Meeting Young House Love

So you might have guessed it from reading my posts, but just in case you did not know. I love the blog Young House Love. John and Sherry are a normal couple that began writing their blog years ago as a way to keep their families apprised of their home updates. From there it has become a monster success. So much so that they have both quit their jobs and have written a DIY book!

 I was one of the first in line to buy their book, and so pumped when they announced that they would be coming in to Austin to do a signing! My friend Corey agreed to come with me for the signing and talk they were giving on writing their book. I was pumped.

 Fast forward to this past Tuesday, I was worried because I had seen their updates from other cities and it looked like the lines were going to be really long and because it was pouring rain that we might be standing outside in it for hours. Good thing the folks at Book People are quite the pros at hosting book signings and they had us all inside and cozy while we waited for them to arrive.

They arrived right on time and were as sweet and approachable as they are on the blog. Their talk on writing their book was really interesting. I was exhausted just listening to them talk about the process. Most nights while doing the photo shoots for the book they only got a few hours of sleep. They also did not hire any stylist or any other help to do all the project shoots and the projects themselves. Each and every thing you see in the book they did. It is really inspiring. It all makes me even more excited for our bathroom remodel!

Anyway here they are talking to the group. Sherry is of course making a funny face because that is how she rolls:

After the talk Corey and I grabbed a coffee and waited to get out books signed. The store grouped us by letter section so we all did not have to stand in line forever. It worked quite well. After only about 30 minutes our group was called and we started to wait in line. It then hit me that I was going to get to talk to them. And I know you all are probably thinking, “So what?”, but these guys are like mom and dad’s Bob Villa to me! They are the reason I have been willing to do so much of my home projects. I read their blog every day and refer to them by first name to Parker whilst doing almost all of our home projects. I of course began to freak out.

In line, they are on the other side of the glass. I think they would have preferred to stay that way after talking to me!

Corey gave me a look like “Keep it together Christine”:

 And I had this look on my face:

It is blurry because I could not sit still I was such a wreck!

Anyway I decided I wanted to tell them that I refer to them by first name so much that Parker now refers to them as my besties (silly term for best friends). I did not, however, think about how creepy this would come off. Oh well I went with it. Corey and I got up there, got our picture taken and then I stared to run my mouth. Sherry was gracious and said she thinks of other blogs as her friends and “besties” too and that she was glad I did the same. Yea right, I am sure she thought I was nuts. Oh well. Here we are, being awesome with my besties!

They of course signed the book to their bestie, Christine! Woot! It makes me happy. All in all it was a fun night. I am so glad I went. And if you have not read their blog you should do so. It is awesome, funny, thoughtful, and helpful!

House Goals for 2013

Happy new year everyone! We had a great year in 2012 and we are so ready to get going on new house projects for 2013! 

First off, I am going to learn how to sew this year! Parker’s very generous grandpa gave me a sewing machine and lessons for Christmas this year and although I never thought about trying to learn to sew I can already tell you I am enthralled with the idea of making lots of custom items for my home on this fancy machine. Just in case you were wondering I got the “Baby Lock – Grace” machine. It is amazing. 

I plan on making curtains for the whole house on this bad boy, straight lines are my friend. So far my inspiration comes from pictures like this:

And this:

And this:

I will let you know when I get started!

Secondly and probably the biggest DIY project I will ever take on is our Master bathroom renovation! Yes, you heard me right Parker and I are going to do our master bathroom renovation ourselves (mostly). We plan to take out a small closet, frame out a new door move the sink (I know, we are calling plumber) and tile a shower. We will also have to redo the floors and install a new vanity. This is going to be major y’all. 

Thirdly, install a ladder into the attic access in the garage. Right now we just have a hole and we pull our ladder up to it. Although it is not that big of a deal we plan on using the attic as storage for a lot of our Christmas décor and getting in and out of that area easily will be a big help. Plus we went to Home Depot the other day and we found that these attic access ladder things are not much more than $150. Not too bad. 

If I can get these three big house projects done this year I will be super happy with us. I fear the master bathroom project is going to take at least a month because Parker works on weekends and we are limited to how many hours we have together to get this all done. I will be back later with all the mood boards and ideas I have out there for this project and show you some detailed before pictures. Trust me you are going to be amazed we have been able to deal with this bathroom for 6 months.

First fire fail

Parker was super nice to offer to make a fire for me. It was the first night this whole year that it was going to freeze so we thought it would be fitting.

Parker got all the fixings for the fire and the Eagle Scout in him set up a great looking fire. Here he is working away! Don't you like our fireplace by the way?

Pretty fire with the stockings hung with care.

What we did not think of was how the house would smell after we made the fire with wood from the backyard. So although the fire was gorgeous and we enjoyed it, it also STANK!!!! So three weeks later our house still smells like fire and we will not be setting a real fire in there again. At least until we can figure out how to make sure the house will not stink after we have one.

Any thoughts?

An $89 Headboard

I know it has been forever, sorry about that. We have been super busy celebrating lots of family birthdays and the holidays. But We have also been busy doing stuff around the house. The most significant would probably be the new headboard I made with my mother in law and Parker over the Thanksgiving holiday.

I had been planning on making this headboard for a while. It was always a "When I find the right fabric, or time to make it I will". Well with MIL on hand and time to do it I felt it was go time in the house.

MIL and I headed over to a new fabric store and they just so happened to have the exact fabric I had been looking for. It is nice and heavy and fairly neutral so if I wanted to change the colors of the room or our bedding I could.

After buying 3 yards of the fabric, a bunch of extra thick batting, a piece of plywood (cut in half to fit in our car), extra long screws, nuts and bolts and some 2x4 pieces to be the legs we hauled everything back to the house and got started. Every one of the tutorials I read about said this was a super easy project and I was hoping to be done with it in just a few hours. Well, it was fairly easy but it took a lot more time than I had planned.

First we assembled the plywood and screwed the pieces together with a remnant to reinforce it. We then began to wrap the headboard like a present with the first and then a second layer of extra thick batting. Here is what it looked like after both layers were stapled onto the plywood.

Then we wrapped the whole head board in the fabric making sure it was laying flat and pulled tightly around the batting. We wanted to make sure it looked even and no pulling effect was happening so we took our time and used a lot of staples. Here is what it looked like without the legs attached and after about two hours of work. pretty nice right?

Then we began the next day with attaching the legs to the headboard. This is where we ended up having a problem. See the back of the headboard had become super thick because we had been folding the batting and then the fabric down and stapling it. so when we went to screw in the legs the fabric keept getting caught on the screws and the legs would not attach. To our horror we realized we needed to take the fabric off and attach the legs directly to the plywood and then re-wrap the legs with the fabric. After many hours of fussing with the legs and the MIL helping me figure it all our we finally were ready to attach the headboard to the bed frame.

After fussing with the bolts and getting everything even and attached we finally could see the fruits of our labor. I think it came out awesome! The whole thing cost me $89 not the close to $2000 I was going to spend on the bed frame I love from Crate and Barrel. Luckily now we have more cash saved up for the bathroom renovation we are plotting for spring of next year. Woot!

What am I supposed to do with this?

Apparently we need to get out trees trimmed!

I came home the other night to this in our front lawn! What the heck? Our neighbor told us that we had some high winds in the area. I did not notice that, but I guess he is right.

These trees are pretty large in the front of the house. We are very lucky that nothing happened to the house. There was no damage to the roof, and to the lawn really. I can't believe it! I am hoping Parker will write a post for you all about breaking down the tree and disposal. He even got to use a chainsaw!

Hope all is going well with you all! I will be posting about our Halloween decor and more later this week!

Master of Arts

As I mentioned to you the other week I made some home made art for Parker for our annaversary. I wanted to save money and be creative this year and I think I accomplished both! Two years is your cotton anniversary. Well since we did not have a met yet I did not want to get sheets wich is the obviousl cotton gift. I also did not want to get Parker any clothes as we are both working hard to loose some weight and I was not sure if it would fit him once he did.

So I came up with the idea of making art on canvas. I have seen a dew other blogs do the same thing and I figured I could pull it off. I used a coupon and bought two canvases on sale and Jo Ann's and then use paint samples we already had. In the end I probably only spent around $15 on the whole thing.

Once I gathered my materials I got to painting. I had seen a few ideas for what I wanted to paint but in the end chose the words from the long we walked down the ilse to at our wedding. The Beatles are my mom's favorite and I have always loved this song.

Here is how my first attempt at home made art came out. What do you think?

I know, it is kind of awesome! I love the whole look! The colors just happened to go well together in the room and they were free!

After Parker got his gift we decided to hang it up for the world to see. I like that it is right next to our bed reminding us of our special day and a good message to live by.

After hanging this artwork up I decided to hang other art up in the room. Hey, it's been 5 months I guess it is time. Next I hung up a map of Venice over Parker's new dresser. I also put out a picture of the family ad an eagle that his mom recently gave us from when Parker earned his eagle scout. I love the way this looks.

Above is a picture Parker's grandma painted and Parker's mom gave us just after we moved in together. I have always liked it and imagined having it in a special place in our home. I think it brightens up the muted colors in the rest of the room well.

So there you have it. We now have stuff to look at in our room. Things are slowly coming together in the house. It is amazing to me that even 5 months into living here I still feel like we are just moving in. I hope you like what we are doing with the place. We sure do! :)

Fit for a king

The evolution of our bedroom started a few years back when I found some great pillows at a sale at Dillards. Since then I have been trying to make our master bedroom feel less like a broker 20 year-old’s bedroom or like my mom’s house (no offense mom!) and more like OUR house. I have discovered this is the challenge for a lot of young couples starting out. Not only are you just getting started on your life together but then you have to cross the bridges of who gets to have what in their own bedroom. The fact of the matter is it takes time. That is what this post is about; the evolution of our bedroom’s style over time.

So with that let’s take a look back at the first picture I have after I bought some pillows on sale at Dillards just after we got married in January of 2011. We were using Parker’s bed and my old bed frame, and tables that I have had since college. Also know this picture was taken in our old apartment at night so it really looks super dark in there. It was much less cave like in person.

After a visit to my good friend Sarah’s house in Philadelphia I got inspired to get a more traditional quilt for our bed. After looking around a bit I found a really cute quilt at Marshalls for something like $30. I had the wherewithal to buy a king sized quilt knowing that we would eventually buy a bigger bed.You can see it on the bed in the picture below. When we moved into our new house, with a much bigger bedroom our bed looked very out of place in the space. It actually looked tiny! Here is a picture just after we moved in.

 After a few more months of sleeping on this bedframe and mattress in the house Parker and I decided it was time to finally upgrade. Between his back pain and my hip pain we knew that us wanting a mattress was not just about vanity but also comfort. We had actually been trying to wait until Christmas this year so we could give the bed to each other. We figured though, it was best to try and get the bed now instead of continuing to sleep on a mattress we no longer we comfortable on. So without further a due, here it is in all its glory!

Isn’t she pretty? We ended up going with a traditional coil bed after much debate about getting a foam mattress. It is a Beautyrest Elite king pillow top with individually wrapped coils. It was almost half the price of the memory foam mattress that we liked, and is super soft and comfy. For now, and for the next decade, it is exactly what we need. We had it delivered for free the next day and had our old one hauled away. We are pretty happy about it so far, but it defiantly needs to be broken in. It is not nearly as soft as the one in the store was. But the great thing with it is if we don’t like it after 90 days we can return it!

 Now, with a new bed comes the fun part (for me at least, Parker not so much) new bedding! We had actually saved a bunch of money from gift cards from our wedding two years ago, knowing that we would one day have to make this purchase. So it was fun to not have to hold back because of cost. We went with a duvet from Crate and Barrel. It is actually like their super popular one right now, so I had to special order it wich was a whole debachle. But now that it is on there with our new grey sheets and old quilt I am in love with it! What do you think? Here are some detail shots. As you can see, after all of this, I am still using those pillows I got on sale at Dillards years ago!

 Now that we have the bed all set up we need to make a headboard. I am going to attempt that this weekend. We also need to adjust a few more things in the room. In the end I think we have done a great job of combining our styles to make a room the modern and comfortable for both of us. Can’t wait to start on the next project!