We Met, We Married, We Live

Melissa and I snuck in not one, but TWO craft nights this month.  (Catch up on the first photographic craft night here)  I was loving a lot of the map pieces that were being pinned on pinterest, but one in particular caught my eye.

Source

I loved the idea and we decided to do a map project for craft night.  I headed to AAA to grab some maps…As a side note, I have been a AAA member since I was 1 year old.  My great grandma never wanted me to get stranded and since AAA covers whatever vehicle the card member might be in, it traveled in my diaper bag with me.  A perk of AAA is that you get free maps whenever you want, so off I went to secure the needed maps.  I grabbed Sioux Falls, St. Louis, and Omaha.

Upon arriving at Melissa’s, I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do for sure so we decided to improvise.  Melissa had a Fisker’s circle punch, so that settled it, I would do circles.  As I thought about it more, I decided I want to try some paper embroidery.  We headed to Hobby Lobby and I bought some red embroidery thread and a needle.  If I were to redo this, I would probably measure things and make templates, but in the spirit of craft night, I winged it.

First up was “we met”.  I decided to embroidered a heart.

Yep, you’ll notice the center of that heart is the Ameristar Casino.  In the mood for a how we met story?  Good, because I’m in the mood to type it.  One of my first assignments when I started work was to pass my:  Series 7, Series 66 and PHR certification tests.  This took from July until April of the following year to accomplish.  To celebrate our passing, a bunch of friends and I headed out to a new club that had just opened at Ameristar casino, “Home”.  Now we love to dance, so as soon as we got there, we headed to the dance floor, never mind the fact that we were the only one’s out there.  After a few songs, the dance floor starting filling in and I happened to look across the crowd and see a really tall cute guy in a black shirt (we’re not really that tall, I’m 5’10″ and he’s 6’3″, but inexplicably, a lot of short people live in Missouri, and I regularly end up feeling like a giant).  He seemed to be attempting to get my attention and come over to dance with me, however he spent a fair amount of time working up the courage to come over.  After some consultation with his friends, he managed to make his way over to me and introduce himself.  We had a good time dancing and talking, since he was from Nebraska (my neighboring home state), we talked a lot about the Midwest and then spent FAR too long discussing rhubarb.  No, I’m not joking.  We both love rhubarb pie, crisp, and I was explaining rhubarb wine to him.  Apparently, all this left a good impression on him because he called me a few days later to invite me on a date and the rest, as they say is history.

Next up, I decided to give wedding bands a whirl.

We were married in my home town, Sioux Falls, SD.  Mostly because we were contemplating a move and didn’t want to have to travel back to St. Louis to attend our wedding if we ended up moving before wedding day.

Last, but not least, I made a house for our first house…I don’t think I need to go into those details since ya know, that’s what this whole blog is about

After I had my map parts, I needed to figure out the perfect way to display them.  I’m not good with fonts, I don’t have Photoshop, so I decided to keep with the theme of making it my own, I would embroider the date for each of these events on some bigger paper and frame the whole thing.  I headed to Gordman’s and found the perfect frame.  It was $9.99 and I had a 20% off coupon, so this was perfect.  Then, I headed back to Hobby Lobby to find some scrap book paper and more embroidery thread.  Scrapbook paper was 50% off, so total I spent 75 cents on scrapbook paper and thread.

When I got home, I tried my first run of dates free hand and this failed miserably, I decided to make a template on the computer and print it off.  I taped it to the back of the scrapbook paper and embroidered my numbers.  This worked great and I was able to find a rhythm pretty quickly.

Tada!  The finished project.  I didn’t really have a scientific method on this, just went with what I thought looked good, and I have to tell you, I’m in LOVE with it.  I can’t believe this on a whim!

How about you?  Are you lovin’ map art?  Have you embroidered paper?  Did you bring your ottoman outside to your patio this weekend??

Linked up with A Bowl Full of Lemons , Tip Junkie, DIY Show-off, It’s a Blog Party, Newlyweds on a Budget, 5 minutes just for me, Young House Love, House of Earnest, and Bower Power.

Julie over at Peanut Butter Fingers, just made her own embroidered map out as a gift for her husband for their 1st anniversary.  It turned out so cute!!!  If you’re looking for more embroidered map inspiration, head over and check her out!

Also linked with the DIY Show-off.  Click on the button to see other awesome DIY projects!

Enjoying Sunday

We’ve been going non-stop on house stuff for a few weeks (don’t worry, I have lots of blog posts in my head for ya, I just haven’t had any time to write ‘em up!) and we decided that today we were taking the day off.  Currently we’re sitting on the patio with some wine, cheese, pretzel bread (best stuff EVER, if you have a HyVee near you, go to the bakery and buy some immediately, magazines and tunes.  We realized this is the first time we’ve just hung out outside since we have moved in.  So sad.

And yes, we have no patio furniture so we brought the table from the living room and the ottoman, plus the computer speakers outside with us.  We’re so cool.

Hope your weather is equally beautiful and you are enjoying your Sunday!

Now I know my ABC’s

Several weeks ago, I was looking for some inspiration for monthly craft night so I headed to pinterest.  I was struck by several words made up of individual photos of letters.  I had been pondering how I could do something similar myself and by a stroke of luck, I was walking downtown in the old market and noticed some of the awesome letters painted on bricks and store fronts.  Photo walk craft night was born.

We (Melissa and I) headed to the Old Market after work to get our photog on.  I wasn’t sure this would work out, but I was pleasantly surprised!  They turned out pretty darn good!

Here’s some of my fav’s…

I love the font on this one, the color, and the little imperfection from the chipped bricks in the upper left.

I love how the bricks come through on this one.

How cool is this A?!?!

It was so easy to do, I don’t have a fancy camera, just a normal Canon point and shoot (though macro mode is vital for this).  Once I collected all my photos, I uploaded them using Picnik to crop and resize and then I sent them off to Walgreens to order.  I was originally going to do black and white, but I thought the colors all kinda flowed together.

This project was super easy and super cheap!  Now, I need a 4ft long frame so I can hang my masterpiece on the wall!!!

And all together now!

Walgreens Deal Alert!

Today through Saturday the 20th, Walgreens is offering a free 8×10 photo collage, no other purchase necessary.  You can order it to be picked up at your local Walgreens through one hour photo.  You need to use the code “PrintOne”, upload and select your photos and order away.  You know I’ve ordered mine!  Sorry for the poor quality, it’s apparently really hard to take a picture of a picture…

Mold FREE is the way to be

As you may have gathered Saturday, we were both pretty worn out and frustrated about our house.  This was SO much more than we were expecting and we couldn’t help but feel completely over our heads.  I mean, we went from figuring out how to replace discontinued siding to facing a serious mold infestation.  After checking in with my dad at the end of Saturday, he offered to come down and help us for the day so we took him up on it.

Sunday morning our reinforcements arrived bright and early.  Having his expertise and some extra sets of helpers was a big relief for us and we were ready to get started.  So what did we do?

We started by getting rid of the moldy studs.  We let them dry out over night (thankfully a 0% chance of rain, phew) but it was clear they were quite rotten and needed to go.  The tricky part about removing studs from an existing wall is if you don’t remount well enough, the wall will no longer be stable.  Since we weren’t saving the moldy drywall, we used the sawszall to cut off the rotten parts.  

Next, we needed to get that drywall out.  This proved very easy since it was soaked.  You may wonder how we didn’t catch this sooner, all I can say is there is chocolate brown paint in there and it’s been painted at least 3 times, so it seemed to seal it in.  For fun, I took the putty knife and scrapped all the paint off the wall…yep, it absolutely peeled off easier than the wallpaper.  Awesome.

Dad also reinforced the bottom of the window (and yes, we’re giving up trying to fix the stupid window and we’re just replacing the whole dang thing).

In case you were wondering, the electrical box was also completely rotted out…so that’s not super safe…

Here you can notice some of the newly placed studs (and yes, my favorite stud muffin in the yellow shirt).

We needed to survey the damage and make sure it was contained.  We verified the upper part of the house wasn’t rotten and then headed inside.

Staring at the ceiling.  There was a bit of mold in there, so we wiped it down with bleach and let it air, before we seal up the window we’re going to put Killz on it to make sure it’s dead.  The good news is there wasn’t any rot.

Check out that newly studded wall….as I was mentioning you need extra super reinforcement so the new wall is braced and not going anywhere.

No…that’s not a 4 pane-d window…

After we got the studs back in, we were ready to start getting the house sealed back up.  We’re not done with our fix but it’s supposed to rain this week so we need to seal up or we’re going to have a pool in the dining room.

This board felt fantastic going up….like a sigh of relief.

Last board of the night.

I’m sad we didn’t get a good group photo  Dad and Steve at the end of the day.

We covered the front of the house in clear plastic wrap to help keep the moisture out.  I didn’t get a picture because it was after 10 p.m. by the time we finished!

Still on the exterior to do list:
Piece together our siding
Fix the back of the house window sills
Select and order new windows
Install new windows
Pick a paint color
Finish painting the exterior lights
Have the house painted  (SO glad we didn’t decide to do this ourselves)
Sit on the front step and have a drink with an umbrella in it

I love distractions

In conjunction with our outside of the house redo, we’ve been on the hunt for new exterior lights.  We were looking for something dark, probably oil rubbed bronze and modernish and hopefully square.  After a long hunt (2+months), we were unable to actually find anything we loved.  I then began to entertain somehow painting them, but I wasn’t really sure how to accomplish this feat.  Since we have several other things going on (catch up here, here, here, and here), it wasn’t really too much of a priority.

Late last week, Katie Bower happened to blog about her light makeover, and it was all I need to get the motivation to go.  Basically she had the indoor version of our exterior lights and she taped all the glass and sprayed away.  Since I don’t think I’ve officially introduced you to the beauties that live on our house, check these puppies out.

Awesome detail (I love the fake lantern on the top), just very very weathered and definitely plum full up of bugs.  I pulled those off the house and brought them in to start the tapin’.  I decided while Steve was nursing his head wound yesterday to start my project.  It took a really long time to thoroughly tape one lantern (inside and out).  How long?  2 episodes of Dance Moms, 1 episode of Love in the Wild, and 1 episode of Project Runway, and yes, I watch some AWESOME tv shows.

After taping, I headed out to spray, I was so excited, I missed the final “before” step, but check out Katie’s blog because she has a good picture of what needs to happen and has more patience than I do.

First coat.  I was in L-O-V-E at first spray….the color looked good on Katie’s blog, but photos don’t even do the thing justice, it looks SO good.

I basically rotated, sprayed, waited, rotated, sprayed, waited, etc.  This took me off and on all day Saturday and Sunday (and yes, I’ve only done 1 of the 5 so far just in case this didn’t work…) and it was worth every minute.

I took of the first patch of tape!  (The inside is still taped over at this point)

Holding it up by the “before”.

I am so happy with how this turned out and I can’t say enough wonderous things about oil rubbed-bronze spray paint.  That stuff rocks.  The closest lights we have found ran $90 a light…at 5 lights on the front and one on the back that brings us $540 of savings.  I still have a half can of spray paint left, so we’ll figure 3 cans total to do everything, $8.00 a can, so I guess really $514.  At this point, I’d take whatever nickels I can get so $500 smackaroos?  YES.

Have you used oil rubbed bronze yet?  What’d you spray?  I’m going to be outside staring at my lights and ignoring my house if you’re looking for me!

Linked up with A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Weekend Progress

We’re in high home repair mode, but I thought I’d take a break to show you your progress.  We started yesterday morning with the goal of the getting the siding we need to replace the rotten pieces we have on the front of our house.  We headed to Builder’s Supply since we had heard from numerous sources that they are the best resource for siding in Omaha.  They had an awesome design center and if I hadn’t been so focused on the task at hand, I would have loved to wander around and see what’s new and hot.  Anyway, after looking at our siding for about 2 seconds, the helpful sales guy told us we were in trouble.  Apparently the stopped making the siding mid-1990′s.  Since our house was built in 1997, it’s safe to say that it was probably discontinued at the time of siding and the builder more than likely just had it sitting around.

We left with a few options, the least attractive of which was to reside the entire front of the house.  Not my idea of a good time.  We decided to get a second opinion and headed to Millard Lumber.  The guy there told us, “You guys aren’t going to have a good day, they haven’t made that in quite awhile…you may want to just head to the bar.”  Excellent.

So, home we headed to ponder.  I decided to launch an expedition to the attic to see if by some miracle, the first owner of our house had stashed extras in the attic.  I found a pair of kids snow boots, a beer bottle, 2 old valences (which are HILARIOUSLY awful, so I left them up there, misc. nails, and 1 piece of 6′ long siding.  I brought my prize down to Steve and then made him take my picture with it.

Alright, so we need about 26′ total, so more improvising and creative strategy will be necessary.  We worked out a plan that involved creating our own siding with various saws to match.  I’ll go into that once we get that part of the process underway…it’s TBD for now on the effictiveness of that.

First step in siding removal is to take off that end piece.  One of the ways to side a house quick is to put this type of “end cap” on the boards so you don’t have to worry about being precise with your cuts.

There, board off.  Next, we just started cutting into the siding that was rotten and prying it off with a crowbar.  Thanks to our neighbor for giving us an extra crowbar to use.  Our neighbors are seriously awesome in supporting our home remodeling efforts.  I can’t imagine trying to do this with neighbors you don’t get a long with.  Anyway, digression.

So after you have a chunk off, it’ll look something like this.  Our rotten part was in the lower right corner of the window.  We were disappointed to find that the house wrap was SOAKED.

After we peeled it back, things did not get better…lots and lots of mold.

I went in the house to search for my mask and somewhere in this process, Steve got bonked on the head with a stray board.  The gash was a little to large for my liking, so off we went to the Urgent Care.  Thankfully, he didn’t need stitches and they glued him back up and we came home.

He laid down until the headache subsided and then headed back outside (the doctor ruled out a concussion, so he was free to do what he pleased…I tried to get him to lay down for the night, but he oft ignores these types of requests).

And sadly the mold reached all the way to the sheetrock.  It’s so frustrating to think this could have all been prevented if they had just cleaned their gutters (when we moved in we discovered there was a stray shingle that was clogging the water’s path out, since the roof was shingles 6 years ago ish, we’re assuming the water had not been flowing down correctly for quite some time and instead ran down the side of the house).  We decided to let it air out for the night and came inside.  We’re headed back out to continue our tackling today, I’ll share our plan once we finalize it

Here’s where our house ended the day yesterday:

Send good thoughts our way, we need all we can get today!

Slapping lipstick on a pig

Last night was a big night!  I finally took my little pots of paint outside for a test drive.  I had 4 colors to try.

1-  Devonshire Green- Benjamin Moore
2- Eagle Rock- Benjamin Moore
3- Gettysburg Gray- Benjamin Moore
4-  A concoction  our painter mixed for us…greige.

I had searched the depths of the internet to find some inspiration and I found this house in Devonshire Green

Source 

2- I found Eagle Rock in my search for the Crownsville Gray, I just liked the gray with brown undertones.  We have brown shingles and brown brick, so we definitely need something that plays nice.

3-  I saw this picture of Crownsville and was attracted to the gray/green of it all.

Source

4-  We told our painter what we were looking for and this is what he brought.

Alright, the suspense is building, let’s check these guys out on the house shall we?

Side of the house in the shade.

Back of the house

Garage

#3- Crownsville Gray is for sure out.  It is reading a really weird seafoam green on our house and in our light which I dislike even when it’s in small doses.
#1- I was hoping to like the devonshire the most, but as it’s dried, it’s become a lot more greeny, so it’s on the fence for now.
#2- Eagle rock is my favorite so far…I seem to be drawn to dark colors though.
#4- Painter mixture is Steve’s favorite, though we both wish it could be darker.  We’re going to head to Sherwin Williams tonight to get it made darker and then paint HUGE patches on the house this weekend to narrow it down.

While I’m nervous about picking a color, I am SO EXCITED for the end of August.  I know our house is going to look 100% better with the outside fixed, trim and shutters spruced up, and new paint everywhere.  I know it sounds silly, but I really feel like this is what we need to make it feel like ours and not us living in this house that someone else lost…and once it’s done, I will probably never liken our lovely house to a pig again.  :-)

Who has a favorite? Any advice for choosing a color?? We took a poll of the neighbors that were outside last night, but they weren’t to helpful…seems they would be happy looking at anything that’s not the pinky, yellow, peeling, brown situation we have right now.

Trying to pick a color

I’m 98% sure I blog about picking paint too much…sorry about that, I wish I would be done picking out paint colors.  Since we’re never picked out exterior paint before, we aren’t really sure what we’re doing.  We grabbed a bunch of samples from Sherwin Williams and now we’re waiting for a decent weather forecast to throw ‘em on the house.

Here’s what we’ll be sampling so far:

We’re thinking a browney-gray or a greeny-brown.  We’ll see when they get on the house….Do you have a favorite paint color we should check out?!

101 Uses for Duct Tape

Dear Neighbors,

Please forgive us.  It must get worse before it gets better…
Love,
Steve & Elizabeth

Steve started working on fixing our windows last night.  The problem is, he really was just trying to get a feel for what to expect and in the process took on more than he was willing to do in the course of a few hours last night.  The result?

That’s right, duct taped window sills to help keep out the rain while we get new boards.

And yes, in addition to the duct tape, the blinds broke.

Hole that was not made by a mouse, but instead by Steve trying to remove the rotted wood.

And all together now…our hot mess of a duct taped house.

If you need us this weekend, we’ll be outside trying to fix our disaster (or at the very least, at the store buying white duct tape…).