Afternoon Quickie

Get your heads out of the gutter! I'm talking about a little flora and fauna here and quick little project that I did the other afternoon after work.

It all started when I ran in the dollar store to grab some trash bags. I spotted a few diamonds in the rough on the C-to the-heap. So I decided to break out the spray paint and get down to business.

These little gems are plastic cheap-o planters that set me back all of maybe $10 for all four of these pieces. I wanted some nice planters to put by the front door, but I didn't really want to spend a lot of money to buy some nice ones. So these will work in the interim. I grabbed a couple of cans of oil bronzed spray paint and got to working on these guys.

Boom! All painted up with new ferns looking all fancy pants.

I grabbed the ferns from Lowe's and I didn't do a very good job of picking out two ferns the same size. Oh well! They look great by the door just the same. Now I need to find a pretty wreath to hang on the door to make it all pretty.

While I was at Lowe's I grabbed a few other things. They had a nice tomato plant there so I snatched that up and I can't wait until I can enjoy the fruits of this plant's labor.

There are already quite a few 'maters on the plant, so it won't be too much longer!

My most favorite find of the day was the cutest little plant cage that I got for the kitchen. I picked up an ivy plant to put in it for a little bit of green to brighten things up.

I'm currently on the lookout for some pretty flowers for the planters and a few hanging flowers as well for the carport. Stacey got the most gorgeous hanging bougainvillea plant ever for her birthday. Its a beautiful golden yellow/beige color. So I'm on the lookout for something as stunning. So if anyone is coming from Century, FL to Thomasville, you can bring me one. Hint, hint.

Anyways, that was my quick little DIY planter/gardening post. Hopefully I can get my pictures all downloaded from the weekend of Stacey's dirty 30 birthday extravaganza to share!

Lazy Weekends

This weekend will have to go down in the record books as Laze-Fest 2012. And you know what? It was amazing!

What's wrong with being lazy? It's my full time job!

David and I will be coming up on a year of being together at the end of the month. So that's been one full year of going back and forth between Thomasville and Savannah every weekend. It's totally worth all the travel to see David every week, but let's face it, it's exhausting traveling 4+ hours one way each weekend. Since David had to be in Orlando today for work, we took advantage of having two full days together. And guess what we did? Not a dang thing and it was glorious. After all the go, go, go, go,go of the summer and the fall, it was nice to have nothing more on the agenda than football and food. We did venture out downtown to run in Kevin's and ate lunch at Stacey's favorite restaurant downtown- The Billiards Academy. Which specializes in hot dogs. I figured David needed the full Thomasville experience. So we went in to eat and to watch a little football. We got our hot dogs just in time to watch Marcus Lattimore get his leg ripped off. So yeah, I lost my appetite and my desire to even watch football. After watching some of the UF/UGA game, I really had lost interest and decided that my day would be better spent outside reading  my Southern Living magazine than watch that goat ropin' go down.

David got me a little present for the patio, although he admitted it was more for him than for me! Ha!

The Pyromaniac

He got me a Chiminea fire pit to keep warm on these cool evenings. I was really impressed with my new fire pit. It did a fabulous job keeping us toasty warm and it was zero mess- even better! Guess I now have even more reason to pick up all the sticks and pine cones in the yard. This little Chiminea is the perfect size to burn all that stuff up. So thanks, David for my present. I love it!

We spent the rest of Saturday burning anything we could get our hands on and listening to some music. It was the perfect evening. I will have to get some stuff to make smores for the next time we use it.

So, that's about all the highlights I have from our weekend. Unless you count some old school movie watching in our sweatpants and a trip to Wal-Mart.Well, there was some more peanut boiling- which was better this go round, since it was cool and we could open up the windows to let the heat (and smell) escape from boiling those things for hours on end! And of course, the copious amounts of food that was consumed.

Oh- and Oscar has found him a new BFF. I'm kinda jealous. He is totally David's boy now.

After our lazy weekend, it's back to the daily grind and to a pretty jammed pack schedule on the weekends from here until Christmas. Sigh.... I'm tired just thinking about it. But it will all be fun and well worth the effort. First up- Charleston next weekend! Woot. Woot! I'm even going to take a vacation day to head up a day early to enjoy the Citadel Homecoming festivities. I think I'm looking forward to the much needed day off than anything!

Hope ya'll had a fabulous weekend doing just what you pleased!

Sunday Projects

Hey Ya'll!! Its a rainy Sunday here at my house. That means, that I could get a few honey-do jobs marked off my list. Okay, really just one honey-do job, and I had to plead to have that one finished! I was in Lowe's yesterday and made a slight impulse buy. I bought a ceiling fan for the kitchen. Go ahead and scoff all of you interior design types that hate ceiling fans. I'm sorry. I live in Southwest Georgia and it is hot 95% of the year. So functionality wins this one. This is the fan that I bought.

Do you notice what is says on the box? Look closer.

That's right......the five minute fan. I got this one because I knew that would be about the time frame I had for Joseph to put the fan up for me before he got mad with it and wanted to stop. Needless to say, it didn't take five minutes, more like about 30 minutes. And all of 1 minute for Joseph to be complaining about his wife bringing stuff home for him to do on his day off. Whoopsie! But it really helped that it was 90% pre-assembled. Score!! Here is my sweet hubby cussing installing the fan.

You're loving my popcorn ceilings, aren't you. You should be jealous! (not) Here she is. I have already enjoyed the coolness she gives off this evening while I was cooking supper. Happy dance time!

I also started another project. It is yet to be seen how this one will turn out. I grabbed three of these darling pots yesterday at Lowe's. They were basic terra cotta pots. But I jazzed them up with a little bit of high gloss red spray paint. I realize that I am a horrible blogger since I didn't take any before shots. But here are the after.

Aren't they adorable? I got a Parsley and Basil pot. And obviously the "generic" herb pot because apparently nobody plants Rosemary, I guess. But those are the three herbs I am planting. I am being brave by starting out my plants with seeds. Usually I buy plants that are already established, but Lowes doesn't have them this time of year. So here we go!

I basically filled the pots 3/4 of the way full and then dropped a few seeds on the surface. Finally I covered the seeds up with about 1/4 inch of dirt. The packet suggested to plant the seeds every 6 inches or so, but since I have mine in a pot, I figured I would dump some seeds in and hope some take. Then I can just pluck out the plants once the pot gets too full. So, I got all my planters filled up. I placed them by the window and gave them a little bit of water. We should {hopefully} see some sprouting seedlings in about 2 weeks!!

And if you can see on the window, that is indeed rain!! We needed it so very badly. So that's what I have been doing on this somewhat lazy Sunday. You have any projects that you got done? I know my mother got at least one thing done, her closet. She finally watched Hoarding: Buried Alive and had the same reaction that I did. Clean, clean, clean. Throw away stuff, throw away more stuff, and throw away even more stuff! Happy Sunday!!

PSA for Lazy People

The craze right now in exercise is Zumba. Well, I have found something better than Zumba, the Roomba! Yes that's right. Instead of getting in some "light" exercise while cleaning, now all I have to do is lay on the couch and watch my little robotic friend clean for me.

image from www.irobot.com

I haven't named my little friend yet, but I'm thinking about it! It has to be a name that is super awesome for a super awesome vacuum. I scheduled Mr. Roomba to clean this morning at 7 AM and he didn't sleep late. We heard him turn on and get to cleaning. He had our entire house cleaned in about 1.5 hours. And when he was done he happily took his cute patootie back to his docking station to recharge his precious little batteries. I know that Mr. Roomba will help me keep all the dust and grit to a minimum here in the Dapper Castle. I could sweep my floors twice a day and it would still need it the next morning. Now that we have nothing but wood floors this is really going to help out. I even sent my old vacuum a-packing to the prison that is our storage unit. I'm envisioning it hooking up with some random thing in there a-la the mop or broom in the Swiffer commercials.

iRobot has not paid me for this little commercial for this little man. But I love it so much I had to share. We have it scheduled to clean every other day while we are at work, so when we get home, everything is nice and clean. The only bad thing is that the dogs don't really care for it. They usually ignore it until it starts coming their way and they think it is chasing them. It is pretty funny actually. So if you are a busy gal like me, I would suggest you look into this product. It will really cut down your cleaning time, so you only have to do a deep cleaning of the floors like every two weeks or so. He vacuums hardwood, tile, carpet, rugs, you name it! So if you want to join me on the lazy train, here's your chance!! Jump on board!

Wait!?!?!? Is that water?

Yeah, you see this guy. He is a bad, bad boy. He decided that he wanted to flood my house. And do a lot of damage. And cause me to have to rip up my floors. And cause strange men to frolic through my house at all hours of the day. And to cause blowers and dryers to put out 110+ degree heat when it is already 110+ degrees outside. That's right folks, my washing machine decided to flood my house one day. Apparently there was some kind of crack in the wash basin and therefore leaked a whole loads worth of water into my house. This is what I had to deal with!!

Here are the pups surveying the damage and those really loud, hot things that magically appeared in our home! We ended up having to pull up the wood floors in the living room and the hallway due to water damage. Not the best thing to happen after being on vacation for over a week and having mountains worth of clothes to wash! It took about two weeks by the time the floors dried out enough to put down new ones and for the new floors to get put down. Not fun at all! Not to mention the fact that the whole time my house was turned upside down. For a while there, I thought TLC would have to come in and film an episode of Hoarders by the way my kitchen looked! Epic fail on the having to shimmy sideways to get anywhere in there!!

Yes. Super gross. But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise I guess. Got new floors and we expanded the wood floors to go into the bedrooms as well. We did this because we will probably never get this place sold, so we will have to rent it out I'm sure. So we thought that wood floors would be way better for renters than carpeting! We decided to go with a wider board this time. And hand scraped to hide any imperfections!! Here is the before and afters!

Sorry about the first picture, but that's the only one I could find that I had on this computer!! So that is the saga that is our floors/washing machine fiasco. Don't you just love unexpected home repairs?

On a positive note. I get something even better than new floors. I get this:

The ROOMBA!! It is a robotic floor vacuum that you can program to clean your floors for you. Otherwise, I would be doing nothing but sweeping all the time. I will let you know once it arrives how well it does. I think I am gonna like this bad boy!!

Head Case

I got a hair-brained idea one day. And it all started because I was bored and went shopping downtown. Of course, I had to go in the fabulous fabric store to see if they had anything new. I was actually looking for fabric to make some pillows for the couch or curtains for the kitchen. Instead, I found this.

A beautiful silk plaid and a nice floral. (yes, I am grandma-y. Love me some plaid and florals. Get over it.) If you notice it is the pink version from this previous post. There is a method to my madness.

So my attention turned to my upholstered headboard.

This is the before. It has seen its better days after Joseph and I have been leaning up against it for two years. I don't think that I ever shared how I made this. Really simple. I simply went and got a piece of OSB from Lowes. Just plain old 7/16", Georgia-Pacific, Hosford, Florida made OSB. (I used to work at the plant were it is made, so I always look for our product, and I had to make sure it came from that plant before I bought it. I told you I was weird.) I think it might have set me back 3 or 4 bucks. Good for me, not good for GP's bottom line. Then I got some 2" foam from my local craft store, along with some batting. I cut the OSB to the width that I wanted and got to work. I took spray adhesive and glued the foam onto the board. Next, I wrapped it with batting and secured that in place with a staple gun. Then came the fabric. The damask in the picture above is really showing up against the camera flash, but it is much more subtle in normal light. After the fabric was stapled in place, I nailed on some cheap boards that I also picked up at Lowes that I cut to the correct height. Wah-lah. Instant headboard.

But I was ready for a change, so I got to work on changing things up. At first, I was going to make a slipcover for the headboard, since the legs were nailed into place and I didn't want to take the time to take them off. But I decided against that simply because I was too lazy to get my sewing machine out. So I just decided to work around the legs.

First, I laid the fabric out on the floor.

Then I placed the headboard on top and got to stapling.

That's it. All done. Pretty simple, yeah. And its great because you can instanty change your look with just a couple yards of fabric!

Here it is all finished.

My plan was to pick up a duvet in either white or a soft green or tan, but like most best laid plans, they change. Not long after I recovered this headboard, my husband and I decided to go get my king size mattress from my parents house. We hadn't done it before because my bedroom furniture that is still at my parents is extremely massive and our little room now just won't hold the bed, but it will hold the mattresses. I do believe that our new bed has saved our marriage. Really. We now have room to get away from each other while we sleep. The three dogs (I know) now have room to spread out on their blanket away from us. So I am no longer kicking my precious babies all night, waking me from a deep sleep. It is awesome. So there you have it, a little headboard change and bed hopping!

A Little Bathroom Redesign

I want to redo one of the bathrooms. I just have to convince Joseph first. Right now the shower in our bathroom looks like this.

Yes, we are using it as a closet. As you can see, the shower is itty bitty. We don't ever use it. My poor 6'5" husband and this shower just don't jive. So, I am thinking of a slight bathroom redesign to make this bathroom more functional. Here is the basic layout, off course, not to scale.

This is kinda what I have in mind to do.

I want to seal off the door to the hallway and have the closet open up into the hallway. Then expand the shower to make it bigger. I drew this picture before I went in the bathroom to see what kinda space I would have. I can nix the bigger vanity, so that area will need a little bit of work. But, that is what I have in mind. I'm thinking I can probably get it done (doing it ourselves) for well under 1000 bucks. I'm sure the hubs will veto this, but maybe he can be seduced with the thought of rainfall showers and maybe a few shower jets. Stay tuned for the verdict! Ha ha!

A Project Finally Finished

I have been looking at this for probably about 3 months.

If you notice the top half got painted, and well......I never found the time to finish the bottom. For three reasons:

1.) I ran out of paint

2.) It has been constantly raining

3.) I am lazy

So, I finally made myself get crackin' because I was tired of looking at it. Now if I can find some place for the dog bed to go...another day.

Here it is all the same color.

Notice when the bed is gone, you have a clear view of the missing paint. Yeah, I guess you can add paint-eating to this list of stuff that the dogs do. I don't know how they did it, but the paint is gone. Maybe the lead in the paint is the reason why they act all crazy!

While I was at Lowe's getting the paint (I was super lazy and used spray paint) I decided to tackle a few more projects. #1 the kitchen. I hate the cabinets. They are just the stock, cheap cabinets that Lowe's keeps in stock. And they had just plain jane knobs on it. So I grabbed a few knobs and switched those out.

I wanted some different pull knobs for the pull out drawers, but since the holes were already drilled for just one hole, I decided against defacing the cabinets with me trying to drill holes in them just right for different pulls, so I just went with all the same brushed-bronze knobs.

Not much of a difference, but it makes me feel better. Then I decided to change out door knobs to match the new kitchen knobs.

Granted, these weren't my first choice of knobs. But the ones I liked were $25 and these were just $10, so I just went with those since we will hopefully move out of this place soon. But I thought that upgrading little things like that would help. I just did the doors in the kitchen, dining, and living room. I might splurge and get a little bit more fancy ones for the back of the house, but I doubt it. I also want to change out ceiling fans, bathroom light fixtures, and vanity fixtures one day. Just trying to decide if I want to put that expense into a house that we will be putting back on the market soon.

Another completed project was the kitchen island. Remember that it looked like this:

It also got a coat of paint. Now it looks like this:

It has since been moved back to the kitchen because the pups no longer have the desire to chew on it like they did before. But I did have to do some repairs on the bottom with wood filler to fill in a huge chunck that they ate off the corner.

One day if I ever get really brave and can figure out a good way to paint fake plastic cabinets I want to do this to them:

As the Rolling Stones would say, I want to Paint it Black.

Another project done is installing the new light fixture in the dining room. My parents gave us this for Christmas. Joseph had a wonderful time installing this heavy, bad boy.

That's about it on the projects I have going. But just to keep it real here is one project that will probably never get finished.

My poor quilt. I do have the front done for the most part. I still need to go buy a few more honey buns to make it just a bit bigger. But somehow, I don't see that happening for a while!

What do you have on your honey-do list? I have a long one, I just doubt that my honey will do them!!

Have a Seat

Super boredom can be interesting. It can make you do things that you would never dream of- like taking out a paint brush and some paints and think of things to change. Well, I was super-bored the other day and decided to make Joseph's computer chair a little bit better looking. So, out comes the green paint and wa-lah! A new look to an old ladder-back chair! I know this is boring, but I didn't have anything else to post today. So, you will have to take what I'm giving today! Thought it turned out cute. Much improvement over the old worn out brown wood and now it matches the rest of the room!!

On the store front: I was super excited to find some Lenox Butler Pantry rice bowls at TJ Maxx yesterday on sale for $10/piece. Much better than the regular $18 a pop for one. So I grabbed the ones that they had. Yay me. On a sad note, a little clock I bought over the weekend at HobLob got broken the moment I brought it in the door. Guess I will have to get the glue gun out, even though it does stay together now without glue.

The New Guest Room

Before I get into the guest room, lets look at the before picture.

WARNING: Viewer discretion is advised. May contain offensive pictures.

The old red, black, gray, and white just wasn't doing it for me. And not just because I bleed orange and blue, but because it was hideous. That's what love will get you. Trying to incorporate Joseph's Georgia pictures and stuff into the office/guest room just wasn't working for me. So let's take a look at the after pictures! Oscar is playing "Where's Waldo" and not doing a fabulous job! ;)

I still need some pictures and other stuff to finish out the room. I thought it was far enough along now that I could FINALLY post a picture!! Joseph now calls it the beach cottage room. He loves to make fun, but I know that he secretly loves it and does a happy dance every time he walks in the room now.

Oscar loves his new perch on the chair looking out the window. This chair was in the living room, but we decided to move it in here so that I have some place to sit and talk when Joseph is in his closet, I mean "office". The last picture shows the new home for my pictures that I just did. I need some serious accessories. Think a trip to the ol' HobLob is in order today!

Finally, we got rid of the honkin' huge TV and got a new flat screen. Joseph had a blast hanging it on the wall, considering that his electric drill is broken. But he dug down deep and pulled out his ultra HeMan strength and did it by hand with a screwdriver. I hope that my P90X will help me become the SheRa to his HeMan strength. Anyways, we got it hung and it is just so pretty. (Couldn't resist taking a picture with one of my favorite shows on!)