Category Archives: House to Home

Summer Time

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Summer time has got to be my most favorite time of year, along with spring, and fall. Honestly, I could do without winter, the short days of winter, and scraping ice off the windshield on cold mornings when I’m already late for work, and  all the extra layers you have to wear to keep from freezing ones bum off. Yeah, I could live without all of that, but those warmer seasons are bliss for me.  I love the warm weather, especially baking in my car after being in a frigid office all day, the long evenings spent sipping iced tea in the backyard, just perfection. Lately, I’ve been watching our apricot tree spit out fruit like a baseball player spits out to-baccy, not a pretty picture? Well, lets just say our apricot tree is being very productive this summer.

I’ve picked two of those so far, I know it’s not too impressive to some folks but it’s a big deal to this little desertrat.

Do you know how many Silvery Minnows we killed using up their water from the  to get these suckers to grow?

Aside from growing apricots, we’re also growing some water conscience yarrow.

And some Holly Hock weeds, well, they aren’t weeds but they grow like weeds in that they never grow where you want them too. But I’ll take it, they bring color to my barren yard.

I’m not really sure what this little green bush is called, his tag blew away over the winter. I currently have him growing in a pot until he’s big enough to not be rolled on, run over, or eaten by my brat dogs.

Oh yeah, and you may remember my grass fiasco from last year, which can be reviewed here, here, here, and here. Well, the drama continues this year. Although, I must say I am pretty impressed with how things have rebounded this spring. Maybe my grass drama is coming to a close. If only I could keep stinking brat dogs from digging ankle breaking holes in the middle of the yard. Let’s just say I don’t say many nice words when walking across the yard in the dark. I owe you a more complete post on the yard and the grass situation, and how we’ve tried to conserve more water and therefore save more Silvery Minnows that reside in the Rio Grande.

But for the time being, a shot I got of  a bare spot in the grass this year. Looking back at some of the grass posts from last year, makes me feel a little better about the state of things this year. But I am still battling the  stupid brat dogs who keep wrestling over my baby grass so I keep re-seeding in the hope that something will survive.

I complain about falling in dog holes, fighting with destructive wrestling dogs, and worry about the plight of the Silvery Minnow, but all in all, I really do enjoy our yard. And I love that it’s summer time so I can while away my evenings tinkering with grass, avoiding the canyons that my dog-brats have carved into my beloved backyard, and just enjoy the fact that I don’t have to scrape ice off my windshield the next day.

Holy Yellow Cow!

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Apparently, I’m becoming one of those once a week bloggers. It was never my intent, I’ve always wanted to be a once a day blogger, gladly gabbing on about the newest happenings at my nest, or sharing that cute picture that I just shot of my puppies or sweet Hubba Bubba.  But alas, I’m lucky if I can scramble on here and quickly type up a post with some pictures thrown in. Actually, that’s not quite true, my posts take thought and time, I edit every single photo you see on this blog and try to be careful with those things called words. Maybe that’s why I’ve turned into a once a week blogger, it’s the time that it takes to put these posts together. Maybe I could become an everyday blogger if I were to include fewer word circles and start eating more potassium to prevent word diarrhea. (Yeah I went there)

Anywho, I’m not really sure how to transition from word diarrhea to how I prettied up my living room, so I won’t. Let’s jump right into the visuals shall we?

Ignore the ugly leashes that are so glaringly obvious in photos, but apparently are completely ignored while living in this space.

So, remember in my last post I finally got to reveal something finished on the ole blog, my oh so beautiful new floors? Well, I didn’t get to talk about how I prettied it up. With the living room having to be completely dismantled to install the flooring, it gave me a chance to finally work with a blank slate. This was a foreign concept to this pack rat, an empty room? With open, flat surfaces? Where does the clutter go?!  Well, the clutter hasn’t gone anywhere it’s just being stored in boxes in the sun room until I can figure out what I want to get rid of and what I want to keep. I am hoping to shake my pack ratty-ness and give away or sell most of the items that don’t have sentimental value to me. There’s just too many things to spray paint in this world for me to be wasting time dusting yet another thrift store knick-knack.

After putting all the furniture back in the room, and enjoying a completely clutter free space for a few days, I was ready to play around with some new accessories. I wanted color, lots of color, it’s summer after all. So, I started out with my new favorite yellow cow.

Yes, I know she’s a creamer, but the Bubba and I aren’t coffee drinkers, and I couldn’t bear the thought of putting Rillo away in a cabinet.(That’s what I’ve named her, short of Amarillo, which means yellow in Spanish. From what I’ve been told.) The flowers I clipped from my now dry and crunchy front flower bed.

Working with Rillo as my inspiration, I pulled items from around the house that would coordinate with her yellow glory. I found that my small collection of globes and a vintage children’s book brought the perfect mix of bright and fun to the room. Perfect for a summer setting on the ole coffee table.

Apparently, I easily fall victim to trends, notice the other globe on the end table in the foreground? Oh, and I can’t forget these guys:

Yeah, I totally went with the  owl craze too, but I never follow a crazy trend  I’m not completely in love with. Those owls and my globes are some of my favorite things in the room. Here are a few others.

C.S. Lewis is awesome, that’s all I’m sayin’.

Monograms are almost as awesome as C.S. Lewis. But the only monograms I  seem to find more readily are A’s. Oh, well, I’ll just be a self centered little A and only have my monogram selfishly displayed.

What changes have you made to make your home more summery?

New Floors

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Way back in my post about my visit to the Abo Ruins, which by the way was freshly pressed (I’m still amazed that someone found one of my posts to Freshly Pressed worthy!) I had mentioned that Bubba and I would be ripping out our old stained carpet and replacing it with vinyl plank flooring. Surprisingly, there was minimal gnashing of teeth during this project.

Here’s what we started out with, I had started moving things out and thankfully remembered to take a sort of before shot.

I didn’t realize how beige my house was before seeing these photos. Maybe it’s time to put some new paint on the walls, and more substantial art above the sofa.

I’m almost embarrassed to show this shot, but I’ll show it anyways so you can see a contrast between the before and the after. Those spots you see are “signatures” left by the doggies, they’ve been steam cleaned and scrubbed to an inch of their lives, the carpets not the dogs. With each new stain, the carpets would get spot cleaned and then shampooed, to no avail. The stubborn things would go away for a little while, and then somehow reappear, I called them poop stain ghosts. Since they were haunting me. They are the reason the carpet had to go.

This, the dirt that lurked under the carpet was another reason I wanted to rip it all out. There’s nothing that says home like puffs of dirt coming out of ones floor!

See those ugly brown things? Those are linoleum tiles that were originally put in the house at the time of construction way back in 1957. I don’t even want to think about the risk of asbestos, ignorance is bliss until we all die of lung disease. Anywho,  the remaining tile around the perimeter was holding tack strips down. And underneath those ugly tiles and tack strips was crumbling  concrete.

*Commence gnashing of teeth*

After the tedious act of ripping out the old carpet, prying the tack strips and old tile off the concrete subfloor and finally patching said concrete this is what we had to work with. Yup, that’s a giant crack going down the center of the house, from the end of the hallway all the way to the end of the living room. We tried patching it with some of this concrete patch stuff that the nice Lowes guy recommended, but later found that plumbers putty worked just as well since the concrete patch got a little crumbly when it dried. But don’t take my word for it as I have no idea how the plumbers putty will hold up under the heavy foot traffic that we inflict on our floors.

And that scary looking black stuff is the adhesive from the original tiles from 1957, again, I don’t wanna think about the chemicals lurking within that mess.Thankfully, the sand that was trapped under the nasty carpet pad got rid of anything that was still adhesive-y.

After removing all the remnants of old tile, tacks, sand, and everything else that is nasty it was finally time to start laying down the vinyl planks.

We used Surface Source Vinyl Plank Flooring from Lowes, in Classic Chestnut. At first, I wasn’t too sure about the color, but at .88 a sq ft it was worth a shot.

So, we commenced laying of planks, the first row went down pretty easily. So did the second, third and fourth.

Then we got to that last row in the hallway and encountered some issues. The last row didn’t quite fit around the door frames as well as the first row did, and apparently someone *guiltily looks away* laid the first row of planks slightly askew. It was at this point I stopped taking pictures and started to worry. Thankfully, Bubba was there to help, and sawed at some of the frames a bit to get the planks to fit underneath, just as the instructional video suggests. But either the saw wasn’t sharp enough or the door frames were built of steele, because we were only getting a lot of dust and a major arm work out, but the planks still weren’t fitting underneath the door frame. It being 10 o’clock on a Sunday night, we couldn’t do a thing about it until Monday. So Monday after work, my sweet Bubba ran to the hardware store and bought an oscillating saw. After that, things went much quicker, and the gnashing of teeth finally ceased.

While we were sneezily pulling up carpet, prying away at those annoying tacks, and stressing over door frames, the rest of the house looked like this:

But amidst the chaos there were a few peaceful moments too.

Ahh, yes rest, it does a soul good. With those few moments of cuddle time on the couch we were able to find that final bit of energy to finally get it done. Plus, I was getting really tired of having to put shoes on just to walk through the living room and down the hall.

But not anymore! It’s so nice to have floors without disgusting stains on them! And all the dust stays on the surface just waiting for the daily sweeping or vacuuming. I thought the vacuum wouldn’t work so well on these floors, but it really does a better job of getting that dust and fur up than any broom and dust pan could.

Here’s another view, ignore the ugly Goldie chair, yes we are those crazy people that have a reserved chair just for our dog. I have been on the hunt for a couple of nice dog and people friendly chairs, but for the time being I just use a blanket to protect the hand-me-down that Goldie is so attached to.

 A close up, I have found that vinyl plank flooring is quiet and doesn’t have that plastic-y feel and sound that some laminates have. Plus, it’s generally cheaper than other hard surface flooring and super easy to install. This type of vinyl plank is floating meaning that it sticks to itself not the floor. I’ll have to do a how-to post about it when we do the other rooms in the house. Oh, and we liked this flooring so much we want to replace all the carpeting in the house with vinyl plank. Exciting stuff eh?

April’s photo dump

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As I may have mentioned a time or two, I have a penchant for taking a ridiculous amount of photos, but sadly I don’t have the same penchant for blogging about them. So to remedy that problem, you have the honor of witnessing my first ever photo dump. Yeah, I’ve done monthly wrap ups, and I even did an entire blog recap when I hit 100 posts. But this time, I don’t really have a reason for sharing random photos, except just for the sheer joy of putting them out there. So, grab a tall glass of sweet tea and get comfy…

During the month of April I celebrated my 20+10+1 birthday. (I’ll let you do the math.)

Bubba makes a homemade birthday cake for me every year. And every year Annie-dog supervises.

Besides the delicious cake, I also received tulips for my birthday. Purple ones…

And white ones! Oh, and I finally got to use my owl vase!

The weekend before my birthday we took a little trip down to Las Cruces  where we viewed the raging Rio Grande River.

Visited with Bubba’s family…

Dined at one of our favorite Italian food establishments…

Then on our way home, saw many desolate areas…

After all the birthday celebrating had calmed down, it was time to celebrate Easter. One of my favorite holidays, not only is it a holiday filled with pretty pastels and Peeps (come on how could you not love sugar covered marshmallows?) it’s also a day to celebrate our Savior’s glorious resurrection.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” 1 Peter 1:3

Apparently, this photo dump turned into a recap of April, and of course a recap of a national holiday, my birthday!!

The O in hOtel

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Wow-wee, it’s been way too long since I last posted. I miss my little blog-y home, and all my readers (hi Mom!!).

As promised, I’ll be sharing some photos from my little work trip to Los Angeles. I will apologize in advance as I realize most of you will find fire escapes and yet another sky scraper quite boring. But for this girl from a town that has only one tall building, it was a pretty awesome sight!

Honestly, I’m not really sure how to organize these pictures into posts. When I forced you to see, when I shared with you my shots from our Charleston trip I broke those down into each day we were there. However, with these it’s a little more difficult, because some days I took loads of photos and others not so much. So, I’ll break them down into 3 categories: room, board, and sites.  I’ll try to make them into three posts, but we’ll see what happens, remember I have that itchy shutter finger, so I’ve got LOADS of shots I just can’t wait to share!

On with the room, we stayed at a boutique hotel called The O Hotel. I have no idea what the “O” stands for unless it stands for “O, this hotel is dang expensive!”. But I shouldn’t complain, the cost of lodging did not come out of my pocket, and it was pretty nice and more importantly clean.

The room itself was pretty basic, bed, desk, tv, bathroom.

Sorry for the fuzzy photos, it was pretty dark in there!

Aside from the small-ish but comfy bed, I had a great view!

Yup, that’s a block wall. Apparently in the big city you have to pay big bucks for a view. This was a hard pill for this southwestern girl to swallow, where views and wide open spaces are free to all.

Here’s the view when laying on the bed, it’s a little more interesting than what you get when standing in front of the window.

Yup a parking garage, while visiting the City of Angels I came to understand that Los Angeles residents really do love their cars. But since they all loved their cars so and insist on driving them everywhere, they must park them somewhere, hence the 50 million parking garages I counted while in downtown LA.

Aside from the great views, the hotel room offered storage for the weary travelers treasures.

Sorry for mess, I didn’t bother to pick things up. It was the last day and I had forgotten to take photos of the room before I messed it up.

They offered a luggage rack and a small closet, which was fine as I am not one to really unpack while traveling, I’m more of a throw it in a suit case and don’t worry about organizing it type of girl.

My favorite part of the entire hotel was probably all of the marble, I LOVE marble and would love to incorporate it somewhere in the yellow shoebox. But cost restraints and the high maintenance have been a slight marble deterrent to me.

Here’s the shower, I didn’t really care for the hand held only shower option, but the water was hot and the pressure was good.

Oh yeah, and the shower area didn’t completely close off, so if you weren’t careful you could easily flood the bathroom while singing “Oops I did it Again” during hair washing. They had tracks for a shower door, but no shower door. Hmm…very curious indeed.

Oh, and I should mention the shower gel/shampoo/conditioner holder. I loved this idea, I didn’t use any of the products due to my ridiculously sensitive skin, but it’s a great way to keep essentials handy without having them fall off shelves and bruise big toes. Not that I speak from experience or anything.

Remember when I mentioned the marble? Oh, the marble, it was deliciously creamy, light and bright. They had it everywhere, the vessel sink was even made of marble.

I learned that if I were to ever get a vessel sink, it would need to be slightly more rounded on the bottom. This one didn’t really drain all that well as there was frequently water standing in the bottom.

This may have been mentioned previously, but I loved all the creamy marble, but I didn’t love the slate flooring they paired it with. It seemed a little cold.

The room was small and stylish, but so was the lobby. It was cozy and quaint, but with a restaurant and bar it could get pretty loud and crowded on a Saturday night.  But on a Friday afternoon it was pretty quiet.

The fireplace was a little modern for my taste, but the brick work and lighting were very chic. And I would be remiss not to mention the high ceilings, they really do open up a small space.

Honestly, most of the hotel was a little too modern for my taste, but I guess I’m just an old lady who enjoys well worn, curvy vintage finds opposed to the sleek clean lines of the modern style. Thankfully though, I didn’t spend very much time hanging around the room or the hotel in general. There was way too many things to see, eat, and photograph. In the next couple of days I’ll show you what I saw and most importantly what I ate while visiting the fair city of LA.

Don’t be scared, I promise  I won’t rattle on as much next time!

womp-womp

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It’s been so long since I last posted I don’t know if I’ll be able to put words into sentences. But let’s give it a shot shall we?

I will give you fair warning, this post probably won’t make much sense and will have abosolutely NO structure. So, if you enjoy a well rounded post, then I suggest you stop reading here. But if you don’t mind my ramblings and my random photos, then sit back and enjoy the show!

Recently, I’ve been trying to attack a few of my smaller projects. You know, those projects that don’t really take a lot of time, and really don’t make a huge impact. But they still make me feel good for doing them, because darn it, I’m gonna do something fun!

I saw this idea on Pinterest to make your own murcury glass lamps. I love the look of these, but I hate the price tag, so the thought of making them myself out of cheapie lamps was super appealing. The instructions suggested using Krylons Looking Glass spray paint and  lots of water, but I being the independent rule breaker I am, thought I’d try using a metallic spray paint.

Here’s my set-up:

A $3 Goodwill lamp, and her $3 cream brother in the background. And here’s pinky after my little experiment:

Imagine a big wop-wop sound effect as I studied the results of my labor. The process, is pretty simple, you drench the lamp in water with a trusty spray bottle, then spray it with your spray paint before it dries. It may have worked better if I had started out the with the correct product in the first place, and maybe covered the original pinky mauve with another color before water drenching step. So, I’ll be purchasing some Krylon Looking Glass spray paint to try this project one more time. Hopefully, I’ll end up with results that are similar to this:

Aside from getting a spray paint headache, I’ve also been playing around with art in the living room. Over the past year I’ve acquired quite the collection of discarded art from various thrift stores. Some of them are originals and pretty darn good, others aren’t so good, and still others are prints. I’ve decided I may need to be more discerning about what I bring home, and where I place my works of art.

Here’s my living room art wall way back in August of 2011:

Ignore the girls on the sofa, this is a recycled picture from this post. Honestly though, this is a typical scene in my living room, dogs sleeping on the couch and crooked pictures on the wall.

Here’s my little art wall last week before I started tweaking with it again:

Sorry for the poor white balance, it was night time and I didn’t want to wait until I had better lighting. But back to my art wall, as you can see, I’ve got way too many photos up here that really aren’t connected and brought together the way they should be. So, I took them all down except for the one that I knew I wanted to keep on that wall.

Then after fiddling for a while I came up with this:

Now it looks too sparse, and I’m not really sold on the two yellow bird paintings anymore. It might be time to do some art purging. Back to the drawing board on this one too. Chalk this one up to another womp-womp moment.

Hopefully, this weekend I’ll get a chance to tackle these womp-womp projects and make them into woot-woot projects!!

Have a great weekend folks!

The many faucets of life…

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Tell me, why is it so hard to get a post up? I think about blogging all the time, I take tons, and I mean TONS, of photos to include in these imaginary blog posts, and yet, very rarely do any of them come to futrition. Like my story of our faucet. You may remember a few weeks ago I had mentioned my longing for a new kitchen faucet. Well, I finally found the one, the perfect faucet. Just in case you forgot what the old one looked like and why I am so giddy about the newest here’s what we started out with:

Apparently, the installer of the last faucet wanted to make sure it never came loose, evidenced by the many layers of plumbers putty. After two hours of chipping away at the putty we were left with this :

And this:

Thanks to overstock, this beauty is now in my possession. So, our sink is currently looking like this:

Aww…much better and shinier. Here’s another view:

I love that curve, and the separate hot and cold water handles. As well as, the sprayer, it actually sprays and isn’t made of plastic!

Yeah, I know how weird it is to be this excited about a new faucet. But when you are dishwasher-less and end up spending most of your time at the sink, it’s so very important to have something pretty and functional to look at. Especially when your backsplash is old and the grout is dirty. I’m experimenting with different techniques to rid the backsplash of the many years of grime that have settled into the grout. Stay tuned for that update.

Also stay tuned for many random posts about some pretty random things I’ve been up to. All those photos I’ve been taking have got to be recorded somewhere right?

Quirk

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I love quirk, it’s my friend and constant companion. Quirk is preferable to some of my other companions like guilt, anger, and that other not so pleasant tag-a-long, jealousy and his friend covetousness. But quirk, quirk I embrace, quirk is the type of friend you call up to see the latest chick flick with. The buddy who still wants to hang out with you, even if you snort-laugh in public. Quirk is the fun friend, but  guilt always brings ya down, anger is just too unpleasant, jealousy is too judgy and that other acquaintance covetousness always wants what it can’t have and makes everyone miserable because of it.

Since I’ve been hanging out with quirk more often, I’ve become more aware of her presence around my home. Like my budding interest in owls:

Or my new favorite old things, pineapple bookends. When I brought these home Bubba thought they were…interesting…and…pokey. I am hoping that one day we will share a love of pineapple bookends.

Right now these lovlies are living on the living room coffee table, hanging out with my small vintage camera collection.

I couldn’t bear to put my pineapples in the front room where we keep all of our books. (A place I usually avoid, since I haven’t allowed quirk in that space.)  I just had to have them front and center, where I spend most of my time, in the living room, sadly, in front of the TV.

Alongwith my owls and pineapples I’ve noticed that quirk is showing herself in my other newest interest, globes. I love the colors, and it’s really nice to have visual aids when it comes to learning that Africa is not a country, but a continent.

This isn’t quirk, but she’s one of my other favorite and nearly constant companions:

(Never mind the floating head, I’m still experimenting with bokeh. And yes, the dog does match the carpet, many a night has she been stepped on in a sleepy stumble to the kitchen for a drink. )

Goldie dog tags along with me throughout all of my adventures, at least in the adventures where dogs are allowed.

Quirk is showing her face in the fact that I can’t bring myself to letting my Valentine Tulips bite the dust. I change their water and trim their stems every day. Obsessive Complusive? Or quirky?

Have you found quirk in your home recently? Is quirk something you want to keep around, or the friend you choose to ignore?

P.S. I’m linking up to a linky party hosted by the Nester, we are all celebrating our imperfections. Whether those imperfections be in the home, personal, or found in our quirkiness.  Click the banner below to be directed over to Nester’s celebration of imperfections.

Doomsday Preppers and Tulips

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Bubba and I keep it pretty low key for Valentine’s Day, we typically don’t fight the crowds at restaurants, or pay a ridiculous amounts of money on roses or chocolates.  He and I usually stay in, cook dinner and enjoy one another. Some years, I even talk him into watching a romantic comedy, this year was not one of those years. Instead we watched Doomsday Preppers on Nat Geo, I think it’s obvious who won out on the great remote battle that evening. Maybe I let him win because he surprised me with these:

Flowers actuallyon Valentine’s Day! Not the day after (which would have been fine since they are much cheaper then) and not the day before, but on the actual day. I was so proud of him, and so proud of myself for telling him what to buy. Not that I’m that kind of wife…who am I kidding…I so totally am that kind of wife!

What did you do for Valentine’s Day? Did your sweetie fake surprise you with something?

House Nuisance

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In my Home Goals for 2012 I mentioned a quote that has been floating around the blogosphere for a while now:

“Have nothing your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” William Morris

In keeping with this thought, I’ve been trying to tackle those areas in my home that have been of particular stress inducing, hair pulling, wanna-give-away-all-of-my-earthly-possessions-and live in a yert nuisance.

One of those many nuisances has been our mini-linen closet in the hall. You see, we have this weird half closet that houses bath and bed linens. The other half, the top half, of this closet opens into the bathroom by the sink, this is where we store toiletries. That’s another story for another day, I’m taking baby steps, and believe me when I tell you the bathroom closet is not a baby step, it’s a giant I’m a big girl look how I can organize my home with one hand tied behind my back while juggling two rabid squirrels with the other type of step. (Yes, I got tired of hyphenating.)

Anywho, here’s where I’m at with our bed and bath linens:

 

Do you have any frustratingly cluttered areas in your home, or is your entire home frustratingly cluttered?  Hair pullin-let’s-just-buy-a-new-house-because-this-one-is-dirty sort of cluttered, not that I know what that would feel like.