A giant mess with holes and dust and dirt and rusty pipes EVERYWHERE.
I've mentioned before that our basement isn't finished. Well, it just might be by the end of the year!! I've been insanely excited about it. Like when I heard the plumber could move where our water line came into the house, it MADE MY DAY. I told him that about 10 times, too. And while thinking about having the basement finished just gives me happy hives, sometimes the mess does put a bit of a damper on things. Here's what the last few weeks have looked like:
{This is a plumbing mess.}
We were getting two new floor drains (the existing one is in our family room space) and the bathroom fixtures roughed in. It was an entire day full of dust and noise.
Don't worry about the giant pile of dirt that's overtaking the walk up to my front door. I don't. We (which, in this case, is pretty much just my little brother) had to dig window wells so people could come cut giant holes in the foundation of our house with giant saws. Four giant holes, four giant window wells (they had to be dug 4 feet back from the house, a foot on either side of where the cut needed to be made, and 18 inches deeper than the bottom cut).
Dirt was (still is) literally everywhere.
Oh no! The water pipe!
It's cool, just dig down 2 more feet. That's what we needed to do to have the water line entrance moved and still be good to go, code-wise. Small price to pay to have the window be where I wanted it. I could have stood at the bottom of that hole and been buried standing up.
Then they came and cut the big giant holes. You may have picked up from my tone that I was kind of nervous about this, despite the fact that they were ready to go with the steel lintels that would take the weight of the house. It's just... a big giant hole in the load-bearing concrete wall your house is built on. Right? That's scary.
Things were fine, though, and now you can stay tuned for part 2, when progress actually looks like progress.
There's no typo in the post title. This is my second go-round with these chairs. Here's the first.
Here's what they looked like a few weeks ago:
I was never a big fan of the fabric I ended up picking, and as it turns out, the light green was not outdoor fabric like I thought, so it turned kind of a neon yellow green since I put it on 2 years ago. Yikes.
This winter it occurred to me that just plain clear vinyl would be awesome. I waited for the weather to lighten up and last month I did this:
It's pretty cool. I used the thickest vinyl they had and just wove it like I had done with the fabric strips.
The vinyl for outdoor/indoor use, so we'll see how well it holds up. And because vinyl doesn't fray like the fabric I had on the chair before, there was no need to finish the edges with a zig zag or anything. Hooray!
I kind of wish I hadn't spray painted the chairs at all now, and just had the silver with the clear.
It's kind of freaky sitting in them. I suppose the clearness makes it looks like it won't hold you up, but it's really pretty strong. It held up my husband and he's a pretty big dude.
So here's the entire progression, from when I first found them in the creepy shed (which is still creepy, by the way) to now.
I had some surprise morning glories come up a week or so ago and realized I needed a trellis sooner rather than later. Instead of heading to the store to look around, I decided to see what we had in the shed that might work. I found several antique gardening tools that I thought might be kind of neat, so I propped them up all together and voila!
Also, a note about morning glories- I'm talking about for-real morning glories, not bindweed. This variety that's coming up here is Star of Yelta. Now let's talk about the tools I used. Can you see the little claw hand on the middle handle? Here's a close up:
What is that? I thought it was kind of crazy, so I left it at the top instead of just the handle. It looks like a creepy little hand.
I thought my improvised trellis went well with the super old ladder I'm using as a plant stand on the other side of the front door:
Before we got our new awesome ladder, Mike would actually use this one to get up on our roof. Yikes. I'm much more comfortable with it as yard decor.
And now, where I've been:
Weeding. And potty training. And having down time on the couch when I overdo it and my back can't take it.
Why weeding has taken over my life: We have a lot of perennial flower beds at our house. Like a lot. And with the recent lawn stuff that's been happening, I added even more (my dad thinks I'm crazy- he might be right). Regardless of my sanity, they're lovely and they really add to the cottage-y feel of the house:
That bed in front of the brick raised bed is a new one, that's why it's so sparse right now. Just give it a year and it'll fit right in.
I'll spare you pictures of the potty training process (I'm pretty sure I don't have any, anyway) as well as pictures of me laying on the couch looking super pregnant and pathetic. Speaking of pregnant- I'm 35 weeks now! Just a little over a month and I'll have a brand new little girl! I have a lot of sewing planned for her- mostly onsie dresses. We'll see if I actually get it done before I go into labor, though. I wouldn't bet on it.
I'm sure I'm not the first person who has ever thought of this, but my mom thought it was really great and wasn't something she'd done before (and I have 5 siblings), so I'd thought I'd put it up here.
Mim is big into hopping these days, as well as shapes and colors. So now when we go outside to do sidewalk chalk, it turns into a learning game where I draw a bunch of different shapes on the patio and then ask her to jump (or stomp, or stand on one leg on) the shape I name. It's really fun. We've tried it with letters and numbers before, as well (she didn't like that as much as just the shapes or colors).
Here's what I mean:
In this variation, I only drew circles (her favorite shape- "Mo kirkle, pees?") and then had her find all the ones of the same color. Anyway, there's about a million ways you could adapt or modify this and if you're looking for something to do with your little kids this summer, give it a try!
Here's the best advice ever for vegetable gardening: find someone who's a very experienced gardener and then have them plan and pretty much plant your entire garden.
That's what my dad did for me this year, bless his heart forever. Now I have onions, radishes, carrots, peppers (which I'm incredibly excited for- they've been a big craving all pregnancy), yukon gold potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, butter crunch lettuce, cucumbers, acorn squash, yellow zucchini (another craving), peas, tomatoes, watermelon, crenshaw melon (Mike is sooo excited for those), and pumpkins, all in various states of growing.
Like I said, my dad planned and mostly planted everything, but I've learned a ton. For example, I didn't even know before that to harvest lettuce you just pull up the whole plant. At least that's how it works for butter crunch.
And now I just have to share some pictures because I'm so proud. (Don't mind the weeds- they die tonight.)
{One of the tomato plants}
{Lettuce! We'll probably eat this one tonight.}
{Brocolli! We're definitely having some of this tonight.}
{The crenshaw melon.}
{The acorn squash. It hadn't even sprouted on Saturday.}
{Two rows of potatoes. I love potatoes.}
{The onions. We have a bunch of these, too.}
Something kind of cool- my dad grows almost everything vertically. Tomatoes, melons, winter squash, and cucumbers (although it might be normal to grow those up in cages, I don't know). It's because he had really limited space in the first garden he grew and he wanted to get in as much yield as he could. Anyway, even though we have a lot of space that we could devote to a garden, I just think it's convenient to grow things vertically- it makes finding and picking the veggies really easy. That's why my tomatoes are planted next to stakes; we're training them to grow up.
So the reason I've been MIA so long- the yard. We've tried to get some major work done this year, and with the help of a lot of family, it's coming together. I was going to wait to post about this until it was all grown in and perfect, but I just can't wait anymore.
Our house when we first moved in:
{Summer 2008}
A little red house, so so cute, but with some things that we wanted to change.
Goodbye huge tree that was wonderful in many ways but too close to the house and hello new windows:
{Spring 2009}
Goodbye to the curb that bisected the property:
{Spring 2010}
Goodbye grass (we had to take it out so we could level the yard and give the entire property a nice grade):
{Early summer 2010}
Not pictured: the ugliest non-lawn ever. There's a gap in between these two pictures of about 4 months. We spent the rest of our lawn budget on getting an air conditioning unit for the summer (so worth it), and so after the grass was removed, the weeds came up like crazy and everything was bumpy and awful. It was the crappiest lawn ever.
It's flat! (It mostly was, at least. We still had to work on the grade in several places. Oh, and we still have to fix the back.)
{Fall 2010}
A new sprinkler system as of this spring (this is where the process started feeling more constructive and less destructive):
{Spring 2011}
The last of the stump gone, a final grade, and grass seed!
{Spring 2011}
My picket fence. I adore it. Also, you can't tell in this picture, but there's a green tint on the dirt now that is actually the grass sprouting:
{Early summer 2011}
And finally, grass:
Coming in late summer 2011.
Still a lot to do. The back has definitely suffered with all the focus on the front, but hopefully we'll be able to make some progress on it before winter. Hopefully. The biggest lesson I've learned from this is that everything yard-wise takes at least twice as long and costs twice as much.
Other yard progress includes a vegetable garden, which I'm going to post about now.
I know, right?! My project list is still growing all the time, and lately I've knocked out some big yard landscaping stuff (and by "I," I mean my family), but I'm waiting for that to be ready for some dramatic after pictures before I blog about it. Anyway, I was inspired Saturday by the awesome weather to get out and get one of my little projects done that I thought of a long time ago. It also helped seeing all those painted rugs out there in blogland. My front door mat before:
Yeah, I just got the cheapest one there was when I bought them 3 years ago. But now:
It's much better. I was going to do a multi-layer stencil, with leafy branch stencils in the background, but I thought I better keep it simple to make sure it would even work. I used my Silhouette to make a vinyl stencil and just used spray paint. I was worried that I would get lots of seepage around the edges because of the texture of the rug, but it turned out ok. It probably helped that I stepped on the stencil once it was positioned, to really seal the vinyl to the rug. I'll have to see how it holds up, but even if it doesn't last the summer, it's not like I'm out anything.
Here it is in position. I like it. You'll have to imagine some bright flowers in the planter and some sweet potato vine coming down on the other side, where I have another planter you can't see in the photo. Looking at this picture makes me want to go paint my other outdoor mat right now, but alas, it is raining like crazy.
After seeing the ornament wreaths everywhere last year, I decided to make one. I used some old ornaments that I wasn't using on the tree anymore and went for it, but I didn't have enough to make one as big as I wanted. So I bagged it (literally, all the stuff that went into the making of it was all together in a garbage bag when I unpacked Christmas this year). I brought it out and thought about getting more ornaments to finish it. Bah. Then I was at the dollar store and I saw the tinsel and I thought of the cover of the Martha Stewart magazine this month and WHAM:
Tinsel glitter ornament wreath!
The wire that I strung the ornaments on was not up to holding this business up, so I wired a big embroidery hoop to the back to reinforce it and it's holding up great. And I totally love it.
It was really easy, too. Since I had all my ornaments strung up on the wire already, all I did was close the loop and then wrap garland over the wire and between the ornaments. Three garlands is all I used, but I might go back and add one or two more to chunk it up a bit. We'll see. I'm definitely going to go get more garland- I might go a bit tinsel crazy.
Anyway, that's the conclusion of my wreath craziness- I made this one and the ones in the previous 2 posts all in one night.
It's been awhile. Thanks for not unfollowing me. I haven't done anything since the embroidery hoop ornaments because of a few things- writing tests for my students and my husband herniating a few disks (or was it discs?) in his neck. He was in the hospital for 3 days but he's home now and doing well. I'm just glad it wasn't any worse (because it could have been paralyzed-worse). We're almost back to normal, actually. The biggest difference to me is that he can't drive (big neck brace). The biggest difference to him is probably the burning nerve pain in his arms (which is a bummer, but at least now we can joke about it). So, just today I got back on the craft wagon. I probably won't be getting some of my bigger projects done this year (felt nativity hand puppets and stockings) but it's cool. I'm on track for finishing Christmas shopping before the 24th, so I'm happy with that. And now, what this post is all about:
This is my front door wreath. Yeah, it's a little cheapie one I got somewhere and then glued pinecones to it to improve its look. My crafting in the past year has come far, if I do say so myself. I also dug my old centerpiece from my Christmas stuff yesterday. It was kind of a bough swag that had 3 taper candle holders in it- on the formal side and just not what I'm going for anymore. However, it was made of some quality fake greenery. I took it apart (you can see pieces of it on the left hand side of the picture), basically disassembling it into picks, then stuck it all on my sad wreath with hot glue (reinforced by twisting wires together). And now:
It looks so much more expensive, right? I love it. I toyed with adding a bow or maybe a sign nestled in there, but I decided to go with au naturale for now.
Remember this post? Where I found all those awesome things in my creepy shed? I was really excited about these folding chairs:
I planned on leaving them like they were, until I looked a little closer:
Some were in worse shape than others, but there was no way I was going to sit on any of them. I pushed on one with my hand and one of the bands completely ripped. So I did this:
{Don't mind the junk in the background}
I cleaned, primed, painted, cut outdoor fabric into strips, bought new screws and nuts (the old ones were all rusty), and now:
The thing is, I'm just not feeling it anymore. I wish I had chosen different fabric or a different paint color or both. That's probably why it took me so long. It was almost right after I got home from Joann's that I decided I didn't like the fabric as much as I thought I did. That always happens to me- If I don't have a very specific idea of what I want and I just get too overwhelmed at the fabric store so I pressure myself into just making a decision. Does that happen to other people? It probably didn't help that the Mimster was with me and she started to get really bored and hard to handle. I know what I want now- I wish I had gotten plain canvas. I don't know about frame color. I probably would like this blue with canvas, but how cool would copper spray paint would have looked? Or yellow. Anything would be awesome with plain canvas. And then I could do awesome, colorful outdoor pillows. Sigh. Since I've only finished this one chair, I'll probably just leave the others until next year, when I'll redo them again. I'm sure not going to invest anymore time into these when I don't absolutely love them: they're very time consuming. To give you an idea, here's the time/cost break down:
Removing the old fabric: about 45 minutes for all 4 chairs Priming: I don't know. I did 2 coats, though. Painting: Also don't know. I never finished because I ran out of spray paint and was not motivated to buy more. It took about a can per chair. Buying fabric: Not long enough. It cost about 30$ for all the fabric (50% off) Cutting it into strips: Probably close to an hour to cut for all 4 chairs. There were 14 strips per chair. I used the old brown strips I took off the chairs as patterns. Spraying the fabric with a clear coat of indoor/outdoor spray paint: I only did this for one chair. It's definitely a good step, though. It made the fabric stiff, which made it easier to work with. Zig-zagging up the sides of the strips: I never finished this, even for the chair I put together. I did it for the solid apple green strips, but not the striped strips. It wasn't worth the time. Even just doing those took over a half hour and almost an entire spool of thread. Putting it together: Like an hour per chair. The hardest part was poking a holes through the fabric.
Yikes. Too bad one of my bigger projects this summer turned out to be such a bust. Ahwell, at least I know it works, and now I know what I want them to look like. Next summer.
{A close-up of the zig zag along the edges of the strips}
{I folded the fabric into triangles on the end, which meant poking through 4 layers of fabric. I used a nail, then stuck the screw through the whole.}
There you go. A good idea gone wrong (not horribly wrong- just not as wonderful as I thought).
