Project teaser

Any idea what's behind tag number 1?!

Necessary Evils

After a grueling workout today I gave up hope of cutting off the beam sticking through the ceiling--pictures later. When I removed the damaged drywall in the pink bedroom to repair it before this weekend we discovered the crack was from an old beam that pushed down. Now there is a replacement beam, so the other needs to be trimmed. Unfortunately neither our hacksaw or handsaws can handle the scope or angle. Both Jeremy and I gave up. I hold out hope that I will miraculously gain the ability to fix this problem tomorrow. Probably not, though.

I needed to get something done this evening though, lo ironing.

Christmas Wreath

Megan and I made wreaths on Friday--mostly in the dark. Yeah, that's why my wreath is so... full. I figured that I'd decorate it and throw it up on the door anyway.

Fully decorated

I see a white mantle and I want to paint it black.

Okay, so it doesn't quite have the same right as The Doors' Paint it Black.

We picked up a tiny can of black paint last time we were at the hardware store. Unfortunately we got it at Lowe's, which only carries Valspar--which I usually avoid like the plague because of their stupid commercials. (There is a theory that color holds power over us. That theory is now fact.--Awful commercial) Paint worked fine, though.

Before the semi-white mantle (smoke creme, I like to call it) blended into the white wall behind it. Now the black creates a nice focal point.

Linen Closet Floor

The last part of the bathroom floor that needed completion was the linen closet. I could tile it (blech, too much work) or I could put down a different type of flooring with a threshold.

Peel and stick tile. So easy, I love it. Exacto knife, one quick cut, break to size, stick to floor. EASY. I recommend to anyone who needs a quick floor in an area that doesn't need any glamor.

Whole project took less than an hour--including clean up.

Me and My Adorable Niece!!!!

Cuddle Kittens

Quick Ornaments

I got 8 glass ornaments from the store today. One of them in going to Karen. I'm going to use the rest of them for our future Christmas tree! Now that we have a house we're finally going to have a tree and we're really excited. We don't have a lot of ornaments so I'm trying to bulk them up with ones that aren't all just gross and boring plastic balls. I made two tonight.

I had a whole mess of cool-colored acrylic paints (Thanks Sarah and Justin :-D). I knew that you could make neat swirly nails by floating nail polish on the top of warm water. I hoped that it would work with acrylic paint too.

Unfortunately, I don't generally like to think before I do things and I quickly figured out that it wouldn't work because wet acrylic paint is water soluable.

So I dredge up my not oft-used nail polish. I filled the bowl with warm water, put two colors in a bowl, tied a ribbon to the ornament, and dipped them. You could use more than two colors, but I wanted to keep it simple.

Whole process took maybe 5 minutes. They actually turned out kinda cool looking. They look like swirled glass, but they're a little more textured than that. I'm willing to put it on my tree, at least.

Suggestion: If you try this, have nail polish remover handy and don't use your nice bowls. You can clean them, but I had to use a lot of non-acetone remover to scrub our nice bowls clean :-p.

Let there be lights!

We finally have the lights in our bathroom hooked up. We really lucked out considering that we didn't measure... or really think ahead in their selection at all.

Firstly, the two sets touch with maybe a half inch between them. Pure luck.

Secondly, the two electrical boxes are not even with each other. The curve of the light rod hides the two different levels.

Sadly, our bathroom has some serious setbacks before it's finished.

1. The old mirror (which is in great condition) is 57 inches. The gap between the 2 tiled areas is 55 inches. Laura, why didn't measure beforehand? There were holes in the wall that looked like the anchors for the mirror--really. I didn't even question it. There were two whole lines of them. My tiling stopped right outside them. Now I have to figure out what to do. Oh well, not getting fixed before my birthday. People will just have to look at the ugly wall (it's all gappy and you can see the patches). We though the wall would be covered, so we didn't worry about making it perfectly smooth and awesome. *Sigh* The temp mirror will have to do for now. At least it has a nice frame?

2. Near the door is just... wrong. The wall isn't smooth because there used to be tile. I did patch over it. I probably just did a bad job, who knows. Anyway, the wall is bumpy and it makes me cranky. I need a new solution. Plus the little patch of "backsplash" tile looks enormously awkward. Gotta figure out how to fix that. I'll probably just live with that problem for an inordinately long period of time.

3. The shower pipe will not sodder. It's hard enough that parts of the wall try to catch on fire while you're soddering, but for some reason the pipe will not get hot enough to take the sodder. It's really frustrating because we can't finish the shower until that pipe is leakless. Suggestions?

PEBBLE!

You can see her side-part really well in these pictures. (Honestly, this is just to keep Heather reading the blog :-p)

Where'd the weekend go?

While Jeremy and Tanner played SKYRIM, I had a very productive weekend.
I primed the bathroom on Wednesday.

I primed trim Saturday morning. I also mowed the lawn and cut down the lilies and hostas for the winter.

Then I went shopping for craft supplies and crossed some "crafting plans" off of my pinterest list.

I did some other craft projects, but they're multi-day...so hopefully you'll be seeing them sometime in the next month.

My Sunday morning was productive with Church, cleaning, nothing exciting. Then I spent the afternoon fretting over the location of my kitty cat. She spent the day inside the walls because she figured out she fits in the hole in the floor of the linen closet. She was very quiet, so I was worried that she was okay. I was supposed to be painting the bathroom, but I didn't want to scare her with noisemaking. She's super skiddish. She came about about 5PM so I set to work painting.

Now I'm watching The Next Iron Chef and playing with the wild things.

Her eye problem has gotten much worse (see above).