Poodle Doodle!

Before

After

Taking projects and knockin' 'em out! This little puppy will go perfectly in my new laundry room (there are a few finishing touches and then I will reveal it!)

Ever the neglectful blogger...

Cece and I are here to update this blog. How do people live life AND still have time to blog about it? I'm still trying to find that alleged balance between the two.

NO, the laundry room isn't done. But it's pretty darn close! In order to tide myself over until I can make a big reveal right here on this very blog, I will talk about some other fun things from the week!

Cece and Elvis are Valentines.

So far, these two are spending most of their time competing with one another (or Cece is laying in her kennel with the door wide open, sighing and acting depressed.)

You can see her back there, pissed that Elvis is in her room. You can see Elvis sitting there, oblivious, because he has spent his whole life getting everything he could ever want.

They're so cute.

I'm trying to pace myself so my blog posts aren't miles long with weeks between them. So, with that said, I will only talk about ONE of my recent projects.

I will call this "How I started my own herb garden."

How I Started My Own Herb Garden, by Sara.

Here are the goods.

I'm starting slow. I only chose 5 packets of seeds a couple of weeks ago to get myself started. I found a sunny window in my kitchen and got to work. I thought, I'll see if anything happens with these, I'll go from there! 

Here are the rest of the supplies. 

I left out a picture of water and sunlight, because DUH! Do you really not know that you need water and sunlight to grow a seed (or 500?)

500 is my estimate of how many seeds I planted, with about 100 being in each packet.  I tend to over-estimate, though.

Here is an aerial view (I did not care to rotate this photo, if you're wondering,) of the pots in a sunny window!

Let's take a quick side note to say it snowed a record amount this weekend in Dallas. 12'5"!!! It was glorious.

Even if all the trees along our backyard fence were bogged down with ice and laying on the ground. (Do you like the red cuff of my bathrobe on the side there? I didn't bother to crop it out, because I didn't bother to take the bathrobe off allllllll day long that day.)

Back to my herbs. Friday, aka snow day, I walked by the window to check on the little guys. For the past couple of weeks, they've just looked like little bowls of dirt. Friday, my friends, was the day that the Dill and Cilantro sprouted!!

See those green things that look like worms??? That's dill!

I'm hoping this photo doesn't get cut off, because these sprouts are still pretty tiny. But they're there. They're curly and they're there. (Say it 5 times fast.)

Now, if you will please excuse me, my husband is waiting on me so we can watch Couples Retreat.

Maybe the laundry room will be done tomorrow?

Project City!

That's what I'm calling our house for now. I have about 15 (bajillion) projects going on. One of which is our new dog, Cece!

This is Cece, pre-grooming. 

Cece is a labradoodle who is EXTREMELY skiddish. She is afraid of new people, and especially men. We got her for free on Craigslist. We think basically the owner just didn't want her because she couldn't breed her (see above: skiddish.)

I spent about 2 hours with her on the back patio on Saturday, trimming her fur and brushing out all the matted stuff. There was a lot. She is pretty calm once she gets to know a person, so she just sat there and let me pamper her! Unfortunately, I had to cut off all the hair on her cute ears because they were so badly matted. But it will grow back, and I'll make sure it stays brushed! Saturday night, I gave Cece a shower. Too bad the water was freezing (see last post: heater broken = cold EVERYTHING.) 

I haven't had a chance to get any post-grooming photos, as she runs away everytime I point the camera at her. There are a lot of pictures of her butt (which is, coincidentally, in a diaper.) 

So that's our project dog. Elvis loves her, but is adjusting to not getting ALL of our attention right now (only about 90% of it.)

Next project!

My wonderful, wonderful laundry room.

I chose to include the mess. That way, when I do the big reveal at the end of my renovation, it will look even more shockingly amazing! 

I have spent the weekend up until today working long, hard hours on this baby. I painstakingly peeled every piece of that beautiful wall-paper down, using nothing by my hands and a small putty knife (and a wall-paper steamer.)

I took down those horrible wire shelves. And they'll stay down! But I'll hang them in a closet, because why waste such functional storage? (But why display it out in the open like that?) Luckily, this laundry room's got plenty of storage. Above the washer and dryer, across on the opposite wall, and there's even a pretty good-sized closet in there too. Oh, the possibilities of organization that await me!

During the peeling process. This took forever.

(Cue hallelujah music and drop 'Mission Accomplished' sign from ceiling)

Oh, wait. I'm not done. That was what I like to call "Stage 1" of the laundry room project. 

Stage 2: apply texture to the walls. I won't even go into that process. Let's just say I had quite a few hiccups along the way, and I'm just not ready to talk about them. For now, I'll just refer to that as "the worst day ever," or to put it in more layman's terms, "Superbowl Sunday."

Stage 3 happened today, and it was to paint said textured walls. And I'm choosing to not share anymore photos of this project until it's completed. Why? Because I'm a witch! Ahhhhhhahahahah!

But I will share some pictures of a different finished project. Remember our flooded work-out room?

Well, it's done! (Not by our own doing, this "project" had to be hired out.)

The floors are no longer flooded, although they are wet in the picture because Kennedy had just mopped.

And a view the other direction! So far, it's "worked out" great! Haha.

Stay tuned for my big laundry room reveal! It could happen any day now...

Let there be light!

I made lamps. Seriously! I MADE 2 lamps. Kennedy and I are in the process of (finally) decorating our room. I was out at TJMaxx the other day, scrounging for some decor items, when I came across a couple of vases. I've been wanting to make a lamp (or lamps) for a while now, and these were a perfect way to start, because I didn't have to drill anywhere for the cord.

Here are the vases I found. They were $15.00 each, and actually came with a matching lid. However, one of them was missing a lid, so I was able to haggle a little and get one of them for about 10% off. Score!

Here are my lamp kits. If you look closely, you'll see that one of these was on sale. When I took it to the register, I was able to haggle and get the other one on sale too. At first, I thought they were exactly the same, but when I got home, I realized that one is a push-through switch, and one is a turn-knob. No big deal, because it saved me a couple of bucks! So far, I've saved $4.00!

Here are my other tools. A hot glue gun, and some cork tiles.

I used the cork to plug the top of the vase and hold the lamp kit in place, so I traced a circle and cut it out. This lamp-making thing is so simple, it's ridiculous.

Viola! Tried and true.

Next, I took the threaded tube (that will later hold the lamp wire) and poked a hole through the cork. No cutting necessary, just twist and push through for the perfect-sized hole.

Here's the fun part. I pushed that copper end of the wire through a hole at the bottom of the vase, then threaded it through the metal tube, and there it is! I won't go into detail on step-by-step instructions here, because any lamp-kit you buy will have it's own set of instructions. BUT, you need to follow those instructions to the letter. There are two wires there, and both have a certain place to be fastened. Otherwise, the kit won't work.

My underwriter's knot.

Once the kit was assembled, I pulled out the trusty hot glue gun and glued the wire inside the vase in place, and then I glued the cork in place around the inner-rim of the vase. I can rhyme all the time! I ended up using lampshades that we already had from some other ugly lamps hanging out in a closet somewhere. I also used my left-over cork to glue to the bottom of the lamps, so they wouldn't scratch our wood side tables.

And drumroll, please....

Ta-da!

You can do it, too! Kennedy also made a good suggestion to paint the cork white so it would blend in with the lamps. Also, it would make it look a little less 3's company (if you catch my drift.) He's so smart!

Next, I want to make some lamps out of glass vases. This will require a little more finesse, as I will have to find a diamond-tipped drill bit and drill a hole without busting the vase. I got a good tip from a handy-man about how to do this. I will also be consulting this website when the time comes. Good thing I've been saving all our glass jars from our kitchen, so I can practice!

Next blog post, I'll be addressing the fact that I set our heater to 88 (as high as it would go) about an hour ago, and our house is still only 60 degrees. I'm FREEZING!

Good news to share!

I have finally found a replacement for the once mac-and-cheese shaped hole in my heart, left by Bracco when we moved away from South Dakota.

The best news is that it's at a place you can find literally almost anywhere in the country! It's Panera Bread's NEW Vermont White Cheddar Mac & Cheese.

No, they're not paying me to say this (although, they'd be smart to, as I've told about 4 billion people about this mac and cheese this morning alone.) Try it. Go to Panera Bread for your next meal and try it. It's creamy, cheddary, warm and delicious. You won't find a better match-up, unless you live in Sioux Falls and can go eat at Bracco. But this one is cheaper.

In other news, I've recently stumbled across an AMAZING blog, Knock Off Wood. You can find it over there in my blog roll for future reference. If you're like me, and cannot bring yourself to buy new furniture, this blog gives detailed instructions on how to make exact replicas from your favorite stores like Pottery Barn, West Elm, etc! I'm excited about this! Time to get Kennedy some more tools! (I'm the supervisor; I don't do power tools.)

And finally, our heater sucks. It's literally 55 degrees INSIDE our house. First of all, screw you cold weather. I'm sick of it. I'm supposed to be able to wear shorts and a t-shirt right now. Instead, I'm bundling up as much as I did when I lived 1000 miles north of here. This is ridiculous.

I can't stop staring at that picture of the mac and cheese. I gotta get outta here!