{House} Living Room Progress

As I mentioned in the previous post we have put a large dent in the work on our house and while we still have several things to do here are some photos on the progress of our living room. We had the bookshelves ripped out, the fireplace torn up and refaced, replaced the carpet and painted.

Before view from the entryway...

 after....

other before view from entryway...

 

after....

 before view from the hallway...

after view...

As you can see we need to do some furniture shopping (we are currently using dining chairs as extra seating and our giant media cabinet as an end table ha! ha!), hang a few items, work on window treatments and would like to replace the ceiling fan and add a few can lights but I think it already looks a hundred times better (and brighter). I'll post more as we progress.

Lessons of a 1st time homebuyer

Every house I've ever lived in (rented or houses that my parents had bought) has been clean when we moved in. Maybe not perfect- but clean enough for you to feel comfortable moving your things into.

So we never thought to put a requirement into our contract to have the house professionally cleaned. Let me just say that unless we have a home built, we will never buy another home without requiring the house be professionally cleaned.

We had our walk through at 5 pm the night before closing and I was mostly looking to see that the sellers had fixed the things we'd asked them to take care of after our inspection. I never thought to look closely at the baseboards, the edges of the carpet, the ceiling fans, and checked every cabinet so it's partly my fault.

We went to the house the day after we closed to start painting, but instead spent the next 2 days literally cleaning the house from top to bottom. The sellers I'm sure are wonderful people, but in the 2 or 3 years they lived in the house I can tell you they never once dusted, washed the windows, or used the extension on their vacuum. I'm not even sure they owned a vacuum. We've discovered many half-hearted DIY projects which is why we'll just call the previous owners the "Sloppy Sally's."

So after the scrubbing, vacuuming, windexing, hole patching, dusting the dust blankets off the ceiling fans, and chair rail removing (which were cut all at the same angle so they looked like two arrows pointing at each other at every corner) -we began priming and painting, and removing and replacing broken outlet covers, blinds and broken closet doors.

In one week we were able to clean and prep the house, get the paint and several improvements done and unload the PODS container. Had we not had some major help it would have taken the two of us a year to do all that since our nugget can't hang out in her pack n' play while we are working (she plays for 5 minutes then whine/fake cries/real cries til we get her out).

My family is nothing short of incredible. My dad and mom spent hours and hours cleaning, spackling, sanding, removing doors, making trips to Lowe's with me, priming, painting and watching Brooklyn so Daniel and I could work on the house. My brother and sister-in-law spent their entire weekend watching Brooklyn and helping us move all of our furniture and boxes in from the storage container. Had my sister and her fam lived closer they would have been there too (actually, when we packed in Oregon- they drove down and helped us pack up our house!).

We had some work done on our fireplace and had new carpet put in the living room and hallways since it was beyond nasty. As of today we have most everything unpacked but still need to hang pictures and such.

There are still things to do - all of our lights are builder basic from the mid 90's so I'd like to change those, and somewhere down the line there will be renovations to both bathrooms and the kitchen. This weekend we are going to tackle the garage and try to get the sea of leaves out of our dog decimated backyard (that badly needs some TLC). I'll post all the pre-move in pics next week- promise! For now I'm going to work on B's one year post, break down some more boxes and dream of a day when I can finally get that post renovation manicure!

Love,
Why did we buy a house again??

P.S. Anyone wanna come help be paint all the trim and doors?  .......Anyone??? ......Bueller????  

{DIY}: Bow holder & bows

So after the wreath project was over, I decided to venture on to a more labor intensive project which has now spawned a mini addiction. Like many little girls Brooklyn has lots of headbands and bows and I wanted to get a hair bow holder for her to put them on. As usual, I had a picture in my head of what I wanted and didn't see it on Etsy or Pinterest so I decided to take a stab at making it myself.

I ordered an unpainted 4 peg coat rack (to hang the headbands on) and wooden plaque (for the bows) from hobbylobby.com and painted them in colors to match B's nursery. Once the painting was done I attached her initial to the plaque and matching ribbons to the bottom of the plaque and hung them in B's room.

Which then led me to making her little bow clips. Like 24 of them. I just started and couldn't stop. I had to try different colors, different kinds of bows, I went nuts. I found that adding the no slip grip helps them stay in B's hair and I'm glad I finally have colors other than pink. She has some cute blue rompers and even though they have ruffles on them people see blue and still ask if she's a boy so having some blue clips/bows should make it easier for folks.

I still have some work to do on some of them but wanted you to see the madness for yourself :)

For the bow holder I'd say it probably ended up costing about the same to make as it did to buy (one of the cheaper ones on Etsy) only because I bought 5 yard spools of ribbon as opposed to just buying just what I needed. I had a blast making it and this kiddo is going to have a bow for every outfit ha ha! I have tons of ribbon to make bows so if you are having a girl or have a girl and want some bows or clips call me. :)

{DIY}: Wreath

So I, like many of you all have been gathering oodles and oodles of ideas from Pinterest. I'm pretty sure if I tried to attempt making every dinner, drink, dessert, and craft project I've pinned I'd have to live to be 157 years old (and have a personal trainer to help be burn off all the calories I cook!). But I have gotten cracking on a few and I started with the easiest.

I have a fall and winter wreath but didn't have one for spring so after seeing one on Etsy via Pinterest I thought surely I could replicate it. So I headed to Michael's and bought a grapevine wreath for $4, and grabbed a few artificial flowers (which happened to be 50% off when I was there so that only set me back $6) and an unpainted letter H for $1.

I headed home and got out the trusty glue gun and some white paint I had left from when I did Brooklyn's nursery letters. I painted a few coats on the wood letter and while that dried cut the flowers off their wire stems and figured out where I wanted to place them and hot glued those suckers on the wreath. Once the letter was dry I glued that on and voila! a personalized, hand made wreath for $11 and 30 minutes of painting and gluing!   

33 weeks and another nursery project

Less than 7 weeks to go (unless she's late or early)!

Here are some fun facts for ya:

Today I am 33 weeks & 4 days.

On the scale: So far I have managed to pile on 25 pounds over the past 33 weeks and am fearful that with the holidays upon us that number may jump drastically over the next 6 1/2 weeks. I have been lucky up til this point and don't have stretch marks....yet. I'm sure there's still plenty of time for those to appear.

Cravings: Lately anything that's bad for me, breads, mashed potatoes, but mostly sweets. You should see me in the bakery/bread section at the store. Daniel had to drag me away from the tables filled with cakes, pies, muffins, croissants, and coffeecakes. Apparently I was circling the tables with crazy eyes. (Which is why I'm fearful of spending my last weeks pregnant in the midst of the food over-indulgence season)

Symptoms: I think I've been really blessed in that this pregnancy hasn't seemed near as bad as what everyone warned me about when it comes to aches, pains, and sleeplessness. I don't take naps, no swollen ankles, I don't need 80 pillows to be comfortable, I'm not up every hour to pee at night, and until now have been able to do all the things I normally do and function at work and home at my regular pace. If the delivery is anything like the past 7 1/2 months have been, I could definitely do this again.

Things I miss: I'm sure this will make me sound like an alcoholic but....wine. I'm really missing being able to have a glass of wine with dinner.  And as of this last week, I miss being able to walk up a flight of stairs and not be winded, and being able to bend over and get up off the floor with ease.

Looking forward to: Finishing up Brooklyn's nursery (just a few more projects ;) surprise!), and getting to finally meet her!

As you know, I'm on a make everything yourself kick, maybe it's my version of nesting. This week's project is a set of clothes sizing rings for Brooklyn's closet. I already had the paper, paint and Modpodge, all I needed were the rings and sticker numbers! I bought wood "O's" from the craft store for $1 a piece and the stickers were only $1.50 so this project only cost $6.50 (yay for no sales tax in Oregon).

DIY: Lamp

I'm back at it again!

I couldn't find a nursery lamp I liked, well in the price range I wanted, (babies don't need $80 lamps), so I made my own (shocker)! I used the "pick your own" base and shade from Lowe's (Target and wally-world have the pick your own options too). Cost was about $20 bucks.

Used 1 yard of fabric (same used in her bedding), fabric glue (which I already had) and bought some decorative trim from JoAnn's (which I didn't end up using). Started by peeling off the fabric trim from the top and bottom of the shade so the edges would be smooth.

 I laid the shade on its side and traced the edge of the top and bottom as I slooooowly rolled it along, then cut about 1/2 inch extra past either side of the traced lines to be able to have fabric to fold over the edges. I also cut it and extra inch or so longer than it needed to be so I could fold over the edge and make a nice seam (as opposed to my jagged cut edge- I've never been good at cutting a straight line!)

This a small lamp (10-12 inch base and 8 inch shade) so really 1/2 yard of fabric would be plenty.

Used my handy fabric glue and started by gluing the edge of the fabric to the seam of the shade popped in a few pins and let it set for about 15 minutes before proceeding glue in the edges, pinning and being sure to pull tight as I went along.

Then I began brushing the overhang edges with the fabric glue and tucking them tightly under the top and bottom rims.

Once finished, I was getting ready to attach the puff-ball pink trim to the bottom and felt it would make it look cheesy. I liked the modern clean lines so decided to leave it as is. (I can always add trim later if I get all girly girl crazy)

Here's the lamp turned on (notice the frilly pink edging laying unused in the background!) Remember when picking your fabric that the thicker and darker it is the less light will go through. Took about an hour and a half  to do and the best part is, like the shades, you can do it to compliment any room!

The bedding just arrived yesterday so there's some sheet washing and bedskirt ironing to do and I still have to paint her nightstand but hopefully there should be some updated nursery pics coming in the next few weeks!

Friends... Roman Shades... Nurseries, lend me your eyes

Our house is an east/west facing house, with the nursery in the back. It has big windows that let in a ton of light. The large nursery window happens to face directly west, which will be great, when the baby doesn't need to sleep at all hours of the day. We bought the "blackout" roller shade which works except there is about a 1/2 inch gap on either side (due to my poor measurements) that still let a significant amount of light peep in. Also a plain vinyl-ish roller shade isn't exactly the most fashionable thing to hang in a nursery.

I wanted to have Roman shades made out of the fabric we are using for the bedding and the quotes I got to have them made were outrageous, Every quote ranged from $180 - $230 per window (and there are 2 in the nursery)! Considering the fabric I'm using is like $15 bucks a yard, I'd say these folks are overvaluing their ability to sew a hem on a rectangle and stick a string through it.

So Like any crazy person with ZERO sewing experience, I decided I was going to try to do it myself. So, as I do with all projects I googled it. I stumbled across a blog that had a no-sew roman shade  step by step tutorial....using mini-blinds. JACKPOT! I highly recommend it. Below are the after pics. We are just getting started on this room (sad, I know) so there's a lot more to come (like bedding, a glider, lamp, wall art etc.). I think it turned out pretty nice!

Here's the $ breakdown:
4 yards of fabric - $60
2 cheapo sets of mini blinds - $15
fabric glue - $4
heat n' bond $7
Total spent: $86

I got 2 custom roman shades for half the price it would have cost me to have one made. It's a great solution especially since we are renting and dropping major bucks on window treatments just isn't something renters do. The best part is if you already have mini-blinds up your halfway there just go pick out some fabric you like and some fabric glue and you are good to go!

Now go make some shades!

Now walk it out....

Yeah, you read that right. On October 14th I will be exactly 28 weeks and 1 day preggo and I will be walking to raise money for student athlete scholarships. (My other option was to golf and if you've ever seen me swing a club without a baby bump in my way you wouldn't want to be anywhere near me swinging a club with a 28 week belly to add to my mad golf skills!)

wouwolves.com

I'm not a student athlete, and never was, nor do I work in the athletic department. So why am I participating you ask?

I'm doing it because I believe the student athletes at Western Oregon University deserve the best opportunity to be successful both in the classroom and on the field. These kids take a full course load, travel for games during season, spend countless hours practicing in season and during the off season and most have at least one part-time job all while maintaining a higher overall GPA than the non-athlete attending WOU.

I'm doing it because Daniel and I love Western Oregon University and the kiddos that attend there.

I'm doing it because our coaches find a way to win even though we play with far fewer scholarships than many other schools in our conference.

I'm doing it because I hope that if my little girl is good enough to play a sport in college that there will be people to willing support her dreams and her school.

I'm doing it because no gift is too small- a lot of little gifts can make a huge difference!

My goal is to raise $1,500 for scholarships I started my mission out by throwing $50 in and have had some folks help get me on my way but I still have a long way to go!

Visit my page HERE and help me and Brooklyn reach our goal!!!



   

DIY Nursery Letters

It's official! Having a kid makes the "do- it- yourselfer" in me ecstatic.

I wanted to try my hand at the wood nursery letters and it was easier than I thought! Here's what I came up with (and also Baby Hare's name, love it or hate it- it ain't changing)

Pardon the ridiculously dark dinner table- not the best backdrop

If you know me, you know I can't draw a straight line, so hand painting designs on the letters was out of the question. Thank goodness for ultra fun scrapbook papers, mod podge, and an x-acto knife! The best part is that I got to pick papers and designs that will compliment Brooklyn's nursery bedding.

 

 The wood letters came from woodlandmanufacturing.com where you get to pick the size, thickness and font of your letters. I needed a thinner font since there are so many letters in her name. The regular block style letters they carry at Michael's would have taken up an entire wall. I also didn't want all caps for that same reason. They come unpainted (you can purchase them already painted) so I had to put a few coats of white paint on them before decorating.

 

 After deciding what papers would go where and lots of cutting, gluing, and trimming I added a few embellishments and that's that.

 

We still have 4-6 weeks until the furniture arrives so once that's in and all up I'll post pics of the letters on the wall.

Yard work & dogs

The good news is we are still getting a dog.

The bad news is- we have to wait longer than we wanted to.

All of the puppies were spoken for. There were 7 in the litter and we were the 9th on the list. (Which isn't too bad considering we started out at 25 on the list- but no dog is no dog whether we are 9th or 1 millionth.) We are on the list for a breeder having a litter in July, and the puppies would be ready to come home at the end of August so I will keep you posted.

Dale, our landlord and the builder of our house, came by yesterday to do a walk through before he ok'd our new, improved, dog-friendly, fence added, lease!

He wanted to make sure we hadn't trashed the place.

We party pretty hard you know.

He walked through, opening cabinets, and closets and shower curtains. I paced around like a freak-a-zoid. I was paranoid. You would have thought that this walk through would determine whether we lived or died. I'm such a spaz. He finished the walk through, wrote some things down on his notepad and said "Thank you for taking such excellent care of my home. It looks like the day I built it." Then I did this.....

So we will be spending the next few weekends making our front yard look spectacular by power washing our front porch and putting down some new bark dust stuff that goes around your plants. They deliver it in giant piles in your driveway here, and our yards are small, so we went half-zies with our neighbor. Then our landlord is finishing fencing off our tiny yard and we are going to get to work planting grass so that when our pup is ready to come home we'll have a nice place for him to play. 

Our current yard tools consist of a manual mower (like the Flinstones), a weed whacker, a craptasic rake, 2 pair of gardening gloves, and one of those mini- garden trowels. I suppose I'll be heading to the hardware store this afternoon to add a wheelbarrow, big boy shovel and whatever other crap the hardware man says I need.

Sounds exciting huh?

The dresser transformation

I'm back at it again. Just another wild idea that I had to implement! I like to use the "google method" for all of my projects....I get an idea - google it and go from there. Haha!
My hubby's family has passed along several items of furniture some of which are here. One of the items is a 6 drawer low-boy style dresser that we've been using after finally getting rid of Daniel's fake wood dresser that I think he's had since college. Eek! We like it a lot but it was a cream color and doesn't go with any of our bedroom stuff so instead of getting rid of a perfectly good dresser/tv stand I decided to attempt to spruce it up.

Before. I'd already taken out drawers & taken off hardware!

Our bedding is a wacky paisley-ish patterned bedding with bright colors in it (the rest of the house is in neutrals so I decided to have a fun colorful bedroom) yellow, aqua, red etc. I lurrrrve it.

The cream dresser didn't fit in with the funky brightness. So I lugged that bad boy downstairs to my design studio (aka the garage) took off the hardware and primed it...... 

then painted it and gave the brass hardware (which I'm a dummy and didn't to a before pic of) a coat of oil rubbed bronze spray paint as well.

Painted and ready for glazing!

Then I took my first stab at glazing to make it antique-y looking. I did fine with the nooks and crannies part but need to improve on my flat surface glazing techniques.

New fun yellow dresser in our room!

I've got to figure out a better way to have the tv set up, and yes that is a white wire shelf that is supposed to go in your kitchen cabinets. Judge me. :)

 

I took this one so you can see the bedding a little (It was impossible to get a shot with both the bed and dresser...it's the 1st time in history I've been annoyed by having a huge master bedroom) . Not an exact match, but I think if I would have done the yellow in the bedding it would have been too bright.

So there you have it folks. Yippee for Yellow!

The Challenge results.....

Drum roll please................

We saved 1 billion dollars!!

Just kidding.

We saved a lot though.

More than I thought we were capable of.

I am proud to announce that we only ate out once and it was because we were waiting to get something installed on Daniel's car (a Christmas gift we finally got around to doing) and it took longer than expected so our total eating out money spent for the month of March = $5! Yea for Subway! On average (yes we know our average expenses on everything because we are crazy excel junkies),we drop around $300 a month eating out  so we saved $295 bucks!!

Shocker alert....I didn't buy a single item of clothing, or jewelry so that budget went down 100% this month! Go me!

We did treat ourselves to a few Redbox rentals so instead of the $22.50 ($90 for the month) we usually spend at the Sunday matinee it was $6 in rentals plus a $5.00 for oreos for the whole month! :) That's $79 bucks in the house savings piggy bank!

I figured with eating out less we'd surely run out of our "envelope money" for groceries like halfway through the month, but surprisingly we didn't! We used what we had and I was more conscious about what I purchased at the store. I have a tendency to buy lots of fruits and veggies each trip and with only 2 of us, I end up throwing a bunch away because we can't eat it all fast enough. So much less food wasted this month - saving cash and our planet! (can you tell I'm turning into an Oregonian? haha!)

We've realized that there is a happy medium between the extreme saving like this month and the extreme free-for-all like previous months. Daniel is excited to get to eat lunches out again but recognizes that bringing lunch a few days a week goes a long way. I have learned that it's ok to spend money on good quality additions to my wardrobe but that I don't need to have something new every single week.

At this point in our lives, saving a little extra for a home and hopefully one of these days, a little one while staying as debt free as possible sounds way more fun than any designer bag, or fancy meal out I could ever imagine.

Now to just try not to go hog wild this month.....

P.S. The husband is back home in OKC for the weekend so you know what that means.....the garage is free for projects! Aaaaaaand I'm dog-sitting for a friend so I can all but guarantee you there will be a few posts next week about the pandemonium that is about to ensue. 

Week 1 gone wild

Oh my goodness it's not even fair!


So we started out our month of living on only what we need just great...for about 1 day. I hopped on gilt.com (bad idea #1) just to "see" what designers they had  featured. And there it was in all it's glory....Kenneth Jay Lane jewelry, my fave!!!

Ok, who called the people at Gilt and told them to tempt me with beautiful bracelets, earrings, and fun necklaces???

Who wouldn't want one of these for over half off retail?!?!

But I was good and said "NO pretty jewelry! I do NOT neeeeeeed you on my ears to make me feel trendy and cute... but if you'd just come back to this site in exactly 1 month I'll be sure you get a great home."


Adrienne: 1, temptation of buying things I don't need : 0


Then came my mid-week saving grace in the form of a 11x13 in. pan filled with homemade Milky Way bars! My co-workers Melissa and Karen (and Melvin!) didn't want me to go without my afternoon Milky Way for an entire month so they made me what looks like a lifetime supply. I have no idea where they got the recipe but they taste goooood!

Friday we went to the Goo Goo Dolls concert (tickets I'd bought back in January) they played at a Casino about 25 minutes from our house. It was neat because the venue only seated 1,700 so every seat was a great seat. I will admit after the concert ended we each put a dollar in the slot machine on our way to the car. I'm the dummy that won $10 and let it ride (bad idea #2) and lost it....so Friday we spent $2.

So far this week I'd say we've done well! We haven't eaten out, I've resisted the urge to shop online, and we are foregoing our weekly post-church Sunday movie trip (which normally runs us $22.50 after popcorn and soda!) for a $1 Redbox rental and taking in some WOU baseball.

30 days.....come on, join in the fun!

So I'm going to begin a 30 day blogging adventure! I saw this over on a gal I used to work with's blog (parentingv.3.0 I highly recommend you check it out- she's a hilarious mommy of 3 gorgeous little redheaded gals and also happens to be an amazing photographer www.gingersnapphotographs.com) and thought it'd be fun! 

I think it's more to get you jump started on blogging  and although I've gotten much more consistent as this 1st year has gone on, I thought it would be a neat way to share a little more about myself! If you have a blog or have always thought about starting one, I'd encourage you jump in on the journey with me! 

Post a link to your blog in the comments section so we can all follow along too! I'm starting on the 1st of January, So for the 1st 30 days of 2011 (I hope!) here's what I'll (and hopefully you too!) be blogging about.

Day 1-Introduce, recent picture, 15 interesting facts

Day 2-Meaning behind your blog name

Day 3-Your first love

Day 4-Your parents

Day 5-Your favorite recipes

Day 6-A picture of something that makes you happy

Day 7-Favorite movies

Day 8-A place you've traveled to

Day 9-A picture of your friends

Day 10-Something you're afraid of

Day 11-Favorite TV shows

Day 12-What you believe

Day 13-Goals

Day 14-A picture you love

Day 15-Bible verse

Day 16-Dream house

Day 17-Something you're looking forward to

Day 18-Something you regret

Day 19-Something you miss

Day 20-Nicknames

Day 21-Picture of yourself

Day 22-What's in your makeup bag

Day 23-Favorite vacation

Day 24-Something you've learned

Day 25-Put your iPod on shuffle, first 10 songs

Day 26-Picture of your family

Day 27-Pets

Day 28-Something that stresses you out

Day 29-3 Wishes

Day 30-a picture 

Come on you know you want to!! Leave a link to your blog in the comments section and we'll all get our daily blog on together! I've already started a post for each day and saved it so that I can work on several at once.