Archive for December, 2010
Hold On.
As we head into the holiday weekend, we’re looking forward to watching “the kids” unwrap their presents (yes, Burger gets some too), gorging on goodies, and spending time with family and friends. But before the festivities officially begin, we wanted to take a moment to say HAPPY HOLIDAYS to you guys!
The image above was the Christmas card that we sent out to our family and friends (in case you can’t see, the text reads: “Hope you get your mitts on everything that you want this season“). This is the template we used through Snapfish (we just provided the pic and the wording of the note and they printed 40 5 x 7 cards on matte photo paper & provided envelopes for each one to the tune of around $25 thanks to a coupon code that we googled around for).
Getting the shot was a bit more involved than our previous years’ cards (which starred Burger as a reindeer, a kiss-monger, and a big brother in waiting) since we had a dog and a baby to work with this time (everything from getting Burger to actually wear his trapdoor sleeper to keeping both of our models in place was a bit of a challenge). But we had tons of fun watching Clara try to lick Burger for a change (weird, but true). And since we know you guys love behind the scenes stuff, here’s our “set” of sheepskins in the ol’ den where we shot it in early December:
Notice the block acting as Clara’s stand-in while she was getting a diaper change? Oh and here’s a fun fact, Sherry actually photoshopped that bow on Clara’s head after we uploaded the pic because she wanted her to look a bit less androgynous (since there’s no hair to clip a real bow to yet).
Anyway, happy holidays to all! May your days be merry and bright- and may your chihuahuas (and other various family members) be held tight.
Psst- We announced this week’s giveaway winner. Click here to see if it’s you.
Toy Story
One of our readers (hi Keri!) referred to our current house as the older sister of our first house. The Barbie to our previous house’s Skipper if you will (a bit bigger and more mature, but still with that playful happy-go-lucky attitude). LOVE IT. In fact, from that moment on we’ve been referring to the old house as Skipper…
…. and the new one as Barbie (when we’re not calling it “Casa Petersik Dos” of course).
How great is the concept of kissing Barbie by the way? It works so well with the whole “house love” thing. Maybe we should change our tagline to “the house that kisses!” just like the slogan on the Barbie box. Or maybe not. That would be weird.
So there you have some random toy talk on a Thursday morning. Do you guys have nicknames for your old houses (or your current one)? John’s parents call all of their former homes by the street name (ex: “I always loved Apple Grove’s big tub”) while my friend prefers to give them all actual names like Hank, Farrah, and Mitch (she also names her cars). And of course there are people who call their house by the style (ex: “remember Split-Level’s cute kitchen backsplash?”). Let’s all share our house nicknames on this cold almost-Christmas day.
And speaking of Christmas, I’m off to bake some holiday cookies – but stay tuned for our Christmas card featuring none other than sweet Clara and cutie pie Burger hamming it up. This year’s card is totally our. favorite. ever.
Skipper image from here and Kissing Barbie image from here.
Nice Mugs
This is a weird DIY thing I tossed together three Monday nights ago in front of the TV in our old house.
The first reason I’m calling it weird is because we no longer live there, so it’s funny that this post somehow got buried and now it’s getting published with our old walls and shelves in the background. And it’s pretty darn close to Christmas, but I figured it might be a fun little last minute gift idea for someone. Better late than never, right? Hence the idea of hitting publish on it (as opposed to delete).
The second reason I’m calling it weird is that I totally didn’t use the right materials to make these mugs food or beverage safe (so they’d be great informal flower vases on a kitchen windowsill, pencil holders in an office, or even q-tip or cotton ball containers in a bathroom) but they shouldn’t be used to hold tea or coffee. I just used a silver Sharpie that I had on hand (the same one I used to make these ornaments to celebrate Clara’s first Christmas). Why’d I do that? Well, we sold a bunch of these mugs that we never used at our moving sale, but when we were packing our three floating shelves in our old dining area we realized there were three more mugs sitting up there that we somehow missed. So before I put them in our donate pile, I got the odd urge to draw on them with my favorite little marker. Just for kicks.
My expectations were to have some fun sketching on the mugs and then just donate them (after writing “not for food use” on the bottom). But I ended up loving them so much that I gleefully packed them up and took them with us to our new house. I think they’ll look so cute in our office (full of pens, pencils, and paperclips). And of course I can also use them every year around the holidays to hold individually wrapped candy canes in fun fruity colors like yellow or pink (which, thanks to the wrapping, won’t be affected by the not-food-safe Sharpie).
As for the how-to details, what you see is what I did. I pretty much just drew rows of hearts all the way around one, some funny scale-ish wiggles that looked sort of like strips of ribbon on the second one…
…and a whimsical little tea bag on the outside (and inside) of the third….
The tea bag idea was actually inspired by a similar mug that I recently saw at Urban Outfitters (shown in this post). And of course that one took about ten seconds to do. So anyway, I figured it was worth sharing my odd little a-few-weeks-old evening project even though it’s not really the best DIY gift when you use a silver Sharpie (unless you tell the giftee that they’re not food or dishwasher safe) since a food-friendly ceramic marker or paint pen might make these quick little designs that I threw together a lot more functional. Happy mug-drawing to one and all!
Low And Behold
By the time we unpacked our shower curtain last week, it had been 48 hours since either of us had showered. And those two days were filled with lifting heavy objects, if you catch our whiff drift. So hanging the shower curtain was a welcome step in our moving process. What was not so welcome? This result:
You know we love hanging an extra long shower curtain all the way to the ceiling to add height to the room (the 95″ waffle curtain is from amazon.com and the 86″ fabric liner is from Bed Bath & Beyond by the way). But the trick doesn’t work so well when the tension rod you inherit is too stumpy to hang on the higher tile-less portion of your shower wall (it was literally about a half-inch too short to grab the slightly wider wall up top). Then the tricky part becomes being ok with the bottom of the extra-long curtain sitting bunched under the toilet seat.
We were not ok with it.
Which is why our first post-move trip to Home Depot was to get a new longer tension rod. And now we have this going on. Ooooh. Ahhh. Note: You can read more about raising your shower rod and finding extra long liners and curtains here.
It’s a small start in the process of making this bathroom feel a bit more like our own. It’s a great bathroom with lots of good stuff already, but not necessarily an overall style that we’d pick for ourselves. So eventually we’ll do some tweaks / upgrades / remodeling to make it more “us.” And yes, we’re definitely planning to swap out the light fixture for something smaller that doesn’t encroach as much on the newly hung ceiling-height shower curtain. And speaking of light, anyone who is wondering if it’s super dark with the shower curtain that high- amazingly it’s not. It sort of glows and light shines through the light curtain and the liner so the whole shower is lit up through the curtain if that makes sense. In our old house we didn’t even have a ceiling light (just a wall-mounted one above the mirror) and it was still nice and bright.
‘Til then, we at least get to enjoy nice finishes like these sleek stainless shower fixtures.
And these spa-like glass shelves:
We don’t really have a clear vision of what we’d eventually like our master bathroom to be, but there’s a good chance both of those items will be kept long term. The only thing we can say for certain will be going sooner rather than later is the mirrored door. Shocking I know. When have you known us to remove a mirror from our house? We can usually be found hanging them left and right.
But we already have a nice chunky floor length mirror in the bedroom (the one seen in this post, that I got Sherry as a surprise wedding gift) so there’s no need for the slightly less exciting door-mounted one a few steps away. Here’s hoping we don’t break it during removal and suffer a seven-year span of bad luck. And for anyone else out there who’s ready to remove a big mirror on their door or wall, we’ll be sure to post about our hopefully-not-bloody-at-all removal process when we get there…
Buh-Bye Bi-Folds
Our new place sure has its share of bi-fold doors. Like this pair sectioning off the future dining room and the main hallway (see a floor plan here to get your bearings):
And this nearby set that closes off the hallway that leads to most of the bedrooms (we removed one door to get the daybed through on moving day):
Then in our bedroom we’ve got another big set closing off the bathroom sink area…
…and a single bi-fold door right next to it closing off the walk-in closet.
That doesn’t even include all of the bi-folds that close off the other three bedroom closets. So basically… yeah, there’s a lot of ‘em. And unfortunately most of them go against the whole open / airy vibe that we’re going for, so most of ‘em had to go. Sorry bi-folds. But we’re already loving how the hallway looks so much more open sans doors.
And getting rid of the straggler leading to the back bedrooms certainly helped too (we still have to go back and putty / paint where the doors were attached).
Our master bedroom is even looking airier thanks to the door departure.
And although we’re going to leave them on all of the other bedroom closets for now, we did take the bi-fold door off of our own closet (we were constantly bumping into it). We’re thinking we might replace it with a thick floor length curtain at some point.
Another bi-fold that didn’t get the axe was one between the kitchen and the laundry / mudroom.
We don’t have a particular fondness for the look of this door, so right now its saving grace is purely functional. Without it there’s a straight shot from our carport right into the kitchen. See, here I am leering through the door to demonstrate.
We’ve learned that surprisingly enough, the side door that leads out to the carport is the one all of the neighbors use when they stop by (in the words of the previous owners: “if someone comes to the front door, they’re probably selling something”). And since my wife can and will nurse pretty much anywhere – even at the kitchen table – it’s probably not a good idea to leave that window unobscured.
So we’re going to leave that bi-fold up for now, but as soon as we can find a moment to frost that glass (so the light still pours in but the view is muddled) that bi-fold will be getting the same farewell treatment that the rest of them got. Stand by for that unbelievably exciting undertaking (I’m kidding, but hey- not every project is mind blowing). Oh and we’re donating all of the bi-fold doors to the Habitat For Humanity ReStore so they get to live on in someone else’s house, as opposed to junking up a landfill. Have you guys been to a ReStore yet? They’re full of awesome old windows, doors, sinks, faucets, light fixtures, and even rainbow colored toilets. Believe me when I say that there’s something for everyone.
Psst- This week’s BabyCenter post is all about trying to get Clara to adjust well to the new house (so we didn’t have an angry/grumpy/confused/scared bean on our hands). Here’s what worked for us.
