A short story about stupid baskets

Our beautifully finished Terry-built shelving unit had to have just the right baskets; ones that were cohesive with the look and feel of the bathroom, and ones that came in a semi-uncommon size.  Go figure. 

 

Fortunately, we found a set of 4 baskets on one of our trips to Lowes that were roughly the right dimensions, so we gave it a shot to see if it worked.  Our opinion is that we can always return it.

So home they came, and instantly we knew we loved them with how well they matched the vanity top.  One small problem: They were Juuuuust a little too wide.  They fit in the cubbies, but they would rub against the sides every time we pulled them in and out each day.  

Solution: I snipped the top edging off of the each of the baskets. 30-minute Sunday morning project to jumpstart the day: Absolutely!

Clearly it didn't leave the most beautiful looking top to the baskets, but it was still firmly supported, and we knew that there would be basket covers over the edging anyway, so really it didn't matter!

Now they're completely a perfect fit, for the room and for the space in the shelving.  Win-Win!!  So happy!
Sidenote: Terry is still finding snippets of small cuts from the top of the baskets on the floor.  With his bare feet.  Suppose I should have swept afterwards.  Oops oh well :-)

Paint touchups gone horribly wrong

This was my blunder this past weekend.  Luckily it wasn't an enormous waste of time, but in the heat of the moment, it certainly was, well, a mess. 

Our master bathroom needed a few touch-ups on the paint, and not thinking much of it, I went out to the garage to grab the paint . As you may or may not recall, we ended up having to paint the bathroom twice, so I went back to check with Terry as to which paint we ended up with.  He said, Gravity, I went and grabbed it, and away I went. 

Just in case it's hard for you to see from the untouched photo above, I changed the exposures and pointed out my chaos.  For those other paint pros out there, you know as well as I do that wet paint is not the same color on the wall as dry paint.  I could clearly see that it looked different, but I just assumed it was going to dry to normal. Then on the edges that were drying faster, I could clearly see by sheen and by color....this was a no go.  I grabbed Terry to voice my confusion, and before he could get back to see it himself, he yelled, "AWW **Expletive**, Gravity was in the bedroom!"  Mind you at this point, there were splotches like this on every wall. Every. Wall.

Just for reference, this is the actual correct paint (with exposure changed again so you can see it better) of the "correct" paint while it was still wet.  So no one can call me crazy or say that I should have seen it right from the start. 

So with the CORRECT color in tow, and another hour of my audiobook, the master bathroom is all fixed, both in paint color and touch-ups.  Yay for being almost finished with paint in the house!!!  Only the hallway and the hall bath to go, and No. More. Paint!!!

Master Bath Shelving Completed!

So here's where we left off with the shelves almost completed. 
Better yet, here's a walk down memory lane:

Starting day of Demolition

 Mid-Day 1 Demo

 Mid-way through Renovation

 Prepping the space for the shelving unit needing to be built

 Shelving unit built (I unintentionally caught Terry in the shower door reflection off the mirror...always makes me laugh later)

 After we were certain it was going to fit properly and sit securely in the space, we took it back out and painted it. And then put it back in again to still make sure it fit. One can never be too careful with home improvements ;-)

For the final phase, Terry wanted to build a an edging along the end to hide the seams between where the shelves and the tiling met.  It would give it a nice clean finish. Terry got to buy another new tool that I actually knew about from my frequenting of younghouselove.com...a Kreg Jig Drill!  So in the picture below, see how the newly installed trim is seemless?

This handy little guy allows you to drill holes at the proper angle depending on the thickness of the piece of wood you're drilling into.  

 Terry in action. 

 Holes are in.

The holes then allow you to put in screws to the adjoining piece of wood.  When all is complete, the drill holes will be faced to the back, and the seamless front is out to smile.

Finished product!!!  It's even more beautiful in person.  Terry seriously WOW'ed me with his carpenter skills.  We allocated the top shelf for extra towels and washcloths, then three cubes for hair/beauty/man products that conveniently will be stored in baskets that match beautifully with the vanity counter-top, and the bottom shelf will store extra rolls of toilet paper and bars of soap. 

You like?? 
FYI: We're looking for some art to pop a bit of color in the space but are still finding the right inspiration.  Will post when we find the perfect fit!  Also, prepare for a super boring post about the wooden baskets we found for the shelves.

Valentines 2012

Terry planned an absolutely stunning meal for Valentines Day even though I told him again and again that we didn't need to do anything fancy.  There's been some serious family illness back home, so my head was just not in the romantical/food-oriented mode that it should have been yesterday.  At one point, I think Terry may have even had suspicions that I was sabotaging his meal.  Crazy pants talk I tell ya!! (My head was just in Delaware and not focused on the actual quantity of scallops I was purchasing in the grocery store.  Oops.)

We started with a super simple salad.  Mixed Greens, onions, goat cheese, balsamic dressing, and cracked pepper.  His also had cucumber, radishes, candied walnuts...ummm, and something else I didn't like, can't remember.

 

 I love this picture of the Blood Orange.  They are so pretty inside, and their smell is the cross between and orange and a grapefruit.  I'd never dream of biting into one....blech!....but I wonder if it tastes like it smells.  Anyway, I had to juice 10 of this puppies for the blood orange gastrique that Terry made for the main course. 

Another fun newbie for our kitchen: Spaghetti Squash.  I chopped them in half (which by the way, do not be fooled by them; they are a tyrant to slice apart), gutted the seeds out, and steam-baked them for an hour.  Then you could easily run a fork through them and it pulls apart to look like spaghetti.  And it's delicious! 

But enough already....the main course: Seared Scallops and Shrimp (shrimp courtesy of our freezer and my flub at the grocery store) on a bed of sauteed spaghetti squash tossed with parsley, basil, and shitaake mushrooms, crispy baked prosciutto crumbles, and a blood orange gastrique. And no, that picture has not been manipulated folks!  We paired a wine we got from our very first trip to Napa with the meal; a 2007 Chimney Rock Elevage Blanc.

As if it could get any better, we digested a bit, then pulled out these store bought cupcakes.  To both our surprise however, there was a red velvet layer and a whipped cream layer, but there was this magical creamy fluffy vanilla bean layer of goodness as well that was a cross between a cake and a mousse.  I may have eaten all of mine in three non-breathing gulps.  And I might go back and buy them again for tonight, but don't tell; I don't know if I'm going to share yet. ;-)

Can you guess who got which card?  Such a toss-up, right?! 

 

Finally, since he always buys me gorgeous bouquets of flowers who are we kidding he buys them for himself and I'm his excuse, I thought I better get him a bouquet this year.  And so I did.  And it's beautiful.  And he loved it.  Win-Win.

A lovely Valentines indeed.

 

5K Run For Our Beads

This past Saturday was a site to be seen!  Terry (!!!) and I ran a 5K in 17 degree weather! Soulard is the part of St Louis known for it's Mardi Gras Celebration, and in honor of the upcoming Mardi Gras, they had this 5K and the Taste of Soulard.

Contrary to my Mom's belief that we ran a marathon, it was in fact only 3.1 miles.  But it was Terry's first 5K ever, and in his words "My first and clearly my last". When I asked if he'd run it with me, I was expecting complete refusal, but to my surprise and happiness, he said sure!  So happy that he ran it with me. Certainly love that big grouchy bear!!!!!

 

UPDATE:  Photo posted on the race results page. Yah honey!!

The Master Bedroom...among other rooms I've never showed you

Holy smokes I have never, not one singular time, EVER posted a picture of our bedroom.  Well, "OUR" bedroom being the one that we live and sleep in every night, since the picture below is of the house when we did our first walk-through....but that is NOT our styling.  Sheesh! 

After writing up my post yesterday about our front corner room that I assumed I'd written about at least once in 2 years time, call me flustered when I looked and realized I'd never once posted about our master bedroom.  And I even hinted about our room in a post from a few months back, and never wrote the next post up!!! (someone needs to call me out on things like this)

Without further adieu, I'd like to introduce you to our bedroom:

Again for reference,

This was the second disaster color option room for the house....that sadly stayed that way for far too long in an attempt for us to have time trying to fall in love.  The problem with this color: (maybe we can see a common theme from last post) Moody. I liked it a lot at night.  It was a darker shade of blue, almost with a hint of gray in it.  In the daylight, it looked like we were living in Nantucket.  Not that there's anything wrong with Nantucket.....it was just the wrong color for our bedroom.  It was a color for the exterior of a getaway home, and not for the interior of the room we sleep in every night.

Again sorry with the photo ops here. This was taken in 2009, when we still had our room cleared out and were temporarily sleeping in the front corner room to paint.  The one thing I have learned most is to take good before photos.  I'm trying.....

On for almost two years we went, trying to love that room.  Loving it at night. Hating it when we woke up each morning.  We waited until we decided on our color for the Master Bathroom, and then chose a shade to compliment while still being a bit different.  We chose Gravity from Valspar.

The weekend I drove with Sarah to the East Coast and attended Rachels Wedding, Terry was uber productive (and sneaky...it was a complete surprise) and painted the entire room along with working on the bathroom. 
We changed out all of the trim in the room and painted it bright white for contrast.  We also swapped out the blinds to a faux-wood thick slat shade.  It works wonders on keeping the sun out in the morning and keeping peering eyes from looking in at night.

 All thats left is some art for the walls, and a new ceiling fan (which we have in the box, just need to install).  I'm trying to decide whether or not to paint the metal around the mirror sliding doors for the closet to a brushed nickel with some Rustoleum spray paint, but I'm nervous.  Tell me to stop being nervous!!!!

Front Corner Room: From Start to (Almost) Finished

With documenting all of our house remodeling over the past few years, I have come to just assume that at some point I have put up pictures, or discussed each of the rooms in our house AT LEAST ONCE.  Turns out, not the case.  For a few rooms! Sheesh!  So, let me introduce you to our Front Corner Room.  This so happens to be the room we are working on most diligently at the moment, and as I was attempting to reference back to an older post I had assumed at some point I had written, it slapped me in the face that I've never brought her up. And yes, it's a her, she's a feminine room, you'll see.
For reference, this is the room I've neglected.  Well, and I've neglected the office too. But that's for another day (and a few weeks of finishing touches still). Update: Seriously, I've still never put up pictures of our Master Bedroom other than when we saw it while looking for houses?!?!  Why has no one called me out on this?!?!

This is the front corner room on the day we went and viewed the house.  YIKES!

This was the first room we attempted to paint in our "brand new, all ours, we can paint it whatever we want!" home.  The walls were blinding us though which is the main reason we started there.

Again, can you believe we bought this house looking like this?!?! YIKES

The color we opted for: Green! So here's the thing...I'm a little embarrassed by this too....I loved this color at first.  It was bold, it was opinionated, it was just what I thought our old house needed to kick-start it to a 20-30year olds lifestyle and vision.

But boy was I wrong!  That color started growing on me like a bad weed in the flower-bed.  Instead of being opinionated, it was just moody.  In the night, it had one personality, and in the daylight, it was like we were in a different room. (Hard to tell between the two pictures with night and day, but can't go back and re-snap from 2 years ago.  My bad). 

We lived with it that way for embarrassingly over two years.We never hung art.  We didn't decorate or style.  I was stuck in a rut because I didn't want to admit defeat and repaint, but I didn't know how to make it any better.
We put it off and ended up painting (and repainting.....if you haven't figured it out yet, picking paint colors was not still isn't fully our natural talent in life) several other rooms and started to learn what color scheme we like most and what we feel works best in our house.
The past two weekends, we hunkered down, primed back to white again, and then after much deliberation, chose our new color and jumped. 

After much deliberation (and many swatches on the wall, we were set to buy a gallon of the lighter shade on the wall from the pictures above.  Luckily for us, Jordan gave some insight that it may read too close a shade to the carpet.  Ultimately though we felt that the darker shade was just going to verge on too dark or MOODY again and No One Wants That!, so we got to Lowes, found a color in between, and purchased. 
The panic set in while checking out at the register, and didn't let up until we got it up on the wall. 

And now I'm officially in love....for good....because I'm not painting that room again....period! I'm Serious!

So all that is left now is touchups (ugh, I walked around the room a few nights ago, and there are so many spots I missed or didn't get enough coverage on that I'm nervous I'm going to have to go buy an extra quart to have enough) and putting in the white trim, conveniently missing in the picture above. Hopefully it will add a nice contrast to the green and give it a nice Pop!