Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Top Projects of 2011

Wow, looking back on 2011, I'm pretty pleased!  We completed a TON of household projects, so just in case you're new around here or you missed anything, I'll take you back down memory lane in chronological order...

Looking back, I've grown so much into blogging in the past year.  I didn't really do anything original until March (must fix this for this for 2012) when I reorganized my jewelry with things I already had...


Then I finally showed you my kitchen makeover from summer 2010...


We purchased a new couch after 1.5 YEARS of Craigslist hunting!


I made my first attempt at a gallery wall in our reading nook...


We removed half of our popcorn ceilings - the other half will happen hopefully before January is over - hooray!!


I made over a little something from Goodwill in true "White Elephant" style...


I updated 2 Goodwill lamps for our family room...


I made over these pillows, and also these ones, and even did a knock off of some West Elm pillows...




I re-organized out laundry room with some help from IKEA...


I completed my most popular project ever - the IKEA hack known as my chevron lazy susan...


I tore our pantry apart and re-organized it...


Then I tore everything out again to paint the pantry...


I made some yummy things here, here, and here  (see the recipes tab at the top for a full list - even I was surprised at how many there were!!).




I painted a side table for our family room...


I FINALLY learned how to use a few different photo editing softwares...


I took you on a family room tour and showed off my hemmed curtains...


I completed perhaps my favorite project of the year - my Fall Wreath!


I made my most-pinned project - a mod-podge canvass for my friend's baby...


I took you on a tour of our master bathroom, and then promptly ripped out the tub...


And I finally did a little post about what Christmastime looks like at our house...



Wow, what a full year it has been!  I'm setting some goals, tying up loose ends, and hopefully when I'm through I can share where I'm hoping 2012 will take us.  And while I'm at it... a HUGE "Thank you!" to EVERY SINGLE person who reads here.  I never dreamed how much I would love blogging, and while I think I would still do it even if no one read, the fact that you take time out of your day to spend here makes me beyond grateful.  Your comments and love throughout the year gave me the push to do a lot of the things I've shown you here today and over the last year.  Thanks for an amazing 2011, and happy last Wednesday of the year, friends!

Saturday, December 24, 2011

A very Merry Christmas to you and yours!

I try not to get pushy on this blog, but every so often I think I'm allowed to say what I think around here ;)

A warm and loving MERRY CHRISTMAS to you and your family.  And may we not forget whom it is that we celebrate this time of year...


Thank you to Jesus, who saw fit to leave heaven, to live among us, and ultimately to die for us because He first loved us.  Below are the words to one of my favorite Christmas songs by Chris Rice; I think they're prefect for today...   *you can go here to listen - it's so beautiful*

Tears are falling, hearts are breaking
How we need to hear from God.
You've been promised, we've been waiting
Welcome holy child, welcome holy child.


Hope that you don't mind our manger
How we wish we would have known.
Long-awaited holy stranger
Make yourself at home, please make yourself at home.


Bring your peace into our violence
Bid our hungry souls be fed.
Word now breaking Heaven's silence 
Welcome to our world, welcome to our world.


Fragile fingers sent to heal us
Tender brow prepared for thorns
Tiny heart whose blood will save us
Unto us is born, unto us is born.


So wrap our injured flesh around you
Breathe our air and walk our sod.
Rob our sin and make us holy
Perfect Son of God, perfect Son of God


Welcome to our world.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Christmas around here

We're making progress on the bathroom, but our tub is still living on our back porch (I may as well live in a van, down by the river), so I'm not quite satisfied...  But while I was organizing a closet yesterday instead of what I should have been doing (getting ready for Christmas which is nearing at the rate of a high-speed train!), I found something...  A tripod.  I immediately got more excited about using my DSLR now that I can take longer exposure shots!

So, here's a tour of our little Christmas set-up.  And when I say little, I mean little - it's basically just our tree =)


See all those presents mashed underneath the tree?  That's what me with my Christmas shopping DONE looks like.  BOOM!  And see those sconces on the wall?  They're coming down as soon as the tree does in favor of a giant... (leaving you ins suspense b/c I'm going to tell you about it later, heeheehee)



I seriously can barely handle how exciting that tripod is...  I LOVE this long exposure shot of the tree.  It was taken in TOTAL darkness.  OMG, I'm in love.

In other news... I've really enjoyed reading about everyone's creative gift wrapping this year.  People are using everything from wax to stamps to car batteries (OK, maybe not car batteries, but you get the idea...) to help their gifts put their best foot forward.  My family, however has a different tradition.  We like to see how creative we can get using only traditional materials: store bought gift wrap, ribbon and bows.  I like to think I did ok this year.  Here's a gift for my dad...


The paper was from the grocery store and came in a HUGE roll for only $0.99 - score!  The ribbon also came in bulk (a 5 pack of different colors for $2.00), the sticker was stolen off of the wrapping from one of the gifts my students gave to me, and the bow was purchased (along with roughly 20 billion others just like it) from an estate sale for $1.  I'll never have to by bows again! =D  If you divide everything up, I'd say this wrapping job cost me about $0.10, and I think it's pretty cute.

Here's one of the gifts for my parents in-law...  I like to call it, "The Poodle."  It's sort of like a one-ended popper...  with more curls.  You won't see this kind of wrapping in a department store!



IF YOU ARE MY BROTHER-IN-LAW, OR HIS VERY SWEET AND ADORABLE GIRLFRIEND, STOP READING HERE!!!
~
~
~
~

~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~


For the rest of you, I decided to forray into the world of basket creation this year...  I chose some YUMMY bottles of wine, and some cute glasses (love me the glassware section at World Market, I could seriously spend all day in there...), and made a wine-lovers basket.  Something was missing though, until I found these adorable wine charms on Etsy...


They even came in that cute little cigar box *swoon*  I threw it all together in a basket, and sqeeeeezzzzeed it into one of those "cello" bags.  And here you have it!


 We also bought them a set of 12 of those glasses, they were just too cute to pass up.



Can you find the three gifts I featured under my tree?  I barely can!  Also, note the oblong one in the front...  a whiffle bat and balls for my little cousin, not a bad wrapping job, eh?

Ted's favorite thing about Christmas?  (Aside from having me home to take him on daily runs, of course!)  Basking in the glow of the tree.  What a cutie!  **A SHAGGY cutie...  Time for another trim!**



So, that's what Christmas looks like at our house...  It's not much, but then, I don't feel like investing a ton into decorating a house we won't live in forever.  Plus, too much Christmas deco in a small home just starts to feel cluttered to me, and Lord knows I can't stand clutter!

I hope you and yours are enjoying the Holidays.  Happy Thursday, and Merry 3-days-until-Christmas, friends!



Sunday, December 18, 2011

complete randomness (and also tub news)

We got some GREAT news from the pest control people late last week (see my previous post about the giant landscape rock-filled hole in our foundation underneath our master bathtub here)...

The Hole Can Be Patched!  We Can Re-use Our Tub!  Glory Hallelujah And All Things Awesome!!

Now we just have to tear out the shower... sigh.  But I can't be too sad - things could definitely be worse!

But I'm not going to lie... with this BIG project underway, Christmas fast approaching, and the deadline of me going back to school for the spring impending, I'm feeling like a ball of stress.


I've been feeling bit under the weather as well - but I didn't let it stop me from going skiing this weekend, which was a good decision.  =)

I'm also pretty excited to be getting new glasses today - hooray for un-used FSA money! These were my last glasses...



And I was totally in love with them - but I always feel such anxiety about choosing frames...  You have to live with them and wear them with everything for so long! Eek!  I just need a pair that's going to make me look 6 inches taller and 10 pounds lighter. Shouldn't be hard to find, right? ;)

I hope you all are having a wonderful Tuesday and enjoying the heck out of this holiday season!  Hopefully I'll have some bathrooms pics/news/insanity to report soon.  Happy Tuesday, friends!

Monday, December 12, 2011

Splish-splash I was(n't) takin' a bath...

Yep, that's what we are around here.  You can read a bit about the whole story here, but it goes something like this...



Eric bought our house with a remodeled bathroom.  It is LOVELY, but we've known it needed some work to fix the shoddy job done by the first DIYer who lived here (the same bright-idea-haver that filled in our pool with dirt and let two palm trees grow inside. What a winner).


On a seemingly unrelated note, Arizonans occasionally get bouts of termite activity.  It's totally normal and expected.  Those little underground wood-lovers can't get enough of our dry soil, so you have a termite guy on hand for those occasions.  We started noticing increased activity in the past few months and got worried.  We called some people in, and paid quite a bit to have the house completely treated and with a warranty to boot.  Yeehaw!  Love me some warranties!

Enter the kitchen island a month later with it's wood boring insects (read more here) that I was certain were termites, and you have a pretty pissed-off me.  I thought the termites were falling from our ceiling onto the island and I was not a happy camper.  Especially sine this company guarantees their work, but doesn't cover furniture damage.  The owner of the pest company came out to take a look and he was the one who knew the island had come from IKEA with the bugs in tow and told us to take it back and exchange it for a bug-less one (which we did).  He checked over the inside of our home while he was there...  *cue foreboding music*

He enters our bathroom, pops off the tub acces panel and sees a practical SWARM of termites coming up from a HUGE hole in our foundation.  Awesome.  Way to go Mr. Crappy Remodeler Guy (this title reminds me of the Real Men of Genius ads, haha!).  The termites have been coming up through this hole for years.  Solution? Remove the bathtub (!?!? Be still my heart!!), treat the area, and hope to eventually put the tub back in.

The good news is that the damage from the termites is not severe and very localized.  We are so LUKCY!!  The bad news is that the bathroom is snowballing into a HEFTY project with an equally HEFTY price tag.  So, for step number one, we spent our weekend removing our tub.  And because I knew all of you would be dying to see (winkwink), I took tons of pictures.

Here's what our bathroom looks like when you walk in...
(forgive the counter clutter, we live here, people.)


I L-O-V-E love our cabinets, mirrors and couter tops. It's hard to tell in the photos (since there's no natural light in here), but everything is either glass, chrome or white white white.  I love how clean and sparkly it looks.

Here's what the tub area looks like (directly to the left when you walk in the door).  You can see the access panel is already popped off...


I luuuuurrrvvee  my soaking tub.  I mean, the tub has been out for two days and I've almost cried twice because I wanted to take a bath that much.  THAT is how much it LOVE my tub.

To the right of the tub is the shower...


Yep, washcloth hanging over the top and all - I like to keep it real (and for the record, I also hate loofas.  Are there any other washcloth loyalists/loofa haters out there?  I keep it old school, I guess).  The shower is a little small...  Sometimes I feel like I could just soap down the walls and spin around and be all clean.  But you take what you can get =)

Here's the view from standing between the tub and shower...


It's a pretty spacious bathroom for a 40 year old home - hallelujah.  I HATE small bathrooms.  I also love our toto toilet with a no slam toilet seat and lid.  Seriously, I love that toilet like people shouldn't love a toilet.  It's easy to clean, and looks amazing.  I'm considering taking it with us when we move out.

We've known the bathroom has issues before this.  Like the tiles behind the shower and tub in the above pics were laid too close to one another, so the grout comes out when you so much as wipe it down with a SPONGE (talk about a cleaning NIGHTMARE).  Case in point...


So, we knew we would eventually need to re-tile.

Then we started noticing the caulking around the shower base slipping away from the wall.  Then, water started leaking out from the wall whenever we would shower.  Cue my nightmares about Eric and I both dying of cancer that we acquired from black mold in our walls (we DO NOT have mold, but my imagination tends to run away with me - especially in my dreams).  What we do have is water coming out of our wall because of an improperly-leveled shower pan. Thanks again Mr. Crappy Remodeler Guy!  Case in point...


See that wet grout?  The water has only been on for 5 minutes. UGH!  Eric's solution was "We'll buy ourselves some time and shower together."  Haha!  I don't think so mister, that thing is only big enough for one.

So when the termite guy gave us MORE bad bathroom news, the writing was on the wall.  So, we began taking out the tub this weekend....  First we (Eric) scored the caulking all around where the tub is mounted to its box...


We (Eric) sealed off the water lines to the tub and moved the fixtures (my beautiful chrome fixtures!!) out of the way.  Since every fiberglass tub that is not freestanding has to be set with grout on the bottom, we (Eric and his dad) lifted up the tub and tried to knock the grout off the bottom from the access panel so it would be lighter to lift.  Meanwhile it sat propped up on pvc pipes like so...


When the grout had dislodged itself from the bottom of the fiberglass, we (this time I actually helped and didn't just stand around in the way while snapping pictures) just lifted the whole thing right out and carried it to the backyard (we would look like HICKS if all you knew of us was our backyard, haha!).  Leaving behind this GAPING hole...


You can see the grout that was attached to the bottom of the tub leaning up against the left side of the tub box.  Fortunately, it looks like the drywalling and framing was done according to code.  I was FREAKED out that the drywall would be just the normal stuff and not the moisture resistant stuff, so you can imagine my relief when I saw that green paper!  (Green-papered drywall = drywall for bathrooms/kitchens/anywhere moist)

Wanna see a bigger-than-life hole in someone's foundation and Mr. Crappy Remodeler Guy's solution? Welp, here ya go...


See that friggin L-shaped BEAST of a hole?  Grrrrrrr grumbleandcursetheformerownerofyourhome.  And do you see his "aweomse" solution to said problem (<-DRIPPING with sarcasm).  Landscape rocks.  Yep...


You can see some of the termite tubes in the top left of the above pic.  Tears!  So, we are tub-less.  And in an ideal world, this will happen...

Termite man will come today between 8 and noon and tell us that we can treat and patch the foundation easily and inexpensively, and that the patch will work so amazingly that we'll never need access to said area again.  We will then be able to re-use our old tub, and all we'll have to do is rip out the shower, level the pan, double check the plumbing and moisture situation, re-tile and use the same old (tiny!!!) shower insert again. This will cost us somewhere in the range of $300-$1000 depending on how well the shower holds up upon removal.  We will of course do EVERYTHING (except plumbing) ourselves.  Because unlike Mr. Crappy Remodeler Guy we know what we're doing with tile and shower pans.

But.... it could turn into this mess...  Mr. Termite man says we can patch the hole, but we may need access to it again in the future for further treatment, meaning we would need to either buy a new, freestanding tub and re-tile the floor leaving an access panel there, or come up with some other access solution. This would mean that we could invest in a bigger shower insert (a relatively small price, only around $200 and TOTALLY worth it), since the freestanding tub would take up much less space.  However, the freestanding tubs of the world cost roughly your first born child and also your right arm, so there's that to think about.  The re-tiling would still have to be done around the shower, and we would have to try and match our current floor tile, as you have to finish the floor under a freestanding tub.  This could run us anywhere from $4000-$10,000. I DIE.  Holy expensive, batman!  This is what I feel like that amount of money would be...



Everything hinges on the word from the termite man today. *bites nails compulsively* Not that I'm freaking out or anything (I totally am!), because I know our DIY skills are up to the challenge (Are they?), and I'm sure everything will work out perfectly and we won't have to spend much (But probably not!).  Ugh.  Merry Christmas to us! This is why you haven't seen me around.  This is why you don't see my holiday mantle and Christmas tree and wintery crafts and everything else my bloggy friends with functioning bathrooms are doing.  So if you think about us, say a little payer for cheap repairs and stress management techniques. Also that I would stop tearing up whenever I think about how NICE a bath would feel...

I'll be back tomorrow to show you what our bathroom looked like BEFORE Mr. Crappy Remodeler Guy got his grubby little hands on it.  I must say, even with these hefty issues, I'm glad he did the remodel...  I don't think we would have purchased the house if it had the original bathroom.  Be ready for some 70's chic countertops!

I hope you're having a fantastic Monday, friends, and thanks for reading my not-so-interesting, and very wordy post. =)  Happy Monday!

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Pinspired to plan a wedding

My Pinterest has been blowing up with wedding stuff lately, so I decided to plan my current fantasy wedding (I'm always getting obsessed with the next trend so this is my "for now" fantasy)

First, the ring...


Yep, that'll do just fine.

Next I need the dress...


Mmmmm - I bet this feels like BUTTER

The shoes...



The bridesmaids need a little something to wear too...


Matches the sparkly ring, right??

A serene location...


Complete with a vintage outdoor reception...


Some adorable favors...


Coke bottles - what a great idea!

Gotta have a killer cake...


And lets not forget the adorable pictures...


*Sigh*  I'm pretty excited about my fake wedding.  But in all honesty, I'd never want to plan another one, haha!  Any other married women with me on this one??  Hope you all enjoyed our little walk down Wedding Way today, and have a happy Thursday!