Dibs

I put myself on a Pinterest hiatus a while back. I just kept accruing more and more projects and not executing any of them. I thought I'd be more productive if I quit pinning but instead I just started Craigslisting like a nut. I logged in this morning, though, and realized... I don't need anything else! I got some kitchen chairs a couple nights ago off CL (I'll post about them later, gators), and really, I think I'm furnished!

Which brought me back to... I guess now I need to actually nest my home. The day before I quit Pinterest, I made a list of all the projects I really wanted to get done and swore I wouldn't get back on the Pin until I completed them (or most of them... or got shot down by D on most of them... which ever came first). I've been slowly working through the list but have a ton more to go!

But I thought it would be fun to share my list and then hopefully share the outcomes of the projects as I complete them! 

Now. A few years ago when I got started on this website, I would get so worked up when I saw someone else post on Facebook that they had completed one of the projects I loved before I got a chance to! I was so excited when 'Secret Boards' were released and I hoarded all my favorite ideas (and I still have a couple little darlings tucked away). So, sharing this list of my favorite DIY ideas makes me feel vulnerable. I'm trying to prepare myself because they're all really fabulous and other people may like them, too. I want to scream "DIBS!" but I realize that's the opposite of a blog, right? So here goes:

Make a wreath for the laundry room out of cloths pins (this is so dorky, I'm not even worried someone else will do it! I'd decorate the wreath a little differently but I think the idea is so sweet! )

Make a Texas glitter art (mine will probably have to have a few more hearts)

Make a blanket ladder Have D make me a blanket ladder

Make a clip board wall

Install wine shelves above the fridge (I'm actually half way there on this one!)

Restain the coffee table

Print/Frame travel photos

Make a bucket list destination art

Make a sheet music print (This one would be really hard but such a statement piece!)

Sew a table runner for the table behind the couch (I'm crazy about this tartan plaid)

Make booze-y shadow boxes (one for bottle caps, one for wine corks!)

Thumbprint art

And then I have some that don't really have a specific Pinterest image... just like a million Pinterest images that I'll reference:

Organize my pantries

Spray paint the fire place cover

Make a mantle box

Style the urns on the porch

Organize the Keurig area

Yay! I'm excited all over again to get rolling on these projects! Hopefully I can turn my walls from bland to homey and personalized! And this doesn't even include the project pieces of furniture I have sitting around the house (new tea cart, side table that needs stained, table behind the couch needs repainted... a ton of projects!) I'd say that each of these is a blog post prompt but that'd be a lie. I'll try to take some pictures of the process on the more intricate ones but "clip board wall" and "Texas glitter art" aren't exactly brain surgery.

Wish me luck and if anyone feels like getting crafty one weekend, hit me up! We'll DIY together!

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Weekend Update

Happy Monday errrrbody! I couldn't be happier to be back at work today! Oh yes, you read that correctly. I believe I'm going to start working 7 days a week. Why, you ask? Because I cannot be trusted in my home.

D went to Lubbock Saturday to visit his mom and take her out for her birthday. I stayed in Midland and my mom and I went antique shopping and then out for a light lunch. Adorable, right? 

I bought this tea cart. It needs some love and paint but I see potential for a cool bar cart!

Well, at approximately 3pm, I was starving again. And since I had no one there to judge me, other than the dogs, I proceeded to spend the rest of the day eating jalapeno cheddar popcorn and milk chocolate. Not even DARK chocolate. I had some soup for dinner... and then more popcorn. Yikes. So I'm so happy to be locked in my office with only what I have stowed in my cabinet:

Cinnamon anyone? Apple cider vinegar?

I did, however, have a fairly productive weekend! After I watched the KUWTK where Kris decides she wants to be in the Broadway production of Chicago, I put on my DVD of Chicago and went to work! All That Jazz gets me movin'!

D told me he abhors the border in our bedroom the other day. I was under the impression his decor style was "Army Barracks Chic", so when he made a comment about the decor of our bedroom, I took it seriously. I spent over an hour using every method I could think of to get the border down and this is how far I got.

 I think maybe they stuck it on there while the paint was still wet? Or just used superglue. I'm not sure but it's not budging. :( So much for my cool girlfriend surprise. Any recommendations?!

After that failed attempt, I decided to stick with what brung me and get my hands dirty in the kitchen. I was not excited about it at all; I'm so over working on the kitchen. But once I actually started painting the trim, I freaked out. LIGHT! I see it! At the end of the tunnel! On Sunday, D was helping me after he got home and every time I started painting a new section of the orange-y 90s wood trim, I would sigh with relief! He was making fun of me for sounding sexy when I did it but it just was such a relief to be on our way to pretty, clean, white trim!

Sorry about the terrible lighting; those windows make it tough. This was what the kitchen looked like Saturday afternoon...

And this was Sunday night. WHAT A TRANSFORMATION! Just kidding. But it does look better!

I'm such a dumb dumb. I sanded the chair rails and was so excited to get painting, I painted all the chair rails before I looked up at the crown molding and was like, "Oh." I had forgotten to sand those. So after I went to town on the chair railing, door frames and window sill, I had to call it a night. I'll do crown molding tonight when the rest of the paint is nice and dry. Oh, and we're having to get new baseboards. The old ones started disintegrating  when I sanded them. I'm such a cheap-o that I was like, Nooooo I can save them!!! But, alas, they're in the dumpster.

I apologize for the most drawn out before and after of a project ever. I think real bloggers wait until a project is done for a big reveal... but if I don't show you these pictures, the only pictures of my weekend I have look like this: 

She likes to sleep on my shoulder like a parrot. 

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Dinking Around

My mom always told me not to "dink around" when I was younger (no typo). Like not to dilly dally, don't dink around. As in "come STRAIGHT home after your shift, don't dink around flirting with the boy that works in the projection booth". Whaaaaaat? He was kind of cute! I couldn't help myself. :)

Well, Mom, I've been totally, 100% DINKing around this week! A friend of D's referred to us as total DINKs a while back and we had never heard of it. It means "Double Income, No Kids" and it refers to the go-go-go early career folks.

I won't lie. It's downright glamorous at times. We have gone on some really fabulous vacations, we bought a house, we paid off our vehicles. We're lovin' it.

The downside (which is totally worth it, I realize) is that we're early career professionals. We work stupid hours. We get the crappy assignments at work. Not to mention we're still learning, so it takes us a ton longer to do everything than our more senior coworkers. We run ourselves completely ragged during the week, just trying not to screw anything up.

And then, in true DINK fashion, we make travel plans for probably 50% of our weekends. We're attending weddings, baby showers, birthday parties. You name it, we can't seem to find a reason NOT to go! Until Sunday evenings roll around and we see our piles of laundry and 45 work emails on our phones and wonder if it was worth it.

So, yea, as I was saying earlier, this week has been especially grueling fabulous DINK-tastic.

D worked late almost every single night this week. I haven't seen my lunch break since New Years Eve. We're teetering on insanity, or maybe just turning in to full-fledged zombies, and, honestly, we haven't really been that nice to each other all week.

How Ev Verrrrrrr..... on Monday, D and I booked our plane tickets to Germany for Oktoberfest!!! We're going to fly in to Munich to meet up with friends and then spend 3 days raising hell in the tents! After that, we're going to fly down to Brussels to spend some time with Mel and Andy, snuggling and trying to convince them to move back to the states, <3<3<3 and then we're going to take off for Zermatt, Switzerland to ski the Alps!!!

 Now, we had been saving up for it for a while, D tolerated the budget gestapo for the last 6 months (that'd be me) and I used a bunch of our credit card reward points to pay for 1/3 of the tickets... it's not like we were woke up one morning and decided, hey! Let's go to Germany this fall! But planning and preparing aside; what a blessing!! We're so excited and realize this is a very unique time in our lives that we'll be able to run off to Europe for a week every now and then.

So yea, it's FRIDAY! And when I look back on my week, I forget all about eating grilled cheese for dinner because we haven't been to a grocery store in an embarrassingly long time, the stress breakout I'm getting from my project load at work, or our suddenly depleted savings account. All I can remember is that WE'RE GOING TO EUROPE THIS FALL!!!! Hooray, Hooray, Hooray!!!

DINKs fo lyfe, sucker!




Jk, we totally want kids some day.





Also, sorry no pictures. Bad blogger.

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Weekend Update - Wall Texturing Edition

My weekend looked like this:

And then like this:

I got the kitchen breakfast area textured! I finally mastered the art of the texturing. D joked that there was going to be so much joint compound on the walls from my failed attempts it'd pull the wall down. At least I thought that was a joke until I realized that's a real thing. That's why he bought me the UltraLightWeight Joint Compound. Hm.

I still have to make my way around the kitchen, but the breakfast area is DONE! Once I got the technique, it went really quickly. And messily. And there was wine and a playlist I made in September which has all the good jams the radio isn't playing anymore. And there was some twerking.

My tactic changed a couple times but finally I found the magic combination. Slather the joint compound straight from the GOD FORSAKEN plastic bag. I checked with D, who went to private Christian school growing up and it's not a sin to call something God forsaken. That bag just clings and makes a huge mess. Eventually I figured to scoop out a bunch in to a paint tray and only get your hands super messy once. ANYWAY, yes, slather on the joint compound with a putty knife. Not too thick but not so thin you can still see the wall through it. Pretty scientific, huh?

Then take a trowel (I used a plastic one that was $6 at Home Depot) and smack it against the wall a bunch to make peaks. The picture above shows me working my way from left to right making peaks.

Then let it dry! It's so tempting to not let it dry but give it like 15 minutes to set up a little. Then take your putty knife and run it lightly against the wall and knock down to tops of the peaks. I would make one pass from left to right then another from top to bottom to minimize streaks. BOOM. Texture. After it dries over night, take a sanding block and knock it down even more, until you get the desired look.

This is what mine ended up looking like! This was actually taken before I sanded it. I like it even better after I thought to sand down some of the rougher edges.

This is a picture of the hallway which was professionally textured (and has glossy paint). I got pretty dang close if I may say so myself!

I'm so tempted to paint the breakfast area now because I'm tired of texturing. But I wooooon't. I'll finish texturing around the kitchen and then the plan is to sand down the trim, paint it white, install board and batten and then paint the walls. Then we're DONE with the phase 1 kitchen reno! The next time I'm feeling froggy, it'll be staining the kitchen cabinets a darker color. The orange-y tint drives me nuts. But I'm going to need a reno break after this endeavor.

So yea, I textured basically right up to people showing up for the Super Bowl party. That was my entire weekend, broken up only by a couple shopping trips. Other than the whole Broncos choking in the Super Bowl part, the weekend was just perfect :)

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