Back from Vacation

Last week we returned home from our awesome vacation in the Florida Keys. We had a blast! We visited Key Largo, Marathon/the Middle Keys, and of course, Key West. Here we are at mile marker 0, the start of U.S. Highway 1:

If you didn't already see our Facebook album of photos, check out the Shutterfly album I made below (I got it free after writing a TripAdvisor review--yay!).

Click here to view this photo book larger

This month is very busy for us! We'll be attending Adam's cousin's high school graduation party, Art's wedding, and then heading up to Wisconsin to see Adam's parents for a few days.

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.

Coffee table refinishing

We've been busy with lots of projects lately, so I'm going to start doing more posts to keep up!

I recently decided to refinish the top of our coffee table. The cats had scratched it up pretty badly, and since we often eat on it (instead of our kitchen table), it had suffered a lot of abuse. Here's what it looked like before, courtesy of a December 2009 posting, when we had first started painting our walls:


I decided to go with a black stain for the top instead of trying to match the existing color. I chose Minwax ebony stain, and then used Minwax fast-drying polyurethane in satin for the topcoat (I actually did three coats on this, since I had only done two on the kitchen table and later wished I had all three). Here it is in the garage, waiting to come in:

It's nice to have it back in the family room now. We'll see how it holds up to kitty claws... Meanwhile, outside, the clematises that I planted last spring are really taking off this year:

It's really exciting to see everything I planted last year come back even stronger and healthier this year!

Happy Easter!

Sunday was Easter, and we hosted both of our families at our house, which was a blast! Lots of food, fun, and installing exterior lights. A future Easter tradition? (I don't think so...)

We had several pounds of leftover ham, but it was delicious, so I'm not complaining! Adam and I have been eating it for lunch every day at work. Mmmm...

In the interest of sharing a few more favorite recipes, our menu included the following:

Fig-and-Orange-Glazed Ham
Parmesan Scalloped Potatoes
Almond Green Beans
Arugula Salad
Pasta Salad
Grilled Zucchini and Squash
Deviled Eggs
Strawberry Shortcakes
Chocolate Trifle

After we finished eating, Adam and the dads went outside to install two exterior lights on either side of our garage door. We also needed to replace the light right outside our front door -- we had a big storm earlier this month, and our (former) storm door got pulled open in the wind, smashed into the light, and was completely broken. We're super grateful to our parents for helping us out with the new lights!

The new lights on the garage look like this:

And the front view with all three lights:

It's hard to photograph... looks way better in person!

DIY Chandelier

We've been thinking for some time about replacing the light over our kitchen table. The one that came with our house was fine, but was more of a ceiling mount deal (below) than the chandelier you might expect over the main dining area in the house.

We had looked somewhat for a new light, but hadn't seen anything too exciting. I decided it would be fun to try and redo one that I found at our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I am in looove with ours... cheap house-ish stuff! So cool! It's like a thrift store for your house. My plan: buy a light fixture with a shape I liked, then paint it whatever color we wanted. We picked out this gold one:

We picked out RustOleum Dark Bronze Hammered spray paint for this project. We used the black color, same brand, for our patio set and really liked it. I hung the light from the garage ceiling so I could spray it from all sides. I was going for an "oil rubbed bronze" look, but got more of a gray instead. Actually though, I really like it -- it doesn't match everything else in our house, which makes it look unique.

But, to skip back a step, we had never hung a chandelier before. It took us a few minutes to figure out how to shorten the length; basically, remove the chain links you don't want (they aren't solid, so you can pry them apart with pliers), and then pull the cord up and trim it. Here's Adam in action with the pliers:

But, the very, very best part was the PRICE. Everything at ReStore is used (and generally donated), so it is very inexpensive. This light had been there for a while, so it was marked down to $7.50. The spray paint was about $6.50. So total cost for this lamp: $14! Amazing. Because of that, we ended up splurging on the light bulbs. I wasn't sure what kind I wanted (it came with a couple different, non-matching bulbs, but we didn't like any of them). Then we saw these at Lowe's and had to have them! They were almost $4 apiece, so that brought our total light fixture cost up to $34... still not bad!

One thing we should have considered: since this hangs over the kitchen table, the cats can reach it. And Jack loves swatting it... uh oh.