At this point in my short blogging life, I have uploaded over 1,400 pictures to this thing. With nearly 200 posts, I’m beginning to forget what I’ve written about, what I’ve photographed and what pictures never actually made it to the computer. Yes, my memory cards are currently housing something like 8,000 pictures. I’ve heard many people who maintain blogs say this and I shall repeat, the picture part is the most time consuming. For every one picture you need to post, you take like 10-15 and choose the best one.

Since I am a weekend warrior, sometimes I am so inspired on Saturdays that I take a million pictures and think of a million blog topics. Then Monday hits, as well as “real life” and sometimes I just don’t have the energy and can’t even remember what I was planning to say. The short summary to all of this rambling? Sometimes my projects fall through the cracks.

Back in March/April when we were working on the office full steam, I took on a little project that I forgot to tell you about. It involves this guy.

Yes there are two different sizes of gumballs in there. When we replenished the stash we bought the wrong size. Whoops. But anyway, we received this amazing gift from Mike’s brother and his wife about 5 years ago. We love the the novelty and unexpectedness of it. I have always adored gumball machines, especially the giant one from Family Double Dare in the early 90s. Remember? No? It’s okay I found a picture!

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Everytime I see Mark Somers on the Food Network it just feels wrong. Also in the 90s, way back when I was in elementary school, I remember seeing a girl who was dressed as a gumball machine for Halloween. I was so jealous because it was obviously the coolest costume out there. It looked like this, but with balloons for gumballs…

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Some girls aspire to wear lingerie and animal ears, I aim for a garbage bag and a sheet. I think that explains a lot…

While we loved our gumball machine, we thought that it was time to give him a makeover. So I (very nervously) disassembled him.

Taped off his important parts…

Then I sprayed him. I sprayed him bright green…

I understand that he is likely not food safe at this point. We never really ate the gumballs from him anyway. I imagined a green machine with bright white gumballs. He took a while to dry and when I removed the tape, I discovered a little mishap.

My taping missed a few spots around the metal (the red on the plastic piece where the gum comes out is actually printed there). I planned to touch this up with some acrylic paint in the closest match possible. I knew I could never spray it any closer than I did!

It seemed genius, perfect. And then I put it in the office.

Not so bad, but then I stepped away.

And away some more.

Then Mike and I declared this project a flop. Maybe not a full and complete flop, but we don’t like it. The green is too John Deere, which is funny because they sell John Deere spray paint and I purposely avoided it. With the addition of our white chairs, we decided another pop of white in this little corner would be perfect. Actually I think I sprayed this the same day we bought our chairs, so yes, it took me nearly 4 months to post my failure. Not because I was keeping it secret, but because I wanted to report on a final product before posting.

I bought some high gloss white spray paint soon after this mishap, but then life got crazy and the last few months have been a blur of coffee, textbooks and Pinterest. The office still looks exactly as it did in the pictures above, but maybe I need to conquer a small project to satisfy my painting itch. Can of white spray paint? I’m coming for you.

That is of course, after I pull the 4 foot weed in my front yard. Yes neighbors, we still live here….

…Wait do my neighbors read this? Hello, is that you guys? Yes, this IS why I stand in the yard with a camera and run away when you spot me!

This weekend was uncharacteristically cool with temperatures in the 70s or so both days. I wanted to give the house a good spring cleaning (yes I know, it’s nearly summer) and my closet needed to be organized. But we couldn’t resist the chance to work outside without sweating or getting sunburn, so we decided to tackle a project on our outdoor to-do list. Mike put in his vote for staining the stairs that lead to our patio.

We started later than planned on Saturday since we had some errands to run and we were trying to decide what project to tackle. Once we decided to stain the stairs, we figured we just go to Benjamin Moore (which just happens to be around the corner from our house) to get Pottery Barn’s Chesapeake Brown stain. This is the color of our outdoor furniture and once we saw that they sold the color at Benjamin Moore, we figured it would be an easy choice. We went to our local Benjamin Moore store and they didn’t carry their own brand of stain! We debated whether or not to go to another Benjamin Moore, but we figured since it was already noon we’d just head back to Lowe’s (we had already been over there) and choose a dark stain. Our furniture is a dark brown so we figured it wouldn’t be too hard to get something similar.

We ended up choosing Cabot Semi-Solid Deck Stain in Cordovan Brown. It was literally the darkest color Lowe’s had and it had to be mixed. I took a before picture, but I apparently butchered some settings on the camera when I did so the picture looks like a trippy x-ray. But here’s the can while we were using it 🙂

We have never stained anything before and didn’t know anything about the products. We chose something that said it was meant for the outdoors and then basically went for a color. However, this stuff stunk and I was not a fan of that.

We had to clean off the stairs first, since they were covered in some dirt from the patio process. I used a scrubby brush we bought for our laundry room floor that we haven’t used yet.

Who’s that 14 year old boy?? No wait, that’s just me… wearing a men’s shirt and a hat. I just got my hair cut last week and it’s in that too-short-for-ponytail phase, so I needed the hat to keep it out of the stain.

We had some plans Saturday night, so we were only able to tackle the outside and railing/spindles. We saved the areas we had to walk on for last so that we could get up and down the stairs for as long as possible.

I also suffered from several splinters in my…pants. Sitting like this and scooting around made me jump out of my seat several times. Luckily my pants were thick enough to protect from serious injury and/or death 🙂

We had to stop for the night around 5 and when I got out of the shower the stairs looked like this…

Yes, it started raining on our hard work minutes after we stopped. Thankfully, it didn’t ruin anything or cause stain to run all over our patio. But can I just say that the weather is a jerk?? This has been happening to us for weeks. I specifically checked the weather and wanted to stain on Saturday because it was supposed to be dry, while Sunday was supposed to have thunderstorms. But of course, Sunday was dry…

Day 2 began the staining of the walkable areas. We started earlier because, you know, I was waiting for those afternoon thunderstorms that never came.

The large, deck portion was a breeze. I thought because it had the greatest area it would be hard, but it went so fast and was pretty fun to do.

The steps were not so fun and took much longer. There were so many pieces of wood and edges hugging the house that it took some attention to detail.

By early afternoon yesterday, we were all done and just waiting for it to dry!

I went outside today to check on the drying process. It was dry to the touch, but I was a little disappointed to see that there was some obvious unevenness. We didn’t wipe off the excess stain, mostly because we wanted it to be dark and because I was putting on thin coats and essentially dry brushing the heck out of it. Mike did most of the outside parts and he put his stain on thicker. So some spots I assumed were wet are actually permanently shiny. I noticed the thicker stain on Saturday and tried to wipe and dry brush the areas out, but it was too late 🙁

I’m planning on sanding down these super shiny areas and re-staining them to look a little more rustic like the other parts. Rookie lesson learned- make sure you’re both using the same staining method when working in a team 🙂 No big deal, you live and you learn.

psst- I’m linking this post up to Thrifty Decor Chick’s Before & After Party today 🙂

Tomorrow marks one year since we closed on the house! To say this snuck up on us would be an understatement, especially since I think I just realized this last week. It has been a better year than we ever could have asked for and thankfully, half of it is chronicled on this blog. The other half? Lives on my iPhone. It is amazing how much of the past 2 years of my life is documented on my phone. I have around 1,500 pictures and take nearly one a day.

So I’ve decided to show you the first few weeks of our homeownership, through the lens of my iPhone. Please excuse the poor quality as I reminisce 🙂

What the exterior looked like when we closed on Tuesday, March 30 2010

That Friday we had the wainscoting installed in our living and dining rooms

After our fridge was delivered and we managed to squeeze our table out of storage, the kitchen began to look more like home

We had painters scheduled for the Monday after we closed, so we didn’t have too much time to agonize over paint colors

Some words of wisdom on the morning the painters arrived, courtesy of a Ssips juice box. This place has given me millions of mind stretching opportunities!

The two story entryway painting in progress, we could have never, ever done this ourselves! In fact, that ugly light is still hanging until we hire someone to change it!

The hallway in progress

The nerve-racking process of waiting for paint to dry to see the true color

And waiting some more…

Bet you never noticed that our ceilings are painted a very light gray! This is the only picture where it’s noticeable. We just wanted to take away some of the starkness of the builder white.

The hallway between the entryway and kitchen was originally blue. After seeing it, we asked them to repaint these walls the same light taupe as the entryway.

The moment the kitchen turned blue! (see that the dining room back there is still white?)

Blue family room and a newly delivered entertainment center

After the dining room was painted, we headed to Ikea later that week to purchase our Stornas table… but the color we wanted was discontinued and out of stock. This picture is from our 8pm trip to Brooklyn to get one of the last tables in the tri-state area.

But it was so worth the trip!

Maybe it was our pot of gold? This rainbow was over the entrance to our neighborhood in early April of last year.

Pretty grass! The builder laid our sod a couple of weeks after closing, when it was a little warmer.

However, we still hadn’t moved ourselves in. Our mini-family was still squeezing on a full sized bed at Mike’s parent’s place. We saved the best part of the house for last…

In mid-April, we moved the kittens in. This is Mowie about 10 seconds after we let her out of her carrier, she loved it immediately.

While Macky and Darwin snuggled behind the couch for a few hours

But pretty soon, they were enjoying the finer parts of the house

And everything seemed right in the world (and the yard!)

Happy day you become ours, little house.

Waaaay back in January, we visited the Crate & Barrel outlet and finally purchased something(s) I’ve wanted for about a year. We scored these bookends for 30% off the original price.

I have always loved the wooden chunkiness of these guys. I love the ampersand and I actually handwrite it often. The “@” symbol has become a little part of me since I started this blog. I comment on other blogs and use it as part of my name multiple times per day. Throw in the discounted price and I felt like we could finally take the plunge…the only problem was where to put them.

I’ve shared our original office plans before, which included built-in cabinets in a dark stain. We have since obviously decided to go with a black/gray/white/green color scheme that the bookends did not fit in with. I thought maybe we could put these in our bedroom or on our dark wood entertainment center in the family room, but at the end of the day they felt much more office appropriate.

The solution? Spray paint them white.

I know, it hurts. I love the wood grain in these possibly more than anyone. My rustic loving self is still shaking this one off. But at the end of the day, the symbols were the right fit for the office. I’d rather have white symbols than no symbols. So yesterday, despite 20 mph winds, I managed to get outside to do some spray painting. Scratch that, I decided to spray paint in the garage. No worries, I left the doors open of course, I just needed some barrier from the wind.

I used the same box that I used to spray paint my Pier 1 star basket at Christmastime, how is that for thrifty? 🙂

After a quick coat, I was feeling much better about my decision.

It was a little tricky to get in all of the nooks and cranies of these things, but all it took was one coat and a round of touch ups and we were good to go!

They are definitely different than they were before, but I love the crisp modern vibe that the white gives off.

I love the contrast between the shelves and the symbols and how they add that pop of white we’ve wanted to have in this room. Once we add the other white items we have planned, as well as some actual books to the shelves, I know they are going to look great!

ps- I did use my green spray paint this weekend, but the verdict of that project is still pending…

Since the weather this weekend is supposed to be this…

I’m hoping to finally get outside to play with this…

And even some of this…

I bought this spray paint a while ago, but because of cold, rain and being busy, I haven’t had a chance to use it. I’m hoping to spray some office accessories this weekend, as long as the weather cooperates. I would tell you what I’m spraying, but I am slightly nervous to take my beautifully traditional things and make them funky with glossy green spray paint. It is either going to be a brilliant idea or a complete disaster.

Good thing I have this blog to publicly humiliate myself if this doesn’t work out, but I have a feeling I’ll be just fine 🙂