Archive for May, 2011
My 1st Mother’s Day & Proof I’m Crazy
Part One of This Post: My First Mother’s Day-
Oh man Sunday was fun. In that nontraditional I’m-sure-some-other-moms-might-not-get-it way. The whole weekend was sort of an extended Mother’s Day extravaganza since we made time for visits to the farmer’s market and a Bon Air parade/festival with Clara and John on Saturday (Burger’s afraid of firetrucks and loud noises, so he skipped the parade). Then on Sunday, I was awakened by the bean who was holding a handmade card (she scribbled all over it with crayons- so cute) along with an equally sweet card from John and Burger. I was also given a printout that was entitled “The Tale Of Sherry’s First Mother’s Day” which explained that John tried to hunt down the gold Calypso for Target dangly earrings that he knew I had been drooling over, but they were sold out in two stores that he drove to as well as online. So he snuck onto my Pinterest boards and saw that I was also obsessed with these lovelies (found here on Etsy)…
… so he ordered them for me instead. Yes there was excited arm flapping. I love them so much. They kind of remind me of lemons which take me back to our wedding day. And I love that John thought to check Pinterest to find something I was obsessing over. Smart man.
Alas, my new lovely lemon earrings didn’t arrive in time to be handed over in the flesh, so a picture of them was sweetly included in my little First Mother’s Day printout along with news that John was also getting me a Mother’s Day massage to continue the tradition that he started last year when I was hugely pregnant and desperate for some prenatal massage relief. Wahoooooo. He intentionally didn’t book the massage for Mother’s Day (he told me to pick a later date because he knew I wanted to spend the whole day with Clara). Sweet, huh? Thanks hubs. For the Mother’s day rubs and the beautiful baubles.
Anyway, after my little wake-up slash card & gift fest, Clara and John and I went to Einstein Bagels (one of my favorite breakfast spots) where I got an asparagus and mushroom flatbread sammy (for two bucks with a coupon- haha). It was so delicious I can’t even say. John and Clara shared a muffin and a coffee cake in case you’re wondering (suddenly this play by play got very specific). Then we headed home for Clara to catch a nap and John parked me on Karl The Sectional to watch some delicious reality TV (Pregnant in Heels) while he went outside and got back to work on the patio. The plan was for him to work for two hours while Clara napped and then come in and shower and play with us for the rest of Mother’s Day.
Here’s where Mother’s Day veers of into the nontraditional realm. By about two hours into Project Patio it was apparent that John needed waaaaaaay more time to make progress, so I decided the best possible way to spend the day would be to play with Clara while daddy kept working on the pavers (what mom doesn’t want a finished patio for Mother’s Day?). So Clara and I played with blocks and puzzles and crayons and had some lunch and brought daddy some granola bars and even practiced walking a little bit (don’t worry, it was all assisted so John didn’t miss any true first steps). We even got outside for some fresh air and had fun on the patio while John worked away in the background.
Burger was especially excited to have some fun out there too, and it was cute to see both of “the kids” enjoying our new space- even before it was completely finished.
And about eight hours of hard hubby handiwork later, I had my Mother’s Day patio! John had completely cut all the edge pavers – he just needed to add sand between the cracks, which he planned to do on Monday (final “after” pics should be up tomorrow morning for ya, btw). And we had just enough time to enjoy a nice family dinner (burgers from Five Guys – mmmm) and then it was time to put the bean to bed and enjoy some sofa chillaxing (John wrote Monday morning’s post while we watched a criminally long episode of The Apprentice – seriously three hours is about two hours too many). But it was the best Mother’s Day ever.
Part Two of This Post: Proof I’m Crazy-
I always tell you that I’m neurotic and loud and crazy but for some reason you guys don’t buy it (instead I get pinned as perfect and prissy, which are both hilariously untrue). But behold, this video pretty much proves my insanity. We were asked to chat about radon by our local news station (it was recorded a few weeks back but aired last night at 11pm on NBC12). And while John’s quotes make total sense, I shout things like “We’re gonna die tonight!” and “It sounds like aliens. Invasion!” while waving my arms around wildly. Here’s our Flip video of the TV screen (yeah, we’re high tech):
Now do you believe me? I’m nuts. We cracked up the entire time it aired (and then rewound the DVR to watch it again while cry-laughing). And for those of you at work, you can read a breakdown of the segment here (complete with some nutso Sherry quotes worked in of course). Oh and there’s some cute footage of the bean in the video too, so it might be worth a watch on “mute” if you’re trying to keep your video-viewing on the down low at work.
Possibly the funniest thing that happened during the interview was that Clara started clapping for the first time. On camera. And we sort of lost it. They even sent us this “outtake” of the big moment:
If the clip above doesn’t work, here’s a direct link for ya. And yes. I’m flapping my arms and generally acting insane again. I guess that’s to be expected at this point.
I Think I’m Possessed
What else can possibly explain the fact that I’m laying in bed at 12:52 and thinking these totally-foreign-for-me words: “I’m so excited about my quilt I can hardly sleep.” Seriously. The only explanation is some sort of unbeknownst-to-me lobotomy. I’m the girl who loves to use iron-on hem tape to make curtains and crib skirts (here, here, and here). I’m the girl who whined for about 2,000 words about just how cursed I am when it comes to sewing (here). Can I really be the girl who can’t sleep because of a quilt? Insanity.
But I am. Here’s what I’ve been up to. And it is by no means the right way to do this. I went rogue for sure. I don’t know proper form or correct terms and didn’t even take a class or read a book about quilting. I just took it one this-might-work step at a time and held my breath a lot. So to all of you fancy quilting experts, please don’t snort too loudly with laughter when you see how it all went down for me. I just made it with love. And a bit of wonkyness for good measure. You know, just so it’s obvious that it wasn’t made in a factory. Haha. It’s perfectly imperfect and then some. But I love it so much I can’t sleep. Total shocker. Anyway, on to the crazy feel-my-way-along-as-I-go process. It all started when I came across this gorgeous quilt on Pinterest and was immediately inspired:
I’ve always wanted to use all of the mixed and matched fabrics from Clara’s weekly photo project to create some sort of crazy birthday quilt but I knew it had to be pretty darn simple for me to even have a prayer of pulling off my own wonky version of it. But the un-lined-up corners and white stripes interspersed with different textures and prints had me at hello. This I could do. Maybe. And if not it might not kill me to try, just to learn that it’s not quite within my skill level yet. So I trecked out to JoAnn Fabric and used one of those 50% coupons I always get in the mail to get two yards of white quilt-ish fabric for just $8 (the kind with a quilted cotton front and some thin batting already sewn into it on the back). I figured it would work as the white striped fabric between each strip of textured and printed fabric from Clara’s weekly shots and also as the backing for the entire quilt.
Then I washed all of the weekly fabric along with the new white quilted fabric so it was all nice and soft (and pre-shrunk). Then I had to iron a bunch of it because it was all ganked up from the washing process. Boo. That took a while but you know I did it in front of the TV at night after putting Clara to bed, right? Then I parked my butt on the sectional and cut out three inch by twelve inch strips of each of Clara’s weekly backdrops (except for some which weren’t fabric at all like the yellow rug, the shower curtain, the moving box, and a few other non-fabric items we tossed in there). When it came to the three inch width, I wasn’t exact with that since I liked the not-all-the-same-or-lined-up-look of my inspiration quilt from Pinterest). And I left out some of the crazier fabrics that I knew wouldn’t work that well so I was left with 27 different strips of around 3″ x 12″ fabric (I ditched things like the crunchy gold New Years fabric since I knew it wouldn’t be soft and cuddly like the rest of the blanket). And nobody loves a scratchy blanket. Especially the bean.
Then I cut out 30 three-inch-wide-by-12-inch-long strips of my white fabric. Those 30 strips left me with about two thirds of my yardage of white fabric to use for the backing, which was a pretty happy accident. Then I kept my arse firmly planted on the sofa and just started pinning away (one white strip got pinned to one printed strip, which got pinned to another white strip, and so on – for a striped look).
Nineteen strips made up each row (nine patterned ones alternated between 10 white ones)…
… which I would then sew together (using straight invisible seams from the back of the fabric, which I learned are the easiest kind from making my Sue pillows).
After creating three super long strips that were each about a foot wide and three feet long, I then laid all three of those super long rows next to each other to create this three foot by three foot square that looked pretty reminiscent of my inspiration quilt. I was shocked. It was kind of coming together. This is when I started entertaining the idea that my brain had been switched with a stranger’s.
Note: I originally considered straggering the printed strips like some of the rows on the inspiration quilt (theirs line up sometimes and don’t other times) but I laid it out on the floor the staggered way first and it looked too busy for my liking since my stripes were thicker and most of them had large-scale patterns so it looked kinda cluttered. I then laid them out in the above long stripes (instead of staggering them) and liked the clean and simple look a lot better. So that’s how the front pattern came to be.
This is the point at which I stood and stared at that giant not-perfect-but-pretty-great striped patchwork-ish square of baby blanket happiness for about an hour. I was in total shock that I hadn’t sew-cried or screamed into a pillow yet. Next it was time to iron down all of my seams on the back since I’ve heard that after stitching fabrics together a huge part of making non-bunchy quilts is to iron the back seams so they lay flat (because once those back seams are covered with quilt backing, it’s not exactly easy to iron them flat).
Then after each row was ironed so the back seams laid flat, I pinned one row to another row (with the ugly side out, so once it was stitched the seam would be invisible from the front)…
… and after a quick pass through Oh Brother (my trusty sewing machine) I was left with this:
And may I just say that my sewing machine is so great (it’s a Brother XL2600I that I found on Amazon for $89 with great reviews that I affectionately call Oh Brother). It was all totally user error that was tripping me up in the beginning and I would definitely recommend it. So far at least. It might revolt on me next week. You never know…
Then I repeated that process and added another row (which I again pinned from the back and stitched so the seam was invisible from the front).
That big smile above is what proud looks like. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t a) sewn my finger, b) created a giant nest of string like I did during my first sewing attempt, and c) thrown a maimed quilt on the floor and stormed out of the room. Holy bananas. My plan was actually working. And I wasn’t even cursing.
Here’s the back-view (also note that Burger is kindly showing you a chihuahua back-view):
After I ironed those new back seams that I had just created by joining those three long rows, I took the backing and the front of my quilt and faced the good sides towards each other on top of each other (so it was like a sandwich with the good stuff in the middle). Then I pinned around three of the four edges and I used my sewing machine to stich around them while keeping it all inside out like this. Yup, I basically made a giant pillow sham just like I did here with my Sue pillows. I even stitched a bit of the fourth side closed on each end (leaving just the middle portion open so I could flip things right-side out again.
Then I flipped it right-side-out and hand stitched the unsewn middle of the last edge closed (with my butt parked on the sofa in front of the TV of course):
It was definitely starting to look quilt-like, but it was sort of like a pillowcase that had been stitched closed with nothing in it. If you pulled on the backing with one hand and the quilted front with another hand, you could balloon the whole thing out since nothing was holding them together except for the stitching around the edges. So here’s where I actually started to feel like I was quilting. I also started to sweat profusely because I was about to dive into seams that show on both sides of the quilt. No more hidden seams done from the inside. I actually had to stitch down from the top of each white row of strips to the bottom, and the little white seam would definitely be exposed, so any ganked up thread or knotted nests of string would ruin the whole effect in a hot minute. And I would probably have had a full blown meltdown after all that work if things suddenly went south. So I gritted my teeth, held my breath, crossed my fingers, decided I needed them and uncrossed them, and tried to take it slow and steady.
Lo and behold, I was left with this.
And I was also left wondering who the heck took over my body and made a friggin quilt. Insane. It’s definitely not perfect, but a week ago I would have bet you a million dollars that I couldn’t ever sew two strips of fabric together, much less make a quilt (albeit an imperfect one). And I actually love it in all of its not-quite-perfect glory. Hopefully that will remind Clara that it was one of my first attempts at sewing, which she brought out in me (because before she was born you couldn’t pay me to use a sewing machine- let alone convince me to buy one and attempt a friggin quilt, but for some reason she made me want to make her something meaningful with all of her weekly fabrics). In case I’m not hitting this hard enough, I am shocked that I actually made a quilt. Seriously, almost speechless.
Oh and in the spirit of Burger sharing his hindquarters above, here’s the finished back-view:
Now I get to give it to Beaner for her b-day and I hope that she’ll always have it and know that her entirely undomestic mom (you think I’m kidding, but John does the cooking and the laundry around here) was possessed by some other-worldy being and whipped up a quilt to commemorate her big one year birthday. I’m not gonna lie, there were some victory laps around the house. And yes, John sang the rocky song while I ran around waving my quilt in the air.
In summation: Word to Oh Brother (yes, I just hit you with a word to your mother slash Brother sewing machine joke). Booyah.
Psst- My jazz hands even excitedly created a new category called “Sew Excited” a la Jesse Spano (get that reference here). So you can see the whopping three posts in there by clicking the Topics tab up near our search bar and scrolling down to find it.
Psssssst- We went Nursery Crashing over on BabyCenter this morning. Get in on the fun here.
Fab Freebie: The Royal Treatment
***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries – see who won below!***
According to random.org, the royal treatment is going to Cathleen Pearson (who feels bad for Kate’s balding husband). Congrats!
No, not those royals. The majesty behind this giveaway comes from Royal Design Studio, whose stellar stencils will turn your walls into a stylish statement piece (but not in the way that a certain hat made a statement on a certain princess’ head recently). We’re crazy inspired by all of the stylish patterns and fresh color combos they showcase, and one of you will score $100 towards anything you find on their site. Enough chatter – feast your eyes on these babies (Sherry’s over the moon for the one on the top right) and be sure to head over their website for more eye candy.
- PRIZE: A $100 gift card to Royal Design Studio
- TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “I WANT THE ROYAL TREATMENT!” and…
- BONUS QUESTION: … fess up, were you totally caught up in Royal Wedding mania? Did you get up early to watch the festivities? Have you been chatting about the dress, kisses, and hats ever since? Or were you on the other end of the spectrum and worked hard to avoid the hubbub?
- GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, May 11th at 8pm EST
- NUMBER OF WINNERS: One
- PRIZE SHIPS: Anywhere in the world!
- USUAL STUFF: One entry per e-mail address is permitted. The winner will be selected using random.org and announced on Thursday as an update to this post. That’s right, come right back here on Thursday morning for the announcement of our winners. Good luck…
Note: We weren’t paid or perk’d for hosting this giveaway, we just like rewarding our lovely readers! See our Giveaway FAQs page for more info. Pics from Royal Design Studio
It All Goes Down
The last four days have been nutzo in Patio Land for us (not to be confused with Temptation Island- remember that show?). The good news is that it’s nearly done. Like 90% done. But since I’m a bit low on energy at the moment (and we have to wait for better light to take more pictures), I’m gonna cover as much of our four-day patio-extravaganza as I can muster. The rest will come a bit later when we’re 100% finished (and have a chance to take about a million after shots from every angle).
To recap: as of last Monday the area was all marked, leveled, and dug up.
Then on Tuesday our nearly 10-ton delivery arrived via flatbed (300 square foot patios apparently weigh more than two elephants). As far as deliveries go, it wasn’t that eventful – except that the forklift (seen hooked to the back of the truck below) got a flat tire halfway through, so it delayed things a bit while the guy left to repair it.
But eventually everything made it into our carport in one piece. If you’re keeping track, that’s three giant bags of fill gravel, one giant bag of sand, and three pallets full of cobblestone pavers (two of the rectangular variety and one of the square kind).
We picked a paver called CottageStone by a local company named Eagle Bay. Yup, it’s manufactured right here in Richmond and we discovered it just by asking for the most affordable paver cobblestones at a local stoneyard called Southside Builders Supply (it came out to be around $2 a square foot, which beat both Lowe’s and Home Depot prices by around 75 cents, which really adds up over 300 square feet). The color is a gray-ish tone that they call “Jefferson” (amongst other Virginia-tastic color names like “Blue Ridge,” “Chesapeake,” and even “Richmond”). It was pretty easy to make our color choice because we decided to do our best to roughly match the gray cobblestone pavers that are already in our driveway. So that’s how we picked our poison- er, pavers (read more about the cost of the whole project here). But enough about design decisions and money – let’s get back to the physical labor.
We took Wednesday off Project Patio because it rained, so Thursday was my next work day (while Sherry tended the blog, the baby, and brought me granola bars and water by the hour). As my trusty Lowe’s video and the saleswoman at the stone yard had directed me, the next step was to put down my weed blocker. I picked up this 300 square foot roll of Weed Block and ground staples to hold it down (weirdly called “Crampons”) from Home Depot.
Since we know from experience that weeds and grass love to sprout up between paver stones, we wanted to at least discourage their appearance (although we’re huge rebels… just kidding… we like to follow directions or we start to hyperventilate). Here’s the area all covered in the Weed Block sheets just as recommended. It was pretty easy to cut it to size with scissors and then just stab each row into place with my crampons, so this step only took me about forty five minutes.
Next up: gravel. And not just any gravel – THREE EFFING TONS of it.
Laying this gravel basically consumed my entire Thursday. My wheelbarrow wouldn’t fit through the gate separating the carport and the patio area, so I resorted to carrying the gravel bucket by bucket (thanks to a spare 5-gallon paint bucket that we had on hand) back and forth all day. It was exhausting and disappointing (only because I fully expected to look like Hercules when I was done, but still found myself staring at my usual spaghetti arms). But in the end I was glad that I went the bucket route instead of using the ol’ wheelbarrow, because it allowed me to keep my nylon strings in place, which were invaluable when it came to ensuring that everything was nice and level with a slight slope away from the house (which is really important for drainage reasons).
But my workout for the day wasn’t complete, because the gravel had to be tamped down. First I lightly misted the whole area, which started to turn the loose gravel into more of a cement-like consistency. I paid close attention to the Lowe’s video at this point in the process, which instructed me to make it moist enough to clump, but not to go overboard and get it too wet. So my advice would be not to go spray crazy and just look for that cement-like clumping action and then step. away. from. the. hose.
The tamping was a manual task again (sigh) because we opted to purchase a $30 hand tamper instead of going through the trouble / expense of renting a plate compactor (our car is small, we’re cheap, and I may have already mentioned that I wouldn’t mind bigger biceps). It wasn’t a particularly enjoyable task, but honestly at that point my arms were sorta operating on autopilot. And it was actually really gratifying. You can see how it turned my gravel pit into a flat, semi-solid, and ready-for-sand surface below. It almost looked like asphalt in the end. But sand would have to wait for Friday. Over seven hours of Project Patio was enough for me (and the sun was starting to set anyway).
After taking Clara’s 51-week photo on Friday morning, I threw my patio pants back on and got to laying down a 1″ layer of sand. I couldn’t have done this part without the brilliant tip from the Lowe’s video involving two pieces of 1″ PVC pipe. Praise google.
You basically lay them down side-by-side and then dump your sand over them.
Then using a spare piece of 2 x 4 (or in my case, some extra trim molding) you scrape off the excess sand which leaves you with a flat, paver-ready surface of sand (which is exactly an inch deep thanks to the pipe “spacers”).
Then you carefully pull out the pipes and fill the empty “pipe lines” with a little bit of excess sand (by hand) for a totally flush look. Let’s just say it was a much faster process than the gravel was (since it only had to be an inch deep instead of three, which made it a lot faster to haul). Here it was half-complete:
I would’ve finished faster had I not run out of sand at the very end. But fortunately a quick trip to Lowe’s for a few extra bags did the trick (notice the color change at the far end of the area?).
The last step before we could fiiiiiinally get to putting down stone was to install the plastic edging to hold all of our pavers in place (which will end up being virtually invisible once we backfill it with dirt/mulch on one side and pavers on the other). We had heard different theories about whether you should do this before or after you put your stone down (apparently it can work either way) but we thought it’d be easier to plan our curves with the flexible edging than with the heavy stones themselves. And we can tell you from experience that it was the right way to go for us – definitely consider adding the edging first if you’re doing any sort of curve and would appreciate a nice set guide to follow.
By this point it was about 4pm on Friday. I really wanted to call it a day, but Sherry and I were determined to get some of the pavers down so that we could at least start to see the patio come to life. So I charged forward and promised myself that I’d just put down the entrance area. A couple of hours later (yes, it was slow going at first), I had this:
I’ll get into the ins and outs of cutting and laying the pattern in the next post, but below you can see things progressing slowly but surely. Sherry snapped this pic right after she put Clara down to sleep for the night (hooray for a 7:15 beanette bedtime, which gave us some daylight to work together on it- enabling us to move twice as fast during that narrow evening window). And thankfully we didn’t hear a peep from Clara (you know Sherry had the baby monitor outside on high, just in case). But Clara must have known we were busy making a patio for her birthday bash. Smart kid.
We both decided to put all the cuts on hold for the night so that we could focus on just filling the central patio area with as many whole pavers as our arms could carry (and avoid operating a wet saw in partial darkness as the sun began to set).
By some miracle, our energy held out ’til about 9:30, when we finally laid the last full paver at the far end of the patio. So you can sort of start to see how things are coming together, despite the darkness and all those missing stones around the borders that we still have to cut.
Our camera batteries only lasted long enough to attempt to snap a few totally normal pics of us “conquering” this task. So we just got a few blurry shots like this winner before the camera shut itself down:
Notice how I chose the role of laying down and looking exhausted? I plead that so-tired-you-feel-drunk phenomenon that occurs after a loooong day (when everything makes you die laughing and you kind of lose your mind for a minute).
So now you know how the Petersiks spend a Friday night. Actually, we did cap it off with a Netflix movie (after a much-needed shower, of course). We saw Love & Other Drugs if you’re wondering. And we thought it was just as naked as the critics said, but not bad. Just don’t rent it with the extended family over the holidays or anything (awkward).
Home Sweet Home?
We interrupt this regularly scheduled broadcast for a quick patio progress report: the wallet-draining patio supplies (mentioned here) have arrived. And now we kind of get why they were so expensive. They’re bigger than our car, it took a giant truck to haul them, they weigh over 19,000 pounds (that’s not a typo or an estimation, it’s on our itemized delivery ticket) and they completely monopolize the carport. John’s out there working away today (T minus one week until Clara’s big par-tay) so I thought I’d slip in this sneak peek of the craziness that is the current patio project. More details soon.
But now back to the whole question in the title. Wait, first I have to ask. Does anyone else think of this part in Anchorman when you read questions?
Just me? I’m ok with that.
Anyway, the first few weeks of living in our house didn’t feel like it was our house. It didn’t necessarily feel like the previous owners’ house either. But it just didn’t really feel like ours. Call it House Limbo if you will.
Even after moving in every last box and setting up Clara’s crib and sleeping in our new bedroom for thirty-ish days in a row it still felt kind of like we were living here but not exactly “home.” Then we painted the master bedroom (the first room besides Clara’s that we tackled) and somehow something shifted and it felt a little more like ours.
Maybe it just took a few of those bigger “alterations” (like changing the wall color) to help it sink in that it’s really our house and we can do whatever we want to it.
I remember how novel that concept was back when we moved into our first house. The whole “wait there’s no landlord to tell me I can’t paint or hang curtain rods?” thing. It took a while for us to fully grasp the concept of home ownership. And it was surprising to have those feelings again with our second house. It wasn’t like we were expecting someone to come in and tell us we couldn’t switch out the light fixtures or knock out the wall between the kitchen and the future dining room, we just sort of felt like we were playing house. Courting the place but not married to it yet, you know? We were in that “seeing where the whole relationship would go” phase. Haha. But lying in bed at night after painting our bedroom we both talked for hours about how it finally started to feel like ours.
And that’s sort of a huge concept – the whole “this house feels like our home” thing. So something so large and hard to grasp must need to happen slowly in stages. Because we only recently reached another “deeper” level of the whole “it really does feel like home” journey. What triggered that feeling? The personalized frame gallery that we made in the hallway…
… and the fact that we finally had a real working dresser and an organized closet.
They both really were game changers, as lame as that sounds. I can’t believe we waited so long to add something personal to the walls (the hallway gallery took us over three months to start and over a month to finish). And to create an actual sock and underwear drawer for myself after months of living with crazy piles of clothing on the floor of the closet was definitely a huge relief. I guess we felt more like ourselves with the sentimental stuff hanging up and the unmentionables tucked away. Like we were getting back to ourselves and the real way that we like to live – as opposed to feeling like we were on vacation with nothing on the walls that was really ours (and piles of clothes on the floor “temporarily”).
And of course it always feels the most like our house when we have people over. Because they show up and it just feels cozy and full. Even if we just order pizza…
…or lounge in the living room.
We’re actually anticipating another level of the whole “this really is our house” feeling when we finally complete the patio. I guess just the idea of creating an outdoor zone that no one before us has ever hung out on feels especially unique and ours-ish. Here’s an up to the moment shot of John’s progress so far out there:
Have you guys noticed that it takes a while to really feel at home in a new house too? Or did you move right in and feel amazing and call it “home” right away? It’s funny because it didn’t not feel amazing to us. At all. We were floating. Every night for the first month we marveled at the house and were so happy that it was ours (in fact we still do that at least twice a week). But it’s just kind of weird how certain things have to take place to feel settled in a new space. What did it for you guys? Was it cooking your first big meal in your new kitchen? Or painting every last room and piece of trim for a totally fresh canvas? It’s weird how such mundane (or major) things can totally change how you feel about your four walls.
Psst- We announced this week’s giveaway winners. Click here to see if it’s you.
Psssttt- Have you heard that Mariah Carey named her son Morrocan after “an interior decoratoring theme of a floor of their apartment”? Do you have any feelings about that? And furthermore, should we name our next baby Quatrefoil after our favorite mirror shape? Quatrefoil Petersik does have a nice ring to it…
