We’re spending today packing things up, and although we thought it would feel monotonous and tiring, it’s oddly exciting. Even the act of wrapping a bunch of cups in newspaper feels like “IT’S HAAAAAAPPENING! We’re really DOING IT!” Can you believe Clara looked like this last time we moved? Three birthdays (and a significant amount of hair) later, my baby’s gone. Sniffle. But there’s a pretty cool kid (complete with an arm tat) in her place, so it’s a fair trade. Life will change with this big move, and our blog and our process for the new house might feel different to you because we’re approaching it, well, differently. More than any other house that
Archives for May 2013
How To Install Oak Hardwood Floors
Get on the floor. Seriously, wood, get out of those boxes and do your thing. Oh how I wish it were that easy. Turns out laying oak flooring takes some serious time. But man oh man is it gorgeous when it’s down. So it turns out wood-floor-laying, my friends, is time well spent (picture me saying that as confidently as Ron Swanson says “turkey can never beat cow”). Don’t mind the dusty little path emerging from Clara’s room. We still have a few more spots to sweep… As we mentioned here, we decided to go with solid oak hardwoods for the four bedrooms and the hallway upstairs since many rooms downstairs (plus the stairs) have nice
Chip & Joanna’s Farmhouse Kitchen Reno
Something about renovating a farmhouse just sounds so idyllic to me. And Joanna’s farmhouse kitchen renovation doesn’t disappoint. She and her husband took it from closed off and dated to open and, well, check it out yourself… Hey guys! I live in Texas and my husband and I are in the middle of renovating our 125 yr old farmhouse. We have been married for ten years, have four kids, and have lived in 9 homes. All of which we bought, lived in, and flipped. After we move into the farmhouse, I am done. I hope. When my husband first showed me this house, I walked right out of it and said there is no way.
A Full Rundown Of Home Makeover Projects & Links
Packing up our current house and new-house-floor-laying continues… … but we didn’t want to scoot outta our beloved current house without one more updated Listy McListerson full of everything we’ve checked off and a few things we’d love to have done if we were staying here longer (those are bulleted at the bottom). #warningitslong Just for fun, here’s the very first list that we shared for this house back in 2010. I love how plans seem to evolve as you live somewhere and figure out what we love/want as you go. It’s also really funny how quickly your eyes adjust and you forget what you started with, isn’t it? Seriously, a week after we knocked
Adventures In Hardwood Flooring
Late last week we were finally able to start installing our hardwood floors at the new house. It’s going well (we’re getting it done with our own four hands), but it’s proving to be a time intensive project – which is not necessarily the type of project you want to take on when you’re short on time (we’re scheduled to move in this weekend and would like to be completely done with four bedrooms and a long hallway by then – egads!). So once we’re breathing a bit easier and a bit further along, we’ll write up a play-by-play of how it all (literally) is going down. ‘Til then, enjoy this still-dusty pic of the
Fab Freebie: Indie-stagram
*** This giveaway is closed – see who won below! *** This week’s lucky random winner is.. Keelan (who’s favorite picture of herself from her Costa Rican honeymoon, saying “my husband took it of me at the end of the trip while I was lying in a chaise lounge and I just look the epitome of happy – relaxed, tan and soaking in every minute of our adventure.”) Congrats! We’re spending today with our family for the Memorial Day holiday, but we wanted to drop in with a giveaway for you guys. Are you a fan of Instagram? A lover of gallery walls? A sucker for things that are fast and easy? Well, read on,
How To Make Fabric Tea Bags For Kids Tea Parties
Guys, I did it. I broke out the sewing machine to make something for Clara’s third birthday. It’s a little tradition of ours to make her something instead of buying it since she gets a ton of store-bought presents from family and friends. I even used her big ol’ stash of monthly photo fabrics, which have also come in handy for making her a quilt, a table runner, a beanbag, and even a birthday banner (remember that epic battle of woman vs. sewing machine?). It all started when I saw these fabric tea bags on Pinterest and thought they’d be really fun for Clara’s play kitchen since she’s so into making food and pretending to
Taking Down Those Old Curtains
Yup, we finally called it. The old floral curtains couldn’t last another day. So we made a few jokes about Kim Kardashian’s Met ball dress and got ready to say goodbye. They looked pretty fancy, but they just weren’t our style, so it was time to take them down and make a nice little donate pile for Habitat for Humanity. The funny thing is that when we got up on chairs and lifted them down, we discovered that these babies were pinned and even screwed right into the window at times! Cracked us up. I mean, we’re no strangers to using fabric remnants and wood braces screwed into windowsills, but seeing white pushpins sticking out
April Superlatives: Inside, Outside & Acting A Fool
Um where did April go? The shower-iest month seems like a distant memory by now, but it was filled with outdoor makeovers, bathroom updates, shades a plenty, and even a bit of rapping. So we’re taking a moment to appreciate all the things that we checked off of our list as a motivator to hopefully make the coming months just as productive. Oh and you can catch superlative recaps of the last 2+ years here (in 27 easily skimmed posts instead of nearly 900 long ones!). Plus, we’ve got a little clue about what’s happening next week in the mix below… Most Photogenic: Next Monday’s giveaway, which should make all of you fellow Instagram addicts pretty
How To Use A Paint Sprayer On Trim & Doors
If we’ve made one thing clear about our new house, it’s that we’re not crazy about the trim colors… Somewhere between the Williamsburg Blue and the Muddy Mauve, our painting hands began to quiver with excitement. Or was that dread? Not sure. We reasoned that while all of the carpet was up and before the new hardwoods went down, we should take advantage of the can-get-painted subfloor and go ahead and tackle the upstairs trim. Correction: trim and doors. Sixteen doors to be exact… which we removed and de-hardwared first for easy painting. Attempting to quickly paint four bedrooms and closets worth of trim along with a long hallway plus nine windows (with tons o’
A Dragon Themed Kids Birthday Party
Who smells smoke? Don’t panic, that’s just Clara’s dragon party, rollin’ into town (er, the internet?). Note: you can’t really smell this party through your computer, so if you smell smoke, please look into it. This year’s party was lower key than our last two (here’s her first birthday party, and her worm party from last year) and even though it was rainy and wet outside, eight kiddos and twelve adults jammed out inside. It was fun. And Clara made me cry. She’s just so big and sweet and hilarious and I’m the luckiest mom in the world. Plus, dragons. I mean if that’s not a trump card for a party, I’m not sure what
How To Make A Whole House To Do List
Exciting times guys. Operation Ditch The Blue Trim is currently in progress! So while we sweat our way through un-blue-ing things on the second floor – that’s four bedrooms, a nice long hallway, and at least 10 doors – we thought it was high time we shared our master to-do list for the new house (and for anyone jonesing for trim-painting info/photos, we hope to finish up and be back with a full report for you on Wednesday). These posts came about when people asked how we organize all the stuff we have on our to-do list. We explained that we basically have one long run-on document that we update as we go. Folks kept