Friday's Letters

Today I'm combining a Friday's Letters post with another because well, I just wanna- so there! ;)

Dear Blog, I have been so uninspired lately that I have been ignoring you. No matter what I do I can't seem to get inspired and I hate to just post stuff just to post it, so that I have something posted for that day. Seems so beside the point of having a blog, having to torture myself to do posts or come up with material just to fill space on a daily basis. SO, I am slowly regenerating myself and will eventually return to you full force...

Dear Cameron, you are almost 9 months old and I just can't believe how fast you've grown, how much you change and grow every day right before my eyes and how much I enjoy watching you do it all. You're hilarious and it's freaky how much like me and your dad you are. Genes and the proliferation of them are such a weird thing!

Dear Boo Kitty, I loved you like a child before I had Cameron and I still love you but if you pee or poop in the living room one more time I'm really going to lose it!

Dear shoe and bag closet, Ha! I conquered you! Hopefully that will inspire me to keep going and organize the other closets in the house, eventually moving on to getting other more major projects done. For now I will flaunt you as my one victory so far during this lazy summer of mine....

And now... here's my post on the shoe/bag closet organization...

So I've been in a full funk for the last few weeks. Not sure what it is, probably just the mid-summer blues but whatever it is I just can't seem to get it in gear. In an attempt to get myself kick started again I decided to take on some organizational projects that I've been putting off since we moved in almost a year ago.

First up was getting all of my shoes and bags out of the Shoes Under bags that they've been stored in for the last few years and organizing them in one of the guest bedroom closets. The closet we have in our master bedroom is kind of small compared to the size of the room. Luckily, we have two extra bedrooms with big empty closets!

A side note about Shoes Under- they SUCK! I bought them when we lived in an apartment thinking they were perfect since they'd just easily slide in and out from under the bed. Well, like I said they suck. The compartments aren't sewn to the bottom of the bag so everything pretty much just ends up bunched together at the bottom of the bag. And the bottom and sides of the bag have no structure at all, it's all fabric so the bag is floppy so when you push or pull the handle the bag just collapses and doesn't move. I'm such a sucker for those darn As Seen On TV products! Hope that Yonanas machine I just ordered is as cool as it seemed on the commercial.

Ha! Just kidding... how completely ridiculous is that thing!

Here's my finished high heel and bag closet. My flats, flip flops, sneakers and boots are in my Master bedroom closet. I used skirt/pant hangers to hang the bags. I saw on Pinterest that someone else used S hooks which is a brilliant idea but I have no idea where to get some. I've looked around as I've been out and about and haven't seen anything even close to an S hook. Besides, I like to use what I have if possible and I had a stack of skirt hangers just hanging around looking for a job!

Weekend Update: Life's a party!

I'm linking up with Sami's Shenanigans for the Weekend Update!




There's been a lot of celebrating going on around here lately. Two weeks ago we celebrated my birthday, Saturday was Cameron's 8 Month birthday and yesterday was Father's Day!

For his 7 month birthday I let Cam pick out his cake. This month I decided to make a sort of mini cake out of cupcakes fashioned into the number 8.

Saturday we headed out to Put-in-Bay, one of three small islands located just off the shore from Sandusky, Ohio on Lake Erie. It's such a perfect day trip for those in the Cleveland area. "Day" trip is key here because at night the place (I hear) turns into the mid-west version of the Jersey Shore!

We got on the ferry at Port Clinton and took the 15 minute ride over to the island at 10 am. It was Cam's first ferry ride!

Downtown is lined with lots of touristy shops and bars/restaurants.We had lunch at the Boat House and then stopped at a shop where we picked up the cutest little Captains hat for Cameron.

 We stopped by Perry's Cave and bought a bag of dirt that we then took over to the miners sluice to pan for semi-precious stones. It was a lot of fun even though it was obvious that the semi-precious stones were just pre-mixed into a bunch of gravelly dirt. That didn't seem to ruin the fun for anyone though, there were a lot of very excited kids sluicing away. Soooo cute to see how excited they'd get when the gems and crystals would appear from the dirt, such a great activity for kids!

 

Here's the loot we panned out for Cameron.

Rose quartz, crystal, amethyst, peridot, sodalite, garnet, pyrite, obsidian are just some of the gems in our booty. The finders card also had ruby, sapphire and emerald on there but alas I don't think we have any of those in our little cache.

For Father's Day Cameron got Dada his much longed for bird feeder. (I think Cam's going to say Dada before he says Mama. He says Da, da, da, da all day long. Sigh. Oh well, hopefully Mama will be his 2nd word?) The previous owners of our house had a bird feeder right in the same spot in the back yard. I was glad when we moved in to see that they had taken it with them, Dave however was disappointed.

Since then he's been talking about getting one only to have me shoot down the idea. I've just never been a big bird person and thought that the feeder's location in the middle of the yard was too random. I also thought that kids, when running around back there, would accidentally plow into it. I finally changed my mind when I realized that we don't exactly have six kids running around back there all the time. Heck, we don't even have one that crawls yet! And because it really isn't that much in the way, there's still plenty of room for little ones to run wild.

And finally, here's a pic from my birthday featuring me in the Birthday Hat sitting on my gift- the Indonesian  Bench that I've been wanting from Cost Plus World Market! Love it so much and the pillows I purchased from Festive Home Decor on Etsy are so perfect on it. Now we're searching for complimenting chairs and a coffee table.

Current Crush

Today I'm linking up with Framed Frosting for my Current Crush, a post where I showcase what I'm currently "crushing" on.

Right now I'm so into... BURLAP!  It's really inexpensive material that can be used in so many different ways plus it fits into that whole industrial/rustic look that I love and is really popular right now!

Here's my DIY version of the burlap pillow which I silkscreened and sewed myself. Read the post for that here.

Homegirl

Such a super cute logo/sign and love the big colorful SALE sign

We have a bit of a local celebrity in our little town. Her name is Gina Bishop and she's known for re-purposing salvaged items into decorative pieces. She first garnered attention through her blog Homegirl, as well as her extremely popular barn sales where she sells her re-purposed and salvaged items. It has been her appearances on the Nate Berkus Show though that have really skyrocketed her into local celebrity and decorator guru status. In October she appeared on the show with her sister where she competed in a room makeover challenge. Since the show she  has also made a series of how-to videos for MSN and appeared with HGTV star Eric Stromer as the winner in GMC's Let's Trade Secrets Challenge.

I first learned about Gina through our local town newspaper where she was featured in an article. After Googling her I learned about an upcoming barn sale and then realized that she lived right around the corner from me! Last weekend she had another one of her famous sales. This one had to be the biggest and busiest one yet. The very first night the line of shoppers spilled down a good portion of her driveway. We went to check it out on Saturday after the fervor had subsided and were pleased to find that there were a lot of great things left. 

I really love her style which is similar to mine but just a touch more country. Like Gina, I love to find old, run down, out of date items and repaint or re-purpose them for my house. Most of the time when I see something at one of her barn sales I usually think "I can make that!" There's just something about having a piece of furniture or a decorative item that not everyone else has, a piece that you found in an out of the way random thrift shop or industrial yard. And of course there's the satisfaction of having given it a new look and new found life.  It's such a compliment when someone asks where you purchased a piece or when they say that it looks just like something they saw at one of the major home stores.

Anyways, back to Gina.... all I have left to say is You Go Homegirl! Love your style, love to shop your barn sales and I LOVE that you live in the same little town that I do.

Memorial Day Recap

Hey everyone! Had a great Memorial Day weekend. The weather was super hot and humid, a perfect kick off to summer. Of course our A/C decided to kick the bucket on Friday. Well, it didn't really completely die. It seems to kind of work a little, enough to keep downstairs a respectable temp. It's still warmer than we'd like but not so bad. Now upstairs is a different story. The A/C doesn't seem to work at all up there so it's been hot, hot, hot. Calling the repair people today!

Saturday we went to a birthday party in Pittsburgh. That night Dave and I went to dinner and a movie (the Avengers in 3D = 3 hours of non-stop explosions). It was our first "date night" and was a lot of fun. Cameron got up at his usual time (5 a.m.) so we watched the sun rise over downtown Pittsburgh. The view from my in-laws condo on top of Mount Washington is amazing!

Cameron basks in the glow of the morning sun.

On Monday we went to the Memorial Day parade. It was Cameron's first parade! I thought he'd be scared of the loud drums from the marching bands but he didn't bat an eye. The next three photos were taken by my mother-in-law.

 Cam made a new furry friend at the parade.

Our neighborhood pool opened this weekend so we checked that out for the first time after the parade. It was a lot of fun and not ridiculously crowded like we assumed it was going to be. I'm excited to have such easy access to a pool (right down the street from our house), especially for Cameron since he loves the water so much!

Cameron contemplates his attack on the kiddie pool.

 What kind of madness have you brought me into?

In between all of that Dave finished mulching the front yard (there were a few plant beds left), mulched around our mailbox and Cameron's playhouse and re-seeded a patch of grass. Phew! That's a lot of hard work in very humid, 90 degree weather! It all looks so, so, so nice though.

A Mother of a weekend

We tackled a huge project last weekend- mulching the entire front yard. (I use "we" liberally, as always Dave did all of the heavy lifting, digging, raking and sweating.) For a few months now our yard has looked really shabby and I've been a little embarrassed especially since we're flanked by neighbors with yards that could be featured in Better Homes and Gardens magazines.

We started with quite an over grown mess. Instead of just hacking everything back and dealing with what we had we decided to pull everything out and start from scratch. So after mulching we're halfway there. Now it's just up to me to select the flowers, plants and shrubs- no small feat!

Here's the before...

And the after...

Yard work took up most of the weekend but there was also Cameron's weekly swimming lesson on Saturday and of course Mother's Day. I woke up to find a large gift waiting for me in our freshly painted sun room!

Dave finished the sun room the weekend  before. We eventually plan to replace the carpet with tile. The paint on the walls is Benjamin Moore Weston Flax HC-5, a really light, creamy yellow color.

Back to the important stuff... like my gift! As soon as I saw that it was from Don Drumm I had a good guess at what it could be...

A beautiful sun to grace the wall of our sun room! Love it so much! It's a perfect fit on the one wall we have in the room. Don Drumm is a well known Akron, OH based artist best known for his beautiful sun sculptures.

Of course I asked Dave to hang it up right then and there. While he got the tools he needed Cameron and Boo Kitty played with the ribbon. (Please don't write me... I know that it is not a good idea to give ribbon to babies but I was watching him the entire time and did not let him put it in his mouth nor did he ever attempt to wrap it around his neck. He mainly just looked at it and waved it around. And no, I won't ever assume that since he did not do any of that this time that he'll never do it another time.)

Baby steps...

No... I have not had my baby yet and this post has nothing to do with babies...

It's about our newly, freshly painted dining and living rooms! We've been in our house for two months now and we're taking little baby steps toward making it our own.

A few weeks ago we hired painters to come in to rip the wallpaper off the dining room walls, paint the windows, crown, base and chair rail trim a crisp white (which were this odd yellowish/ecru color) and paint the walls in both the dining and living room.

Usually instead of paying someone we would normally do something like this ourselves BUT since I'm super, duper prego at the moment and my husband is super, duper, crazy busy at work these days we decided to hire a company to come in and do it.

We've worked with contractors before and all I can say is that unfortunately, most of the time you realize that you would have/could have done a much better job than they did. So needless to say our painters were not the creme of the crop. Hell, they weren't even the nasty bits left over at the bottom... they were just not good. After having them re-do things several times we finally got the rooms to where they were decent, paid the bill and brushed our hands of them.

Anyhoo... we love how fresh and updated it looks now. I know everyone always says it but it truly is amazing what a coat of paint can do for a room... for anything! Here are the before and afters...

Dining Room:

Living Room:

We obviously still need to get a new chandelier and some sort of buffet for the dining room and oh yeah, some actual furniture for the living room would be a good idea too! :) But like I said... baby steps in the right direction!