This morning before I left for work, I checked on my deer only to find them covered in dew. I figured that would definitely mean I would have to redo them and I was prepared to come home and tell you that there would be no deer reveal.

Well, the deer faked me out. When I got home, they looked just fine! No marks from my failed attemped to move them while they were still wet, no dew marks and you could hardly see that weird stain seepage I mentioned yesterday. I was all set to sand them this weekend, but I think they’ll do just fine 🙂

I stuck them on the entryway table to take pictures, but I liked them there since the table has been lacking in the accessories department for months. I decided to add books that represented both my and Mike’s websites… so we have decorating and lyrics 🙂

I decided to angle the books rather than put them flush against the wall. They just looked better that way.

Who knows if they’ll stay here once we finish up the entryway and finally find a white lampshade. I think it would be fun to spray them an interesting color someday (ala Antonio from Design Star’s pink geese), but I’m liking my new display so far 🙂

Since I was standing in front of a mirror and I promised to try to include more pictures of myself, I couldn’t resist.

Sorry guys, I really tried to take myself seriously, but it didn’t happen. I mean, I was standing in front of a mirror with a camera… what is this 2005? Plus the mirror has a smudge. And I’m wearing the shirt I sleep in. It’s the thought that counts 🙂

Anyway, I’m in the midst of another entryway project so I’m keeping it short tonight. Hopefully I’ll finish it this year this week…

Update: here is the before picture of the deer again, so you don’t have to click back to the previous post 🙂

Yesterday, Mike spotted this in our backyard…

I love our random deer sightings. It’s amazing how well they camouflage themselves and I’m sure they’re out there more than we realize. Mike and I grew up in a more congested area (we’re from the same town) and deer sightings were rare and always exciting. I love having furry, speckled butt neighbors 🙂

I love them so much that when my mother in law was getting rid of these bookends, I decided to take them.

They belonged to Mike’s grandmother and are apparently decades old. But you know what? The oldies are coming back. I figured with a little white, high gloss spray paint these would look like they came straight out of West Elm.

But first, I couldn’t resist doing this.

Yes, I tried to recreate the live deer scene. However, the bookend version was way smaller than I anticipated. But maybe Deer can be our version of the Travelocity gnome and just pop up in random places?

If my neighbors didn’t already know about this blog (yes, secret’s out… hey guys!), then I would have felt weird. But I obviously have no shame and put inanimate objects in my weeds for entertainment purposes.

After I was done gnoming, it was time to get down to business.

I often spray paint in the garage, but all of our outdoor furniture (including a table, 6 chairs, a bench, 2 umbrellas and a fire pit) are still taking hurricane shelter in there. So I decided to use this old Pottery Barn box and spray them in the grass.

I used the short and quick spray method. I confess that I am normally rather impatient and just hold the trigger down, 3 inches away from the object (12 is the recommended) and generally succeed. I didn’t want to mess these up, so I was more cautious.

They look a little more worn when spray painted (they have some cracks) but it doesn’t bother me. Here are the two of them after a first coat.

I went back outside a half hour or so later for a second coat. Even after that, this strange mark keeps popping back up. Chemical reaction or something?

I eventually lost my patience and just sprayed the hell out of it, but it kept reappearing after a minute. Weird.

I have no pictures of my second coat because after the first one, I noticed that this happened…

That is my camera. With a light dusting of spray paint. Ugh. Thankfully, the lens was spared and it just looks stupid. The wind was blowing lightly and I didn’t realize that my camera was laying in the grass, in the line of fire. Therefore, it stayed inside for the rest of the night.

However, my bookends will not be staying inside tonight. I went to pick up the Pottery Barn box to move it inside and the bookends fell over. While soaked. Then I had to use my hands to stand them back up, which not only got me messy but required touch up work. I’m hoping the tacky surface that was left isn’t noticeable, considering I just sprayed right over it. So I ended up leaving the entire box outside for the night. Don’t worry, it’s not supposed to rain. I’m actually more concered with bugs getting stuck to them…

The one time I try to spray paint properly. The one time! ::shakes fist in air:: Hopefully I’ll have true after pictures later this week…

ps- The Office wedding episode was just on and that dance scene gets me every time! Couldn’t help but stop to watch 🙂

Thank you all, once again, for your kind words for Darwin. We’re all hanging in there, just taking things one day at a time. Darwin’s been enjoying his brand new toy, Larry the Lion.

He’s currently sleeping on him 🙂 Darwin also took an interest in our therapeutic painting project.

That picture was taken with my iPhone. It’s amazing what some good light will do regardless of the camera.

We’ve spent the past few days finishing up our painting. Since we only did one coat of primer, we ended up having to do 3 coats of paint to cover up the taupe we previously had on the wall! Lesson learned, but it’s finally done 🙂

We have our entryway lamp on a timer, so that’s why there is a funny contraption in the outlet. We’ve been searching for a round, textured, chunky ottoman to stick under the table to make it more substantial looking, so that timer will someday be hidden.

We also still need to change out the gray lampshade for a white one, but we haven’t had much luck with finding one of those either!

The white we used was Olympic’s Crumb Cookie, which was the closest match to the existing trim. It is slightly less yellow, though not noticeable unless you’re me or Mike. We can’t figure out if it’s just a slight difference in finish between the different brands. Regardless, not a big deal. The baseboards in the picture above are the old paint and the wall/chair rail are the new paint.

Warning: I was completely lazy and left the mop and floor cleaner in this picture. I even saw it as I was snapping pictures but overtiredness=laziness. I didn’t feel like walking down the stairs and moving it for the sake of the picture. Whoops.

Macky thinks he’s a model. He seriously loves to photobomb.

And we forgot to put the outlet covers back on upstairs, whoops!

For the Macky fans…

I love these little mittens…even when they hit me on the way down the stairs.

I still have some touch up work to do tomorrow with the taupe. Macky thought it would be funny to rub up against the baseboards minutes after I painted them last night. Black cat + white paint = no bueno. He put himself in the tub (no seriously, he loves to play in there) and I seized the moment and gave him a wipe down before he licked himself. He thought it was funny and purred and rolled over the whole time. I wish I had pictures.

And for the fans of a good before and after? Here’s the hallway several months ago…

And today…

We cannot wait to finish up our molding and add the picture frame boxes like we have in our adjoining living room!

Then we’ll get to use our new nail gun too! 🙂

Update! Had to include a picture of Darwin sleeping with his toy, because he is just too cute 🙂

Yes, Larry the Lion is buried under his paw/face somewhere.

On Saturday, we took Darwin to a speciality vet for some extra tests on his kidneys. We found out today that he has cancer.

We were also told that he has already lost 75% of his kidney function and lost even more weight in the past 3 weeks. We thought he was getting better.

Though I know that strangers offer some of the most comforting words, I’m not ready to post about it. How could I ever express in words how much I love him? Or what it feels like when I think of losing him? I feel like I wouldn’t do him justice.

So what are a heart broken cat momma and dadda to do? Paint. In our pajamas (with gothic looking nail polish to suit my mood).

We’ve been itching to tackle the primed walls of our entryway and have had a can semi-gloss paint on hand for months. Tonight we decided to scrape our energy together and begin to complete this mess. We started with the chair rail install at the end of March.

We took a break halfway through to order some pizza AND we had it delivered. This is monumental because we’ve only done that once before- during a snowstorm. We didn’t want to have to dig out the driveway so we figured we’d order pizza, only to realize that we had to clear the walkway and porch for the guy to actually get us the pizza. So we ended up shoveling anyway and kicking ourselves for being dumb. This time it worked out as pizza deliveries should 🙂

We didn’t get to paint the upstairs hallway today, but we were able to paint the lower walls and chair rails downstairs and along the staircase in just an hour or two.

It’s so much brighter already! The paint color is Crumb Cookie by Olympic. It’s a slightly off-white with grayish undertones. We brought a piece of our trim that the builder painted to Lowe’s and had it color matched to Olympic’s no VOC paint. The Lowe’s employee was super helpful and tried a bunch of colors against the trim sample to make we had a good match. We brought home a sample just in case and checked it against our existing trim. Thankfully it matched. This all happened back in like, April when we bought the paint.

We decided to paint the walls before finishing up the picture frame portion of our molding because we figured it would be faster this way. Now once the rest of the trim is up, we can just caulk it and go over it with a brush and forgo the roller. Plus we obviously do projects in small segments, so at least we can deal with a plain white wall for a while if need be.

The painting was relaxing and much needed. It was such a small area that it didn’t feel like more of a chore than something fun. I’m very happy I peeled my watery face out of my pillow to join Mike and put a dent in this overdue project. It felt good to drop everything for a bit.

Darwin watched us for a little bit and gave us the paws up. Though he said he would have painted the walls orange…