Clara turned three on Tuesday (Threesday?) so we’ve spent the last few days marveling at this wonderful little lady before us and wondering where the heck the time went. And just like we did for her two previous birthdays, we marked the end of another 12 months by customizing the fabric backdrop for her photo project. You might remember that this tradition started on her first birthday, when we used my handwriting to create a pattern that we printed on fabric using Spoonflower (here’s how we did that). Spoonflower came to the rescue again last year, but we took advantage of Clara’s artistic abilities and converted one of her scribbles into the fabric that time
Archives for May 2013
Having Fun Painting Fabric
Someone hit the big 0-3 this week and that same someone is pretty excited about it! As you may have read over on Young House Love, to culminate this year’s photos we again let Clara help design a custom “fabric” for her birthday picture. This time around it meant letting her paint directly on two yards of white cotton fabric. And as usual, we wanted to share some of our favorite outtakes with you guys. Like this one, where we asked her how old she was going to be. Pretend you don’t see seven of those fingers. Here’s her Home Alone pose. There was also a nice amount of marveling at the glorious mess that
Pricing And Picking Oak Hardwood Flooring
Let’s talk about wood, shall we? As we mentioned on Tuesday, we decided to go with solid oak hardwoods for the four bedrooms and the hallway upstairs since many rooms downstairs along with the stairs themselves have a nice medium toned oak already (pretty similar to the hardwoods in our first house that ended up being super dog/kid friendly). As for where to get it, first we looked on craigslist to see if anyone had a large quantity of something in the right tone/amount (no dice) and then we headed to Lumber Liquidators, since we’ve had luck with them when it came to buying hardwood floors for half of our first house back in 2007
Halfway Through May
It’s time for our monthly moment of thanks to the sponsors who make the other 30+ posts possible. Without them we might not have food on our tables or clothes on our backs (and hungry, naked blogging doesn’t make for good DIY morale). So feel free to check out some things that caught our eye this month, and peruse our usual round-up of discounts at the bottom of the post – plus a hint about Monday’s $500 giveaway! This “Splatter Stacks” print from Hoot Design Co. Because books make me happy. Shades of Light‘s dhurrie rugs, like this honeycomb guy that comes in five colors. Our pal Dusty’s DIY backsplash install as featured on The
How To Draw Floor Plans With Floorplanner.com
Just like our first house floor plan and our current house floor plan from yesteryear, a bunch of you have requested a new house floor plan. So here ya go! They definitely help visual people like us see what walls are where, and what flows into what. So we whipped this up with floorplanner.com (which is, as the name might suggest, a free floor planning site). One big difference from the last two floor planning posts that we shared? This time there’s a second level. Who’s got two thumbs and a set of stairs? This girl. The funny thing is that when we shared a video tour of the new house, some people said “wow,
How To Remove Carpet & Prep For Hardwood Floors
Dude, removing wall to wall carpeting (and all the layers under it) is no joke. We learned that when we finally tackled that task this weekend – and lived to tell the tale. Let me just tell you, progress smells a lot better than old carpeting. Even when there’s a substantial amount of sweat involved… When we bought this house we knew that the four bedrooms upstairs (along with the hallway) needed new flooring since the once-cream (now mostly tan) wall to wall carpets were stained, threadbare, and even holey in some areas. Thankfully a few areas were so loose we could peek under them during our very first walk-through to see what we were
Fab Freebie: Talent Show
***This giveaway is now closed – see who won below!*** This week’s randomly selected winner is… Sheilagh (who’s talents lie in “all aspects of art and being crafty!”). Congrats! One of the most exciting parts of doing a project is getting to share the sweat-inducing results when it’s done. And that’s the idea behind HouseTalent, a free site where you can easily upload before pics, progress shots, and after photos of the DIYs that are going on in your digs. The friendly interface makes browsing other peoples’ accomplishments just as easy as uploading your own inspiration – from small furniture builds to major room overhauls. And to help you get some of your projects ready
How We Sold Our Second House By Owner
Holy cow, did we just sell our house? (I’ll pause while Sherry flails around since that sentence is a trigger). Now that we’re through the inspection & the appraisal (and the closing date is officially on the calendar), we’re finally at the point that we feel safe enough to shout it to the interwebs (we waited until this point to share the “we sold our house” news last time too). Of course nothing’s guaranteed until we’re all signing on the dotted line in early June, but so far, so good… First, some background: Sherry was set on selling our house FSBO (For Sale By Owner) again. She argued that we stood to save nearly ten grand –
How To Paint Exterior Siding
Remember back when we debated painting the siding on the front porch way back here in fall 2011? Hence the creepy Halloween wreath on the door. We had picked a color and everything (Flagstone by Martha Stewart – the one on the right in the photo above) but before we got around to doing it, the temperatures dropped too much to paint. Then the test swatches – which lived on our porch for several months (sorry neighbors) got painted over when it was time to shoot book photos out there. The project literally became out of sight, and out of mind. Then we redid the columns. And when we did a few of you guys
A Kitchen With Dark Gray Lower Cabinets & White Uppers
As much as we love a white kitchen, there are so many other fun options out there, like my sister’s wood cabinets + white appliances combo and “tuxedo” kitchens (a combo of dark and light cabinets). So when Rita’s makeover landed in our inbox, we couldn’t believe how much she changed her space for the better, and especially liked her two-tone cabinets. Here’s her letter: Hi Sherry and John, We recently finished renovating our kitchen. The challenge was creating a kosher kitchen (two sinks and separate spaces for meat and dairy) while keeping it looking clean and uncluttered and keeping the cost down. The original kitchen was beige-on-beige laminate with very little counter space. The
How To Hang Window Boxes
Word up my fellow Pinterest playas. Hope you got down with some baking, crafting, painting, organizing, sewing, building, or knitting fun because it’s time to share this season’s (completely unofficial) Pinterest Challenge (not sponsored by Pinterest or anyone else, just dreamed up by Katie to make us stop pinning and start doing). The only rule is to pin something you’ve wanted to get done (big or small) and do it. You know, instead of sitting on your duff pinning other things… which I’ll admit happens a whole lot in my world. Our mission this season? Window boxes! I actually pinned two window-box related pics, this picture just for the eye candy of it (at $90+
Planning A Dragon Birthday Party
In keeping with our annual tradition, we thought we’d give you a peek at Clara’s invitation and a few of our party supplies like we did last year and the year before. And since a lot of you are trying to guess the theme that she picked this year (after choosing worms last year)… well… say hello to our little dragon. The dragon theme came about a bit more gradually than last year’s theme, which was born from her worm-laden dreams. Somewhere between declaring that the book Dragons Love Tacos is her favorite (we even read it to her preschool class last month) and frequently requesting to wear her dragon cape around the house – it