Monday, September 21, 2009

2 Years!

To my other half:

Happy 2 years!

I hope we have many more years of laughing hysterically at things that shouldn't be funny to people our age, and staying home on Saturday evenings hanging out and listening to music (although maybe you could tone down the laughing at my chronic mis-heard lyrics!). I hope every year continues to feel like the best year of our lives.

Love you.
L

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Football fun

Josh loves all sports but in particular is a football fanatic. I am not. At all.
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In an effort to make football a little more fun for me we made up a game last year and we are playing it again this year. Each week we try to predict who will win each game. We make our picks based on our own special rating systems and then track who has the best record for the whole season. Josh's rating system utilizes his expansive knowledge of players and team performance and since I have none of that I pick teams based on their uniform color scheme and their logo.

You're probably thinking my rating system is ridiculous and sometimes it is – for example I love the New Orleans Saints logo because it features a fleur-de-lis so I almost always pick them, no matter who they are playing.

So far there’s only been one week of picks and Josh and I tied in picking the winning teams. I hope my ‘special’ rating system continues to do well for me!

(Josh just read this as I was writing and said “your special rating system sucks” – now I REALLY want to beat him!)

Friday, September 18, 2009

Mini facelift

We love our house but when we moved in it was tied for the ugliest house on the street. Not much going on in the curb appeal department. Well no one wants that label so over the summer we did a few projects to spruce up the front of our house.

We had barren flower beds (the previous owners put down landscape fabric, covered it with mulch, and called it a day), random empty pots on the patio, and a less than fresh paint job that was peeling in parts.




Painting the exterior of the house was out of the question so we got to work on a few less pricey projects. As I've mentioned before I have zero gardening ability and that combined with brutal 100+ degree summer heat meant that we needed to select difficult-to-kill plants. I noticed a lot of geraniums around the neighborhood and they appeared to be doing well so we decided to go with a few of those. I also added in a few asparagus ferns for some variety and they are doing okay thanks to only getting morning sun and being shaded from the harsh afternoon rays by the patio overhang.

The project that made the biggest difference was painting the green front door and other trim. We picked a really dark blue with a hint of green but in reality the color dried much lighter. (Although it looks black in the photo below - weird.) Even though the color isn't exactly what we wanted, just the fact that its freshly painted and not faded and peeling makes a big difference!
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Here's Josh getting ready to paint the shutters - I'm glad he went up on the roof because I'm so clumsy there's a 80% chance I would have lost my balance and fallen off!


Finally we replaced the yellow brass front door hardware with satin nickel. I am still looking for a replacement doorbell so for now it will be a lovely reminder of the former yellow look we had going on.
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Anyway, enough of me blabbing on and on ... here's how it looks now:
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(I dont think the little changes are very noticeable in the picture but in person it looks SO much better!)

(Please excuse the brown patches of grass. I had the great idea to fertilize the front lawn but unfortunately I made the rookie mistake of overdoing it in a few patches so now we have some lovely dead areas of lawn - oops. As soon as it cools off a little we will be putting some grass seed down.)
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Now its moved up to being the second ugliest house on the street!! :-P

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Somebody turned 30 today!

Cute then.


And still cute now.

Happy Birthday!
Love you.
xx

Saturday, September 12, 2009

I ♥ paint!

I continue to be amazed by the transforming ability of paint. Just a few coats can turn something ugly into something much more attractive!

In the hallway upstairs there is a cabinet that I think is supposed to be a linen closet. Like all the other wood in our house it was a yellowed oak.

We had painted the upstairs hallway and hung some frames but we just weren't feeling the look of the cabinet.

Then I got the idea to paint it. Because we're boring and love black we still had paint left over from when we painted the powder room vanity we decided to paint it black.

Here it is with the doors removed and the outside primed. Initially I had planned on only painting the outside but the inside is part wall and part particle board so I decided to paint it too.

After priming, 2 coats of paint and a coat of varnish it went from yellowed oak to snazzy black!

Josh and I have been collecting Pearl Jam concert posters for years so we have quite a collection sitting in art folders - its nice to finally get them out of storage and incorporate them into our decor!

You can't really tell in the photo below but I used leftover light blue paint from the living room for the inside of the cabinet - I thought it would look nice with our white towels.
You might be thinking that white is a very impractical color choice but really its great because it goes with everything and is easy to bleach. And it gives our bathroom a bit more of a hotel-ish vibe :-)



(Did you guess from the multiples of deodorant and toothpaste that we shop at Costco?)


On the left wall are some framed photos of our siblings through the years.
Here's a closeup of one side:

And here are the others:

(I just love that one of my brothers when they were little - I especially love how baby Shaun is bigger than 3 year old Andrew!)

The best part of this project is the cost. We already had the paint so we only had to buy hinges and knobs so the project cost us about $11!!!
Bit by bit we are eradicating the oak in this house! :-)