International Chapter of the Junior Society

I’m so loving this blog!  A co-worker of mine just turned me onto it yesterday, and I’ve been sitting here this morning digging through their archives.   Everything is SO adorable!  Yes, it is geared towards kids (or people with kids), but I think anyone can appreciate their aesthetic and the things they post about.   It was hard to pick just a few things to show, but here are the two that were just too fun to not re-post!

How much fun do you think it would be to create a BRAIN jello mold for your kids?!  OMG, I want to make one for the people at the office!  Ha!  Well, if you head over to their site, you’ll see their other ideas for creating a Mad Scientist party for your kids!!

Another post I really liked involved making a mini-terrarium!  (It actually reminds me of a post that I did last year about making terrariums in cookie jars.)  I love their version because how cute is the little chair & lamp in there?!  I also like how they etched a window on the outside.  That’s really completing the total vision, I’d say!

So anyways…add the International Chapter of the Junior Society to your list of reads.  Reading through it makes you wish you were a kid again.  It certainly did for me!

In Progress: Guest Room

First, let me say that I dislike showing photos of my house looking disheveled and ripped apart.  I realize that is part of the draw [for all of us] in reading a house blog, but it’s just that I find it somehow embarrassing as if I’m being caught picking my nose.  You know?  People gawk and stare…but not in that good way.   At any rate, in spite of not feeling as if I have anything great to show, I also feel as if real pictures (meaning warts & all photos) of my house are overdue.  So here you go.

I’ve been furiously trying to work on my guest room in time for my mother to come and visit, but the house seems to be fighting against me.  It’s as if this room just doesn’t want a nice, beautiful paint job…and to be decorated.  I present to you exhibit A.

The walls in this room are just all kinds of frustrating.  First off, they’re plaster… underneath a layer of wallpaper… underneath two layers of paint.  Sounds great, huh?   However, it’s not the painted wallpaper that bothers me, as you might think.  No, the wallpaper is actually the thin paper kind…so the fact that it’s been painted over isn’t that big of a deal.  Besides a few seams that I’m having to cut out and sand over, it’s not that bad.  It’s just that underneath this window I have a slight bit of dampness that has come in from the windowsill and it’s made the old stuff separate from the wall.  Therefore I’ve been scraping and will have to spackle it, sand it smooth….etc etc.  Oh, and did I mention that I’m also struggling to find the perfect shade to paint the walls?  Why is choosing a paint color sometimes the hardest part of the job?  For the record, I think Martha Stewart does a great job with her paint swatch program at Lowes.  (And if you’ve got lots of expendable cash to throw around, I love Farrow & Ball’s paint colors.)

Did I mention that my mom arrives this Friday?  Yeah….guess what is NOT getting done by then?  I’ll probably end up doing as much work as I can this week after work, cleaning up the mess, putting clean sheets on the bed, and calling it a day.  Not exactly how I’d like for her to spend her Thanksgiving in my guest room, but for now it’s going to have to do.  On the bright side, the first time she came to visit I had no working bathroom.

Anyways…to give you an idea of what I hope for it to look like some day in the future, here’s my inspiration images ripped from the pages of various magazines:

Wish me luck as I keep plugging ahead.

New Windows: Some lessons are learned the HARD way

One of the reasons I wanted to move to a house that needed work was to teach myself some lessons.  (Crazy, right?)  Well, yesterday I definitely learned a couple.  I like to think of myself as a very smart and capable person, therefore it was with great enthusiasm and energy that I decided to install new living room windows ourselves.  Nick and I enlisted the help of our neighbor, and with great gusto we started off taking out the old window sashes, weights, etc.  We filled in the holes, scraped the old caulk and unwrapped the first window only to find out…

The windows were wrong.  Three special order Andersen all wood, colonial-style windows.  It was a frustrating moment to say the least.  Let me be honest…I almost burst into instantaneous tears.  I had two giant holes in the FRONT of my house and I’d only just realized that the three special order windows I’d waited a month for were wrong.   What exactly was wrong with them you ask?  Well, not only were the windows that I’d ordered NOT actually replacement windows (these were for NEW construction), but one of them was one inch too wide.  UGH.  I wanted to scream.  The only way I’d even considered buying these windows was because Home Depot was having a sale on them (it’s basically something that never happens on Andersen windows), and I’d also opened the Home Depot card so that I could save another 10%.

Well, after some serious back and forth on the phone with the sales person at Home Depot, we arranged that I’d bring the windows back and re-order the correct ones.  I’d have to wait for the windows again, but they agreed to waive the 15% re-stocking fee.  They wouldn’t budge on giving me the sale price though.  So now my new windows (that I could barely afford the first time) were going to be FULL PRICE.  I felt frustrated and like a TOTAL idiot.  After all, I could have saved myself all this trouble and expense if I’d double checked my order with the window sizes again when I got home.  I should have also someone experienced with this type of thing to the store with me in the first place, and I would have gotten the correct type of windows.

One other important thing I learned yesterday was about being a good neighbor.  Our neighbor agreed to help us install the windows and unfortunately got a lot more than he bargained for.  He spent all day long with us going above and beyond to help me get things straightened out.  We had to re-install the old windows, take the new windows back to Home Depot, and sit and deal with the frustrating salespeople to get the correct windows re-ordered.  At the end of the day I was frustrated and felt like an idiot… BUT I’d also never felt so grateful and happy to have moved to this particular block.  My old ‘hood definitely didn’t have neighbors like this.  Someone who helped out even when it wasn’t convenient.  I was reminded how each of us is called to be a good neighbor.  I can only hope that I prove to be just as kind and generous to him (and whomever else) someday.   Life calls us to be kind to each other.   The world is a much better place when we help each other out.

Big lessons for today:

1. Enlist the advice of someone experienced.
2. Double check your order.
3. Review the new product before ripping old things apart.
4. Be thankful for your neighbors…and be kind, generous to them.   You never know when you’ll completely turn around their day for good.

Working hard…on lots of little projects

So these days I haven’t had much time for posting on ye olde blogge because I’ve been spending so much time [pardon me for this] obsessing on the house.  One of the the things you always hear is to not start a NEW project without finishing the old one, however I don’t seem to bother listening to people’s advice because I’ve got at least four projects in progress at the moment.  I thought I’d catch everyone up on what I’ve been up to these days.

My pal Shauna taught me how to sew a slipcover.

I’m actually EXTREMELY proud of it because I’ve owned this stained Ikea ottoman for years, but hated anyone to see it because it was…well…stained.  So I re-purposed fabric from an old duvet, and now I have a SWEET little slipcover.  (Plus extra fabric left over.)  Total cost = $0.

I also antiqued a HUGE mirror for my dining room.  I purchased this mirror about 10 years ago from Costco for $200.  It’s a 3.5′ x 5′ mirror that’s great…except for it’s crappy gold painted frame.  So here’s a photo of the in-process antique-ing process.  Nice afternoon project and the mirror now looks fabulous.  Sorry for no complete after photo, but it’s hard to photograph it now because the dining room is in progress.

And today while the rain poured down, I painted…and painted…the dining room.  Here’s a sneak peak of the work in progress.

I won’t show any more than that at the moment, but trust me when I say that it’s looking good…  And for those of you who knew me in real life, yes…this is the same Orla Kiely wallpaper from my last house.   I loved it so much that I decided to use it again.  I’m creature of habit.  Haha.

Adorable Shadowbox idea

In this month’s Elle Decor, there’s an adorable idea for a keepsake shadowbox. I’m obsessed with art wall installations as well as not having too many tzchotkes sitting around the house, so incorporating them into my art collection sounds like such a great idea!! And as you’ve probably already guessed as well, I love my pups and therefore the idea of turning their old collars into wall decor sounds like a GREAT idea!! This could easily be made with a shadowbox from the Ikea ribba collection (aprox cost $8) and a basic stainless hook from the hardware store ($2).  (I loved the room so much I had to show the entire thing…isn’t it gorgeous?!  I love that chest of drawers.) Also…here’s a detail of the box itself.