time to eat, larry?

This past weekend, I finally finally FINALLY finished painting our kitchen. A small feat for some, but it took me awhile. 3 days to be exact. OK, not an entire three days. Just Friday night, plus Saturday and Sunday from about 10am-3pm. Alright. I watched a couple episodes of House Hunters on HGTV while I was painting. And Chopped. Busted. Now, everything is painted the same color! Even the phone jack. We don't have a land line, so this jack has been completely useless to us thus far. I can't hang my Droid up on it, as you see here. And we don't have an actual phone number, so even if I plug in my phone purse, I can't dial anyone to tell them I'm talking to them over a purse. Why else would I have a phone purse? Sheesh.
 Dilemma, dilemma, what to do. Finally, I thought of a solution. Cover it with a painting! But, I didn't have a painting. So, I made one! I had a tiny little canvas leftover from a project that never was, along with the brilliant idea to use some of my cheap-o acrylic paints. Squeeze, squeeze goes the paint, and voila! Instant phone jack hider-overer cover thing. After the globs of paint dried, I decided to give it a coat of  Mod Podge to seal it all up. I ran into a slight problem though. I was hungry. And my glob painting turned into this <--

It's all good though.  As soon as I make a frame for the hungry painting, it'll go right up on the wall over the phone jack.  I still wish I could call people from the phone purse, though. Our opossum Larry would be proud. He's always hungry, seeing as that he lives in our trashcan. Larry and I have a lot in common. I like to curl up in that position, too. Just not on rancid chicken bones. That's where we differ. 

UPDATE: Larry was set free this past Tuesday! After carefully dumping him pouring him from the trashcan into a have-a-heart trap, we loaded him up into Lou's truck bed for his little journey.  I tried giving him a carrot, but he was angry and peed all over the place.

sicky pants projects.

Since Tuesday, I've been battling the dreaded post-New Years cold.  You know, the one where friends ask you to sample their different beers, and you nonchalantly comply.  I tried to pretend that I was winning the battle with the cold on Tuesday and Wednesday, but Thursday through Saturday, my body was all like NO.  Yesterday, in between taking naps and drinking tea, I completed a little craft project. 

Back story! Since Lou and I have started traveling, we've always manage to pick up different coffees from wherever we go.  About a year ago, I framed the collection of bags in picture frames that I got from Ikea.  You know, those ones that you get 3 for like a dollar and they're name is Jguurgnsflarvun. I sanded and stained them, inserted the trimmed bags and hung them up on the wall underneath the shelf Lou made.  It looked OK, but the stain was way lighter than the shelf.  It just bothered me.  Flash forward to Saturday!

I gave the frames a facelift by gluing the extra mosaic tiles from the back splash onto them.  It took awhile (since my mind was drifting here and there, and I frequently got uncomfortable and took more Tylenol Severe Cold and Flu), but by the time I was finished, we had a brand new set of frames!  Cost: NOTHING!  That's the best part!

Yes, there's a Starbucks in there. I traveled down the street to get it.

the kitchen.

I'm glad I took a break from writing in between last night and today.  I was a little out of it, and I promptly fell asleep on the couch watching a show on Russia.  I'm afraid my writing didn't reach it's usual witty potential.  I plan to make up for that with my kitchen post.

hell no.

First, let me start out with a picture of what the kitchen looked like before Lou moved in.  Oh... hell no.  When I see that much wood and wallpaper, I think Cracker Barrel.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.  Those little games they have are awesome, and don't get me started on how tasty the menu is. After Lou and his bro moved in, they replaced the counter tops, dishwasher and refrigerator.  They took down the wood craziness above and under the cabinets, de-wooded the wall next to the fridge, and painted.

NO!

Flash forward to 2011.  The kitchen still needed a little help.  The tiled back splash was... well...  not installed properly.  All of the seems (next to the counter and the cabinets) were grouted.  A big no-no.  You caulk those seems to allow for expansion/contraction.  Since the person grouted them, the tiles began to crack and break.  Which showed that they tiled over wallpaper.  WHO DOES THAT?!  The tile had to go.  I told Lou that I'd give him a proposition and a budget showing that I could re-tile the backsplash into something special.  Skeptical at first maybe, but once he saw my research, drawings and spreadsheet... he caved agreed.

love notes on the backerboard. 

I was perusing Ebay and Googling Mexican Talavera Tiles when Lou suggested that we look into pricing glass tiles.  Nothing against glass tiles, but most tiles I saw were plain and uninspired. So, I decided to Google "colorful glass tile backsplash" and most of the images came from a company called Susan Jablon Mosaics, located up in Binghampton, NY.  Ah... the colors, the colors!!!  After choosing several 1/4 sheet samples, we locked into ordering our favorite: Aurora Blend.  We started demoing the kitchen in September, and after months of work (on and off and on and off and...)  we FINALLY finished, at 12:15am on the morning on Friday, December 2nd.**  We still have a little more to paint, but there's no rush on that.  After we finished the tile work, we vowed not to do anything else until after the holidays.  We're going to install under cabinet lighting, some extra storage drawers in the bottom cabinets, and finish painting in the coming months.  I'm just waiting for a snowy weekend to do it.

**WHY would I stay up that late to work on the kitchen?  Because on December 2nd, we were hosting Lou's 40th birthday party.  Our last weeks of working on the kitchen were that of a marathon pace.  After ripping out the stove and range hood, we finished up all the hardibacker, installed the range hood, cleaned profusely, repaired the walls, primed the bare drywall, taped the seams and started tiling.  Tiling took FOREVER.  We had to do a couple repairs for tiles that didn't adhere correctly. We had to wait 24-48 hours after tiling to grout.  Then another day before the caulk.  Finally, the oven went in.  You don't realize how much you miss an oven until you don't have one to cook on for three weeks.  You are correct in assuming that I didn't do s*** the rest of that weekend.

if at first you don't succeed, take a nap. then try again.

First off, I'd like to explain my cryptic brain rant that I said I would update 'tomorrow'. Unfortunately, tomorrow is now 6 days from tomorrow.  Wait... 6 days from then.  From the last post.  This post isn't clearing anything up so far. Let's try again.

FAIL

Last Wednesday night I decided to start tiling the back splash in our kitchen.  My goal was just to do the tiling behind our now non-existent stove. It took me about 3 hours to do it, but I did get it done.  Not as successfully as I'd like to, though.  All in all, about 43 tiles fell off the wall due to, A: bad tiling advice and B: bad mortar application.  After feeling sorry for myself and developing a migraine, I struck back.  I used my Dremmel tool to grind out the dried mortar and I hand applied the missing tiles to the wall.  Lou and I got an additional 8 square feet done tonight. I can't wait to get our project done, and to cook something on our new stove!

SUCCESS

I also got ALL ALL of the squares done for the quilt!  That's right.  I finished all 224 squares... THEY'RE ALL DONE.  I finished sewing the last of the squares on Friday night, and I just trimmed them all up last night.  I'm really excited that I accomplished this much so far.  Now, I'm ready to start sewing the rows and columns.  Pretty soon, it will start looking like a real quilt!  It's going to be such a fun winter project!

4 new wine bags, 224 squares!

A friend of mine (and also my former landlord) ((and also the nicest landlord I've ever had)) asked me if I could make her some wine bags for the holiday season coming up!  I'm really proud that I started cutting them out and sewing them together on Friday night.  I'm hoping that I can complete them tomorrow, and maybe bring them to her sometime this weekend.  

The reason why I was trying to get all of these things done before the weekend, was because I traveled down Washington DC!  It was a lot of fun.  We had great weather, we saw a ton of things around town (both by foot and by bike!) and ate amazing food.  I wish I had more time to browse around the museums and national monuments. I feel like I just was beginning to scratch the surface of the city, then all of the sudden it's time to leave and board the train going back home! I picked up a new book as well, and I'm hoping that I can incorporate some of it's philosophy into future blog posts!  

Well, that's an awfully long post, so I'll end it at this. You can do anything you put your mind to.  Especially when you have coffee.