Archive for August, 2011
Pics & Pixels
The following images make me wish I could carry a professional photographer around in my pocket at all times. But since I can’t, at least we had the pleasure of having one over for the afternoon. Local-ish photographer Andrea Hubbell (she’s from nearby Charlottesville, VA) is doing a series of “living spaces” photo shoots and asked if we wanted to participate for fun. Since we’re (a) not too camera shy – at least when it comes to our house and (b) always excited to see our home through someone else’s eyes (especially someone a lot better with a camera), we gave an enthusiastic yes.
And boy are we glad we did. Not only was Andrea super nice (and very stealthy too – we almost forgot she was here a couple of times) but her photos are beautiful:
Of course we loved seeing the wider-angled full room shots, but what was most amusing for us was seeing all the little details that Andrea picked up along the way. You know, the things we hardly notice and never think to shoot and share. So we thought you guys might get a kick out of that too. What’s a trip to the Petersiks without a shot of Sherry’s pile o’ paint chips after all?
Be sure to hit up Andrea’s blog to see the rest of her photos of our house (barely half of them are shown here). They were taken about three weeks ago, which is why some rooms (ahem, bedroom and living room) are already looking semi-out-of-date and others (this means you laundry room) aren’t shown (since our little built-in shelves were just getting started when she arrived). Oh and here we are with Andrea. Most surprising thing ever? Sherry’s not wearing a black shirt. Crazy, right? I hardly recognized her.
But wait – there’s more. Andrea wasn’t the only person to capture our house recently. We got a very sweet email the other day from a 16-year-old reader from the Netherlands named Karlijn. She’s an avid fan of the video game The Sims, and thought it would be funny to use her Sims-ing skills to virtually recreate our house. And considering the limitations of the game (she said she would have added a Burger if she could have), we’re pretty darn impressed by how close she got!
First we have our guest room with the teal walls, green headboard, and two slipper chairs that look almost exactly like the ones we have:
We chuckled at the accuracy of the “alley” on the left side of this screen capture of our living room (complete with a big gray sectional, a green rug, the bedroom door, and a giant paned window just like our house):
And how true-to-life it is that our windowless kitchen is pretty dark with the lights off? Maybe you don’t know that so I’ll answer for you: very true.
Our favorite is probably the Sims-ified space that is Clara’s room (although the highway that leads into her window kind of cracked us up, since the view is a little different in real life- but we’re sure Karlijn didn’t have much control over that):
And perhaps Karlijn was dropping us some decorating “hints” along the way too. Like maybe we should add a zebra rug in the bedroom? Ooh la la.
Or some outdoor lighting to the patio? (Totally agree with her on this one, btw – we’re thinking about big bulb string lights).
Maybe some Sims players out there can find Karlijn’s place in that giant Sims universe to virtually drop in on on our house. Is that how it works? I’m so video game dumb it’s not even funny. Last time I played The Sims it was called Sim City and I think I gave up after a tornado and a monster attack simultaneously took out all of my skyscrapers. Anyway, we’re sending out a big thanks to both Andrea and Karlijn for taking the time to capture our home using their respective talents. It’s always fun to see a familiar place through someone else’s eyes. Have you guys ever tried to recreate your house in a video game or with online room-planning software or anything? Or seen photos that someone else took of your house that make you take notice of little things that you’d never really “see” on your own?
Psst- We announced this week’s giveaway winners. Click here to see if you’re one of them.
Kinda Blew My Mind
I was watching Sarah Richardson (Sarah 101) the other night (thanks DVR) and she mentioned that at the end of a makeover she has usually used around 10-14 fabric textiles in each room that she does.
And as the title of this post suggests, it totally surprised me. Doesn’t that sound like a lot? Of course she’s an expert when it comes to layering prints and patterns, but I couldn’t imagine a “regular Joe” going into a fabric store and walking out with 10-14 swatches that they were going to combine. But then I realized that she was counting the upholstery fabric on chairs and sofas and headboards along with curtains and a ton of accent pillows. So while vegging in the living room at 11pm while watching that very show, I looked around and counted all of the fabrics going on…
Karl The Sectional’s dark gray fabric (he’s from Ikea) = 1
The faux leather seat of our desk chair (from Target four years ago) = 2
The curtains (from Ikea in April) = 3
The linen-like fabric on the ottoman (from Marshall’s) = 4
The faux sheepskin draped over the ottoman (from Ikea last year) = 5
The green zebra pillows (from West Elm about a month ago) = 6
The printed pillows that I tea stained (from this etsy shop) = 7
The textured felt pillows (from Crate & Barrel last year) = 8
The branch pillow (from Ikea a while ago) = 9
The faux cow pillow (from Ikea a while ago) = 10
The shag mohair pillow (from Target a few months back) = 11
The soft champagne-y metallic pillows (from Bed Bath & Beyond years ago) = 12
Twelve! Who knew? Granted a lot of those fabrics are more tone on tone/textured than brightly patterned (thanks to the colorful rug and art going on). But it’s really interesting to think that we sort of subconsciously mixed all those materials together (although we didn’t exactly have things upholstered and tailored for us a la Sarah Richardson).
So it got me wondering how many fabrics you guys have going on in your living space. Is it in that 10-14 range? Way lower? Way higher? For some strange reason I’m dying to know how things stack up at everyone else’s house. So much so that I tossed in this survey:
[poll id="33"]
Tell me, tell me! Also, doesn’t Sarah have awesome blazers and what appears to be very glossy and perfect hair? The woman has style for days.
Psst- Pretty little pic of Sarah Richardson found here.
Potato, Potahto
I did it. I finally completed Clara’s closet stamping project (you know, the one I started here)! And yes, if you couldn’t tell from the title, I made a potato stamp. It was actually really fun. Don’t roll your eyes. It was. And it was free. In fact this entire project cost me 99 cents since I used one tube of Folk Art Paint in Champagne (a soft and pretty metallic gold color) and two potatoes that we already had (never thought I’d list potatoes as existing DIY materials). As for landing on a pattern, last week I shared how my first idea, a $1 rubber stamper from Michael’s, didn’t work (the rubber stamp pattern was too fine, so it didn’t read at all in person (although in the photo it wasn’t as hard to see):
And then I moved on to a few freehand painted attempts like imperfect horizontal lines, x’s (aka: kisses), and random little rows of dots made by squishing a small craft paintbrush against the wall:
As for my potato stamps, I just tried a few shapes that I did my best to freehand (from a weird little quatrefoil-ish thing to a star and a bee-hive-ish hexagon). As for the bottom right stamp, I saw this on Pinterest (originally from here), and decided to give it a try. I just carved a circle first (using the top of a salad dressing bottle as a guide) and then made little pizza-slice slivers around it to leave the asterisk-like shape.
I also saw this celery stencil idea on Pinterest (originally from here) and gave that the ol’ college try too:
Then it was time to test all of my “stampers” out on paper with the Folk Art metallic paint (in champagne) just to see how they did:
Out of all the potential patterns, the little starburst circle one was our favorite. So off to the closet I went, just to see how it would look on the wall.
I learned that it worked a lot better if I brushed the paint onto the potato with a small craft store brush (so I could remove the excess and prevent globs) as opposed to stamping it into my plate of paint (like you would with a rubber stamper).
Here’s a good shot of how the paint looks really metallic from certain angles. So soft and pretty.
After about an hour I had done the wall with the door on it and about a fourth of the adjoining wall to the left as you face it. Then I had to pause for a Clara nap and the rest of the day got away from me. But she did love the part that I had done once she woke up from her nap:
No worries, I thought. I’ll just finish it tomorrow. But in the morning I realized something that sent me into a mild to moderate potato panic. My stamp had sort of withered overnight. Not too crazy like a raisin or anything, but the whole potato was substantially less firm than it was the day before. More like a sponge than a solid stamp. But I decided to give it a try just to see how it worked out (while holding my breath and crossing my fingers/toes/eyes). My method had to change slightly (since the edges weren’t as flat as they once were, I had to gently rock my wrist back and forth and up and down as I pressed it down to ensure that all of the starburst tips got applied to the wall). But miracle of all miracles it still worked.
So onward I pressed. Literally. I must have pressed that potato into the wall 500 times. But it was surprisingly soothing. I know you’re rolling your eyes again, but there are some projects that are extremely tedious that I’m not a fan of (heck, painting the closet was totally boring) but for some reason I got into a nice little rhythm with my potato and my paint brush so it was kind of nice. Brush paint on, press while gently rocking wrist back and forth, move over a few inches, repeat. Oh and as for my spacing, I just eyed everything, but each stamp is about 5″ away from the next one and I just applied staggered horizontal rows so if you connected the dots it would make a ton of zig-zag chevrons.
I decided as I was stamping to the oldies (yes, I had Pandora on) that it was as good a time as any to think back about the last almost-15 months with the bean. So I sat/crouched/stood in there stamping my heart out and thinking about hilarious blowouts and first words and lost socks and restaurant meltdowns and all the other good/bad/ugly/amazing parenting stuff that has come been flung our way since Clara joined the family. Not a bad way to spend two hours.
And guess what? Once it was dry and I granted Clara some closet clearance, she was so excited! She literally wanted to point to every last shiny stamp that was in there and squeal “stah!” (her version of star).
The total time spent on the project (including various rubber stamper/potato/celery experiments and two installments of stamping) came to around three and a half hours. So worth it for the magical little subtly metallic reading nook we’re on our way to creating.
Next, we added the white shelving systems back in (that we removed before painting):
And finally I loaded in all of her clothes, toys, and blankets. I even tossed down a fluffy faux sheepskin rug from Ikea and some pillows that we already had while adding some of her favorite board books to the little Clara-level corner shelves:
I still want to DIY a beanbag (I’ve pinned lots of tutorials and ideas) but it’s pretty darn sweet in there already. And Clara had some fun taking it for a test ride. I think she likes loves it.
As for John’s impression, this convo ensued:
Me: It’s cool, huh? What do you think?
John: Yeah, it’s really Sweet Sixteen in there.
Me: What does that mean? It’s cheesy? Over the top?
John: No you know… (long pause)… expensive. Like the Louis Vuitton cakes they get. It’s really cool.
Sherry: Huh? (equally long pause) This might be our strangest conversation to date.
I’m so glad we all love it (even if some of us don’t really know how to put that love into words coughJohncough). And even my cheap-o work-with-what-you-have self is kind of shocked at the difference that 99 cents and 3.5 hours made in there (well, more like 5 hours if you count the closet-painting phase too).
Ok, so who’s surprised that I got all old school and made a potato stamp? I totally had flash backs of middle school while doing it. Who out there has stamped a wall instead of just painting or stenciling it? I must say there’s a surprising freedom to it since you don’t have to carefully place the stencil and make sure that there’s no paint on the back of it and that nothing gets smeared or anything. You just eye it and go. And it kind of looks like handmade wallpaper (imperfect, but kind of perfect because of that). This might be one of my favorite solo projects that I’ve done in the new house. Just because it’s from me to the bean with love. And quite possibly because it inexplicably reminds John of an expensive Louis Vuitton cake. Sometimes it’s the little things…
Yup, We’re Those Neighbors. Again.
Remember when John met his frog friend (well, technically his toad friend) here?
Well, this time around we made a new neighborhood acquaintance…
… a snaaaaaaake! And we were skeeeeered. But not to scared to take a picture. Thankfully he was just a harmless garter snake.
Why were we outside? Yard maintenance. We figure our exterior will need a whole lotta small phase projects if it’s going to ever-so-slowly transform like our last one did, which went from this…
… to this (over the course of 4.5 years)…
So since that’s nothing we’ll ever be able to accomplish overnight – or even within a year – we’re all about breaking that humongous task down into much smaller bite sized pieces to tackle slowly over time. So here are a few little outdoor undertakings that we’ve recently checked off.
First on the list: spray the mailbox and our house numbers with ORB (oil-rubbed bronze spray paint) so they would look a little more refreshed.
The most fun part of the process was when John brought it to me using rubber pot holder thingies because it was literally too hot to touch from sitting out in the sun out front:
Up close and personal, she definitely wasn’t looking so hot (even though she was literally quite hot):
So I wiped down all the bird poo with a wet cloth (I live a glamorous life) and used my favorite ORB spray paint (hi my name is Sherry and I have an ORB problem) to apply a few thin and even coats (you can check out some spray painting tips here). I also sprayed the rusted tops of the screws for holding the mailbox in place and our brass house numbers.
Oh and for “drop cloths” I usually use an old fabric one (or cardboard from the recycling bin) but this time I decided to use the same few big black plastic bags that I’ve used for other ORB projects as of late (I just ball them up after they’re dry to be reused since I’m such a spray painting fool these days, and hate to toss them after one go).
Can’t show you all of our house numbers of course, but the mailbox is looking mighty shiny:
Oh and I did this on a Sunday so as not to confound the mailman. By the end of the day everything was dry and I was able to screw them back into place. And while I was up there I snapped a few shots of the flowers since we had some requests for updated pics to see how they’ve grown.
But first, here they are before, back when we planted them:
And here they are now, paired with the freshly sprayed mailbox (we photoshopped out the newly painted house numbers on the post though):
Isn’t it amazing how much they’ve filled in? And it’s worth noting that we only watered them once (when we planted them) and it’s been scorchingly hot so I’m extreeeeeeeemely impressed. Wave petunias are the way to go, it seems.
Even Lord Squirrelio is enjoying the expanding flora:
Oh and as for the mailbox post, we’ve considered painting it but kind of like how it blends into the landscape thanks to the old weathered wood. A landscape designer friend of ours has a theory that you should never bring attention to your mailbox or post itself, just keep it neat and let it be what it is (so it doesn’t stand out/detract from the yard around it). That natural wood post definitely does that. We still might paint it down the line, but for now we’re happy to leave it au naturale.
But I digress with all of the mailbox updating. Back to the title. Here’s why we’re those neighbors again. Remember when we admitted that we had a bit of a mailbox problem (before we weeded, laid down landscaping fabric, planted some flowers, mulched, and removed some extra signs on our mailbox post) which made us quite the embarrassed new family in town?
Well, we also have this insane side yard that doesn’t look like it’s ours, but it is. Yup, everything in this picture is our lot:
Even the crazy shaggy stuff on the left.
See, it’s a whole lotta don’t-know-what-to-do-with-that-but-don’t-want-to-have-to-mow-or-weed-or-otherwise-maintain-it space to deal with, so we decided to see if we could naturalize it (the neighbors have some naturalized land on their lot next to ours so we thought it would “go together” nicely).
Oops. Total failure. It just ended up looking crazy and overgrown:
Not only wasn’t the overgrown grass doing it for us, a few well meaning neighbors actually mentioned that we might want to mow it before “we get reported to the neighborhood association.” Talk about embarrassing. We muttered something about trying to naturalize it like the lot to the left, admitted that it definitely wasn’t working out the way we hoped, and vowed to at least cut the grass in the front for less of an unkempt appearance from the curb.
But it meant that we had to attempt to mow that wayyyyy-too-looong-to-easily-mow grass. Thankfully big strong John got ‘er done! It didn’t take five minutes (more like about an hour of slow back and forth maneuvering and turning off the mower to get clumps of grass out every ten minutes or so)…
… but slowly but surely…
… we went from that crazy overgrown embarrassment to a slightly more manicured-up-top look, thanks to just moving that front strip:
We like how it actually looks like it’s part of our lot now, even if it’s obviously the more naturalized portion of it:
Now it looks like the area down the hill is intentionally wild (hooray- no weeding or incline mowing necessary down there) but the area up top is a bit neater from the road. You know, as opposed to looking all sad slash abandoned.
In other small-things-we-tackle-in-the-hopes-that-in-five-years-we’ll-blink-our-eyes-and-love-our-exterior news, we also planted three more evergreens in the back area of our house to hopefully provide more future privacy from the back (and to pay the environment back for doing all this clothespin driving).
We went with three more of the same fast growing evergreen trees that we planted on the side of our house (so you can check out more on how that all went down here).
Next we did a little weeding. Or should I say big weeding. We don’t know what the heck is in the soil here, but check out the size of some of the weeds springing up around the someday-we-hope-it’ll-look-naturalized-and-wooded side & back yard:
Yeah, that’s a giant dandelion. And yes, it felt like we were suddenly on the set of Jurassic Park and would soon see a pterodactylfly by or something.
Sure we want some areas of our side and back yard to look woodsy and naturalized someday, but for now these big ol’ weeds were more that a little embarrassing. So we dug them out and marveled at their shrub-like proportions. Crazytown.
As for our outdoor checklist, it’s waay too long to share in its entirety, but we’ll jot down a few things that we did (just for the satisfaction of crossing them off) and list a few more objectives that we hope to tackle over time:
weed the side of the carport(done here with some mom help)limb up the giant magnolia(done here)build a side patio(done over the course of about four weeks here)weed, mulch & plant the embarrassingly unkempt mailbox area(done here)plant three fast growing evergreen trees on the side of our house for privacy(done here)make some mini porch updates(done here)upgrade the mailbox and our house numbers with some ORBplant three more fast growing evergreen trees in the back of our houseweed the side and back yard areas, so they naturalize with trees (not giant dandelions)- avoid snakes (so far so good, but this is an ongoing initiative)
- transplant the tree that’s planted ON our house (seen here)
- remove/transplant a ton of bushes and shrubs that block our front walkway & our house in general (in multiple phases)
- paint the front door
- frame out the round country-ish columns on the porch
- remove the also-country-ish scalloped header on the porch
- build raised bed gardens in the back
- add a wood compost bin in the back (right now we use this slightly less handsome compost method)
In short, we’d like to slowly tame the jungle that is this in a bunch of not-too-intimidating phases:
Because let’s be honest, you can’t even see the porch. Le sigh.
What about you guys? Do you completely “gut” your yard and rebuild it all at once, or are you one-project-at-a-time folks like us? Have you ever seen a sneaky little snake? Or a giant person-sized dandelion? Or been told to mow your lawn by the neighbors? Oh man, we’re still kind of blushing.
Chihuahuas Give Terrible House Tours
Since there’s still a whole lotta action going on with this morning’s Pinterest Challenge (we’re completely blown away by all the projects you guys are sharing), we thought we’d post a crazy little Burger video like the ones we used to work in a while back (Clara and Burger are clearly the stars of this show anyway).
We thought it was hilarious that this random footage of the burgmeister actually included a decent amount of our house (and some great get-oriented flow thanks to him running around like a maniac). So without further ado, here’s Burger’s poor man’s (poor dog’s?) version of a house tour video (you can even catch some peeks at new yellow flowers in the kitchen and a big Clara mess on the office floor). Oh but to those who get motion sick, you might not want to push play…
Although it kept Clara plenty entertained (she was in my non-video-taping arm the whole time, hence the giggling/squealing sounds throughout), here’s why we won’t be asking Burger to lead a tour of our home again anytime soon:
- He was a bit rushed. Okay, a lot rushed.
- His narration was less than descriptive. Care to tell us what we’re looking at buddy?
- Could use a little less kitchen, a little more dining room, living room, bedrooms, sunroom… and a little less floor.
- The camera work was crazy shaky. Technically that was my fault, but I blame him for making me run.
Okay, so clearly Burger wasn’t really giving a house tour. But we figured you guys would enjoy a peek into life with our little nutcase roaming scurrying the halls. Do you have any random videos of someone in your family (animal or human) that happens to catch a bunch of rooms in the background?
Anyway, since this impromptu video reminded me of Sherry’s messy house tour from back in April, I figured I’d toss that in too, just for the memories:
Come to think of it, we should probably do another official house tour video for you guys since so much has changed since then. Maybe we should do one before cleaning up and one after, just so you can compare everyday vs. trying a little harder so you can see how rooms look at their best.
The hardest part about the clean-house video tours? All rooms have to be clean at once (so you can’t shove kitchen junk into the office, since the office ends up in the tour too). Boo. But maybe that’s a good thing because it forces us to get rid of piles of junk that accumulate and start fresh.
In other news, with a little walker on our hands, it was time to baby-proof the walls. So we pulled a little gallery frame wall switcheroo with the bean in mind. First we swapped out the glass in those bottom frames for plexi glass (or whatever the proper term for frames with plastic-y fake glass “panes” are called). As for how we did that, we were actually given some cheap-o 5 x 7″ and 8 x 10″ frames with not-real-glass for various birthday and holiday occasions as gag gifts. You know, those inexpensive ones from places like Target or Walmart or the dollar store that don’t necessarily match all the frames you have and might be filled with photoshopped pics of you and a celebrity you’ve never met or a printed application to the Dexter Fan Club (or is that just our quirky family?).
For a while they sat in the yard sale/donate pile (which overlaps with the gag-regift pile) but then we realized we could repurpose the not-glass-panes. So we just removed the glass from our Ikea frames and slipped in the plexi from the cheaper frames. It’s the best of both worlds – no glass but frames that were more well made and didn’t look as cheap and plastic-y.
We also secured them to the wall and added some fun “teaching art” while we were at it. More on that here on BabyCenter.
Update: This week’s giveaway is actually available in all 50 United States and many countries outside of the US too. Check 20×200′s international shipping info page to see if you’re covered and then head back over to our giveaway to enter (if you haven’t already)!
