divided plants!)

Now we’ll head around the deck:

How ‘bout those empty flower pot holders on the railing? Yeah classy! Like I said, it’s been SO HOT here, I finally took the petunias out of those holders and put them down on the ground where they’d get hit by the sprinklers. I just couldn’t keep them watered enough.

Here’s the collection of planters back in oh…June?

The white flowered bush is a hibiscus (love that thing!), and next to it is a pink phlox.

Around the corner is a Sweet Autumn clematis on a homemade trellis. I planted this guy earlier this spring, when it was about 6 inches tall. Next year should be fun to see what it does!

This is also a great shot of our partially repaired rotting deck that I keep whining about. It’ll get rebuilt in the next couple of years. Until then, I’ll just keep whining because – seriously – who builds a deck without using treated lumber? What a great feature on a house…to have to tear out and rebuild. GAH.

Starting from the left in this bed is a cute red and yellow columbine planted this spring (next year again should be much more fun!), next to a perennial geranium and our motion activated sprinkler.

Then comes a deep purple salvia also new this season, a balloon flower in front of the trellis (pretty tough to see, but also pretty tough! Nick dug this guy up and reburied it six inches under the surface without realizing it, I accidentally found the root and repositioned it when I planted the salvia, and later Nick mistakenly Round Upped it…and it still lives!), a euonymus bush with ridiculously tall lilies in front of it (they will be transplanted this fall – “border lilies” my butt), and the white clump is just annual alyssum.

This bed is also the hiding place for a pot of dead petunias Pregnancy takes no prisoners! And it doesn’t hide the bodies very well either, apparently…

And now we head to the back of the yard, hose and all. (I’ll make sure the gardener isn’t such a slob next time…or not)

The gigantic plant in the front is our summer squash. It’s busy creating its own army. The bamboo is alive and against the fence – thirsty as usual, so it’s splayed out a little more than it normally would be. We also haven’t trimmed the winter topkill out of it yet (since part of the bamboo’s function is to keep kids from hopping the fence right there), so those straw colored stems are a bit of an eyesore as well.

Priority next summer will be a manual-hook-up drip system to try to get better water to the plants back there.

For some perspective, here’s an early-Spring shot of this corner of the back bed:

The rest of the back bed is then taken up with the raised veggie bed and the perennials planted behind it. Here are some random angle shots of that area:

First, earlier this spring (the plants were a little perkier then!):

And now:

The tomatoes have some kind of issue and look terrible, but they’re producing like crazy, so I’m not worrying about it.

And the zucchini is obviously getting a little worn down as well! Good thing, because I’m running out of recipe ideas for zucchini…

So concludes the tour of the backyard Like I said, it’s perpetually thirsty and baked from this heat, so it could look a little better, but it’s still a nice improvement from two summers ago, and it’ll just keep getting better.

As I type, the Autumn Joy sedum is just barely starting to turn pink. In another couple of weeks, it’ll be a beautiful deep red – perfect for fall!

I plan to replace some of the spent petunias etc (especially on the front porch) with mums, so we’ll be due for some general fall sprucing up here soon. I’ll keep you posted

Meanwhile, one of these days, I’ll do a quick tour of our front yard as well. The mums look fabulous, the planters are limping along, and we recently learned how great a sickly spirea can look after it gets doused with a bag full of ladybugs. Stay tuned!

Baby’s First Furniture…a Crib!

2011-08-24T11:08:00.001-06:00

Stinkin’ adorable!

It seemed a little small until I remembered the last time I saw a crib I was probably still in daycare – so my perspective has changed a bit!

Next up: window treatment, finding a dresser, wall décor, storage …

A Blanket for Baby

2011-08-23T12:24:00.001-06:00

Back when we decided on a black and white nursery, (actually, a black and white and teal nursery), we had no idea what we’d find out in retail land which would or wouldn’t match.

Now we know: nada.

But luckily for us, we’re not really into the premade bedding sets and coordinating nursery themes, as ADORABLE as some of them are, so we weren’t too disappointed. After all, most baby things come in white (score! half our color palette!) which makes decorating a little easier and laundry – no doubt – a little more interesting when the time comes.

A little decorating challenge is a small price to pay for a neutral nursery color scheme that’s still fun and vibrant. (Yes, vibrant…because “pastel” isn’t in my repertoire.)

Anyway. Soft goods like baby blankets, bedding, and window treatments just didn’t come cute enough or in the right colors from the store….so I’m making my own. The exception is the bedding, since we’re only doing a decorative fitted sheet and a white mesh bumper – no pillows/quilts and probably no dust ruffle either.

Good thing my mom recently gave me a sewing machine (thanks Mom!)….and good thing I have sewing experience making her a “WOW” pillow when I was 7 (it was supposed to say “Mom” of course…and it’s pretty dang cute in a “what did the sewing machine upchuck today” kind of way) …..because I can TOTALLY make my baby’s first blanket now!

And in the right colors to be a cute accessory for the nursery! Jackpot.

(Quit snickering. It only took 3 weeks, one mid-fabric-store freak out, several long calls to Mom to figure out which end was up, a ton of white fuzzies all over my house, and a YouTube video tutorial.)

But it’s totally done.

I will admit that the “teal” portion of the blanket looks a bit on the turquoise side, but it was the closest I could get without special ordering fabric. I did special order fabric for the window valance, and it was so easy and a reasonable cost, I’ll probably do it again for future projects that require certain colors etc.

So what, exactly did I make? I used this pattern:

Along with some fuzzy white fleecy stuff, plain black fleece, and the teal/turquoise flannel daisy print (sorry Baby - if you’re a boy, you’re getting a flowery blanket). I also got my first exposure to “batting” and “blanket binding”. Thrilling, I know.

I cut out my squares of fabric using this tried and true method (which resulted in, um, not perfect squares):

And then I wrestled around for a while with the flannel, trying to straighten the grain like a good little seamstress, until I finally decided Baby will be totally cool with a crooked grain on the back of his/her blanket.

Finally, I sewed. I tried to keep my seams straight (fuzzy fabric makes it tough to line up edges, just sayin’) and spent an evening on the couch dutifully basting out from the blanket’s center to theoretically keep the pieces lined up to sew the front and back together.

Not surprisingly, my checkerboard pattern still turned out a bit wonky, which posed a tiny problem for sewing “in the ditch” AND having straight seams…so the back seams don’t make a perfect checker pattern either.

Then Nick and I both tried to figure out the instructions for sewing the binding on….until I went to YouTube and found a FAB video showing me how to do it. (Seriously, the pattern instructions were awful!) I’m not entirely sure I did it correctly, because the front side of the binding looks *amazing* and the back looks….not amazing. =(

And now, minus the goofy satin rosettes which don’t seem comfy for a baby to lie on anyway, here’s the finished product:

I originally intended to sew ribbon tabs in place of the rosettes, but I couldn’t find my black ribbon until it was too late. So no ribbon tabs for Baby unless I do it by hand – which probably won’t happen!

As you can see, the crib is in a partial state of assembly. Nick spent most of the evening last night working on it, and then he put in a special request that “if” I get a wild hair today to try and finish it before he gets home, “please don’t”. Awwwww

He wants to do it himself! I’m more than happy to let Daddy put together his baby’s crib – too cute.

Tomorrow: the CRIB! I must say, it’s shaping up to be one adorable crib – perhaps even a “must see”

And Then There Were Moldings…

2011-08-22T16:10:00.001-06:00

Hellooooo! I am so happy to report that the beautiful black moldings in the baby’s room are DONE!

Of course, it’s all the little finishing up that takes a while, like getting around to filling nail holes and touching up paint, but we finally got there.

Two weekends ago we actually put UP the moldings with the help of a new pneumatic brad nailer and compound mitre saw…and in the evenings last week we finished up bits here and there.

This post was actually supposed to be done last Friday, but my computer didn’t want to read the card from our new camera until Mr. Computer TwinkleToes could blink at it and make it work. (That would be my husband.)

What can you do?

Anyway, the nursery is still bare bones.

We do have a crib….in a box…in the basement…. and a glider has been ordered so we’re getting there

But in the meantime….here’s the room in its bare-nekkid glory:

For some reason, the phone jack in our new office doesn’t work, so the modem and router have to live in here. Gorgeous, right? At least it gives me an opportunity to find a creative way to hide them.

I don’t really dig the trim color (dinged up Dover White, anyone?) but all the upstairs trim and doors need to be repainted, so I’ll tackle that all at once…..someday! After seeing how ~~awesome~~ ~~amazing~~ easy it was to use the new nail gun, I’m actually considering redoing all our baseboards (way) in the future. We’ll see. (Door casing does not a baseboard make, after all).

Sandra over at Sawdust and Paper Scraps can be blamed for my fantasy of perfect trim; she just makes finish carpentry look way too easy for my own good.

Next up – the crib is getting assembled tonight! And my sewing project is almost done as well (I actually had to look up a YouTube video on my lunch hour today to figure out how to do the last step, but now I’ve got it!)

Here’s a little peek at the progress:

I think it may also be time for a late summer garden tour one of these days, and maybe even an update on the garage. Nick got some more Fasttrack rails and a shelving system put up over the weekend, so it’s looking pretty durn (yes, DURN) organized out there.

Thanks for stopping by!

Progress Report!

2011-08-11T15:45:00.001-06:00

We just hit the 7 months mark with this pregnancy, and we finally have a crib!

Just call me the Roadrunner

Or not.

Here it is online:

And here it is right now!

Exciting, right?

The nursery still needs molding and decal installation (this weekend I hope), so we still can’t really put anything in there yet, let alone furniture….but at least we have a crib!

(The mongoose currently doing somersaults in my belly is excited about that too.)

Another new purchase (even though it hasn’t arrived yet)…..

THIS!

It’s a Nikon D3100! So we can take ~~good~~ awesome pictures! Now we’ll just need to learn how to use it and all of its cool settings.

Aside from these exciting and long-thought-out purchases, life seems to be moving pretty darn slowly. It probably has something to do with our projects that have gone on forEVER and still aren’t quite done. Nick did get 99% of the drywall done last weekend with the help of a friend. Now we just have two funny triangle areas up at the top of the vaulted garage ceiling that need drywall, and I’m betting those won’t be much of a priority. After we can haul all the wood and drywall scraps to the recycling center this weekend, I think I might mentally check the garage off as “done”…

Other good excuses for lack of project completion include a lot of friends-and-family time lately, which is nice. Plus, I’ve been feeling pretty busy with the vegetable harvest. We’ve got zucchini and yellow squash coming out our ears, and despite some kind of problem with the tomatoes (which is slowly turning them brown from the ground up) they’re putting out a ton of fruit as well.

I’ve been making zucchini bread and homemade salsa, and shredding/chopping/freezing everything else. The salsa was instant heartburn for me, so I’m not sure how many more batches I’ll make of that. It’s good stuff….just not right now.

This brown stem issue seemed to happen last year too, but I blamed it on forgetting to fertilize. But this year, the plants got fertilizer stakes when they were planted, so clearly we have other problems. I suspect some crop rotation next year, and maybe some mulch (instead of just weed mat,) will make a difference. In the meantime, I figure they’ll finally poop out right about the time I’m ready to be done with the veg garden anyway.

I’ve (of course) started a couple new projects this week. Here’s a hint at one:

I’m still doing some cutting (and trying to figure out “straightening of the grain”) for this one as of today, but once the pieces are cut (straight or not!) it shouldn’t take long to put together.

Note to self: find something better than a Sharpie and a yardstick for measuring and cutting fabric.

And here’s a hint at the other new project (ok, not much of a hint):

This one requires the help of my mom. It’s a pretty complicated pattern, and I special-ordered the fabric (fabric.com! woot!), so I want it to turn out …well, not wonky. Me and my 3 hours of sewing experience probably just won’t cut it . Enter Mom to show me the ropes! (At some point in the unknown future…you wouldn’t want me to be too committal, now would you?)

Aaaaaand…..that’s all I’ve got.

The list for the weekend includes: installing the decal (wait til you see it – SO cute), and at *least* cutting and painting the molding, if not installing it too. Depending on how much of the molding Nick can/wants to do himself, I may even finish Sewing Project #1 so I actually have a finished project to brag about (yes, it might be wonky, but I will STILL brag).

Happy week, Peeps!

Nursery Update!

2011-07-28T14:33:00.001-06:00

“Nursery” sounds so funny and fancy to me…

But anyway – the baby’s room is coming along! We only had Saturday to work, since we had company on Sunday. Nick spent the day trying to finish up the drywall in the garage, which isn’t quite there yet, but hopefully only one more weekend to have that project all done. He’s only had help (or should I say asked for help?) one weekend, so he’s pretty much a one-man-band on this project.

While he worked on the garage, I painted!

Here’s the not-very-notable-but-still-progress progress:

Clearly, it still needs the chair rail and crown molding, which I think will both be black. I have a Caaaaa-UTE! decal on the way for the big accent wall as well….and then I’ll start to think about window treatments.

Maybe one of these days we’ll even buy some furniture

Did I mention we finally sold our behemoth desk on Craigslist!?!?!?! WHOO HOO! It’s in its happy new home and I’m happy in my (temporarily, I know) emptier home

This weekend?

Finishing the garage drywall!

Furniture shopping? Fabric shopping? I need to find another fabric store other than Jo-Ann – I’m never impressed with their selection. Any suggestions? (P.S. I’m kind of a cheapskate if that makes a difference…)

Long Time No Blog–The Haps!

2011-07-20T10:26:00.001-06:00

It’s been a while since I popped in to share a project or an update, so I thought it was about (dang) time.

We’ve started some big ones that are taking multiple weekends to complete, so they’re not quite done.

First, Nick’s dad helped him put up drywall in our garage (to cover the new insulation, which should keep our upstairs bedrooms a little more climate controlled). They learned a drywall lift is super duper helpful for ceilings, and perhaps even a necessity. It was a great tool!

And while they were doing that, Nick’s mom helped me get started painting the baby’s room, even with a bunch of furniture still in there (I’ve tried to sell the big desk AND our coffee table on Craigslist and no one is interested at all! It must not be the season for Craigslist.)

This past weekend, Nick again worked on the drywall (by himself this time), and he made great progress!

It’ll probably get done this coming weekend.

We also invested in a new garage organizer system which is partially installed. It’s called the Rubbermaid Fasttrack, and it’s very cool. Not exactly the old system of 2x4s that we had before (and not as inexpensive) but very useful for getting maximum storage in a small garage.

And I finished with the white paint in the baby’s room….and opened up the teal! Wheeeee!!!! It’s so bright and vivid and fun! I love it! And even more fun is the name of it: “Mermaid Water Dance.” (You can’t deny that is a super cute paint color name!)

Crown molding will be going up eventually, and a chair rail will be on three walls which will divide the upper white section from the lower soon-to-be teal section on those walls.

Meanwhile, we’re purging stuff on eBay and Craigslist and starting to think about a crib once that big desk is out of the baby’s room.

And of course, work for me has been busier than it’s been in…probably a year? and we’re just getting over a month of dealing with/stressing about a seriously sick cat. So….in lieu of those….and with the understanding that this seriously poor quality (have I mentioned we’re shopping for a new camera?) and majorly unflattering picture was taken after a 13 hour day at work…

Here’s the 25 week bump!

Double Whammy: First Sewing and Baby Project!

2011-06-30T10:00:00.001-06:00

I might’ve mentioned last week that we were heading out of town last weekend to help my mom with a garage sale at her house. While we were there, some folks stopped by and helpfully commented that they’d just been to another garage sale where a nice looking bassinet was for sale.

There are a few things I really hope to find second-hand for our bun-in-the-oven, and although I wasn’t sure we needed/wanted a “bassinet”, I figured it could easily be a pack-n-play (which is a great secondhand contender in my mind) so we headed down the street to check it out.

And before we get too far, let me just say that YES, I know buying a used pack-n-play isn’t recommended due to recalls etc. But something told me (our bank account, perhaps?) it was still worth checking out.

The “bassinet” actually did turn out to be a Graco pack-n-play with a bassinet insert. It was in really good shape, in proper working order, a neutral color, the nice smaller size of pack-n-play (see! I’ve done a little homework), and it had a pretty fantastic $20 price tag. We didn’t pay that…but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Knowing Graco was the top recommended brand of pack-n-plays in the proverbial “Baby Bargains” book, we decided it was worth it to buy it and do more research once we got it home. Plus, it’s black and white (the colors of the future baby room – though granted, that doesn’t matter much for a pack-n-play).

Long story short, it was a total score. <Happy Dance!> I found the exact model online (retailing for $90 and with fantastic user reviews), was able to verify it hadn’t had any recalls, and after a thorough washing of all the parts in a couple bathtubs full of soapy water, it looks beautiful and ready for a baby! (uh, “our” baby….whoa……)

But wait… this isn’t a perfect happy ending (yet). There was one minor problem. One of the 4 narrow support boards in the “mattress” was broken in two and would fall down inside the mattress while transporting the pack–n-play in its bag. Then, we’d have to be shake it back to the proper end when we set the thing up again. Annoying, yes. Totally fixable……yes!

Enter me, armed with a seam ripper and my brand-spanking new sewing machine! To save the day, of course. Or just make things nice and smooth and as functional as they’re supposed to be…

I carefully cut the trim away from one end and slid the board out. Initially, I thought I’d use duct tape and some paint stir sticks to reinforce it to being one long piece again…..but a piece of junk posed a better solution.

While rummaging in the basement for paint stirrers, I noticed an old framed poster I’ve been using to spray paint on. And lucky me….the frame backboard was the same material as the broken board!

I traced out the proper size and cut it out with the miter box saw and then roughly rounded off the corners with the coping saw, since the original (broken) board had rounded corners and I figured they might be rounded for a reason.

I didn’t even bother sanding the edges (gasp!).

I slid the new board back into the “mattress” (this thing is like….1 inch thick, so “mattress” is a stretch) and christened the sewing machine by sewing the trim back on.

While I was doing this, I’d been thinking about the mechanics of this mattress thing and how the cover really should be able to come off and be washed. Babies get poop on stuff, right? Like, all the time?

Call me poop averse, but I decided the mattress needed a vinyl cover on it to prevent messes from soaking in.

So…I ran to the fabric store to find some picnic-table-tablecloth fabric – you know, the kind that’s vinyl on one side and fuzzy on the other.

In the second easiest “sewing” project ever, I cut it to size and sewed an elastic loop onto each corner to keep it on the mattress. I think a sheet then goes on top and will cover the vinyl.

BOOYAH. A perfectly functional, poop-proof bassinet mattress for our little bundle!

Pre-Poop-Proofing:

Post-Poop-Proofing:

Oh yeah, and we didn’t pay $20 for it…..because there was booster seat also at that garage sale that got thrown in. We paid $20 for both, and the booster turned out to be the top rated “Baby Bargains” booster, too. Clearly, Garage Sale Lady had bought all the “right” gear!

I put the removable parts in the dishwasher, scrubbed the rest of it down in the sink, and it’s looking brand new and ready to be splattered afresh with our kid’s messes.

Moral of the story: there’s good stuff at garage sales!!! (Even if it needs a little cleaning/fixing up)

Thanks for stopping by!!

I’m linked to:

The Thrifty Home’s Penny Pinching Party

House of Hepworths

The Shabby Chic Cottage

Fireflies & Jellybeans

Time Capsule: Kitchen Cabinet Redo FAQs

2011-06-29T09:09:00.001-06:00

Jump back in time with me to see what we were working on a year ago this month! *Actually, we started this project a year ago this month (June) and we finished two months later in August, but it makes more sense to keep all the posts together!

I’ve been getting quite a few questions on my kitchen and cabinet facelift because apparently, I didn’t give nearly enough details as I was going along. So this post will address the FAQs surrounding the cabinet painting project in our kitchen. Be sure and let me know if I miss something.

1. Did you use oil or latex paint on your cabinets?

I used Behr interior latex paint. Before I got started, I saw only a few examples where people used oil-based paint on their cabinets (oil has a harder finish so it’s more durable, and it’s supposedly an easier surface to clean). I also asked the guy at Sherwin Williams his thoughts, and he said latex paint has come so far that there is absolutely no need to use oil-based paint on kitchen cabinets unless you just really want to! I poured Flowtrol directly into the can of paint to help the paint spread and hide brush strokes.

2. What colors did you use?

The green walls are Martha Stewart’s “Saguaro”. Go here to see how looooong it took me to make THAT decision. Yeesh. The cabinets are painted with Behr’s “Cotton Knit”.

3. Did you sand the cabinets?

Yes! I bought an orbital sander for about $40 to help with the sanding. I used a fine grit (180 or 220) and just went over all the surfaces fairly lightly. I did not sand enough to remove the existing finish, and unless you want to re-stain your cabinets (good luck!) there’s no need to sand down to the bare wood.

4. What primer did you use?

I usually use Kilz for everything….BUT this time around I asked at the store for a primer specifically for kitchen cabinets, and they handed me Behr interior enamel primer (in a purple can). I used it up and then used Kilz for the rest (which wasn’t much.)

5. Did you use brushes or rollers or a sprayer?

I used a foam roller on the cabinet boxes, and it worked pretty well. But on the cabinet doors (painted in the garage during 90+ heat), I used a high quality brush only. I tried to use the roller but it couldn’t load up enough paint to keep the surface wet while I was working, so bits would dry a little and then the roller would “pull” on those spots and create an orange peel texture. The brush worked great as long as you load the brush all the way with as much paint as it will hold and then work quickly to spread it. No using the edge of the can to get drips off, just dip the brush as deep as the bristles go and immediately move to your work surface.

6. Did you use polyurethane or another type of clear coat?

Nope. I thought about it, and I decided to put the doors back up and see if they are hard to clean or if they are getting dinged up or anything. So far, they wipe clean perfectly and I haven’t seen any dents/dings in the paint surface. Update: one year later I still don’t miss a clear coat – everything cleans up just fine.

7. Can you see the oak’s wood grain through the paint?

Yes, you can see the wood grain texture when the light hits just right. Most of the time you can’t tell, but when I do notice it, I think it looks fine. Personally I think a little wood grain in painted cabinets looks more like a ‘cottage kitchen’ than the perfectly smooth brand-new cabinets you see in the sample kitchens at the home improvement stores.

8. How did you go about painting the cabinet doors?

I didn’t rig up anything special like I’ve seen some folks do (like using cup hooks in the top edge to suspend the cabinets and paint both sides at once.) I set up a workspace in the garage with some saw horses and I painted the backs of all of them, placed them in various places in the garage to dry, then I came along and flipped them all over once they were dry and painted the other side. It took a few weekends. I did one coat of primer and two coats of paint.

Well folks, there you have it :) I hope I’ve answered your burning questions, but if I missed something, just leave a comment and I promise I’ll address it.

Time Capsule: DIY Cabinet Upgrade Part III – DONE!

2011-06-28T14:33:00.001-06:00

Jump back in time with me to see what we were working on a year ago this month! *Actually, we started this project a year ago this month (June) and we finished in August, but it makes more sense to keep all the posts together!

Done!

Finis!

(Disclaimer: Subject to future glazing if I decide to go that route. :))

In Part I, I installed the crown molding.

In Part II, we sanded, primed, and painted the cabinet boxes.

Somewhere in between Part II and Part III, I installed the last piece of decorative trim, and sanded, primed, and painted the doors over a couple of weekends.

And our kitchen has been transformed from this last July (2009) when we moved in:

To THIS!

Whoo to the HOO! It’s done and it feels so good to have a “brand new” kitchen :)

I just get the feeling of CLEAN and BRIGHT and CHEERY and HERB-EY COTTAGE-GARDEN-EY GOODNESS about our new space, and that’s exactly what I was hoping for.

Y’all get what I’m saying?

I know you do!

The FAQ post is coming tomorrow!

Time Capsule: DIY Cabinet Upgrade Part II

2011-06-27T10:51:00.001-06:00

Jump back in time with me to see what we were working on a year ago this month!

A little bit of sanding with my new sander….

A little bit of primer…..

And two coats of paint….

And we’re on to the next step! The DOORS! :)

Time Capsule: DIY Cabinet Upgrade Part I

2011-06-24T09:56:00.001-06:00

Jump back in time with me to see what we were working on a year ago this month!

Our orangey oak builder-basic cabinets have been screaming for some attention since we moved in. Plus, yesterday I realized that the cabinets in my kitchen at home are the exact same cabinets as the ones in the kitchen at work. (Crikey.)

So here are some before pictures:

Right after we moved in

At Christmas

After we painted and had the fluorescent light fixture box replaced with recessed lights

That should give you a pretty good idea!

Alright, so first thing to do in our upgrade is install some trim.

I picked up some 1x2s, some molding (I chose a shorter and squattier version of crown), and some brass brackets. I spent about $30.

I cut the 1x2s to size with a hand saw.

I cut the trim angles with a miter box.

I used Liquid Nails and brads from my staple gun to attach the trim to the 1x2s.

Then I countersunk all the brads and filled the holes in with wood filler.

Finally, I coped the single inside angle with a coping saw.

I discovered an “oops” at the same time. (See below)

Then it was time to install!

I set each piece on top of the cabinets and originally intended to use the brackets to attach it from the back. No dice. I don’t know what the deal was, but I couldn’t get the screws to screw into the back of the cabinet facing. I’m thinking maybe I’m not strong enough to give it the pressure it needed, or I couldn’t get enough leverage (standing on the counters doesn’t give you much leverage) or both? So I made do.

I ended up using 2” wood screws and because they weren’t quite long enough to go through the 1x2 AND into the top of the cabinet, I had to use the weird little boring tool I used on the headboard.

I drilled the holes probably a quarter inch into the 1x2 and then my screws were long enough. Then I could just drill a screw straight down through the 1x2 and into the top edge of the cabinets.

The picture above was from my headboard project, but that’s the little tool I used on the cabinet trim as well.

And now the cabinets are ready to be sanded and primed!

So the one “oops” I discovered was I needed to cut the crown one inch shorter than the 1x2 in the inside corner. Otherwise, the 1x2 that butts up against it will be impeded by the crown. But I installed my molding and THEN realized I should’ve cut it shorter. My solution was cutting a notch out of the other 1x2 so that it would fit in nicely under the crown of its neighbor.

If I’d thought more about this project before I started, I might’ve realized that. But when you’re impatient to get going and you think you can figure it out as you go, I guess you have to deal with the bumps as best you can.

Next: SANDING and PRIMING!

The June Haps

2011-06-23T16:44:00.003-06:00

After a lovely, though somewhat chilly, last weekend at the lake with family, we’re busy catching up on life before we head off again this weekend to help with a big garage sale at my mom’s house.

Luckily, despite our lack of weekend time lately, Nick has some time off work this week, so he thought it would be a prime time to tackle our uninsulated garage.

I grew up with an insulated, drywalled, and even textured/painted garage interior, so I was surprised when we moved into this house and it had a mostly unfinished garage. The areas of the garage which touch other areas of the house are drywalled (no doubt a minimum requirement) but the outside and front walls, plus a vaulted ceiling area right over the door, were all just 2x4s and funky black plywood stuff (or regular plywood).

No big deal, right? It gave us plenty of joist-space to stash random bits of crap, like the I-totally-need-to-keep-this piece of downspout recently chopped off to make room for the rain barrel.

Right???? Right…..

Well, really, it wasn’t a big deal as long as we didn’t really need the two bedrooms over the garage. In the summer they are blisteringly hot, and in the winter, guests shiver through the night even with extra blankets. But…we kept the doors shut most of the time and endured when we needed to go in there(and my computer kept me warm enough while working in the office on those cold winter days.)

But now…. a wee someone will be living in one of these bedrooms full time come November. Ergo….insulating the garage weaseled its way to the top of the to-do list.

Turns out it’s a pretty easy job. Nick got half done yesterday and he’s working on the other half today. Sounds like the hardest parts are cutting the insulation to go in the long narrow spaces, as well as cutting it lengthwise to sandwich various electrical cords, pipes, etc. Apparently, you can’t just squish insulation in, or it loses its effectiveness (good thing I’m not in charge!). It has to be cut to size for each cavity.

For the vaulted portion of the ceiling (hidden whenever the garage door is open), we *were* going to rent a scaffold for the staggering sum of $24 a day.

Fort Knox, watch out!

Anyone else surprised scaffold is that cheap?

Eh, too bad it didn’t fit in our car. We’ll have to figure out another option.

Insulating is an easy one-man job, but when we get to the drywall portion of the project, it looks like Nick’s dad and/or I (you know, all “two” of me) will help out. We’ve never drywalled before, but a garage seems like the best place to start!

Meanwhile, I FINALLY got my butt in gear and got annual flowers in all the planters. (There were 10+ different planters….took me forever!)

Don’t mind the ankle-deep grass. We figure the neighbors appreciate our savannah because it makes their yards look better, so in the name of neighborly relations, we decided to roll with it. After two weeks, it’s finally getting the overgrown mullet look we wanted.

Or the mower is in the shop.

Take your pick.

Despite the grass looking less than awesome, all the summer veg seeds etc are also finally sown and growing nicely….

And the flowers are just generally pretty happy, especially with all the rain we’ve been getting. Folks around these parts are so used to complaining about “the drought” that we’re all still in shock at our current precipitation and water table levels. Give us all another month or so, and we’ll start complaining again.

When we get back from our string of weekend engagements….we’ll start painting and decorating the nursery! I threw out the black/white/teal idea to Nick and he loved it, so that’s the plan.

Thanks for reading and staying tuned….the project pipeline will begin to flow again soon.

Summer Project List 2011

2011-06-14T09:00:00.001-06:00

Despite the next two weekends (possibly three) being taken up with various travels hither and yon, I thought I should update the “List” for the next few months.

Spring holdovers:

Paint porch ceiling finally
~~Sow sunflower seeds~~
~~Buy a bunch of cheap annuals and finish planting out the deck and porch containers (officially six more pots to plant!)~~
New living room window treatments – have the fabric and sewing machine, just need to jump in and get’er’done

Plus new summer projects:

The “Cloffice”: (awesome when I check things off before I even post the list!)

~~Paint and stencil closet~~;
~~Install desktop~~
~~Install floating shelves etc~~
Look for inexpensive roman blinds

Baby related:

Insulate and drywall garage (Nick is going to do at least part of this next week! YAY!)
Paint nursery – official color scheme: black, white, and teal
Decorate nursery

Other:

Living room wall art rearrange
Sell and replace existing coffee table (everyone who has ever tripped over this thing can thank me now – and that would be *everyone*!)
Sell my now-empty desk
Refinish hutch for buffet

And some more (wishful thinking?) ideas:

New master headboard
Revamp guest room headboard
Address the newly barenekkid guest room window (for curtains – not the State of the Union…)
Build potting bench
Master bedroom built-ins (a spring to-do list holdover, but to be realistic, it probably belongs here instead of the immediate to-dos.)

Oh yeah, and I’ll be stuck on a business trip for the next few days, so I’ll have plenty of time to think of more projects. Let me just add for a moment…..that finding professional looking maternity outfits is one serious challenge. Hopefully everyone gives me a “pregnancy pass” for my attire...

Nursery Ideas

2011-06-10T14:09:00.001-06:00

We are rapidly approaching the halfway point of this pregnancy in a few days, and I’m just as rapidly feeling the onset of “oh crap! Nothing’s done!” panic.

I haven’t put more than a few minutes’ thought into the nursery other than how to get all the existing office furniture out of that room (and where to put it of course – check out the new cloffice/guest room to see what we did), so I really need to get down to baby business.

I figure choosing colors is the place to start.

We’ve decided to keep the sex of the baby a surprise, so we need to be careful to choose a color scheme and décor that’s flexible for a boy or a girl….and is not yellow.

Green I’ll consider….for now. After all, it’s the color of plants and vegetation and it’s still early summer when I haven’t gotten sick of all that yet. Ask me again in October how I feel about green and I might tell you to go jump in a lake…. so “green” is up in the air

My thoughts are to choose a scheme of two or three (or four?) colors that’s neutral or perhaps slightly on the baby boy-side of things….and then add pops of a girlier color if baby turns out to be a girl.

Speaking of which, most likely, baby will be a girl.

Why?

Because we have a collectively odd sense of humor and we’ve been referring to he or she as “Herman”. Irony suggests that Herman will therefore turn out to be a decidedly un-Herman girl baby. Meanwhile, I’ll spare you from the eccentric humor that caused us to fall upon the name Herman.

(You’re welcome – and no, if it’s a boy we’re not naming it Herman.)

I was at a baby shower for a friend not too long ago and came home with a “great idea!” for nursery colors: teal, chocolate brown, and lime. Plum shades would be the girly color added later.

It could either be the four shades on the right, then add purple, or it could be the three in the middle and add purple for a girl or lime for a boy (or skip lime altogether).

Only problem is….without realizing it, I’m pretty sure I totally hijacked my friend’s nursery colors after (duh) seeing them in various gifts etc she was opening.

So now I feel like I should probably try to be a little more creative.

The next color idea is black and white and teal. And then add plum for a baby girl or lime for a boy. I dig plum. It was one of our wedding colors. Teal would’ve been a wedding color too but gold seemed better for a January wedding.

Here’s some cute use of black and white:

(sorry, I have no idea where I got this picture weeks ago…)

And a more subtle play on black and white with beautiful use of mismatched furniture:

Again, sorry no credit back to the source. These are from my “idea files”.

Once the colors are figured out….I know I definitely want a tree mural on one wall (either painted on or a decal). Something like these:

The colors are blocking any ideas beyond these, so I guess we need to figure those out first, then we can move forward.

Any fabulous ideas out there? Peanut Gallery, come in….

The Cloffice Reveal

2011-06-07T12:01:00.005-06:00

Yesterday I mentioned we needed to consolidate two rooms, the guest room and the office, into one room.

With some creative furniture rearranging, we were able to successfully combine two desks, a double bed, a cedar chest and a side table into a 9x10 room!

My favorite spot, of course, is the new “cloffice”, which is my desk and workspace.

Here’s where we started:

And here’s where we are today:

I’m still contemplating installing some roller shades to pull down and hide the stuff on that top shelf.

And, to get Nick’s desk comfortably in this room, we rearranged from this:

To this:

Yes, we had to eliminate the headboard altogether…

And the curtains also came down (were moved to our room, actually)

…So there’s still some room for improvement. For now, though, our guest room/office is completely functional, and future tweaks are projects for another day!

We didn’t move the bookshelf from the office yet – it (and the behemoth desk soon to be sold) is the only thing left in there and it may stay in there or make its way to another room in the house. Time will tell.

Thanks for stopping by!

Linked up to:
Fireflies and Jellybeans
House of Hepworths
Chic on a Shoestring
The Shabby Nest
Tatertots & Jello

A Super-Efficiency Guest Room

2011-06-06T12:17:00.001-06:00

With a little bundle of crying, pooping joy on his or her way (no, really, we’re excited, I promise!), we need to rearrange our upper floor living areas to actually give the baby his/her own space to grow into.

Our second floor has two bedrooms plus the master. The bedrooms are being used as a guest room and an office.

I try to keep the guest room organized and relatively free of any excess furniture or stuff. There’s just something about a clean, calm guest room that’s nicer than the “your bed is hidden behind those piles of junk – sweet dreams!” type of guest rooms. The two storage pieces in here also hold the guest bed spare sheets/blankets and the guest towels, to keep them in easy reach of guests and out of our too-small linen closet.

The closet has a few items stored in it (and our lovely ironing board.) This picture shows the room with its new carpeting

The office, on the other hand, is just as full as it is necessary (ie “very” on both counts!). We have two huge (ok, mine is huger) desks in there plus a full bookcase, a filing cabinet/printer stand, and a stuffed-full closet. Of course, the office is all in shambles right now, and I have zero “before” pictures, except this one of the bookcase and one corner of Nick’s desk:

Very informative, I know. Go figure.

And now I get to the point…

Because the guest room also happens to have some rad stenciling already on the walls and it’s the slightly bigger room of the two, we decided to make that room the guest room/office combo area. The only problem is two desks will *not* fit in there with the existing bed.

The plan, then, is to turn the guest closet into a “cloffice” for my desk while Nick’s desk will fit against a wall with some creative furniture rearranging. The guest bed headboard will probably go by the wayside for this to work, but I guess it’s just the sacrifice we have to make.

My current workspace behemoth will take a hike via Craigslist. We’ll “build” a desk into the closet, and floating shelves on the walls above/around the desk will add storage. I’m considering some ideas to hide the closet shelf with its additional piles of crap as well.

Hey, when you have to cram two rooms into one, crap gets downsized and organized…but it’s still there.

So that’s the plan…..aka Step Zero toward making our guest room a “high efficiency guest room” – get it?

After some preliminary clean-out, here’s where we started:

….AND we got a lot done over the weekend, so an update is soon to come!

Spring Project List Update

2011-06-01T10:15:00.001-06:00

Whew! It’s been a busy May, like it is every year. In the last couple of weeks we’ve had 2 graduation parties, a birthday party, a baby shower, a garden swap event, and out of town guests (or we were the out of town guests) nearly every weekend. When we were home, it was catch-up time to get chores and errands done.

So with all this hubbub, it’s definitely time for an update of the to-do list!

Here was the project list I put up way back in…..oh, early March?

Let’s see how I did….

~~Homemade rain barrel~~ Go here to get the dish.
~~Make and put up clematis trellises – 3 of them~~ Check it out here.
Master bedroom “built ins” and window treatments (bwahahahaha! I got the curtain rod up and stole the guest room curtains, does that count?)
~~Make compost platform/compost sifter out of mystery wooden box~~ The wooden box will be going to the dump soon. It’s too decrepit to modify.
Prime and paint porch ceiling
~~Repair side fence~~
~~Plant veggie garden~~
~~Plant 2 new clematis – one on deck, one on side fence~~
~~Plant lilac and Karl Foerster~~
Sow sunflower, ~~cuke, and squash~~ seeds
Nursery Trip:
- ~~Perennials: Shasta daisy, new hosta, whatever else~~
- Annuals: alyssum, petunias, planter fillers etc
Plant pots (half are planted)

And the “if it works out” projects that may end up summer projects:

~~Revamp mom’s country bench for porch~~ I dig my new yellow bench.
New living room window treatments – bought the fabric!
~~Fix/improve guest headboard~~ Plans have changed – there’s no longer any room for a headboard!

Not too bad The summer list is coming soon, and there are already some things to cross off!

Giveaway Results!!

2011-05-18T14:03:00.001-06:00

So apparently Blogger decided to have some glitches right smack-in-the-middle of the cutting board and free pizza giveaway. If anyone had trouble leaving comments to enter, I am so sorry!!

One fantastic reader finally emailed me after having trouble with the comment form, so we managed to get a few people entered despite Blogger’s issues.

We got a whopping NINE entries for the giveaway (those are some fantastic odds, peeps!). Since we all know we can click on the Random Number Generators to get a different number if we don’t like the first one, I took 3 results and averaged them instead.

Here we go!

First result: 6

Second result: 8

Third result: 5

Average (Winner!): SIX!

And…based on when the entries came in, the author of the sixth entry was Manda! Congratulations, Manda, shoot me an email with your mailing address and I’ll get the goods in the mail!

Thanks for entering everyone!

Pizza Amore! Plus Giveaway!

2011-05-10T21:02:00.001-06:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of FRESCHETTA®. All opinions are 100% mine.

Hiya Peeps!

I was recently contacted by Freschetta to do a review of their new FRESCHETTA® Simply…Inspired™ pizza line, and I have to say I was THRILLED!

Lucky for them, Freschetta has been our absolute go-to frozen pizza choice for several years. Ever since we discovered the mushroom/roasted garlic/spinach pizza, we pretty much always have one or two in the freezer for those nights when we just don't feel like cooking. Plus, even without a coupon, they're only $6 at max - who can beat $6 for a pizza!? In fact, here's my messy freezer now:

Needless to say, we're really impressed with the flavors and the quality of Freschetta (the proof is in the pudding, er freezer!), so a *new* line of Freschetta gourmet pizzas is right down our alley.

To try out the Simply Inspired line, we chose the Harvest Supreme variety, which is not exactly your standard "supreme" pizza... but I'll get to that.

The first thing I noticed was the packaging - Freschetta is using a new type of packaging that not only keeps the pizza fresh, but it's 30% less material than their standard packaging. For those of us always looking to throw less into the landfill, this is really great. The fact that companies are now taking notice and making efforts to minimize packaging is even greater!

If you only had smellavision, you would understand when I say that when this pizza is cooking, it doesn't smell like a "supreme" pizza. It smells like a gourmet pizza oven restaurant where you walk in and marvel at the mixture of herbs and veggies and meats making up the Italian bouquet of aromas (seriously.)

Something about the spinach, feta cheese (mmmmm), and the sun-dried tomatoes really kicked it up to primo status - those particular toppings really sealed the deal for me. I'll even admit that I don't care for "supreme" pizza in general, but I loved this version. I think calling it "supreme" actually detracts a little, because it's way better, and had I not looked closely at the toppings, I probably would've passed it up for another variety. To add to the experience, the crust is thin and crispy - just the way I like it (because you don't fill up on bread and can eat one more slice!)

Did I also mention the gorgeous cutting board I received from Freschetta? (I have a cutting board, yes, but it's not nearly so classy as this one.) Made of bamboo, it has slots for utensils and a cute little dish for say....some olive oil and balsamic for our next Italian night?

Alright, alright, so you know I really liked this pizza. And you know I got a cool, new cutting board that really adds a certain panache to my kitchen...

BUT - did you know YOU CAN WIN A FREE PIZZA AND CUTTING BOARD, TOO???

That's right! Freschetta sent me an extra cutting board and a coupon for a free Simply Inspired pizza to give away to one of my readers so you can experience it for yourself! Your cutting board is a little different style, too - check it out...

First, it's a cutie round cutting surface:

And then BAM - it slides open to reveal some neatly tucked away utensils (talk about a storage solution!)

Here's what you need to do for some FAREEEEEE (did I mention that?) pizza and a jazzy new cutting board:

Leave a comment here sharing your favorite frozen pizza! (one entry)
"Like" Freschetta "Simply Inspired" pizza on Facebook and let me know (one entry) (By the way, on Facebook, Freschetta is also doing weekly giveaways through the END OF THE YEAR and offering a $2 coupon soon to its followers. Hello, couponers!)
Follow @FreschettaSI on Twitter and let me know (one entry)

I'll use a random number generator to pick a winner in one week!

Good luck!

** The makers of Freschetta Pizza contacted me and provided the above products for my review and for your giveaway fun; however, all opinions in this post are 100% mine.**

(Fruit and) Veggie Tales ‘11: The Planting

2011-05-09T16:45:00.003-06:00

We went from this a few weeks ago:

To this last weekend:

...with the help of 1) one strapping husband willing to do some tilling for his wife and 2) some rockin’ new weed fabric that decomposes and can be tilled into the soil at the end of the season. (Not so much for weeds – mostly for turds.)

After the dirt was tilled and smoothed, I put the wall of waters up for about a week. I always thought the wall of waters were just to keep the plants warm, but I recently found out tomatoes like their roots to be about 55-60 degrees at a minimum, so planting them in cooler soil doesn’t do them any favors. So getting the little-green-teepees set up a little early is a good thing.

Finally, this weekend, I planted my six awesome $1.69 tomato plants. I intentionally chose much smaller plants than last years’, which stuck up out of the wall of waters and ended up getting partially frozen in a May snowstorm. I also made sure to give each plant a couple fertilizer stakes this time around to avoid the ~~catastrophe~~ carnage of last year’s under-fertilized crop. Hey. Live and learn, right?

Varieties I planted are Early Girl, Celebrity, Better Boy, and “Large Red Cherry”. (3 of those, to get more of that cherry tomato salsa!) So far, the plants are very happy in their little greenhouses.

Left to go into the vegetable garden are cucumber seeds, zucchini seeds, and yellow squash seeds, but these can’t be planted until later in May.

An unexpected addition to my kitchen garden this year is a clump of six ever-bearing strawberry plants! Here’s a very informative shot of …..where they’re planted!

(Don’t mind the hose….we’ll get to that.)

My father-in-law got the veggie bug this spring and ended up with a few too many strawberries, so I adopted the extras. I’ve never grown strawberries in the ground before, so I didn’t even realize they are perennials!!! (When you plant in pots in Zone 4, everything is an annual!) Next year, once Bubba the Rhubarb is in his third season, we’ll even have fresh rhubarb to combine with our strawberries. Yummmmmmmm! (Until then, Bubba is left to his own devices.)

The raised veggie bed is no place for a perennial, so the strawberries were planted off the side of the deck. Near the grouping are two other new perennials I picked up at a sale at Home Depot last weekend. One is a red and white columbine (in the corner), and the other is an unidentified purple salvia. Love how I managed to grab the only plant without a tag...

I have one more plant that will go in this bed in a couple of weeks and then I’ll consider it “planted out”! (YAY!) Caveat: I consider the deck bed to be in 4 separate chunks….so it’s really only this particular section which will be planted out.

What? We can’t all be Yard Crashers and plant an entire yard out in a day (It’s expensive!)

Oh yeah….

How do you like dat mulch?? No wait. That’s not a question. Let me rephrase.

How do you like dat mulch!!!!

Suddenly the area around our deck doesn’t look like a construction zone!!!! YAY! The black plastic weed fabric I put down last spring has been completely removed. (Mulch will blow away if it has weed barrier under it.)

Can you see where I got tuckered out with the edger and gave up just to the far side of the stepping stones…)

Here are some “before” shots to show you how *great* that plastic looked (yeah, it was my idea.)

Hey, I hear the Moody Blues are writing a new song after seeing pictures of my backyard. It’s going to be called “Barf on Black Plastic.”

(Actually, it’s grass clippings )

Yeah. Gorg. (Ugh, Not!)

So… about that hose.

What is it, do you ask? Why, it’s my very own personal Yard-Sentry!

It’s that motion-activated sprinkler I’ve been yammering about as a final attempt to keep the neighbors’ cats from leaving their calling cards in our grass and flower beds….and someday I might even luck out with a video of it in action, similar to the day I lucked out with this shot of the culprits.

If I do manage to get a video…I’ll be sure to share.

Thanks for stopping by! Stay tuned for a giveaway sometime very soon!

A “New” Bench: Country to Cottage Chic

2011-05-06T11:29:00.001-06:00

If I do say so myself!

My mom got this rustic little bench years ago.

Well, eventually, she got sick of the country look. Around this same time, I’d been talking about keeping an eye out for a cheap bench I could put on our front porch.

As you can probably guess, putting two and two together makes…..a new bench for my front porch!

I wasn’t wild about the heart cut-outs, and the back of the bench came up several inches higher than our front window. Solution? Cut off the entire top portion, leaving only one heart cut-out to cover up.

I found a wooden medallion from Lowe’s and used wood glue to glue it over the heart.

Some yellow paint (to match another piece of décor destined for the porch) and mahogany stain later (wipe on, wipe off!), we have this:

Once it warms up just a bit more, friendly plants in the glaringly bare planters will help the porch will look even more summery and inviting.

A few more details:

There’s no poly on this guy. Supposedly, poly isn’t recommended for outdoor furniture.
I used exterior latex paint in a satin finish. I learned later that anything less than gloss in exterior paint is “designed to chalk” – so I should have used a gloss sheen instead. It’s not a huge bench, so it won’t see many (if any) bums sitting on it, but still.

What else is new in the neighborhood?

Welllllll…….

We bought some (more) mulch last weekend, to be spread this weekend. What? More mulch? Because the first truckful wasn’t enough? Unfortunately, no. This time around, our ugly backyard deck beds will be getting a nice, fluffy layer of mulch to replace the totally-ugly-can’t-believe-our-backdoor-neighbors-still-speak-to-us black plastic weed mat that was covering the ground back there! It is supposed to be BEE-EAUTIFUL this weekend, too, which makes mulch-spreading that much more fun. (Yep, I’m crazy.) I’ll *totally* have some narstay before shots to show you, along with the lovely, fluffy monkey-hair after pictures!

WHOOOOOO!!!! MULCH!!!!

Plus, I have one more quick project to brighten the porch (in addition to plants in the planters, which I already mentioned) so stay tuned. Hopefully, I’ll knock that one out this weekend while Nick helps lay sod at a friend’s house.

Pregnant gals don’t have to help lay sod

One of these days, maybe I’ll even start to think about baby stuff or start on my new living room curtains with the sewing machine….! So many projects…so little time

The Rain…Falls Mainly in May

2011-04-26T15:53:00.001-06:00

We’ve had about 3 weeks of wet weather around here. The plants (and weeds) are loving it, and we’re loving it because it’s keeping our newly-spread mulch matted to the ground when the wind blows. But despite the soggy ground, I think it’s time for a little spring garden tour of the backyard plants! (No big picture shots yet – the big picture isn’t pretty yet!)

Plants are thriving left and right. A division of a pink phlox last fall was a dubious contender for survival….but it’s alive (above)! The lilies that got munched into nothingness last year are also cheerfully growing into neat little clumps so far this spring.

Divisions borrowed from my mom’s garden late last summer are also doing great – some Autumn Joy sedum (the one in the photo is protected from basketballs by an obelisk) a HUGE lily that looks like something tropical, and some monarda (“Bee Balm”) are doing fabulous. The Karl Foersters are doing great, too.

Casualties of transplanting and/or winter include those couple of sedum I mentioned and a poor salvia. We’re also not sure how our bamboo fared through the winter, as it’s still very yellow. There are a few green culms (stems) in the center of each clump, though, so we’ll give it a few more months before rendering a verdict.

Bubba the Rhubarb is going nuts, and other star performers are some ice plants, a Betony woundwort, and the lambs ears, which seems to be really enjoying the extreme makeover it got earlier this spring.

The ice plants are doing well….except for being stepped on by a large-footed teenager in recent days. Mud is very telling, isn’t it? Have I mentioned we’re in a perpetual struggle to keep the neighbor kids from hopping the fence to retrieve errant balls? Last year a football clobbered a coneflower. Early this spring, Bubba caught a basketball. I guess now we’re now into the “not careful enough to avoid stepping/landing on the plants” phase and it’s the ice plants’ turn to be smashed. (Yes, the parents are aware of the problem.)

We got the two new clematis in the ground as well as the new lilac (which looks a little lonely in his spot right now), so those will be fun to watch this summer. Clematis like hot heads and cool feet, so I put some large rocks at their base to keep their roots cooler.

A big, fat, FAIL turned out to be the new trellis I made for our large clematis (a Jackmanii, I believe). There are so many large rocks under our topsoil, and that plant’s root system is so large, that not only could we not get the trellis down deep enough in the ground to be sturdy, but I also couldn’t dig far enough to clear the rocks out without seriously damaging the roots. So now we have our very own leaning Tower of Pisa.

The next dry, warm day will see me out there taking the fencing off the T-posts and attaching it directly to the deck railing. “Jack” is growing so fast, I don’t even want to completely remove the trellis at this point – so I’ll have to finagle with the posts/fencing in their current spot.

My arch-nemesis-unidentified-weed is also starting to show its ugly face. I’ve been pulling/spraying these things since we moved in, and they only seem to be growing in number! Well, while planting the new, big Karl Foersters I ran into the roots of a couple of these weeds (for the first time). HOLEY BUCKETS! No wonder I couldn’t get rid of them! The roots go at least 12 inches down, and they are THICK and seem to be interconnected. Pulling is not the answer. Double-strength Round Up is the only solution I can think of.

On a happier note – the linden tree looks to be 100% alive this spring! (not sure about the maple yet…) and in a few weeks I’ll have a couple new (free) perennials from a plant swap to add to the garden as well. The pots haven’t come out of the garage yet either (we’ve been busy!), but they’ll get potting mix this year instead of garden soil, so I’m looking forward to much healthier container plants.

As for the veggie bed – well, it speaks for itself. In fact, it’s practically wailing for attention. As soon as the ground dries out for a few days, I’ll be able to till it and get some tomatoes in the ground (safely inside wall-o-waters). I emptied the compost bin into this raised bed last fall, but the compost was only partially done, so the whole bed needs tilling and raking. I think our uninvited neighbors the Kitty McPoopersons have also been having a grand time in there, so I suppose their ‘nuggets’ need to be tilled under as well.

This summer, my goal is to fill in more bare spots with a few new perennials, divide any others I can, put some annuals into the bare spots, and get some mulch down. I’m also seriously considering a few more lilacs along the fence, but we’ll see. Perhaps I need something like a climbing rose instead

A Little Surprise

2011-04-25T09:30:00.001-06:00

Hello blog buddies!

Yet again, I must apologize for my rather slow posting these last few weeks. As I’ve said before, I haven’t really gotten much done around here. Ok, in six weeks, I haven’t really gotten *anything* done. Yeesh.

But this time, I’m going to pull my ~~best~~ ace excuse out of my sleeve (and no, it’s not “sheer laziness” or even “vacation”….)

Actually…

I’m pregnant (Sounds so weird to me…!)

We found out in March that we’re expecting our first baby, and boy (or girl), it’s been kicking my patootie.

I had no idea “morning sickness” (what a misnomer) could last all day. Or that I would be starving hungry *constantly*….but that nothing would ever sound or look good to eat. Or that all I would want to do is lie around.

But ANYHOO! We will officially enter the second trimester tomorrow (whoop!!), and I’ve been feeling much better and more energetic for about two weeks now.

So now the fun begins! Not only can we catch up on lots of things house-related, but of course, baby fun can start now, too! We have to figure out where to put the little bundle, where everything else will go, and how to make it all cute and functional, hopefully without spending a ton of dough. After all, saving dough is my M.O.! (har! har! I crack myself up…)

And we have until November 1st to get’er’done. That’s right – I’m due on 11/1/11! Pretty cool I think. (A Halloween baby would be fun too!)

I am officially the least experienced baby-person EVER (no really….I think I’ve dealt with a single poopy diaper in my life and that was on a toddler), so this could get interesting.

Won’t you waddle along with me?

A Spring Break

2011-04-22T11:56:00.001-06:00

So I’m just full of excuses lately, aren’t I? The last 8 days or so was a good one, though. And Shamu agrees, so there.

Last year, we planned to take a weeklong vacation to Florida that never seemed to get any traction. Maybe it was because of work….an unwillingness to commit to dates…or the fact that we decided to jump headfirst into the bathroom renovation (ummm…bingo?) but as a result, a vacation was of high priority this year. April seemed like a good time to avoid the school spring breaks and the hot summer weather in Florida. Plus, we were both starting to feel burned out at work.

To save some moolah, we arranged to stay with a cousin near Orlando (and his lovely family). We rented a car for a week and tooled back and forth to Orlando, Cocoa Beach, and the surrounding areas. We also enjoyed, and marveled at, our “private” pool during the day and the gorgeously landscaped bug-proof enclosure it was in. I’ve never seen anything like that, and it was so nice!

Other adventures included…

Airboats and alligators:

A trip to a village in the snowy mountains of England…

and one very magical castle inhabited by my homeboy Harry Potter:

Hedwig wouldn’t leave me alone.

(Just kidding! It was the cutest stuffed-owl-head-turning puppet I’ve ever seen.)

A picture to prove I don’t always look like a dork. (Or do I?)

Sea World (my favorite favorite):

I’m petting an alpaca. At Sea World. Very ocean-y, right? I go for the thrills.

Can you read that? It says “Soak Zone”….

And here it comes… (good thing I don’t have a nicer camera or I wouldn’t have gotten this shot!)

My other homeboy, Shamu (actually a Shamu lookalike) who inspired my marine biologist aspirations for a good ten years or so:

The fan-flipper-tastic whale and dolphin show was my favorite (a girl *can* have eighteen favorites)…

With a quick wave farewell, we moved right along to…

A classic shot of some pink flamingoes. The non-plastic variety. Oh, and me.

I can’t forget my other favorite – feeding the stingrays some seriously delicious (looking) frozen-and-chopped-in-two dead fishies!

Up to my elbows in awesome fishiness:

I dig me some stingrays.

We also had to spend some time at the beach, of course:

And in some kayaks:

Where we met a rather playful dolphin:

And spotted something really exciting…..

Do you see it? (I am pointing after all…)

Now you see it. But do you know what it is?

It weighs something like 1500 lbs….

Has a furry snout…

Looks an awful lot like a hippo in person…

And (evidently) prefers to drink from the garden hose:

It’s a MANATEE! Actually, there are several in these pictures, including a mama and a baby (the snouts you see in a picture above), but they rise and fall in depth, so it’s tough to get good pictures, especially when you are right next to them. We were a little afraid of having our kayaks tipped when they rose to the surface, so we skirted the group and had fun watching and taking pictures.

What a fabulous vacation! Native wildlife….tourist traps….the pool….and the ocean.

What more can one ask for? (Except maybe a more diligent blogger…)

Quick Note

2011-04-19T12:07:00.000-06:00

Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?

Actually, I'm not sure where she is......but I can tell you where we've been for the last eight days!

FLORIDA! On vacation, enjoying Sea World, Universal Studios, the ocean, and the beautiful warm weather!

Gotta run though...more to come later...

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

2011-03-31T16:32:00.001-06:00

Eventually!

Last week I mentioned my mom was coming to visit and bringing her truck. Well, we got some good use out of that truck!

We hauled away the old, rotten fence planks from where Nick fixed our fence. (The neighbors only had to look at them piled in our driveway for a week!)

We picked up a cubic yard of shredded cedar mulch (my mom says it’s called “gorilla hair” in her neck of the woods). Since Nick was off on a guy’s weekend with his friends, we girls used tarps to unload the mulch into the garage and I’ll spread it outside sometime soon. But for now, it’s protected from wind and rain.

The country bench also arrived! We came up with lots of ideas for what to do about those heart cut-outs, and I think the bench will ultimately be painted a deep yellow.

Some big, fat Karl Foersters came too, and they’re hanging out in cardboard boxes on the front porch. I should probably make a point of getting them in the ground this weekend.

Meanwhile, my remaining mail-order plants (for one of which we dug a huge hole a few weeks ago and it’s still a huge hole)…are in the mail as of today! Turns out the huge hole plant…..is going to be much smaller than I expected (boo) so I guess I could go out and fill the hole in a bit (or a lot).

And finally, what a surprise…..my mom was going to loan me her sewing machine for a couple projects. Well, she decided she couldn’t part with it…..so she surprised me by buying me one of my own!!! I can’t wait to start figuring out sewing with some new projects

Last weekend was busy…and this weekend will be busy too. We’re helping my aunt and uncle move into a new house on Saturday morning, then we’ll have Nick’s mom and dad here for a visit the rest of the weekend. With no rain forecast until Sunday, the weather should be great!

Hopefully, Sunday afternoon will give me a little sun to go out and get those grasses planted. I won’t even start with all the other outside stuff waiting to be tackled…

How are your weekend plans stacking up?

All Quiet on the Western Front

2011-03-24T14:35:00.001-06:00

Hello blog buddies!

I thought it was about time for a quick update post. I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, it’s just been a slow couple of weeks for projects. Namely, I’ve started quite a few….and finished none.

Sad, I know.

Nick finished one though! We’ve had three terrible windstorms, and one panel of our yucky old fence decided it had enough. So Nick replaced the crossbeams and the rotten planks in that section. At some point, the whole thing needs to be redone, but this will work for now. (Nice contrast, right?)

But this weekend will see some progress. My mom is coming for a visit, and she’s bringing her truck, along with some goodies in the back of it.

A country bench is coming to be refinished for our front porch!

Some new plants (divided from ones in her yard) are also coming this way, which will give me some food for thought on where I’ll put them. They are Karl Foerster grasses….but not just any…. they are MONSTER Karl Foersters! Before division, they were as large around as a tire, and probably 15 feet tall. Whoop!!

We’ll also make good use of the truck by picking up a load of shredded cedar mulch. This year, I’m opting to get the un-dyed mulch. We currently have the red stuff out there, but it fades *so* quickly, and it really does look pretty fake. Plus, I’ve heard various opinions that the dye has a negative effect on plant health. So I’ll top it off with cedar and hope it looks ok.

We’re also making a trip to the nursery. I still need to poke around and see which ones are open yet, but I know of at least one, and hanging out in a warm greenhouse sounds like a great way to spend a cool March afternoon.

And as soon as it warms back up, I’ll go take some pictures of all the sprouts in the backyard. Sedum are coming up (looking very cute, too), the dianthus is already very green, the irises are greening up, and lilies and scabiosa are also doing well!

I also need to tackle the rain barrel again. It’s working GREAT…but remember how the Gorilla Glue wasn’t really cutting it? Yeah. It’s definitely not cutting it now. My plan? Sewing

Coming soon!

Make Your Own Trellis

2011-03-16T17:00:00.001-06:00

Hiya peeps! (Or should I say “Peeps”, since we’re getting closer to Easter?)

I thought I’d show you how I put together very simple trellises for my climbing plants.

The benefits of these are:

You can make them any size/height
They virtually disappear with a green plant on them
They’re freestanding, so you can access fence panels, decks etc without having to rip your vine off first.

Ok, and now for the downside:

They aren’t decorative, if you prefer a decorative trellis.
Because they’re freestanding, they need to be pushed into the ground, which can be challenging, as you’ll see

I went ahead and did these last weekend, because our huge clematis is getting ready to wake up. I did major trimming on this guy over the winter, and I removed the original trellis bits still wrapped up in it. So, when it wakes up, it needed somewhere to grow, and fast.

It was originally planted on a very flimsy, wooden “Y” trellis that had been literally torn apart by the plant as it grew.

The plant was large enough, though, to get a good hold on our deck railing, so that’s where its support was coming from. Last summer, it got so big, the clematis started folding over itself, so I made a quickie trellis extension to give it more room to grow:

Well, this year it needed a sturdy replacement trellis to help it get back up onto the railing. I also have another clematis (“Sweet Autumn”) coming soon, and it will need a trellis as well….so I made two. I’ll need one more of these trellises before all is said and done, but I’ll do that one later.

It’s super easy.

Grab two “U” posts from the hardware store. They come in different heights, and they’re measured as the total length – so if you buy a six-foot post and stake it up to the “fins”, you’ll have five feet above ground.

Next, get some fencing. I have a roll of green plastic coated wire fencing that I use for tons of stuff (I used it in the trellis extension above as well.)

Lay your posts out on the ground and unroll the fencing to the total length you need. I used the width of the fencing as the width of the trellis, and roll it out to get the total height I want.

Once your fencing is the right length, finagle it into the “U” notches on each post. Use a hammer or mallet to close the notches so the fencing stays put.

Now take it out where you need it, and push it into the ground up to the “fins”.

Our dirt is unbelievably awful, so we had a lot of trouble getting it more than a couple inches into the ground. Hammering the stakes didn’t work either (though we don’t have a sledgehammer, which might’ve helped), but I plan to hand dig the holes this weekend so we can get the trellis down deeper so it’s not taller than the deck railing.

Stand back, and wait for the trellis to be covered with your favorite vine!

I know it’s not pretty, especially not this time of year. But it will be extremely functional in about a month.

(Notice the nice spot on the deck skirting that isn’t painted – the old clematis must’ve been in the way!)

P.S:

TULIPS!

How to Make a Rain Barrel

2011-03-14T12:40:00.003-06:00

One flower bed next to our deck gets zero-zilch-nada water from our sprinkler system. It’s also a very hot area in the summer, where the sun bounces off the side of the house.

But luckily, there IS a downspout that drains right into this bed, so to put this downspout to better use, I decided I needed a rain barrel.

Like this one for $175:

Or this one for $150:

Yeeeeeeah….NO. They’re too rich for my blood. So I set out to make my own.

Here’s how I did it:

I found a valve at Lowe’s that allowed for a nut to screw onto each side of the portion which will be installed into the barrel. I won’t go into the details of all the ideas we tossed around before we settled on this, but suffice it to say that if we could’ve found rubber washers with a large enough center opening, it would’ve been a much faster trip to the store!

Little tip: make sure the valve you get has a notch on each side for screws – otherwise the entire valve could turn when you turn the handle.

Next, I bought a plastic trash can with a lid:

I also bought a flexible downspout attachment.

To keep leaves and debris out of the barrel, I cut a hole in the lid of the trash can and used silicone to glue a piece of hardware cloth (fencing type material) to the underside of the hole.

I find my décor (pillar candles, here) to be quite functional when trying to glue things.

But then….believe it or not, the silicone didn’t stick. I still don’t really “get” silicone. I’ve never once seen it advertised as an “adhesive” but yet everybody and their brother at Home Depot point to it as some kind of miracle glue.

I tried it. It totally failed. I moved on to using Gorilla Glue. It worked a little better….but I suspect it will eventually peel right off the plastic as well and I’ll have to resort to some kind of mechanical way to attach the screen.

So then I thought I was done with the lid.

But I wasn’t. I totally spaced the mosquito issue…..so I grabbed some old screen fabric and hot glued that behind the hardware cloth. We’ll see how it holds up. (I was too impatient to do Gorilla Glue again.)

Next, I cut a hole (using a razor blade) as close to the bottom of the can as possible. I inserted the valve, applied silicone to both sides of the threaded area and tightened the nuts on each side. (You can see an “X” on the can where I took it outside and determined the minimum height the valve would need to be to clear the top of the landscape edging – I can always tip it to drain the water level below that point.)

The only problem is because there are no screws to hold the valve in place, as soon as I tried to turn the handle, the whole valve turned in the hole and (stupid silicone) pulled the silicone seal away from the plastic. Grr! Silicone! Why can’t you be the miracle adhesive/caulk you’re supposed to be!!!

At this point, I thought the seal was shot and I’d have to start over. But when I took it outside and filled the barrel with water, there were no leaks. The jury is still out, but I’ll keep an eye on it and redo the seal later if I need to.

Now my rain barrel is done! To install it, I used a hack saw to cut off our downspout high enough that the barrel would stand under it with space to spare. Then I attached the flexible downspout thingamajig and pointed it at the mesh opening.

I still need to move the downspout brackets up higher on the siding:

I was afraid the downspout wouldn’t stay in place, so I used some wire to attach it to the hardware cloth.

Finally, I leveled an area next to the house and put it in place.

DUNZO. BOOM. A rain barrel. For $8 (valve)+$20 (trash can)+$10 (flex downspout) + random bits I already had like hardware cloth and glue = $38!

(P.S. I also plan to zip-tie one of the handles of the barrel to an eye-hook in the siding to keep it from blowing over…but until I get around to putting the eye-hook in, I did fill the barrel with 8 inches of water or so to keep it in place.)

There’s an irrigation element to this project as well, but since the garden isn’t quite ready for that yet, I’ll just let the water accumulate, and I’ll make the irrigation project a little closer to spring.

But in the meantime, our spring moisture will be put to great use in the dry, dog days of summer.

And my garden will love me!

I hope…

Linked up to:
Between Naps on the Porch
Dittle Dattle
The Girl Creative