Archive for September, 2011

196

A Little Faux Needlepoint

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September 13, 2011

Last week my brother and his wife Ali came to visit us (well, mainly Clara, haha). They live up in NYC where John & I met and fell in love, so it’s always a treat to have them in our neck of the woods and it was actually their first time seeing our new house. Since it was almost exactly their one year wedding anniversary I thought I should DIY something sweet, and since I was an accidental kleptomaniac at their wedding (where John’s long arm snapped the pic below), I knew at least one material that I’d be using: a pilfered napkin.

Wait, let me explain. I had a three month old daughter who pretty much wanted to nurse the entire time. And somehow amid feedings and meeting & greetings a napkin from the table migrated into my purse/diaper bag. It probably got caught up in a blanket or was somehow mistaken for a bib. Total mystery. But the end result is that I accidentally took a cloth napkin from my brother’s wedding reception. And I’m the weirdo who actually called the venue to tell them what happened and offered to mail it back to them, to which the sweet man laughed and told me to that shipping it would be far more than it’s worth and to “consider it a gift.” So I did. And it sat in our full-of-junk-that-we-need-to-do-something-about playroom until Dan and Ali’s impending visit. At which point I said “ooh, I’ll use the stolen wedding napkin to make them an anniversary gift!”

John and I brainstormed all sorts of options for using it (making a fabric mat to display a framed photo from their wedding, dying it and cutting it down to make little fabric coasters, formally monogramming it and starching it to the bottom of a serving tray, etc). But for some reason the idea of needlepoint kept popping into my head. I knew I didn’t trust myself to actually needlepoint it (maybe someday, but with their visit fast approaching and lots of desk/office projects going on, I decided I’d rather “cheat”). And I actually liked the slightly off-kilter idea of hand-drawing a needlepoint inspired design right onto the napkin and then framing that. So first I trolled Pinterest and Google for needlepoint inspiration (most of which was far too advanced for a fake-needlepoint project like mine) and sketched out a few possibilities on graph paper.

Update: I just learned that needlepoint is the wrong word and I actually mean “cross-stitch” – so pretend I’m saying cross-stitch everywhere that I use the word needlpoint below.

John and I decided that this little drawing on the right was our favorite.

I worried how it would transfer onto the napkin (would it bleed? would it run? would it just look terrible and drawn on?), but luckily the Ikea frame that I had on hand (thanks to this Ikea run where we stockpiled a few for random projects like this) had a 5 x 7 ” opening, which meant that I could cut my stolen napkin into fourths so I’d have the option for three do-overs. There was definitely comfort in the fact that the first, second, and third attempt could fail and I’d still have one more shot. I figured the best method of transfer would just be to lay the cloth napkin over the card stock sketch and see if the design was visible (aka: traceable) through the fabric. And it was. Booyah.

Incidentally, if it wasn’t sheer enough I planned to tape the napkin and paper up to a window so the sun would shine through and make it easier to see, but I was glad to skip that step.

Then I just used a fine pointed marker to trace my little faux-needlepoint Xs all around the heart and the arrow and just freehanded the little dashed letters from the original design. Since I’m a detailed-oriented gal, I’ll take a moment to mention that the specific fine pointed marker that I used was a LePen (purchased on sale at Michael’s a few months back in teal because I loved it and couldn’t resist). Did the marker bleed? Yes. Was it slight? Yes. Did I like it? Surprisingly, yes. But it took me a second to realize that.

Since I had four shots at this (thanks to cutting my napkin into fourths), I tried my Le Pen first. And I wasn’t sure I liked how not-super-crisp the slight bleed made things. So then I tried tracing the same design onto a second fourth of the napkin with a ballpoint pen (which didn’t bleed at all). I did it in blue, and black, and even used a red Pilot rolling-ball pen too, just to exhaust a bunch of options.

I learned that I actually didn’t like the sharp lines as much as the softer and more charming slightly blurred lines from the Le Pen. For some reason it just looked more homemade and sweet and sort of timeworn and imperfect – as opposed to sharp and doodled with a pen. Does that make sense?

So I popped my favorite first attempt into my already-on-hand Ikea frame.

Here it is hanging on our frame wall so you can get a feel for how it might look when hung with a few other things at Dan & Ali’s place:

It’s kinda plain-jane on its own, but it’s a nice little frame for a grouping since it plays so well with other busier things.

Total spent: $0. But if you count the original cost of the frame, the price of a Le Pen marker, and a scrap of fabric/cloth napkin (if you don’t accidentally steal one like my frazzled-mom self) this project might be around twelve bucks or so. And when it came to time spent, maybe it took me half an hour from start to finish? Unless my brother Dan is reading this, in which case it was $100 and took me five grueling days to complete.

Speaking of the one-year-anniversary lovebirds, Dan and Ali seemed to be genuinely charmed by it, so… score. I think they especially loved that it was a stolen napkin from their venue (which was hilarious/meaningful), so perhaps using something special like a swatch from a wedding table runner (or even a non-fabric item like a paper menu or seating card?) could help you create something sort of handmade and personal to commemorate someone’s big day in a new way?

So there’s the story of a napkin that I accidentally stole, kept around for a full year, and then hunted down in our crazy playroom full o’ junk. Please tell me I’m not the only one who has inadvertently taken something that wasn’t theirs. And that I’m not the only one to have a giant mountain of odds & ends that desperately need to be sorted/garage saled/repurposed/donated. Oh well, at least I was actually able to locate the napkin without calling in a search crew. That means the playroom can’t be too bad, right? Right?

Wrong. It’s bad.

What have you sketched/framed lately? Any other accidental kleptomaniac stories? Feel free to make me feel less alone in my little napkin-caper incident.

Psst- After many requests we’re spilling the beans about our approach to feeding Clara over on BabyCenter. With our doc’s blessing, we tried a method called Baby Led Weaning which meant no purees and no babyfood (instead she got the same healthy foods that we were eating, tweaked so she could safely eat them right along with us). More on the whole shebang here.

Art We Heart
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4,080

Fab Freebie: Lowe-ded With Ideas

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September 12, 2011

***This giveaway is no longer expecting entries – see who won below!***

Random.org once again spun its wonderful wheel of randomness and selected our two winners as… Amy @ Larryspearslive.com and Amanda Deerr. Congrats ladies!

Raise your hand if you want a $50 Lowe’s gift card. Or better yet, give me a “hootie hoo.” And if the thought of being one of two lucky winners doesn’t instantly get your brain spinning with all of the potential projects that you could tackle, Lowe’s Creative Ideas will happily fill your head with… wait for it… creative ideas. You may already know of the free Lowe’s Creative Ideas magazines (if not, you can subscribe to ‘em here), but even we didn’t realize how much content they have on their website and Facebook page. And along with bigger building and DIY ideas they’ve also got decor tutorials (like stamping curtains) and crafty stuff (like making silhouette art) too.

Note: We weren’t paid or perked for hosting this giveaway, we just do ‘em to thank you awesome folks for stopping in. See our Giveaway FAQs page for more info. Pics courtesy of Lowe’s Creative Ideas.

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403

A Little Weekend Office Painting

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September 12, 2011

We did it. Completely out of order. Yup, we finally decided what color to paint the office and went for it. Which would have been a lot easier if we had pinned down our color pick before we built our wall-to-wall two person desk. Oh well, such is DIY life. We didn’t want to rush into choosing a wall color and then hate it after we built the desk (which would have meant having to repaint everything again after the desk was built anyway). So we waited. And waited. And discussed. And rediscussed. And waffled.

And it’s a good thing that we actually did wait. Because before the desk was completed we were considering some dark muddy colors (which you might have seen on the wall here). And after the desk was built we were both 100% sure that we wanted the dark wood desktop to really pop (a dark color on the walls would just make it all blendy and muddy in there), so back to something light and airy we waffled again…

Here’s a brief synopsis of our thought pattern:

So we actually ended up exactly where we initially were six months ago: Benjamin Moore’s Moonshine (color matched to Olympic No-VOC paint in a satin finish). That’s the same soft gray that we have (and LOVE) in the living room, dining room, and hallway. Allow me to expand upon those weird stream of consciousness bullets above. We thought about going just a shade darker than Moonshine in here, but realized that we like light and bright workspaces (plus once we convert the carport into a garage – even though we plan to add windows to the exterior walls and door – we might lose a little light).

Some of you might be yawning because you were imagining something like sunny yellow (to tie in the front door)…

… or green (to tie in some of the tones in the living room curtains) or blue (again, to pick up on the dining room built-ins and curtains)…

… but after thoughtfully considering belaboring all of those options, we finally decided that going soft gray with the walls will really give us the freedom to bring in some seriously fun brightly colored & boldly patterned fabric (for the two desk chairs and the window treatments) along with some punchy art, bright lamp shades, and even in fresh paint for our desk chairs. We definitely like the idea of some fun cheerful pops of color in the accessories as opposed to all over the walls since we don’t want the room to feel too chaotic/hard to concentrate.

Besides, since we already have such a bright greeny-yellow tone in the middle of the house (the kitchen and laundry nook)…

… we kind of love the idea that all of the soft gray rooms lead to the cheerful kitchen in the heart of the house. So we decided that we didn’t want some other bright color competing with it since they’re next-door neighbors. There’s something kind of nice about a burst of happy color in the center of our home with three soft platinum gray rooms around the perimeter (with pops of color in the accessories like the art/rug in the living room and the curtains/built-ins in the dining room):

The funniest thing to us is that we only have a few unpainted rooms remaining (the playroom, sunroom, hall bathroom, master bathroom, and guest bathroom). And since those spaces aren’t ones that we spend the majority of our time in (meanwhile we practically live in the office), it’s kind of ironic that it was one of the last few that we got to. I wholeheartedly admit that the whole house color scheme above might not make much sense to you now, but hopefully once we paint those last few spaces and add touches like wainscoting in the hallway and other major furnishings/accessories that are still woefully missing (window treatments, lighting, rugs, furniture in the playroom instead of junk, etc) it’ll make a lot more sense. One step at a time.

Speaking of which, our office painting method was slow & steady. First we cleared the room.

Which of course meant the dining room got full of offset office stuff:

Oh and while the office was cleared we snapped some pics of the desktop since so many of you wondered where the seams fell. We had to highlight them with a white line in photoshop to help you out (they’re actually really subtle in real life, so they were impossible to see from this distance without some white-line help):

As you might notice, to the right of both of our laptops (when they’re actually on the desk) there aren’t any seams, so we don’t have any lumpy-bumpy seam-related writing issues (we write on pads and notebooks anyway, so I don’t think it would matter).

Oh and didja notice the holes in the back of the desktop behind both of our computer areas? Let’s have a little side chat about those, shall we? First we made a pilot hole where we wanted them to be (John used a paper template so they were both spaced the same distance from the wall):

Then John used a 1 1/2″ bit…

… to drill a nice ol’ hole for all of our cords (for desk lamps, computers, the home phone, etc):

And John was a smartie pants and taped a cup under the hole to catch shavings, which was a huge time saver when it came to clean-up:

But of course the wood was unstained, so I used a little craft brush to get in there with some dark walnut Minwax to blend the hole in a bit better (we sanded things first, just to keep them nice and smooth so we don’t get splinters while retrieving cords):

So that’s how those handy holes came to be. As for how we painted the wall behind the built-in desk, the entire thing actually slides away from the back wall, so we slowly slid it out towards the middle of the room…

… and covered it with a giant drop cloth to protect our beloved dark wood desktop. That way we could roll/cut in behind it and then later push it back into place and paint the two sides of the wall that it blocked while it was pulled forward.

As is our tradition, John got his roll on while I did tons of cutting in (thanks to that chair rail, two doorways, and two windows). About two coats and four hours later she was looking like a soft fluffy cloud. Ugh, but ignore the light fixture. That thing’s having surgery as we speak- er, write. More on that soon.

Then we just pushed the desk back against the wall and loaded everything back in there. The walls look a smidge blue-gray in these pics, but in real life they’re a true gray color (not icy blue or anything close to purple at all). Oh yeah but remember that everything on the desk is just sort of tossed there, so the leaning frames won’t stay (we need height, so we’ll probably hang some over-sized art on the walls) and everything else will likely evolve as we settle in a bit more.

The lamps are from HomeGoods but we’re not sold so they might go back. We’re thinking we may use new lamp bases or shades as a place to add color along with art, paint on those desk chairs, patterned window treatments, etc. But thankfully we’re still as enamored with the wall color as we were when we chose it for the hallway frame gallery (the color reads more true to life in this pic)…

… and we definitely still love it in the dining room…

… and the living room too…

We especially appreciate how it makes the super thick crown molding and the nice chunky chair rail pop without being too high-contrast (which would also compete with our big beautiful desktop). Of course the chair rail will make a lot more sense when we hang proper art instead of leaning too-small stuff it in front of it.

And we love that this phase of the office upgrade was $0 since we still had a bunch of paint leftover from painting the dining room (we bought three cans back in January when we initially planned to paint the living room, hallway, dining room, and office all that color – and finally completed that initial plan this weekend). Only seven months later. Haha. Oh and we owe you a wide shot from the dining room of the fresh paint job, but since we’re making those aforementioned light fixture tweaks, we can’t shoot one quite yet. Soon!

But wait, there’s more than just a paint plan in here. We actually love the idea of adding a subtle tone on tone stencil around the entire room above the chair rail (hooray, no more desk shimmying necessary). We don’t want anything with too much contrast since it’ll compete with the dark teal built-ins and the fun curtains in the nearby dining room, but we’re seriously considering something like this with just a softer gray color for the feather part over our Moonshine walls (although I love the pop of yellow, so we might try it and bag it if we step back and it’s too much):

At 54 honking dollars it’s hardly a drop in the bucket (the stencil is over two feet tall and almost two feet wide to hopefully make the project go faster/smoother), but we figure that we did snag six cabinets for $6 and we built a 13 foot counter for $27… so maybe we should just bite the bullet and spend $54 for something we love. Any type of wallpaper (even the cheap stuff at Lowe’s and Home Depot) would be way more than $54 for the entire room above the chair rail, so I guess that’s another way that we’re rationalizing our possible purchase. Haha. We shall see. You know we’ll let you know when we make a final decision. We’ve never done a giant repeating stencil like this on a wall (we did stencil the floor of our first house’s sunroom) so that should be interesting too. And who knows, maybe I’ll find it as soothing as my little potato stamp project in Clara’s closet (I enjoyed that repetitive motion more than a person probably should).

Did anyone else paint their walls or drill holes into something this weekend? Or move a giant 13 foot desk? Or figure that we might be painting or drilling holes? Or dream that we had a secret son that we never told anyone about (two different commenters had that dream last week – crazy!). Oh and we painted this room four hours before my mom came to town for the weekend from NY. Nothing like a little en-route visitor to light a fire under ya.

Psst- You can see some mom-visit pics over on Young House Life today. Clara does not have a healthy fear of alligators. At all.

Before & After, Our Current House, Painting Projects
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337

Never Before Seen Footage

Posted by
September 9, 2011

How do you like that sensationalized title? Haha. It’s like Star Magazine up in this joint. This is basically a post idea that John and I came up with when we realized that there were a surprising amount of nooks and crannies in the house that we’ve never shared. And some things that are a lot bigger than a nook or a cranny. Which is weird for two over-sharers like us. So consider that remedied now that we’re over-spilling the beans in true Petersik fashion. Without further ado, here’s the first we-can’t-believe-we-haven’t-shared-it-yet thing. Our pantry:

We’ve mentioned that we have a pantry-ish cabinet next to the wall oven in our kitchen…

… but realized that we never opened wide and snapped a shot. All the cabinetry in the kitchen was replaced around 25 years ago, so the swing out doors and the little middle compartment that also swings out (so there’s storage on the back and on the wall behind it) must have been quite the state of the art stuff back in the day. Heck, we’re still kind of charmed by all of those little shelves to stash stuff – although we do occasionally forget where we put something which leads to a ten minute cabinet swinging search party.

Ok moving on, betcha didn’t know we had an in-ground irrigation system. Fancy, right? Since I’m not fancy I just use the term sprinklers. It’s not for our whole almost-acre lot, just for the front yard and a small portion of the backyard that’s grass. Of course we’re “frugal” with our water usage, so we only turn it on after a while without rain (when we’re not on water restriction of course), but they’re actually pretty handy (it definitely beats wrestling the hose). And Burger jumps off the couch/out of the bed and runs to the window if they turn on. Which is always hilarious. The guy loves watching them do their thing.

Up next is just an update that we’ve been meaning to share. Remember I mentioned that I got a rendering of our first house for John this Father’s Day? Well, I finally got around to framing it. First here’s a shot of the pretty little pen & ink + Prisma marker portrait:

The artist (Jennifer Ahnquist from Kentucky) also included this first-draft sketch in the envelope as well, which was really fun to see:

So here’s the portrait hanging up in our always-changing hallway frame gallery. We hung it nice and low (using the same affixed-to-the-wall-so-it’s-baby-safe method that we outlined here) since Clara loves saying “ohh hou” which is “bean-talk” for old house. So cute.

Oh and see the frame above it? That’s this page from a hand-me-down Boden catalog that my BFF left at my house. I loved the playful riff on “seize the day” so I just cut it out (following the imperfect background rectangle) and popped it into that frame. Can’t wait until Clara starts learning to read, since it’s down towards her level.

This never before seen tidbit might scare you in an is-that-the-vine-from-little-shop-of-horrors-and-will-it-try-to-eat-my-face kind of way. Yup, that’s right, the green leafy mass on the tree trunk next to our upper patio is a vine. It’s actually “hugging” a tall healthy oak tree (we had an arborist and an inspector check things out, just to make sure it wasn’t gonna take that tree down), and apparently the vine down towards the base is not invasive enough to do any damage, and we actually appreciate the privacy and greenery that it adds to that spot (it also gets really festive red berries in the winter that charmed us to no end back when we moved in last December). But if it starts looking too heavy or the tree starts not-thriving we’ll be on it like white on rice.

And now for the that’s-a-shame thing that we’ve never really pointed out specifically. We love the extra wide reclaimed pine floors in our bedroom, but they desperately need some love. Check out the faded square in front of our dresser (our best guess is that some piece of furniture sat there for so long that the floor somehow faded around it).

It has also completely lost its seal, so the previous owners must have placed something brown here on the floor that was sucked right into the wood and stained it (floors with poly or some other sealer usually prevent this from happening). So refinishing it (along with a lot of other damaged areas of hardwood in our house) is definitely on the someday agenda.

We also ironically learned in the very last post about our first house how often we re-share the same angles of a room over and over again – but somehow miss taking shots from other vantage points. For example, we never shared a shot like this of the den (looking into the kitchen/laundry nook) until moving day when everything was packed up in the truck. So it makes us want to include mundane photos like this one of the hallway that connects Clara’s room, the playroom, the guest room, and the hall bathroom to the heart of the house (the hallway frame gallery/kitchen/dining room/living room, etc).

See that giant intake vent near the floor? I’m dying to add some sort of wainscoting to the hall, but I’m not sure how I can do it with this beast going on. Maybe just work it in around it and paint it glossy white and hope that it looks semi-seamless?

Ok, and here’s the thing that will probably surprise everyone the most. This is the south-west corner of our house:

Yup, it’s pointy. The entire sunroom actually slants up. Which definitely threw us off during our walk-through since the rest of the house is so mid-century and ranch-ish. This room was added in the 90′s, so that might explain the different look. But it’s actually a really airy and light-filled room from the inside – thanks to that lofted ceiling:

So it has lots of potential and we’re happy to have it – strange slanting-up roof and all. We actually have a few ideas for trying to integrate it down the road when it comes to the exterior, but who knows where we’ll end up. One thing is for sure: we’ll keep you posted. Probably in that typical over-sharing fashion that we know so well.

Is anyone on the floor? Come on, somebody tell me that something shocked them. Probably not. I wish we had crazier house secrets (although I do have a recurring dream about discovering a hidden room). Wouldn’t that rock?

Psst- Speaking of dreams, I actually had one about Beyonce last night. But the real one (as opposed to the chicken one that we mentioned yesterday). We bought a tiny horseshoe shaped necklace together (it was $100 so I put in $40 and said “you’re the rich one, so do you mind doing $60?). Ugh, I’m even embarrassingly cheap in my dreams. But Beyonce was cool with it. The oddest thing is the concept (how on earth were Beyonce and I going to share a necklace? Are we together so much that swapping it back and forth is easy?). So strange.

Our Current House
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27

Thanks A Million

Posted by
September 9, 2011

**Psst- We know most Fridays we just post once, but today we’ll be back in a few hours with a post about all of the things we’ve never shown you about our house. We’ve got secrets, yo.

Yup, it’s time again for our monthly sponsor shout out (you know, to thank the folks who make our other 30-some posts possible). And since it’s back to school time, we thought we could use this month’s thank you to celebrate learning and all that school-ish jazz. Not that we’ve been gifted anything (here’s our no-swag policy). And of course there are special discounts listed at the end of this post for anyone looking to save a few bucks. Happy Friday!

And now for the JUICY DISCOUNTS:

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