Christmastime!

My lovely dear coworker was playing Christmas music the other day!  I usually try to refrain until at least the day immediately following Thanksgiving but considering the late nights and stress our office has been under I couldn't begrudge her this indulgence nor maintain the willpower to fight it.  It's Christmastime! It's so exciting it should just be one word.  The tree lots are being set up and my family and I are planning to rekindle an old family tradition and go cut down trees this year and I can't wait.

This will be my third Christmas in my house and each year I get a little better at decorating and making it feel like the holidays even though most of my holiday time is spent over at the parents house wit the siblings, cousins and grandma.  So since, the music has begun I clearly spent some time diving down the Pinterest rabbit hole to get some ideas for my front porch and mantle for the holidays.  Here's my current frontrunner, but check out the Curls Curves, and Sass Pinterest Board for lots of thoughts - ranging from super ambitious to I already have everything to do that.

Jingle bells, jingle bells....

Bedside Tables

This project was inspired by the many many Pinterest projects I found that took an old suitcase and turned it into a side table or an end table. There are countless iterations of this project and I'm not convinced that I approached this in the easiest of ways but I'm still happy with it in the end.

I eventually found my suitcase on ebay and used the pre-fab table legs from Home Depot.  I overestimated how high I wanted the table originally and so sawed them shorter.  In the end I used the other pieces on my coffee table that was shown in an earlier post.

I don't have pictures of the inside but on the inside for stability I used a piece of left over masonite that the legs will attach into and reinforcing the bottom of the suitcase. Then, using 4 table top leg plates, attached my 4 legs.  I was still in experimental mode or I would have painted them first but I wasn't sure so I ended up getting them attached and painting them afterwards - no worse for the wear.

I'm pretty happy with the end result though think there may be an easier way to build the second one for the other side (if I ever do)

The first bean

Today I spotted my first string bean!

Happy Sunday

I'm on my own thus weekend my "crew" is all off on different vacations or studying so this weekend it's just me.

Yesterday I spent with my mom and some family friends walking, eating,and farmer's  marketing. 

In addition, I have now tried two of my pins from Pinterest!  The first was the one about using coconut oil as an after shower moisturizer - which was seemingly a success. Although this morning when I started gardening in the heat, and sweat combined with coconut I smelled delicious and was incredibly slippery. Problem? You decide. 

This morning I made myself a delicious breakfast and soaked in some vitamin D

Then after sweating and slipping through some gardening I tried Pinterest project #2. It is a project that says if you plant the ends of lettuce they will grow again. So I used the ends from the market yesterday and put them in my veggie planter...

Ill keep you posted on progress...hooray for Pinterest!

New Door!

Being a new homeowner is full of learning opportunities on a daily basis.  All those great times in apartment life when you can call the landlord are out the window as it dawns on you that you are in fact the landlord...oy.

I recently went through what turned out to be a two month process of ordering a new front door!  While all the steps were actually really smooth my dear house of 1912 doesn't like to make anything simple.  It was discovered that the front door is definitely wider than a standard front door therefore resulting in a special order which took 7 weeks!

But this journey has, hopefully, come to an end yesterday when I finally got the new door installed! I only documented the end result which I now regret because about three hours into a 6 hour process I had a moment of panic.  I looked over and there was plaster all over the floor, gaping holes, exposed inside walls and ripped frame on the outside!  I'm not sure what I thought would happen but it was more shocking than I thought.  I decided to do some deep breathing that my sister had taught me, trust the very capable quirky installer toiling away and have some faith.  In this case it was rewarded!

Ta da!  I now have a front door that does not put myself and my home on display which I'm sure the neighborhood appreciates because I still maintain my opinion that a person should not have to wear clothes in their own home!