Progress and Blue Sky

Here is a a peek at the painfully slow progress I am making tearing up the carpeting in the last bedroom. 

 

 

And some random shots of the ride to and from my parent's house.  I have been thinking about the sky views out in the country, and how far you can see from horizon to horizon.  I think I need to become a farmer - I need more open space in my life!

And finally, a random shot of an earlier summer project - my stoop garden:

Jess

Just a little bit behind...

So I am a little behind on my projects...again.

I seem to have a continuing problem with starting projects and not finishing them. 

As a quick update, I have been busy for the past few weeks with lots of non-house and project related things - work, a vacation, and a cold.  And I have made some progress!  After pulling out of the drive each morning looking at the overgrown weeds in my ivy, I finally gave the entire area a much-needed haircut today.  It was only a fast chop - it really needs much more cutting and shaping - but at least it no longer looks like that part of the yard had been completely neglected this summer.  I also did some weeding in other places of the year. 

Last week I spent Sunday trimming the forsythia and the hostas away from the deck for the deck repair (at least mostly), and last Saturday I coerced Shawn into helping me move several boxes of junk out of the spare bedroom so we (I) could begin pulling up the carpet.  So there has been some progress, even if it has made the rest of the upstairs look like a refugee camp.

Jess

Project #6...is a phone in

My project today wasn't really a project - I cleaned the bedroom, did a ton of shredding, and some laundry.  Just every-day stuff.  On a positive note, I also washed half the my great-grandmother's china which my mom brought to me today (thanks, mom!).  Based on wash time, I would estimate I now have formal dinner service for about 100 of my closest friends...

In unrelated news, we saw Man of Steel today.  Ladies, run, don't walk, to the movie theaters. 

Trust me on this.

Jess

Project #5: Magnavox

For project #5 I cleaned and polished the Magnavox, cleaned the glass, and cleared off the top. 

Check, and I'm out for Saturday.
Jess

Mirror, mirror

When we moved in, I put my silver mirror above the fireplace.  I bought this mirror at Hobby Lobby to hang over the sofa in my first apartment, and I love it.  It is beveled, heavy, and has travelled with me for the last ten years from that first place, to the apartment Shawn and I lived in after we were married, to the new house.    Here it is with last year's Halloween decorations:

I was hoping to get a fun, heavy, geometric white mirror for this space, to play off of the white trim.  I am in love with the Casbah mirror several people have blogged about, but had to give up after searching on Amazon, Ebay, and calling the manufacturer with no luck.

So I kept looking, and not finding anything, when my Mom sent me a picture of an gold mirror and a question mark.  It was meant to be - we were heading back to my hometown to a BBQ the next day, the mirror was at least $100 less what it would cost to buy something that was a similar size new, and after we bought it we discovered it fit perfectly across the back seat.  It rode with us to the BBQ, then home. 

My problem was how to best hang it on my old plaster - it weighs a ton! - and I needed to add hardware to hang it vertically  But here it is, in its new place:

I thought about painting it to play off the trim, but I rearranged the mantle to have some gold accents and now I think it blends in better.   If I change my mind, I may just go back on the hunt for a white mirror and put this one in the spare bedroom - it is so pretty in gold. 

Reflecting,

Jess

Project #5: Christmas in July

This Christmas my grandmother gifted Shawn and I with a fire pit.  My mom ordered it online (stars and moons, as requested), stored it, and delivered it in January. 

It has been sitting in our basement ever since, next to the treadmill.  Both mock me each time I go into the basement...until tonight. 

As always, Max assisted.




















There were no directions, but luckily you can't get too far off base given that there were fewer than 20 parts, and they were helpfully labled. 

Seriously - no one thought this was kind of a no-brainer?  I really think if you can't figure out that this is the fire poker...maybe you shouldn't have a fire pit.  Or handle matches without adult supervision.

What would have been helpful, though, would be if I had remembered that my kitchen doorways are both unusually narrow and hard to move things through.  And that I needed to go through them to get out to the deck.

I took the fire pit out the front door and and carried it around the house to the back. 

I blame it on the s'mores. 

Jess

Project #4: In which we make a neglected pig's ear...into a pleather purse

This is the shelf just inside the door of our bedroom, to the right of my closet:

It looks to me like someone had a really beautiful idea in their head that just didn't quite translate to reality. It is oddly shaped, oddly placed, and bright, glossy white.  This shelf has spent most of its life with me as the magical place where dry cleaning tickets, safety pins, thread, and random photos sit.  It has also done an admirable stint as a home for things the cat tried to eat that could kill him - tacks, hair bands, nails, and the odd chunk of plaster dust.  (You offer Max a piece of banana, and he stares at it like it is poison.  Thumb tacks, on the other hand, are like fresh tuna...)

The people before us used it to store books, and while it didn't exactly make the set up into the "built ins" promised in the listing, it did make it look like someone was trying. 

So, I decided to dig out some of my favorite books and fix it up for project #4.  The dust was intense. 

It turned out pretty, I think.   Although when I told Shawn that Jane Austen was now in our bedroom, he started belting out "Somewhere" (There's a place for me).  He says his ice flow is melting, but he still has an ice flow.  And that I need to get my stuff out of his basement.  : P

I also discovered more painting. Somewhere, some genius painted all the shelves white...but the top one.  No, you can't see the dingy off-white paint, but the part of my brain with selective OCD is really bugged by that (The empty cups I leave all over the house, though - totally fine with those.  They could stay there for weeks.)

At least Max will be glad we're painting again.

Yours in dust,
Jess