Have you ever been in a bathroom that has individual hand towels each in their own little cubby for your hand drying pleasure? Pretty deluxe. We’ve seen them a few places. Typically in very tony restaurants and hotels, but also at the occasional home, which has made me think, why can’t we offer that extra something to our guests too? I’ve been wanting my own ever since. I’ve had the idea for over a year now for our upstairs bathroom, and when I floated it to Dain, he responded that he could make it. How cool is that? Give the guy an idea, and he makes it happen by busting out his woodworking skills.
Archive for August, 2011
Snap, Crackle, Sit….On a Crackle Bench
It’s rare for us to be driving anywhere at 6 in the morning on a Saturday, but since Dain was in the Edina Art Fair earlier this summer, we had a three day span of early and long days. And it paid off in a surprising way. A few blocks from the fair on a random Saturday morning in June, we spotted a pile of wood and a free sign. Cue the erratic u-turn by Dain. Luckily, it was a ghost town at that hour. As we pulled up we realized that we were looking at three solid wood benches. For FREE. It’s almost embarrassing how excited we get about free stuff. Almost. We stuffed them in the car (not ours…a much bigger one that we were borrowing for the weekend to haul all of the art fair supplies) and went on our merry way. After quite a few steps and a couple of months, we finally have one final product. Only one since we hedge our bets and thought we’d test out our new found refinishing skills on that for starters. Enter the crackle bench.
Tiling the Sun Porch: Part 1
Yes, we had another exciting weekend. If you consider a Home Depot run and a hardware store run and a whole lot of tiling exciting that is. But what’s not exciting about concrete, thin-set, and tiles? Ok, pretty much everything. It’s a lot of work, but we had to do it. And doing it ourselves saved us a ton of money. Gone is the cheapo sketchy carpet that somebody set on top of our concrete, and now we have a very nice floor that doesn’t make us cringe. It is a big undertaking for a DIYer, but it’s doable.
The Meal Deal
Unfortunately, unlike in grade school, high school, and college, out in the real world we have to shop for, pay for, prepare, and serve ourselves this meal deal. Sigh. But as we promised last week when we told you about our new August m.o., we are committed to making more homemade meals. So for the last twelve days, we’ve been busting out our limited kitchen skills, sitting down to the dinner table every night, and delighting in our new found craft.
It’s a Jungle in Here
Thanks to some wild and woolly house plants. We both spent years in apartments so we have been toting along some of our plants for a very long time. And the thing about apartments is that space is at a premium along with sunlight. So we basically had one plant stand crammed full of greenery by the one sunny window at our last apartment before buying our house. Naturally we just transported it to our house. But the time has come. To say goodbye and start anew. With a fresh crop of not so crazy looking plants.
Room and Board…..Outlet
That’s right. In case you didn’t know. Room and Board, the high-end, trendy, and incredible furniture manufacturer is not only straight up Minnesotan, but it has an outlet store. A few miles from our house. I die. While I dream of the day that we can waltz into the regular store and buy something retail, I would probably kill someone who spilled a drop of wine on a sofa that cost me $4,798.00 (like this one). So to avoid all of that, we stalk the outlet store. And it finally paid off with the deal of a lifetime. Does it exactly match anything we own? No. Is it it the right proportions for our petite house? No. Was it amazingly luscious and $880 off the original price? Yes and yes. We pounced.
It’s Turning into an Obsession
A chalkboard obsession. For real. Dain asked me the other day if I would paint a child’s room in floor to ceiling chalkboard paint. I said no, but only because I contemplated how many little cans that would require. I would obviously only paint the entire bottom half of the walls in chalkboard. Kids aren’t that tall. In all seriousness. Because I find it delightfully fun. Like I am young again. Not that we’re that old, but we do have under two years before the big 3-0. So while Dain was installing our new toilet, I worked the chalkboard paint as promised in our newly improved itty bitty pantry.
How to Replace a Toilet in Style
Ok, not really. It’s a dirty job any way you slice it, but wouldn’t that be nice if home projects were a little more glamorous? A few weeks ago we installed a dual flush converter on our basement toilet, and as you may recall, we vowed to replace the toilet (in this post) upon seeing the condition of the old beast up close and personal. So Dain put on his handy man pants over the weekend and got it done. Talk about a fun Friday night. You may know you are getting old when you actually spend a Friday night doing home projects and a weekend is not complete without a trip to the Home Depot. But it had to be done.
Homemade Has Never Tasted So Good
At least to us. Which is not really much of a feat since we have very few recipes in our repertoire. Until now that is. As we told you on Monday in this post, we have vowed to make more homemade meals. We actually got a head start a few weeks ago with the meal we made to reveal our chalkboard bottles. Sad that we only made that meal since we wanted to be able to write the menu on our bottles. But anyway, it was INCREDIBLE. Hands down the best meal we have ever made. We actually loved it so much that we had it for about four dinners in the span of a week. So we thought we’d share how two non-chefs put together a simple and delicious meal of fish burgers, grilled corn, and a strawberry-balsamic mixed green salad.
B-I-N-G-O-C-O-A-S-T-E-R-S
As you probably now if you’re following our adventures, we spent an abnormal amount of time perusing the games section at Goodwill last weekend in hopes of finding a Scrabble game for our Pinterest Challenge art. Of course we did not find Scrabble, but we managed to come home with two Bingo games. TWO. At the bargain price of $1.99 each. While it is certainly not as fun as the live version (since there are no daubers or jackpots or screaming ladies in glittery tops involved), Bingo does come in a boxed edition. Were we just delirious from all of our shopping and the lack of working air conditioning in our car? We definitely were, but that doesn’t explain our purchases. While suffering from heat stroke, Dain actually had the brilliant and crafty idea to take the little Bingo cards and turn them into coasters. He is an art major you know.
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