Monthly Roundups
September Superlatives
It’s that time again! When we take a moment to look back on all that we’ve done in the past month at a glance (and gather all the links in one handy place for ya). And of course we tossed in some never-before-seen stuff, just because we’re over-sharers. This month felt pretty scattered since we did everything from finding secondhand night stands and starting to stencil some walls to building a 13 foot desk, altering a light fixture, framing out a mirror, making free art, and beyond. So let’s take a walk down memory lane, with yearbook-esque superlatives. Why? Because that’s our idea of a good time.
Most Pro-Banquette: Starting off the month with a half-baked idea to add a kitchen banquette.
Most Pro-Banquette (Runner-Up): The continued discussion on the topic in this follow-up post, which included a reader submitted rendering (where I looked a little bit like a receptionist).
Least Pro-Banquette: Ending the month with the exciting revelation that we’re over the banquette idea and happy to our true love: a peninsula.
Weirdest Giant Metal Chicken: This girl (aka Beyoncé) that we spotted on our way to Delaware (if you don’t know how she got her name, you must read this (warning: there’s profanity, but it might be the funniest thing on the interweb).
Best Deal: Our $11 yard sale night stands, which we added to our bedroom (along with a faux gold banding treatment on our bedposts).
Least Appetizing: Our empty fridge after Hurricane Irene, which we refilled with a coupon-tastic trip to the grocery store. (Update on that: we put in a $250 “spoiled food claim” with our electric company, who actually accepts those – so we don’t have to worry about insurance premiums going up or meeting a deductible at all – hooray!)
Most Improved: Our $1 (each) orange secondhand cabinets became slightly-taller, white office built-ins thanks to some wood and paint.
Most Tall, Long, Dark & Handsome: The 13-foot wood tabletop made for our built-in desk out of framing lumber and dark stain (for just 27 beans).
Most Inebriated: The walls in our office, after getting their Moonshine on (see what I did there? Moonshine is the name of the paint color, but also a reference to alcohol…).
The Josh Groban “You Raise Me Up” Award: Our office light fixture, which got hung higher (no more head bumps for me), sprayed indigo, and covered with a discounted drum shade.
Most Grounded: The trim that we added to the bottoms of our desk to give it a more built-in look.
Most Secretive: These never before seen parts of our house that we hadn’t highlighted before now, like our spaceship-like sunroom roof line:
The “You’ll Be Missed… But Not Much” Award: The tree growing on our house that we finally removed (to avoid any risk of foundation damage), along with trimming some overgrown shrubs nearby.
Most Persistent: Not giving up on this bathroom mirror framing project (even after a false start with too-small trim and, oh yeah, the whole thing crashing down after the first attempt).
Most Photogenic: Our television. Yes, we have a weird habit of taking pictures of the TV to document decor inspiration.
Easiest: Making a fast & free food coloring print for the hallway frame gallery.
Easiest (Runner Up): Sherry’s simple faux cross-stitch that she broke out to make a personalized anniversary gift for her brother and his wife.
Most Likely To Result In Claw-Hands: Stenciling the walls of the office, which isn’t exactly a quick project – but should be well worth it in the end (we hope to share final pics on Monday).
Best Sentence Ever Uttered By A Sixteen Month Old: “Iss my hoo hat.” Which was said by Clara after insisting that we help her put on a jacket and a crocheted hat (that looks like an owl) over her pajamas. Such a snappy dresser.
Most Three Dimensional: My take on the pros & cons of three different 3D interior design tools.
Most Intense: All of the Blogiversary posts last week…
… so if you missed any of those – here’s a quick recap of what was covered:
- An hour-by-hour look at a day in the life of us Petersiks
- Pie charts illustrating topics like how we spend our time & how we make money
- A breakdown of interesting (and weird) numerical stats about YHL
- A video response to various personal questions you asked us on Facebook
- A chance to talk about yourselves by answering our reader poll
- Setting goals for year 5, while evaluating how we did on year four’s
- Basic tips and advice on the coding side of blogging
- A play-by-play recap about how a post goes from concept to completion
- Ten lessons we’ve learned over our four years of blogging
So there you have it. September at a glance. What have you guys been up to this month? Have you ever made a list of accomplishments to look back on? It’s nice to take a break from adding things to our to-do list and take a moment to appreciate what we’ve accomplished. Just for a minute. Then it’s back to that $%@**&ing stencil…
Psst- You can check out July’s superlatives here and August’s here.
Pssssst- We’re so excited about the curated collection that we put together for Joss & Main (it comes out this Tuesday!). Click here to sign up and get alerted when the sale goes live!
August Superlatives
It’s that time again! When we take a moment to look back on all that we’ve done in the past month at a glance (and gather all the links in one handy place for ya). And of course we tossed in some never-before-seen stuff, just because we’re over-sharers. This month felt especially busy for us, with everything from painting, organizing, building, rearranging, crafting, art-making, upholstering, light-fixture-ing, coding, ORBing (yes, it’s a category of its own), and breaking stuff. So let’s take a walk down memory lane, with yearbook-esque superlatives, because we’re strange birds.
Most Illuminating: Clipping 320 clothespins in place to create our laundry room’s clothespin chandelier for our first ever Pinterest Challenge. Oh and you can scroll down to the bottom of the post to see over 500 (wowza!) other Pinterest Challenge projects submitted by you guys. So much good stuff. Gah.
Most Spoiled: Potato-stamping a fun little pattern inside Clara’s closet turned reading nook. Oh to be one again…
Most Likely To Win Mariah Carey’s Approval: This free butterfly art that I made out of a flier that I picked up on our trip to Natural Bridge, VA.
Most Likely To Win Carrie Bradshaw’s Approval: Adding shoe storage to our laundry room, courtesy of some Ikea recycling bins. Although Ms. Bradshaw would need about a hundred of them for all of her Manolos.
So Fresh & So Clean, Clean: Finishing our laundry room makeover. Woo hoo – one room down!
Most Likely To Be Committed For A Pillow Addiction: Me, as evidenced by these new striped pillows that I scored for $9 each at HomeGoods. And if making free art out of paint chips counts as treatment, then I’m on the road to recovery.
Clumsiest: John, who seems determined to break things lately, including this light fixture cover that fell while swapping out the fixture in our hallway.
Most Hard-Working: Our new Effecktiv storage unit from Ikea, which has the fun job of housing all of our files, printer, and miscellaneous office goodies. Oh the excitement.
Most Debonair: Dressing up said Effektiv unit with some black glass handles from Hobby Lobby Schlobby Bobby.
ORB of the Month: Giving our mailbox the oil-rubbed bronze treatment, along with completing a few other outdoor maintenance projects (which helped our yard look not quiiite as neglected – it’s still pretty bad though).
ORB of the Month (Runner Up): Several door handles, including the hardware on our front door, got a nice little face-lift.
Most Cheerful: Giving our front door the yellow paint treatment. It’s like our house is smiling at us whenever we come home.
Most Likely To Stockpile Swedish Things: Us, after our first trip to Ikea since John’s parents moved out of the area. Suddenly a trip there seems much more precious.
Worst Dressed: A video tour of our not-so-clean house (as well as some random old photos of us).
Most Likely To Get Worms: Creating a compost bin in the backyard using leftover shipping pallets. We’ve got some pretty sweet dirt going on.
Most Likely To Rock: The rocking chair that I FINALLY painted and reupholstered (after it sat around unfinished for almost a year).
Most Pictures In A Single Post: A visual comparison of our new house vs. our old house, which involved so many photos that it took down the site down for a good hour (ca-rashhh). Lesson learned.
Best “Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day” Reminder: A look back at our first house, 8 months in, and how little we had accomplished in that time. Ah, memories.
Best Moves: Switching up Clara’s furniture arrangement to help solve a crib-in-front-of-vent situation.
Worst Moves: Rearranging the office furniture in preparation for its makeover, which turned out to be a not so good solution. At least now we’re on the right track.
The “Thrill Of The Hunt” Award: Searching high and low for the perfect cabinets to turn into a built-in office desk. With a dog and a baby in our shopping cart.
The “Ripley’s Petersik’s Believe It Or Not!” Award: Scoring six whole cabinets for six measly dollars at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Alexandria, VA (well, they were technically $6.30 with tax).
Most Destined For Greatness: Our office cabinets, which we sanded and primed to prep them for glossy white paint. So excited to get these babies done. We’ll share pics early next week if all goes well! And you can catch a sneak peek of me painting them over on Young House Life.
Most Likely To Be From New Jersey: Me, as demonstrated by my magnetic attraction to glittery pine-cones, which accompanied some simple leaf-y decorations that I made for my cousin Megan’s bridal shower. Oh yeah and I sorted M&Ms by color like a wackadoo.
Biggest Jerk: Hurricane Irene, who tore up our neighborhood. (Update: the tree was finally removed from our neighbor’s roof yesterday and they’re in good spirits but the house still needs a lot of repair. Thanks for keeping them in your thoughts)
Most Overdue: Redesigning our blog theme for the first time in over three years.
Here are a few not-it initial designs that we tried on and scrapped. So glad we went with the gray heart background and simplified the too-busy-header (too much change, too left-heavy with that pile of pics, and the ceramic frog felt less “iconic” than my beloved ceramic rhino):
Cutest Couple: Clara and her cousin John snuggled up post Hurricane Irene.
So there you have it. August at a glance. And yes, this was just as much fun as last months inaugural superlatives post. Dorks for life.
What have you guys been up to this month? Have you ever made a list of accomplishments to look back on? It’s so nice to take a break from adding things to our to-do list to look back on what we’ve already done. Just for a minute. True to form we were all over the place (nearly every room of our house got in on the fun). Let’s call it spreading the love (as opposed to lacking focus and bouncing off the walls), shall we?
Psst- You can check out July’s superlatives here.
July Superlatives
We’ve been getting requests for some sort of monthly roundup or recap when it comes to all of our undertakings (just so it’s easier to hunt posts down and see what we’ve recently conquered at a glance). And because we wanted to put our own weird little spin on it, while we were out to dinner alone (for the first time since Clara was born, mind you) we started chatting about how cheeky little nominations and titles for certain projects might be funny (or not, you decide)… and so the idea of monthly superlatives was born! As was the conviction that we have to get a life and stop talking about the blog while on our first date in 14 months.
Oh and since we’re on the subject of superlatives, you should know that John was voted “Friendliest Male” (three years in a row, actually – by his high school marching band) while I was awarded the title of “Best Friends” in the back of the yearbook (with Jenny Czajkowski, who helped me highlight my hair in her sink with mustache bleach). But enough about us. On with the July superlatives:
Most Cheerful: Painting The Laundry Room A (Pretty Darn Happy) Greeny Yellow Color
Most Improved: Adding Some Laundry Room Built-Ins (then painting them and filling them with stuff we already had)
Nicest Legs: ORBing Those Parsons Chair Legs
Most Likely NOT To Succeed (At Least The First Time Around): The Guest Room Light Switcheroo (And ReSwitcheroo)
Runner Up, Most Likely NOT To Succeed (At Least The First Time Around): Framing Our Anniversary Note Cards (And Then Reframing Them Without Borders)
Most Likely To Please The Queen: Tea Dying Some Pillow Covers (<–not only pleasing to the royals, but free).
Most Likely To Result In A Crack Joke: Filling The Patio Cracks With Polymeric Sand
Runner Up, Most Likely To Result In A Crack Joke: Caulking The Laundry Room Ceiling (Slash Kicking Off Some Other Laundry Projects)
Most Outdoorsy: Spray Painting The Patio Furniture (you guessed it, ORB).
Runner Up, Most Outdoorsy: Our Mini Porch Spruce Up
Class Nerd: Coding A Room Gallery
Most Boob-Centric: My Breastfeeding Post (who would’ve thought that little diary entry of sorts would get almost 1,000 comments?!)
Most Free Spirited: My Unironed Ribbon Chandelier (which shockingly still remains unironed, and I’m usually so anal…)
Most Controversial: Priming & Painting Our Laundry Cabinets, Switching Out The Hardware, and Hanging Our Ironing Board (which resulted in quite the directional debate).
Most Glamorous: Painting Clara’s Closet Pink & Playing Around With Champagne “Stencils” (update: I played around with some more homemade stamps/stencils and have completed around 20% of the closet – I’m hoping to finish this weekend and have a post for ya early next week).
Most Embarrassing: The Pinterest Challenge Video. By far.
Most Spontaneous: We didn’t really post about it because it happened sort of gradually, but around the beginning of July, Clara just decided to walk (after lots of funny one-legged crawling like this). And just like that she’s too cool for us. See it here if you can’t below.
Most Immature: The Whole Twig & Berries Thing (Spraying Painting Frames & Mats & Losing Our Duvet)
So there you have it. July at a glance. And yes, this was more fun than we probably should admit. Dorks for life.
Anyway, what have you guys been up to this month? Have you ever made a list of accomplishments to look back on? We’re so used to adding things to the to-do list that stopping to see what we already did is kind of nice. And it’s interesting to look back and pick out the super cheap stuff (tea dying our pillows, painting our laundry room, painting Clara’s closet, and making that ribbon chandelier were under $2 total) and the more major stuff (like creating custom built-ins and adding an inspiration gallery) along with all the other stuff in between. We were all over the place, huh? Just the way (uh-huh, uh-huh) we like it.
