Baby Talk Wednesday: Dog Theory

As you might guess, while we have minimal knowledge of baby, we have a decent base of dog knowledge, so it probably won’t surprise you that pretty early on we started prepping our dogs for all things baby.

While Kirby didn’t really enjoy the company of children, Lucy has always loved kids.  When our nieces or nephews come over, she’s happy as can be to follow them around, let them lay on her, whatever they like, she eats it up.  The youngest child she had really been around though was 5, which is obviously a bit different than even a smaller toddler.  While, we had a BBQ to celebrate the beginning of summer and our friends brought over their almost 2 year old.  Same thing, Lucy followed her wherever she went, phew.  Most recently, Lucy hung out with a 10 month old who thought she was the cat’s pajamas.  She was content to just sit by him and let him touch her, all good things as far as we’re concerned!

Hurley is still a bit shy of people, he’s always been shy, and he warms up if treats are involved, but he takes a bit with new people.  Anytime we have him out and about, kids always want to pet him.  We’ve found he trusts kids a lot more than adults, and if they have a little treat to give him, he’s a happy camper.  Again, excellent first steps.

We have a full and intensive dog schedule going on over here, so I’ll share along the way (and let you know if any of it worked once the baby is actually here…hahaha).

Meanwhile, anyone else have a dog they needed to get ready for baby and/or kids?  What all did you do to prepare?  How’d your dog do with the new family member or tiny friend?  Lay it on me, I love to try out theories!

Baby On Board

Now that the baby cat is out of the bag, I have been very busy on my friend Pinterest checking out awesome baby things. We haven’t gotten too far with anything yet, but what I do know is that nursery decorating FEELS harder than normal decorating.  I want the nursery to be cute (since I’m guessing I’ll be in there a LOT) but also very organized and functional.  And as a soon to be first time mom, I have LITERALLY no clue what I am doing.  So that said, here’s some thoughts that I’m lovin’ on right now.

I love clean and simple and most importantly, gender neutral.  We’re planning to find out what we’re having, but we’re not planning to share with anyone.  I’m planning a pretty neutral nursery that we can incorporate some gender specific accents into later if we want.

First up — I love basically everything about this nursery.

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I am most in love with the striped wall, I think it’s fun and playful while not screaming “a baby sleeps here”.  I think it could easily transition into toddler years or later without having to redecorate.  I also love the pops of orange.

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 I love the blues and greens in this room (and of course, another striped wall).  Olivey green and turquoise blue is one of my favorite color combinations.

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Love the gray/yellow color scheme of this room and the chevron wall (vs stripes).

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Again, more blues/greens/grays.  Looks like without really thinking I’ve found my potential color scheme.  SCORE!

I’m excited to get started, but definitely want to get further planning before we dig in.  Decorated a nursery before?  Any tips or tricks to share?  Must have items?  Organizational tips?  I’m all ears!

An owl, bowls, and a candle

Remember a long long time ago when I won a $25.00 HomeGoods gift card in a giveaway from My So Called Home?

Well, I’m finally here to tell you what I got!  To back track a bit, I have been to Home Goods no less than 6 times since I won and I haven’t been able to decide on what I wanted to get.  My bestest bud Melissa and I headed to Minneapolis this weekend for a girls shopping trip.  One of our preplanned stops was at Home Goods.  She had never been, so it was a must stop.  I must say it didn’t disappoint!  I found some great stuff.

First up — I have been searching, since we moved, for a fire scented candle.  We don’t have a wood burning fireplace so we were hoping for a scented substitute this winter while we have our gas fireplace on.  Having worked at Yankee Candle in college, Melissa has all the ins for me on candles.  Sadly, the fireside candle for Yankee Candle was discontinued a few years back.  Well, walking through the aisle of Home Goods what did she spot for me?

That’s right!  The fire candle.  After determining it was the right scent, it headed straight into the cart….for only $7.99.  Cheaper than Yankee and I can’t even purchase it there, so it’s a double bonus.

Next up, we headed to the fall section where I found some owl tea lights.  After some deliberation, we decided that I wanted only 2 of them and Melissa only wanted 1, so the pack of 3 was perfect for us.  Grown up friendship bracelets if you will

Sorry for the bad picture, we’re having a lighting situation in our kitchen.  I think they are adorable for fall and I’m so excited about them.  All 3 were also $7.99.

Finally, not this trip but a prior Home Goods trip, I picked up some blue ramekins.   I’ve been loving the individual sized desserts and dishes and for $8.99, these were an excellent addition to our kitchen.

I can’t wait to show you where the owls end up and what fabulous things I make in my new ramekins.  Successful Home Goods trip.  Hurray!

Don’t worry, we didn’t just get a few things at Home Goods, you’ll hear about the rest of our trip very soon!

It’s here!!!

Guess what appeared in our yard Saturday morning??

Give up??

Our brand new lovely tree!

It’s already hard at work blocking views.  I can’t wait to watch our favorite new yard addition grow!

I love lamp(s)

I took advantage of this LOOOONG weekend to do a little Goodwilling.  I have been on a dry spell lately and I haven’t found much I really wanted when I’ve been out.  Finally, the curse has been broken.  I have found 2 brushed nickel lamps for our master bedroom!  The best part?  They all but match.  Suh weet!  They were $4.00 each and then I stopped by Menards and picked up 2 lampshades for $15.00 each (I know I could find one to re-purpose, but if I can’t wash it or disinfect it somehow, I don’t  buy it.  Used lampshades are a no go from me).  I’m happy with my find and happier that for the first time in my 26 years of life, I have a full sized lamp to read by before bed!

Isn’t our master bedroom gorgeous?  It’s going to have to be on the update list soon…and yes, we don’t have matching night stands so they are different heights.  And yes Erin, that is still your dresser and night stand.  :-)  On the list, select some paint, window treatments, a new king size bed, and finally hanging up some stuff on the wall.  This winter maybe…

A little closer now.  I love the sleek lines and the fun subtle ruffles on the shade, it’s something pretty to focus on while we hatch our plan for this horribly bland room.

Hope you aren’t laboring too hard this gorgeous day!

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!

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!