Jen Caputo

Kitchen Renovation: Final Reveal (Before & Afters)

Drumroll please!  Here we go - the final reveal of our kitchen/living room renovation.

Let's go back to the beginning!

Before:

Design:

After:

Before:

Design:

After:

Before:

After:

And then the living room, which was not the initial targeted remodel but we wound up giving it quite the face lift too!

Before (this was actually almost a year ago but it's the only picture I can find of the whole living room):

During:

After:

And for fun, here's lots more detail shots:

 

My custom designed spice shelf - probably one of my favorite things in the whole kitchen!

And of course, you've seen this before I think, but here's the craft room again with the new storage closet which used to be my pantry.

Ok, now some details for those who care:

• Start to finish (minus the bay window) was 4 weeks. 
• We then had to wait another 2 weeks for the bay window to come in (Home Depot sent the wrong one)
• It took them 3 days to finish everything else once the bay window came in but they were all 1/2 days, mostly due to waiting for paint to dry.
• Counter space increased by 300%
• Cabinet space increased by 250%
• Craft room storage increased 100%

And now, for the source list:

• Cabinets: Bertch Cherry Wood, Brindle Stain
• Countertops: Silestone Quartz in Ivory Coast
• Appliances: Sears Kenmore Elite
• Windows: Jeld-Wen Energy Efficient line
• Hardwood Floors: Bruce Hardwood Floors
• Stools: Knock-off Pauchards from Overstock (I went through Cashbaq and was able to get a 5% off coupon on furniture plus an extra 5% back because I went through Cashbaq!)
• Sink:  Farmhouse Stainless Steel Undermount Kitchen Sink
• Faucet: Vigo Modern Pull-out Spiral Kitchen Mixer
• Instant Hot Water Faucet: Quick & Hot Water Tank and Chrome Faucet Combo
• Backsplash Tile: Home Depot (it was dirt cheap - less than $5/sq ft)
• Kitchen Rugs - Dash & Albert in Lighthouse Sprout/White Indoor/Outdoor
• Spice Tins: Speciality Bottle (in 8 and 16oz)
• Herb Pots: Ikea - KARDEMUMMA
• Window Treatments: JC Penny Bamboo Shades & Sheers & Rods
• Light Fixture: Bellamy Antique Pewter Semi-Flush Ceiling Light
• Garbage Disposal: InSinkErator 74028 (which I got for free thanks to Swagbucks)
• Green Console Table: Homegoods
• Accessories: Home Goods, Container Store

So.... what do you guys think? Does it look better? LOL!

Any questions about the process or decisions or sources I left off, just ask!!

Fall Nesting

I think they refer to this as fall nesting... this weekend my house was taken over by pumpkins.

First came the decorative pumpkins, picked them up at the farmer's market for $2. Saturday was the last day of the Farmer's Market for the whole season :(

The small pumpkins and gourds (on my cute new green table!)

The woven pumpkins

 

The glass pumpkins

and then, the baking pumpkins

which got sliced

and baked

and pureed  (this is what I did while passing out halloween candy. I had to wash pumpkin off my hands about 87 times)

and bagged

and turned into Pumpkin Five Spice Sweet rolls.

Ok, seriously... I didn't take a picture of these :(  They were so good!  I made 3 pans and gave one to my neighbors. One is still in the fridge. Maybe I'll take a picture when I bake that batch.

and turned into Pumpkin Butter

which is even better when smeared on crusty toasted bread with a little regular butter

and then there are pumpkin seeds...

which dried overnight on their baking sheets

and then were seasoned and baked this morning. Salted, Salted & Chinese Five Spice (Ground Cinnamon, Ginger, Anise, Star Anise, cloves), Lime & Chile

And I probably have enough pumpkin left over in the freezer now to make pumpkin flavored desserts for the next year.

Tonight, I decided to tackle Julia Childs' Boeuf Bourguignon. Apparently it was my goal to spend as much time as possible in the kitchen this weekend as I started that recipe 3 hours ago and it's still got at least 2 more before it's ready. I'll let you know how it turns out. I'm serving these Buttered Rosemary Rolls alongside it. I've been watching the rolls rise for a few hours now and I cannot wait to see them all golden and rosemary topped!

2 Quick Home Decor Art Projects

I made two super quick home decor projects this weekend (about 20 minutes tops for each) and I thought I'd share :)

For this one I:

1. Spray painted a frame with glossy white
2. cut a piece of scrapbook paper to fit the frame
3. used a scallop punch on some white cardstock
4. wrapped ribbon around a chipboard M (to stand for Murphy, my future last name)
5. stuck it all together and framed it
6. tada!

Next, I was flipping through the latest Real Simple and was totally inspired by one of their Thanksgiving tablescape ideas. And it had a tutorial!

You need:

• A bottle or vase or anything else you want to cover - dig through your recycling bin for a bottle you were going to throw out!
• Twine or string
• super sticky tape (I used a roll of red-liner tape I had around, Carpet tape from the home improvement store would work great too)

My  bottle is from Koval Distillery (local in Chicago!) which used to house "my crack" (as Adam calls it), their Organic Ginger Liqueur. It is heaven on earth. I've been saving the bottles because I really like their shape.  For a while I was taking the labels off but they do not come off easy. As you can tell I got half done with this one and gave up.  Which made it a perfect candidate for this project!

1. Wrap your bottle in super sticky tape
2. Peel of the section you will work on first
3. Wind the twine around the bottle
4. and wind
5. and wind
6. and wind
7. I secured the ends with a drop of super glue

And in just a few minutes, you have a pretty new vase recycled from your favorite liqueur!

Well, we're having a party tonight so it's about time for me to jump in the shower and clean up my art projects!

And while I'm here - here's one more way I've recycled a Koval bottle:

To hold dish soap. I just added a liquor bottle spout.

Kitchen Renovation: Day 0

Well... this is it, time to say goodbye to this:

(excuse the filth, we haven't been too tidy when cleaning it out since it's going to be demo'd in the morning)

and hello to this

Goodbye to this

and hello to this

And no, those aren't the light fixtures I've chosen, they were just the last ones I saved in my photoshop drawings...

We had a little gathering this weekend and decided to let our friends draw on the wall... it's pretty darn fun if you've never tried it :)

A bunch of folks spent the night and when we got up on Saturday morning we saw that they'd even started a height chart

Kitty posed next to her line so you'd know she wasn't a liar! She really is the shortest 'person' we know.

You can see Mr. Meowmers in the background, I couldn't get him to come up for the picture.

For the next 4-6 weeks we will be kitchenless.  I rolled our kitchen cart into the living room though, so here is our lovely temporary kitchen:

 

I'm so excited to see the demo, I'm not quite sure I'll be able to sleep... be back tomorrow!

Ok Mr. Meowmers... we get it

Since our whole house is pretty much going to be torn apart anyway, we decided it was a perfect time to swap out the 2 windows in the living room that are original to the house (the only original ones left).

We'd been debating between a normal or a bay window for the front one.

I came home yesterday to find Mr. Meowmers lounging in the sun on our kitchen table. Ok, we get it.

Bay window it is...

Now please stay off my table!

(1 more day till they start demo!!!)

Eww!!!! Popcorn Ceilings :(

Can you guess what that is? (If you read the subject of this post I bet you can...)

Yes, it is my hideous popcorn ceiling that makes my window filled living room look like a cave because it sucks in every speck of light into it's hills and valleys and makes the ceiling one giant shadow.

Here's the deal, I want to get rid of that ceiling while they are doing our kitchen.  But it's not cheap. Adam said I could do it if I raised enough money.

So guess what that means. New Product!!! Sale!!!

I know you guys love to help me out of a crisis and things don't get much worse than a popcorn ceiling so I'm rallying my digi scrapping troops (if there are any of you still out there) and asking for your help!

Ok first, check out this new product.  I'm really excited about it because as far as I can tell, it hasn't been done before!

These templates allow you to add the look of a photo mounted behind tabs with realistic shadows to your digital scrapbook pages. You can move the frame anywhere on the page and it will look like notches were cut out of your paper and the photo was stuck behind them!

For example (paper by Flergs):

And a few sample layouts from my lovely ladies

You can pick them up right here BUT because I really want you to buy them along with anything else you might like in my store, use coupon code jc-popcorn40 through September 8th to get an extra 40% off your entire purchase!

So go shop, have fun! As always, tell your friends :)  Let me know what you think of the new product as well!

Newsletter subscribers should watch their mailboxes for an extra discount!

Be gone popcorn ceiling!!!!!!!

The Little Things

It was a lot of little things that I've done recently that have made my bedroom such a happier space :)

Let's take a trip down memory lane shall we?

When we first bought the house, my bedroom looked like this:

ain't it pretty?

pretty soon after, I'd remodeled it as such:

But there was still lots of little things that bothered me about the room so how about I show you how I fixed them :)

First off was this cable going to the TV.  Looks pretty trashy, huh?

I armed myself with about $8 in supplies (Spray paint, painters tape, a white cable, cable staples)

 

Part of the cable I couldn't easily replace so I taped off the wall and spray painted it. After it dried, I attached the white cable and used the cable staples to nail it next to the trim. All-in-all this took about 20 minutes of work and I couldn't be happier with the finished product!

Next up was the lack of pillows on my bed. My Martha Steward bedspread came with some matching euro shams but they had this silly pink lining on them which didn't fit in with my color scheme at all so they just sat in my closet.

It finally hit me that I had a sewing machine so I took to ripping out the stitches in the shams to remove the pink piping, sewed them back up, and bought some Euro pillows for 7.99 a piece at JC Penny's (thanks to a 50% off sale) and just like that I had dirt cheap new pillows for my bed :)

(I didn't buy a new bedspread, I just decided to flip it over for a change)

These next two ideas I found on Young House Love (which they found somewhere else but I can't remember where).

First off was this slouchy dust ruffle that was a tad too long

I bought some upholstery screws and screwed them into the mattress every 18" or so after adjusting the height and now my dust ruffle hangs in the perfect spot!

No before picture for this one, but if any of you have a feather mattress topper you know how much it likes to move around.  I picked up some jumbo safety pins and again, about every 18" (and again - thanks to inspiration from Young House Love) I stuck a pin through the feather bed, feather bed cover, and the piping on my mattress:

It's like magic!!!! I've had these pinned on for about a month now and the mattress has not budged an inch! It's like I have a whole new bed!!

Next, I needed a dressing mirror. I had this cheap one in my closet from college, I got it at Target I think. It didn't match though so, again, armed with some painters tape, newspaper, and spray paint, I transformed it.

 

I then hung it directly across from the door leading to my backyard to bounce around as much light as possible.

Ok now for the biggie - window treatments!!! 

As you can see in this BEFORE picture, there are two main problems with my existing window treatments

1. The drapes on the door are hung way too narrow so when they are fully open they still block half the light coming into the room.  They needed to be re-hung about 12" wider on either side so when they are fully open, all the light gets to come in!

2. That UGLY roller shade on the window behind the bed had no personality (and was ripped).

The first problem I solved by myself by simply remounting the drapes wider, filling in the old holes, sanding and painting. Piece of cake and such a HUGE difference right?

I couldn't do the other ones by myself though so Adam got up and helped screw in my new bamboo shades (again thanks to Young House Love for the inspiration)

Aren't they pretty (the white sheer ones actually came with my bed set too - they have a cute green trim at the bottom)

We also bought a new flat screen tv for the bedroom.  It has a build in DVD player so that we can drag it outside and watch movies in the hot tub ;)

Since I took this picture I also bought a pretty blue pillow that matches the walls to go right in the middle of the bed (behind the roll pillow). I don't feel like taking another picture though ;)

SO... I think that's it... all my little renovations to the bedroom that make it so much better :)

We do have one project left in here.  That awful ceiling fan.  I'd love to replace it with a modern chandelier (like this one) but Adam insists on a fan so I'm on the lookout for a great sleek, updated, non-brass one that will match the room.

Now... do I need this pillow? :P

Pillow Crush

I have a major crush on this pillow and I think it would match so well in my bedroom, don't you?

Of which I have lots of new pictures to share because I've made tons of improvements lately.

Problem is that pillow is $69 with shipping... (Marked down from $125). But I think I kinda need it...maybe I should have waited to show you this pillow until I showed you the new bedroom pics because it's changed quite a bit (colors are still the same but I have new window treatments, new tv, new mirror, new pillows, new accessories, etc... )

But I need to decide by Saturday because it's not longer available after the 22nd. Have you guys heard of One Kings Lane by the way?  They have awesome deals on designer home decor goodies but you can only shop there by invitation and the deals only last a few days. If you'd like an invite let me know ;)

Anyway, what do you think? Do I need that pillow?

A lighting decision...

I am pretty sure I've made a decision. 

When we were talking pendant lights above the sink, I must have forgotten that I'd asked for a garden window above the sink so I could grow fresh herbs year round.

Something like this

Source

Obviously it would not look right with a light hanging down in front of it, so, pendant light is out.

Also, if we tried to put two pendant lights over the bar like this

that cabinet will hit the one on the left when we try to open it...

So I think what I'm going to have to do is just put two recessed lights over the bar. Which most of you pointed out - would lead to better flow between the two rooms and nobody sitting at the bar will be stuck looking into a light fixture.

and over the sink, dial it down to the three light sconce

My photoshop skills are starting to fail me.  I don't think that garden window is quite at the right perspective...  you get the idea though! (Do you like the forest that miraculously appeared in my front yard?)

As far as schedule goes - the cabinets have been ordered!  Work is scheduled to start September 1st!  Is it ever going to get here?

More kitchen lighting options...

ok bloggy friends, it appears you and I are not in agreement on the lighting scheme for my kitchen.  Nobody liked my favorite light....

But, I do see some of your points.

For instance, a few of you pointed out that I may not want a pendant light over my sink because:

1. It will block our view out the window
2. It will glare at night

Of those of you who liked the pendant, most of you liked the first one the best of which I've started to totally hate... so I went back to the drawing board.

My current plan for over the sink... 

Something like him (or maybe even him)... what I like is that it takes up all of that horizontal dead space above the window, provides TONS of light , but also doesn't block my window... To scale (as far as my math skills allow), what he would look like in the kitchen:

We'd probably move some of those recessed lights over at this point.

So what do we think? Do we like this idea better?

Oh and while we're here - do you think the tile should go all the way up on this wall or stop where it is?  Here's a preview if it went all the way up

It does make this wall more of a focus doesn't it....

I'm also not totally convinced I want lights over the bar/peninsula anymore... it's not really that big so we don't have room for more than 2.. in fact, perhaps 1 is more appropriate... but if I do put one there, I found this one that coordinates with the over the sink fixture perfectly!

If I just did one, he would look something like this:

 

Ok, new opinions please?  ;)

Pendant Light Shopping

We're about 5 weeks away from when they start on our kitchen and the one thing I just can't decide on is the lighting.

I must've spent at least 6 hours at this point browsing on-line stores looking for the perfect pendant light for the kitchen (or three... )  I'll definitely want one over the sink and then maybe 2 over the peninsula/bar.

I was kind of thinking of something industrial/contemporary/old-fashioned... easy mix huh?

This was the first one I considered... it got me headed down the stainless steel path.

but it was a little too art-deco/80ish for me and I realized I needed something a bit more 'craftsman'

Then I found these from Martha Stewart. I like how they are two different lights but that they coordinate.

 

But they're the priciest options I considered and I just don't love them, a tad too plain....

I finally stumbled upon this guy

Brushed stainless steel to coordinate with my appliances, seeded glass to add the perfect amount of sparkle, and that industrial/craftsman look I was going for that will coordinate with the rest of my house.

So I decided to try it on

I do think I like it....

Adam doesn't though (but he also said "just get whatever you want").

So what do you guys think?  Anybody have a pendant light they've been lusting after to show me?  Or do we like this one?

 

_________________________

Edited to add:

Naughty Kelly just directed my attention to a new-to-me site where I instantly found this:

And they're on sale!! Oh my I love this one!  I actually did start out looking for a green glass pendant but I couldn't find one I liked... This color green is even in my backsplash tile... and you guys know how much I love green right? LOOOVE the seeded glass!

Meet My New Kitchen

My current kitchen sucks.  For instance, this is the view of the kitchen from the living room:

I'd like to point out a couple of awesome things about my current kitchen:

• Those cabinet handles. And their placement.  Seriously?  These people were ready to screw on their cabinet handles and the best possible place they could come up with was dead center?
• Those lovely cabinets. They look wood... they're not.  I couldn't even paint them as originally planned.
• That flooring.  It's on top of about 2 other layers of flooring. The floor in the kitchen has a good 3/4" on the living room floor.
• You can literally see all but 2 cabinets in the kitchen in this picture and you see 100% of my counter space.  Yup, that little area on top of the dishwasher is my only counter space.
• The only drawer in the kitchen is hidden between the dishwasher and the fridge and it's only about 8" wide.  No silverware trey fits in there!
• The light... or lack thereof... there's a ceiling fan in the middle of the room.  That's the only light. It's sooooo dark!
• The clutter.  I HAVE NO CABINET SPACE!  So this room is so full of clutter, I hate it.

So you can obviously see why I'm desperate for a new kitchen. 

Feast your eyes on this!  This is the new view from the living room (colors are not correct in this drawing)

Look at all that new counter space! All my drawers, all my cabinets, the correct placement of the handles, all those recessed lights, the under cabinet lights, etc.

I took some liberties in photoshop with my designers drawings and added in pictures of my appliances, pictures of my backsplash, and pictures of the sink and faucets I already picked up and added in the color I think I'll paint.

Look how pretty!  (Pretty sweet photoshop skills huh? )

 

• Yes, I put two faucets on the sink, one is an instant hot water heater. 
• The sink is a stainless steel farmhouse apron front sink
• The main faucet is a pull down spiral faucet
• There are 7 drawers (as opposed to my current 1)!!!!
• And counter space?  I currently have about 5 sq. feet of counter space.  The new layout more than quadruples it!
• The cabinets are cherry
• The countertops are Quartz (Silestone)
• Not pictured: My custom designed spice shelf (couldn't figure out how to photoshop that one in)

So now that you've met my new kitchen, what do you think??  Hopefully by October I'll be able to show you the completed photos but in the meantime, expect plenty of 'during' shots!

A much bigger clue

Does this give it away? This is what I bought last night.

... and I got an incredible deal.  Sears was having a "Friends and Family" event last night open to the public.  All Kenmore appliances were marked down at least 20% and then from 6-9pm you got to take an additional 10% off with 1 year financing.  Thanks to that sale, our appliances came in over $1000 under budget!!!

(The fridge alone I snagged for $1800, down from the ticket price of $2800!)

Yup, that contract I posted yesterday was for our kitchen remodel.  It's the one thing I've been dying to do since we moved in and in a few short months, it will be done! 

And yes, for those of you with sharp eyes - both myself and my contractor managed to mis-date the papers by 1 year ;)

Succulent Love Affair (and OMG, what did I just do?)

 

Oh my God, what did I just do?  Besides sign away a small fortune... Any guesses?  There is a hint in the background of this picture (the colors aren't coming through in the picture very well).

Moving on.

I am totally obsessed with Succulents. They are so cool looking and so easy to take care of. Plus, dirt cheap!

I went to HomeDepot this weekend and picked up a bunch (only $2.98 a piece!), some cactus soil ($4), some river rocks ($4) and a couple of pots($5 for the glass ones, $12 for the big white one).

For about $30 I got 3 arrangements and have plenty of cactus soil left over (I'm out of rocks though)

Each $2.98 succulent had at least 3 separate plants in it which allowed me to divide them and use them in different arrangements.

Look at everyone in their happy new homes:

 

My favorite, he lives in my bedroom now:

You can see him a little better when he was still outside:

I got this guy a few weekends ago - he's my other favorite succulent - a Burro's Tail:

More of My Garden

This morning I noticed that all three of my different color Lilies were blooming!  They are soooo gorgeous! I just love the colors together. I can't believe how many there are either. Last year I planted 2 of each color and this year there are at least 4 or more of each color. They propagated like crazy! These are all of the Asiatic variety.

I also think it's crazy the way they figured out how to vary their height. The orange ones in the back are super tall while the red ones in front are really short. The yellow ones are right in the middle.  Perfect!

More of my garden favorites.  My Jack in the Pulplit!  Last year he didn't grow a comb but this year he has this beautiful one!

And check out my Calamondin and Lemon Tree blooms - they've blossomed! And they smell delightful!

 

My hanging and window baskets are doing great too.

The creeping Jenny's are definitely creeping!

And mom - look how the impatiens filled in!

Reigning It In

I'm slowly getting the Living Room to feel like a Living Room instead of an empty space waiting for decoration.  My window treatments haven't arrived yet but my new entertainment center did and Adam put that together today which gave us 6 new cubbies to fill!  My next step in making the living room pretty was to reign in the clutter.

So, off I went to Homegoods. $60 and 45 minutes later, we are clutter free!

Before, the bottom shelf of our bakers rack. Great place to store my old Rebel, a stack of DVD-Rs  and an external hard drive right?

Ahhh.... all hidden! (These were just $14 a piece!)

Next, a big pile of magazines that was sitting on the floor that have come in the mail recently (We have WAY too many magazine subscriptions).  No Before picture, I'm sure you can imagine what it looked like.  But, my after picture

I bought two of these for two of the cubbies in our new entertainment center shelves.  One will hold magazines straight out of the mail that we haven't read yet. The other will store mags that we are keeping around for some reason after we read them.  This basket is olive green since it's kinda hard to tell in the picture.  They were only $12 each!

And finally, the bathroom clutter.  As I mentioned, we have a lot of magazine subscriptions.  And a lot of them that we start reading wind up here:

So annoying... Not anymore though.  I reigned it in (for $10)!

I love when a small investment can leave you feeling so extremely satisfied!

My Garden, In Bloom

This post is for my mom who wants to see how my gardening endeavors are doing this year.  This is the first time I've actually tried to grow anything edible besides herbs.  Above you can see some of my tomatoes that are blooming upside down! 

I planted some in the hanging pots and some in the ground and the ones in the hanging pots are doing much much better!  The ones in the ground didn't even start blooming yet.  The hanging ones are so exciting, it seems like everytime I go out and check on them (several times a day - ha!!) there are more blooms!

Here you can see one of the hanging plants (I'm using the Upsy Downsy - they were $6 at Walmart):

This one has marigolds and a jalapeno pepper planted on top.  The tomato plant is growing upwards toward the sun but I hear that once the tomatoes start forming the weight will pull it down straight.

My other hanging pot has cherry tomatoes planted on top along with some marigolds to discourage the bugs.  Here's those cherry tomatoes blooming up a storm (he was the first one to start blooming)

Next are my two citrus trees.  These guys come inside for the winter months but get to live outside in the summer.  I've had them for about 3 months and up until a week ago they've been pretty lame.  But this last week they just took off and are starting to bloom like crazy!

My favorite - the Calamondin Tree! Sooooo many blooms that will turn into my favorite citrus fruit ever!  (Absolutely unmatched in cocktails!)

 

And this is my Meyer Lemon tree, he was a few days behind the Calamondin in forming it's blooms but now they are much bigger.

Yeah... I'm sure those last two look about the same... I can't wait till they're ripe fruits... which will most likely be about 10 months from now.... sigh...

Window Treatment Shopping!

Since we moved in, the one thing I've yet to do is put window treatments up.  I just had no inspiration on how to hang them so I've just kept the sheers/shades that the previous owners had up.  But thanks to this post from my new favorite blog, inspiration struck and I went shopping today!

Here's the two rooms I bought window treatments for:

Living room - both windows.  They are both pretty darn big.... (old picture, many changes in this room since this picture was taken, i'll update with the "after" pictures)

And in my bedroom, the window behind the bed which is currently sporting a boring/ugly roller shade.

JC Penny's is having a huge window treatment sale so this is what I bought:

2 of these in this color for the bedroom windows.  I also have some sheer ivory linen panels with green piping that came with the bedspread that I haven't hung yet so those will go on either side of the window (hung high and wide as This Young House recommends)

Also got some wider versions of these in this color for the living room:

For either side of the windows (again, hung high and wide) I picked up these sheers in a beautiful Chocolate

with the matching rods in the longest size available.

 

Altogether, my grand total before sales and coupons was $710.45.

I had two coupons available to me, a $10 off $10 purchase and a 15% off coupon.  So I placed two separate orders.

Doing 2 transactions, my subtotal after coupons & sale prices was 315.93!!!! A total savings of $394.52

But, I went through Ebates which offers 4% cash back on JC Penny purchases which will put an extra $12.64 back in my account making my true savings $407.16 and my total out of pocket 303.29!  Of course this is before tax and shipping which will add on a nice chunk of change but still... .at just over $100 per complete window I'm super excited!!  I think it will make such a big impact on these rooms.

I'll come back and post the AFTER pictures as soon as we get everything hung!

If you're curious, the coupon codes I used were:

Take an extra 15% OFF most items. Restrictions may apply. Coupon Code: SMMRJCPC, Expires 07/01/2009

$10 off $10+ order! Coupon Code: GR8DAD. Expires 6-21-09

Condo Update

Remember this blog post in which I asked what you all thought of how our stager staged the condo and 94 of you replied that you hated it?  Well after much ado, she finally came and re-staged it.  It still wasn't awesome but it was better.  And yesterday, we closed on the sale!  No more condo! No more two mortgages!  No more two gas bills, electric bills, water bills, tax bills, etc.!  Most of all, no more condo association to deal with!

Exciting huh?  Now I get a new kitchen :)

St. Patrick's Day Backyard Fun

As I haven't been shy in telling you all before, I love my backyard. And I love parties.  And since it got up to 74 degrees in Chicago yesterday, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to have a backyard St. Patty's Day gathering.

I cooked 3 Corned Beef Briskets and there wasn't a single piece left over!

Remember a while back I was asking about those light-bulb light strings?  Well quite a few of you mentioned that you saw them at Target so I went to Target and they didn't have any.  But then I went back a few weeks later and there they were!  For just $15 a strand too! (The industrial ones I was looking at were going to wind up costing about $250 for the length I wanted).  Now I know these $15 strands aren't going to last forever but I can replace them 10 times before the investment in the industrial ones pays off :)

We only had time to hang up one of the strands but the eventual plan is to hang the other strand from the tree to the garage to light up the campfire area a  little more.

 

I really dig 'em though and can't wait to hang up the second strand!

While I'm here, I'll share a green project with you!

This is a monogrammed card set I made for my Grandma for her birthday.  I also entered it into PTI's Guest Star Stamper contest in February and earned an Honorable Mention!

Supplies:
Stamps: PTI Borders & Corners: Circle, PTI Trajan Monogram Ed. Alpha
Cardstock: PTI Spring Moss, Stampers Select White, True Black
Patterned Paper: PTI Black & White Basics
Dies/Punches: Nestabilities Circles, Martha Stewart Border Punch

I created the clear box top from some of that nasty clamshell packaging that is impossible to open. I had a big enough sheet that I could trim it to a piece suitable for the top. I had to score it slightly with a craft knife to make it hold it's shape.