Author Archive
I Like Big Globes And I Cannot Lie
You other brothers can’t deny. When a light walks in with an itty bitty waist…
… and a round thing in yo face you get sprung. At least I do. John just gets all blown out and looks angelic.
The purpose of that photo was actually just to show you why we picked the height that we did. The common pendant light recommendation is to hang it 30″ above the top of the counter (from the top of the counter to the base of the pendant), but we went 31″ because my tall hubby didn’t want those round things in his face obstructing the view. It’s so nice to have some proper lighting above the peninsula since that part of the room has been super dark. As we mentioned yesterday, they were $60 each at a local lighting outlet, which made buying two of them cheaper than the actual retail price of one (they’re $129 a pop here).
Of course we still have some holes to spackle (five to be exact), but things are definitely looking up!
As in, I can’t stop staring up at them. And John’s been ogling them too.
The lights, not the holes.
I’ve got holes. In different area codes… area codes. Remember that song anyone? Apparently I’m in a singing mood today. I blame it on the eh-eh-eh-eh-electrical. Blame it on the eh-eh-eh-eh-electrical.
Ok, I’m done now. Promise.
Anyway, this is a shot to show you that we still have a light over the fireplace to switch out. It’s actually perfectly centered on the fireplace as you face it, although the angle of this pic makes it look all sorts of wonky. This is a pendant that broke pretty soon after moving in so we haven’t used it for about half a year. Can’t wait to hang something better suited to the chill-zone by the fireplace. Maybe a big ol’ drum pendant that’s only dropped a few inches from the ceiling so it’s high enough for anyone 6’4″ and under not to bump their heads (that’s the tallest person we know, haha). So yeah, along with spackling holes and getting a pendant for over the sink, this guy’s on the lighting agenda too.
But back to the globes. We actually installed a dimmer switch yesterday, which is awesome because we can blast them all the way up or lower them for we’re-just-eating-spaghetti-but-let’s-fancy-things-up ambiance. We’d love to get LED bulbs for our pendants (they’re compatible with CFLs, halogens, incandescents, and LEDs, which is nice) but since we have a dimmer switch, we have to find special LEDs that work with a dimmer. We’ll keep you posted.
Update: we’re getting lots o’ comments asking if we’ll be ORBing the stools – we’re actually going to wait for the dark cork floors to go in before making any decisions on them either way since that could be a game changer. Oooh cliffhanger…
Here’s how things look in the other direction. See how a big drum shade might be nice for that cozy corner by the fire?
Mmm, let’s get a little closer, shall we?
Update: We gave edison bulbs a try and they were reallllly yellow in our room (maybe with white counters they’re not the best idea since they left ours looking dirty?) – we also gave clear bulbs a try but they cast a bunch of harsh shadows on the ceiling, so we prefer the frosted guys we have here for now – although we’re definitely still looking into dimmable LEDs!
In the words of sandwich-loving Joey Tribbiani: how you doin?
Oh and see that nice big chunk of sunny grellow wall between the fridge and the half wall into the dining room? We want to get a nice big piece of art for that spot. So we’re on the prowl. Will keep ya posted on that too.
When we were reconfiguring the kitchen we talked about putting an upper cabinet there but knew that the peninsula would feel so much more open to those sitting there (especially the person on the end) if they weren’t staring at the side of a cabinet. It’s actually an area where we do a lot of prepping now, so we love that it’s open. It’s hard to explain, but it feels more like a room and less kitchen-y, in a good way. Just sort of casual and airy and not too wood-riddled.
Anyway, next on the ol’ kitchen list is patching those holes (we’ll share all the spackle-tastic details) and hanging (and building in) our craigslist range hood. Then we finally get to add the open shelves that I’ve been over the moon to “meet” since about four months ago when we decided to go for it. We’ve been keeping all of our dishes/plates/cups in a lazy susan cabinet in the corner by the stove, and while it works okay, open shelving will be approximately 957 times more convenient. Yes, I’m a complainer about turning the lazy susan one way to get a dish and having to spin it the other way to get a cup. Plus after we get the shelves made and hung and painted I get to put pretty vases and containers and frames up there along with all of our everyday dishes. Maybe even a ceramic animal or two if I’m feeling crazy. And let’s face it, I’m pretty much always feeling crazy.
Speaking of which, remember my whole self-imposed “Dude, Get On That Already” challenge?
How is it already Wednesday and I have yet to tackle something? Come on $herdog, you said once a week you’d get on that. So GET ON THAT, ALREADY! Hopefully I’ll have a little update for ya tomorrow. Anyone care to join me and share what you’ve done tomorrow morning?
So in summary: work continues and we’re all over the place as usual. Hah. What are you guys up to today?
Lights, Hood, Action
Woot. We did it. We found a stainlesss steel range hood on craigslist. It’s an industrial strength pro JennAir one (valued at around $350) but we got it for… $60! Oh craigslist, I could kiss you on the mouth.
The listing said $65, but you know I did the old “how about sixty, we have cash?!” thing when we got there and looked it over… and… sold! It definitely appeared to be purchased but never used (it still had some of the white sticky peel-off stuff on the underside that new hoods have) – although it didn’t look like it had been kept completely protected while it was being stored (there are some scratches on the curved hood part). But those scratches are most likely the reason we got it for such a deal (in mint condition it could have been sold for at least $200). And since we’ll be building a wood hood box around it, those scratches won’t matter at all. We actually love them for allowing us to afford such a fancy pants hood. Wait, you’re stuck on that part about the wood hood box thing, aren’t you? Allow me to provide a visual (from here). Except this one is a lot wider than ours since our stove isn’t a double wide guy like this:
There’s also this one (from here). Except ours will most likely be white so that penny-tile-to-the-ceiling can be the star. This is a nice visual because there are open shelves on either side like ours will have.
Here’s another example (from here) but I was a weirdo and drew over it in photoshop. So you can kind of picture how floating shelves flanking the hood would look head-on. This actually looks a lot like our kitchen’s layout as you sit at the peninsula.
So yeah… we’re going to try to build a wood frame to attach to the wall and house our new $60 JennAir vent since we looked up some prices for wood hoods that are built by someone else…. and let’s just say I spewed orange juice all over my computer when I caught a whiff of the cost (from here):
We’re not 100% sure on the actual hood-box shape (some are boxier and some have that little stem at the top) but we’ll keep you posted. Might just tape out a few shapes on the tile and see what we like.
Oh and as for the two pendant lights we’ll be adding over the peninsula, we hit up one of our favorite local lighting outlets (The Decorating Outlet on Midlothian for any locals out there), where we found the exact same lights we had been ogling in this post about a month ago! We couldn’t believe they had two of them in the same finish and everything. They’re currently $129 here, but the outlet was selling them for $60 a pop. So for less than the cost of one ($120 total) we got two! We think they’re going to make a huge statement in the kitchen, and considering that big box stores are currently selling similar stuff for $100+ each, we thought it was a great deal.
The finish that we chose may surprise you (or not, haha) but we actually went with oil-rubbed bronze. Since there are already a ton of nickel/stainless accents in the kitchen (hardware, appliances, the industrial stools) we thought it might add up to a more layered/interesting look to pepper in some ORB. We’re huge fans of mixing metals as long as both types of metal occur a few times so it looks intentional (so there’s not one odd man out while the rest is a different finish, which can look kind of weirdly accidental). So we’ll be bringing in a few other dashes of the rich almost-black finish so it’s nice and balanced looking – especially with the mocha cork floors. We also love that the pendants are hugely visible through the large doorway to the dining room, since that room has things like an oil-rubbed bronze door knob, curtain rod, etc – so they should layer right into the mix.
Now we just have to hang the pendants, wrestle that hood into place, build a custom wood range hood cover, add some floating shelves, finish the trim, lay some cork floors, install the dishwasher, and a few other things that my brain is probably intentionally forgetting to keep my blood pressure down. But we’re getting there! We’re like the blogging tortoises of kitchen renos. Picture us crawling along with little laptops tucked away in our shells. Oh and on the subject of hoods and lights, have you guys be dabbling in those areas lately? Any lucky craigslist or outlet scores lately?
I See The Light!
Remember when we shared how shiny and polished our kitchen started to look after we finished grouting?
And then revealed the chaos that ensued a hot minute later?
Well, the room is all put back together and we made a whole lotta lighting cha-cha-changes.
Sure our ceiling looks like swiss cheese. But it’s all for a good cause. Inching towards a more luminescent kitchen.
Everyone says that lighting can make the room, but I’m here to refute that. Just kidding, it totally makes the room. If you have a gorgeous space but it looks dark or yellowed or all angry and fluorescent, well, it kinda ruins the whole effect. So we knew something had to be done since even after getting new white counters and painting our cabinets it was still totally lacking in functional lighting. Specifically, the peninsula was really dark and the area near the sink kind of made me feel like I was standing under a bug zapper. And that never-used-in-13-months fan had to go. It sort of felt like a low flying helicopter monitoring dinner preparation. So down they came. And holes they did leave.
Oh but here’s a money saving tip for ya: do as much pre-work for the electricians as possible since you pay them by the hour for their time. We always remove old fixtures (like the fan, the fluorescents, etc). After turning off the power to them of course (Captain Safety would have my head if I didn’t mention that little detail…).
Even marking the ceiling for where you want things can end up taking an hour of discussion while the electrician is there (and when you pay them by the hour, you’re paying them to watch you have that discussion), so hammering that out before they come is great. For example, John stood on a stool and held the glass lids to our cereal jars in the air to guess where we wanted the placement of the two pendant lights that will someday hang over the peninsula.
That weird little exercise helped us figure out where we wanted those fixture boxes pretty quickly. We didn’t have to figure out the height of the pendants yet or anything, which is nice since we don’t have them to hang yet (we’ll install those on our own and make that decision later). So we just used small pieces of painters tape to make an X in the desired location.
Then it was my turn to dance on the dining table to make another mark up there.
We actually have three rooms in our house without any overhead lights: the living room, the sunroom, and the dining room. And the only one we really use at night (without tons of lamps that happen to live on a super long console table and nearby desk) is the dining room. As in, dinners are pretty dark in there. Or we bring in mismatched floor lamps and it looks like a lighting convention. We have visions of a giant chandelier hanging over that big daddy table of ours someday. So you know what they say about “when in Rome…” – well, I have the same philosophy about squeezing as much work in when the electricians are already here working on a job (saves you the money/time of having them out again to work on a nearby room).
We had also chatted with the electricians the last time they were out and they said four can lights should do the trick on the cooking side of the kitchen, so we even marked their placement with little Xs drawn in the middle of more painters tape, just outside of the fluourescents on either side.
We also had them add an outlet on the counter to the right of the fridge (we have one next to the peninsula for laptops, but we thought an above-counter one would come in handy for plugging in mixers to make cookies on that side of the peninsula, etc)…
… and here are those four can lights they put in, in lieu of the previous two fluorescents that sandwiched the fan, which we had them ceremoniously kill (aka: they terminated the power to those poor guys).
Oh and for any interested locals, we use S.J. Ryan Electric. Good guys, fair prices, all that good stuff (they don’t even know we’re bloggers, we just love to shout out people who do good work). We really like them because as an experienced two-man team they can knock out a lot of stuff in not too much time. For example, in 5 hours they:
- Added four recessed lights
- Terminated the two old fixture boxes that fed the fluorescents
- Terminated the fan fixture box
- Added an outlet above the counter next to the fridge
- Added two fixture boxes over the peninsula
- Terminated the fixture box for the poorly placed pendant a foot to the left of our new pendant fixture boxes
- Added a fixture box above the table in our dining room (and a light switch for it)
- Centered a fixture box over the sink (the previous over-sink-light was about 6 inches too far to the left)
Note: Ick, don’t mind all the photos where the tile/paneling meet the ceiling that are still waiting for crown molding to go up. Soon we hope!
So at around $75 an hour for those two guys, it added up to $375 for all of that stuff (plus around $80 for the materials). Total room changer. Four recessed lights! Two new pendant spots! A centered fixture box for a nice pendant over the sink! A new outlet on a wall that had none! And a spot for a big ol’ chandelier in the dining room! Plus they safely terminated all sorts of things we didn’t need anymore!
Ack, please don’t report me to the Exclamation Point Police for overuse. I just get excited about this stuff. I like sharing those prices because I think people generally think electrical work is more expensive than it is. And it certainly can get up there. But things like marking your placement and removing old fixtures beforehand can really speed things up along with hiring a two-man team. And having a ranch doesn’t hurt since it’s so easy for them to run around in the attic and wire stuff (we hear two story houses can be trickier since there’s not exactly an attic above the first floor to creep around in with wires).
So that’s the electrical bid-ness that went on. Things definitely have come a long way since the last time they came…
Now we just have some pendants to grab and some holes to fill- and you know we’ll share all the details as we inch along. Update: we found pendants and have hood info to share! Tomorrow morning for sure!
What did you guys do this weekend? We got a giant box delivered by FedEx on Saturday and it was our final book manuscript. All 375 pages of it (it’s one-sided and double spaced, which explains why it’s waaay longer than the book will be, even after we add tons of pics and illustrations).
Ahhhhhh! Sitting on the sofa with that hunk o’ paper was more than a little surreal.
Psst- This is one of those things that just makes your heart swell up into your throat. One of the five finalists for the Ikea Life Improvement Project was a reader of ours named Melissa Matthews who found out about it back when we randomly mentioned it during an Ikea giveaway, and entered… never thinking she’d end up in the finals (we were so excited to get an elated email from her all about it)! Well, guess what? She won, guys! She wrote an amazing makes-you-cry email to tell us all about it. As the mother of a child with Down syndrome, Melissa is planning to expand the work being done at the Frankie Lemmon School in Raleigh, NC, a school for children with intellectual disabilities. They use technology and cutting-edge therapy to help these children with special needs and Melissa plans to use the new resources and her teaching background to infuse more technology deeper into these classrooms and to create a website to share these methods with other teachers across the country. We’re just so happy for her!
A Strange Self-Imposed Challenge
We have a new friend hanging out in our kitchen. I found this guy at Hobby Lobby during one of their all-the-time 50% off sales for $12. You know me and faux animals. Faux sho they’re mine.
Then he sat in our playroom for a while (a while = 6+ months) and I recently walked in there and had this moment where I said to myself “Self: you have got to stop hoarding things in this room. Use them or lose them.” Which led to an initiative I like to call “Dude, Get On That Already.” The dude being me. Naturally. So I’ll probably revisit this initiative over the next few weeks and months (at least I hope I will) as I systematically pare down the hoarded playroom clutter and decide whether I’m going to keep things and actually use/hang/enjoy them or craigslist/donate/yard sale ‘em. A lot of things end up in there for one of two reasons:
- I’m not quite sure where to hang them (so I stick them there and say “I’ll get to it later” and later turns into never)
- I plan to somehow alter things by painting or staining them (so I stick them there and say “I’ll get to it later” and later turns into never)
Well not anymore, folks. I dug in and grabbed my horny little friend and marched his antlers all around the house, trying to find a spot to hang him up and actually enjoy him instead of hiding him away in The Room Of Chaos (yes, that’s its formal name these days, so it gets capital letters and everything). Anyway, after walking around for a while I decided it’d be fun in the kitchen next to the fridge, but the original black color (although very cool in its own right) wasn’t working there. So I dragged my buns outside with a piece of cardboard and some leftover white primer + spray paint.
You know my “thin thin thin and even coats” catchphrase when it comes to spray paint, so I snapped these three in-progress spraying shots to show you how each coat is a nice thin mist. You definitely don’t get full coverage with one thin coat of spray paint – which is a good thing. You’re doing it right if it takes about three of them to slowly accumulate. And always keep your hand moving and hold it 8-10″ away. No thank you drippies. Not on my watch.
Speaking of spray painting tips, this guy’s antlers were still looking dark on the underside, which I knew would be seen when we hung him up, so I waited a full day for his front to cure and then flipped him over to give him a nice deep tissue massage with spray paint on the back.
John and I actually considered a few crazier colors (plum, navy, yellow) but thought that the white would look nice on our grellow walls- especially with the gold mirror in the laundry room so close by (it’s on the other side of the doorway, so we didn’t want it to have to fight for attention). But I have big plans for some of the other things lurking in the playroom. Oh yes, plum, navy, and beyond…
Don’t mind the paint touch ups we have been meaning to do for over a month. I’ll get to it sometime. Unless I’m too busy spray painting various faux animals.
Work it, antlers. Work it.
As for how I hung it on our paneled walls, anchors are a gal’s best friend.
Here’s the box we’ve had… oh… maybe a year?
They seem to last, which is nice because it’s so annoying to run to the store for little hanging stuff. Boo to that. Anyway, for those who might not know how they work, this might sound like “health class” in 5th grade, but the anchor is the white thing and the screw is the silver thing you know what a screw looks like. So you drill a tiny pilot hole into the wall, hammer (or push) the anchor into the hole, and then screw the screw into the anchor.
A into B, baby. Oh but just leave a little bit of the screw sticking out for hanging whatever it is you’re hanging on it (the anchor should be flush with the wall, but the screw might stick out half an inch). Das it.
I gotta tell ya, it took less than an hour of actual time (drying time doesn’t count because you don’t have to stand there and watch it). And that not only includes my little spraying trips in and out for those thin coats but also the whole hanging shebang after he was fully dry. So I have high hopes for my little “Dude, Get On That Already” project. I might just keep this up! And if I ever want to pop it off the wall for a fabulous royal wedding, it makes for a great fascinator.
So are you guys with me on this weird little self-imposed challenge? Any items (or an entire room full of stuff) that you’ve been putting off? Wanna tackle it with me as I go? I’d love to get to at least one thing a week but with kitchen/kid/book stuff I’m not sure if I can stick to that, but it’s definitely the goal! Oh and what should I name this guy? Or is naming white faux animals weird when they don’t have faces? Malcolm? I keep getting Malcolm.
And speaking of projects… surprise!
My apologies for the crazy lighting (oh yeah and the ladders and the dropcloths) but we’re in the midst of getting new lighting! Hah. So there’s just one floor lamp illuminating the back corner of our windowless interior room. Which explains why it looks like a glowing Katy Perry alien is hiding back there or something. But as crazy as it looks… wahoo, it’s progress! More details about the whole process as soon as it’s a wrap (and it’s all cleaned up, photographed, and written out) on Monday!
The Real $herdog
One of my favorite things about blogging is keeping it real. Even around the new year when the whole “be the perfect person/wife/family” voices can kick in, I try to fight the good fight and remember that authentic = awesome. And perfect = most likely impossible. So if our house is a mess I’ll make a video to prove it (without even putting my bra away first). If we don’t know how the heck to tackle a project, we’ll admit it (like this). If we fail miserably at an undertaking, we’ll blog alllll about it (like this and this, just to name a few).
We actually love being a DIY diary that’s literally about the good, the bad, and the ugly – because a blog that’s only about the good kind of feels like it’s only telling half of the story. We’re just regular folks attempting to do regular DIY things with a real-person budget while learning as we go. We don’t have any formal training. Five years ago we painted all of our trim the wrong finish, didn’t own a power drill, and our house looked like this:
When we started this blog we were literally DIY beginners, just trying to figure out how to hang curtains and get a good deal on appliances. And although we’ve slowly gained some hands-on experience over the last 4+ years of this blogging thing, I thought I’d start the year (January 17th is still sort of the beginning of the year, right?) by saying a bunch of things out loud to the internet at large that might surprise you. Or maybe not if you really know me.
#1. I don’t have the perfect marriage. It’s amazing how many people ask if John and I ever fight. Is it possible to be married to someone for nearly five years and not fight? Dude, we fight like the best of them! Not loudly in front of Clara, but we definitely can get into it. We’re individuals. Individuals who love each other, but we definitely each have conviction and strong willed tendencies (hello, I’m Italian and from New Jersey). And those convictions and strong willed tendencies can definitely lead to heated discussions, adamant disagreements, and full blown arguments (about anything from a parenting decision to a home improvement snafu). We’re a pretty normal couple I think. We love each other like crazy, but sometimes in the stress of renovating or raising a toddler the moment gets the best of us and we snap. But when we do, we try to remind ourselves that we’re in this together. We both have the same goals (a healthy and well adjusted daughter, and beautiful and safe home, to make each other happy, etc). We’re a team. A sometimes dysfunctional or crabby team, but a team none the less.
#2. I don’t have the perfect child. Sure, there are amazing things about Clara, like how good of a night sleeper she is and how much she loves singing and dancing (and eating funny things like hummus and pickles). But as anyone else who has a 20 month old kid can attest – they’re not all sunshine and roses. Clara cries, teethes, gets mad, throws food, rips magazines, has tantrums, and does all those other things that toddlers do. So yeah, I deal with the same “oh man, she’s sick” or “ack, she’s screaming” or “ohemgee she just threw up an entire pumpkin muffin all over the car seat” issues that every other mom deals with. And let’s not talk about my labor (scariest day of my life) or the 14 months of breastfeeding (I loved it, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it took work, energy, and dedication – especially when I was painting and DIYing between those feedings). It’s a good thing she’s totally worth it. I love that bean to pieces. She’s not perfect, but she’s perfect for us.
#3. I make design mistakes (and life mistakes) – all the time! Our rooms and our lives are in a constant state of flux (our first house took us 4.5 years to finish, and we’ve only been here a little over a year) – so sometimes we’re still feeling around in the dark and we make the wrong call. And later we see the light and say “umm, what were we thinking?!” and course correct. I think the key to recovering from mistakes in general (decor-related or otherwise) is not to be married to that mistake. And to attempt to right your wrong. Say you buy the wrong sized rug but don’t realize it for a while (like we did in our living room). Once time passed and we figured out what could be improved, we decided to reuse the old one in another room (or craigslist it) and save our pennies to upgrade it. That approach helped us (and the room) move forward. If we ever become frozen in fear of a mistake that we’ve made (or the fear that we’ll make one) that’s when a room stagnates. We’d never get past decorating mistakes (or life mistakes) if we didn’t learn/adapt/evolve along the way. Our goal is for our house (and ourselves) to always be changing and growing. No freezing in place allowed. Because you usually can’t get around a life obstacle or a DIY debacle if you’re just stuck there standing still.
#4. I’m awkward and probably less cute, stylish, or “put together” than you think. I have paint in my hair and under my nails 24/7 (well, this week it’s grout). My shirts are all stretched out from breastfeeding (yup, still haven’t replaced those). I am covered in dog fur and/or accidentally sporting some smear of jelly/cream cheese/humus five days out of seven. Seriously. Someone chime in here who has met us. We get comments like “I’d freak out and embarrass myself if I ever met you” but I’ve got you covered. I won’t even notice you freaking out over my intense weirdness. Once I spun around at Target and screamed “Chiiiiiistmas stuff is already out!!!” while holding two wooden trees up to my face like Cindy Lou Who to John. But it wasn’t John. It was this woman I’d never seen before standing there staring at me with a baby in her cart. So I tried to smile and quietly make my way to another aisle and she said “Oh my gosh I love your blog” …. and I nearly died of embarrassment. Not only had I been “that crazy person” in front of a stranger, it was someone who “knows” me. So I stuttered and tried to talk about her cute baby and then John and Clara came to my rescue and I stumbled away while mentally kicking myself in the face. Yup, I’m that awkward.
#5. Sometimes I get nervous and insecure about our future. Not gonna lie, being a “small business” (and even more random than that, being a “professional blogger”) is hardly a job with health insurance and a 401K (more on that here and here). We just try to have faith that we’ll end up somewhere ok since we never thought we’d be here five years ago… and here we are. Sure it helps that we saved up a just-in-case cushion (to keep us afloat for 6-9 months) before John left his day job when Clara was born, but I’d be lying if I didn’t shout “yes – we get nervous and uncertain and insecure about what lies ahead sometimes!”
#6. I roll my eyes at myself. I get it. I really do. I am fully aware that I’m obnoxiously enthusiastic. My blog puns often make me gag a little. I’m the less cool version of that adorkable Zooey Deschanel. You know, without the good hair and the great voice and the comedic timing. I’m her half sister Gooey or something. So although my sunny demeanor might make you want to stick a spork in my eye, know that I’m fully aware that I’m annoying – and sometimes I try to rein it in – but I usually just let my freak flag fly. Why? I figure that blogging is all about being yourself and owning it and sharing your life in an authentic way. So I’m not reserved and cool and collected and refined. I’m hyper and giddy and nutty and weird. And 4+ years later that formula just works for us. So gosh darn it, I might call presents “prezzies” or make a crack joke. That’s just how $herdog rolls.
#7. My house is usually a disaster. At any given time, our frame wall might look like this…
… but our sunroom probably looks like this…
There’s always at least one giant pile of something-to-be-sorted somewhere. And don’t even get me started on the playroom. That room is out of control.
So I guess the point of all that soul baring is to assure you that I most definitely do not have it all figured out. I’m just a chick from New Jersey who started a blog who sometimes forgets to take her contacts out at night (I know, I’m so bad). I’m that gal who discovers that I have strawberry cream cheese inexplicably smeared all over the left side of my ear in line at Target. True story. I don’t know it all, and I don’t have it all, and I’m so thankful to be right where I am. Perfection is kinda overrated anyway, right? I’m many things, but most of all: I’m a work in progress. Kinda like our house.
