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Country Living February issue...

December 30, 2013

I get Country Living magazine along with Better Homes and Gardens. When did I grow up and stop reading Cosmopolitan? I can't remember. Anyway, I like the decorating ideas in these magazines and they often spark creativity and give me ideas on how to re-do something on the cheap. This issue especially! It's the "Amazing Bargain Issue" and has actual people decorating their houses like I do... with thrift store finds, hand me downs and crap they've made themselves. Usually I kind of roll my eyes at the prices people pay for light fixtures, kitchen redo's, etc. Everyone and their grandma these days wants and NEEDS granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances. I say, why? That crap is going to look dated in a few years just like everything else does. I think some kinds of granite already do look dated, but that's just my opinion. This magazine this month has a lady who actually has a plywood countertop covered in chalkboard paint and sealed with pas

Mini bathroom redo

December 30, 2013

I had been wanting to attack this bathroom since we moved in. It's all white tile with a grody white plastic shower pan and brass fixtures. Overall, it's not a bad space-- super tiny, but with a massive skylight and a window so it's bright and airy. The shower tiles were installed in the 90's I believe, and while I'd love to gut the whole thing, and install something to my taste, the style matches the house, doesn't look all that dated, and is in pretty good shape. If we had $5,000 extra lying around I'd tackle it. But mostly, I just couldn't stand that shower pan and knew there had to be some quick fix that I could do. It was covered in grime-- and not even our grime, the prior owner's dirty feet stains or whatever the heck it was. And it wouldn't come off- believe me, I tried scrubbing, I tried bleach, expensive cleaners, even paint thinner. I was thinking that the bare minimum to bring this bathroom at least up to my cleanliness sta

Finding the perfect Christmas tree... in the desert

December 26, 2013

I've never gone hunting for a Christmas tree, and certainly didn't think the tradition would start here in the desert. But I was wrong! The last few years we've gotten a firewood permit, which allows us to go up into the hills of Nevada and cut down dead trees for firewood. It can be somewhat hard to find enough to fill the truck, but last year we were lucky and found an area hat had burned a couple years before. We were left with the branches others had left behind, but we're still heating our house with it. Christmas tree shopping in the desert! This year we looked into getting a Christmas tree permit, and for $5 we found that you're able to drive up to the federal BLM land and scout out a tree. We were looking for juniper or pinion pine. Driving along the dirt roads it's nothing at all like I'd imagined Christmas tree hunting would be like-- there was no hiking through a snowy forest in search of that perfect tree. In fact, it's 99% roc

Project fireplace baby gate!

December 26, 2013

We love having fires in the fireplace at our house. As soon as the nighttime temps dip below freezing, we have one pretty much every night. We bought this fireplace insert a few years ago and it really cranks heat...so much so that we often have to crack a door to let some of the heat out! With the baby being mobile--and attracted to this like a moth to a flame-- we decided something had to be done about the obvious danger. Not that we'd ever let her be alone in the room, but this baby is QUICK! And she doesn't really get "NO" yet. She just turns and smiles. Google "fireplace baby gates" and up comes several metal contraptions for $170, and various burn pictures. Ugh. I didn't want baby to get burned, nor did I want a $170 metal contraption front and center in our living room. Brandon decided it was his task, and built this boxy-looking thing out of 2x2's left over from baby proofing the deck this summer. In theory, it was great. He put

Veggie garden mini-success!

October 05, 2013

This summer I had the most successful garden yet. It was just in containers, but the secret was the drip system. In Nevada, the entire garden can die in one day without water, and this has happened to me three years in a row now. After installing the drip system and a time, voila....veggies!! We had tomatoes that were pretty successful, and the one bell pepper plant did really well. Three corn plants did terribly, we got 3 midget ears. I guess corn is not the best container garden plant. But I can't seem to learn things like this from a book, I need to plant it, see what and how it grows, then learn from my mistakes. The zucchini did well in a huge container, but we will need much more than just one plant next year. One tiny pumpkin was all we got before the plant was spent, and a cantaloupe smaller than a tennis ball is hardly worth mentioning. But the point is........nothing died! It survived all summer long, with several days well over 100 degrees, on a hot, dark brown deck i

Getting ready for baby...

September 16, 2013

Here are some "before" shots of the nursery. This is the bed I most recently made, a twin for Gretchen's room. It was pretty cheap, just a few douglas fir boards. I made it pretty sturdy and taught myself how to do these fancy holes!! I made it when I was about 6 months pregnant, so I had to put it up on cement blocks to paint it and work on it because it was too hard to bend down. I am pretty proud of it. The color was random, off-the-shelf spray paint in chartreuse. I love it though, it goes with her bohemian, colorful nursery just fine. We use it mostly as our changing table for now, and have since moved her crib into our room. But one day she will use this bed!! It also got a lot of use while in the late stages of my pregnancy; snoring and moving around like a beached whale and not wanting to wake my husband up. It was pretty nice to have my own bed for times like that! The closet system in place. Pretty easy, just pine boards in a ladder shape, then

Finished nursery!

May 24, 2013

Well, in this last year and a half of non-blogging, I had a baby! She is the coolest, most unexpected gift ever. We were not "trying" but I got really lazy with my pseudo-natural family planning method. Oops. I remember saying quite frequently though, that if kids were going to happen then it would have to be by mistake because I could never make that decision! Anyway, Gretchen made her way into our lives in March, and we couldn't be happier. I wanted to show off her nursery which I had done by the time I was about 6 months pregnant. It was the office/guest room before, and we just started collecting things. Before the shower, people would ask what color the nursery is, but I have to say it's rainbow. The walls are brown, which I love, and there is some of every color in there, including a chartreuse twin bed, made by yours truly. We re-used many of the things from our house, like the red oriental rug that belonged to my mom, and the oak dresser, also fr

Made our bed

January 20, 2013

We needed a new bed. We'd been using a hand-me-down metal contraption with a saggy box spring for some time, and the mattress was lumpy enough that both of our backs hurt in the morning. After scavenging shops all over Reno and realizing yet again that good furniture is very expensive, I decided to make my own. My dream bed is a platform, low profile type bed, kind of like this: Bed I want I like how zen it looks... clean and simple. I looked at the hardware stores for fancy, expensive wood, like walnut or something... but that would make a fancy, expensive bed. This is not in my budget. So, I chose redwood, because that was the size and shape of wood that Lowes had. I started making it one day when the hubs was at work, and when he got home he took one look at it and asked why I was making a double size instead of a queen. Um, oops. I guess I measured wrong. Somewhere along the line I forgot to take into account the width of the side rails, which are 2-inches each. Duh.