Summer Projects

Even though it's not officially summer until Tuesday, it's felt like summertime for forever here! And one fun part of summer... is garage sales. Last weekend, while Adam was in Wisconsin Dells for Art's bachelor party, I hit up several sales in Bloomington. I started at 8 am but had to cut myself off by 10:30 -- I had already bought way too much!

Last weekend's treasures:

Of course, most of these things are stuff I plan to paint/redo in some way. Except for that bowl. And the vase, which is for our office -- we're currently redoing it, and I'm adding in lots of lime green. We spent yesterday painting the office (changing it from a yellowy-tan to gray). Which means we've now painted every room in the house except the bathroom. All in good time ;)

Here is the vase in its new home (a sneak peek of the still-in-progress office):

Of course, the moment we put up that IKEA Lack shelf (and even before it was fully installed), Jack had claimed it as his new favorite spot. Now we've just got to finish moving EVERYthing back into the office that we had to move out in order to paint it.

Happy anniversary!

Adam and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary today. I can't believe it, but we've already been married three years! We're going out to dinner tonight to celebrate.

Happy anniversary!

Picture frames and cabin trip

When we first moved in, I put up these five pictures: Us, friends, and cats. But since then, it's really looked a little sparse.

Inspired by YHL's gallery of frames project, I started collecting frames from garage and thrift sales. I bought several at a "barn" sale in Bloomington earlier this spring, and spray painted them black to match our existing frames (with feline assistance, of course):

No before picture for those--but they were all ugly to start with, so much better now!

We took a trip to visit my parents' cabin in northern Wisconsin over Memorial Day weekend, and stopped at a few garage sales while we were up there. I picked up even more frames there (although I forgot them in Roscoe), so I'll be painting them soon. Eventually I'd like to cover the whole wall.

Our trip up north was fun--great weather, Friday night fish fry, went out on the boat, and rode the ATVs! Here's the view from the front yard:


And Adam on the dock:


We spent a lot of time playing with our digital SLR camera. We got it as a wedding present from Adam's parents and have been using it for the past three years, but are just now figuring out how to change the more advanced settings. It was pretty fun to see what you can actually do, but we've still got a lot to learn.