New hobby

For my birthday CP got me a sewing machine. For the last couple of years I had been talking about wanting to learn how to sew, but had no idea where to start. CP remembered that and had secret talks with his mom and my mom to figure out the best machine for a beginner that would hopefully get better as the years went on.

I actually got my present two weeks early because CP wanted me to bring it up to Michigan for Thanksgiving so that my mom could give me some lessons. I ended up making Christmas napkins (hard to see but the green ones in front of the sewing machine below). They weren't perfect but a good first start.

After pursing Pinterest, I decided that I would next tackle making a pillow for Izzy (I used this as my guide). I took her to the local fabric store and asked her to pick out the fabric that she liked. She quickly picked out this whale fabric and I paired it with a gray fabric to add some contrast. Actually making the pillow took longer than I would have liked because the first night I would wash the fabric, the next night iron it, the follow night pin it, the next night sew it, the next night iron it again, etc. But I finally finished it and Izzy was super excited.

Finished pillow!

Not sure why the picture is upside down, but here is Izzy getting ready for bed, excited to be sleeping on her pillow (and yes, with all of her stuffed animals sleeping around her).

Now I have to figure out my next project!

Almost Wordless Wednesday- catching up

Various adventures from October....

On Columbus Day I had the day off from work and Izzy's daycare was closed so we had a Mommy-Izzy day! We went downtown to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Izzy enjoyed watching the monkeys run around after each other, but her favorite part of the day was riding the carousel.

Excited to ride the giraffe

She insisted on watching the ducks for a very long time

How YOU doin'?

We finished the day off with ice cream....

......before coming home to a fallen tree in our backyard (it was very windy that day). CP had the pleasure of using the chain saw that weekend to cut it up. We are getting quotes on possibly taking out what is left of the tree this fall (and hopefully putting in a flowering tree like a dogwood or magnolia)!

We enjoyed watching the Cubs in the playoffs. Since we don't have cable we went out to eat to watch one of the games. The whole restaurant was watching and Izzy got really into clapping when everyone else was cheering and getting excited.

Go Cubbies!

 Right before our first frost we picked a bunch of veggies from the garden- broccoli, carrots, radishes, peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Yum!

 Izzy and I also did a Halloween project. I had her draw on different colored pieces of paper, then cut them up to make "hair" for a funny face on our front door.

 The final product- it's hard to see the scribbles on the hair but Izzy is proud anyway!

Almost Wordless Wednesday

Another week, another room finally finished.  We are slowly but surely getting there!  We would like to fully finish the house prior to having this baby (if we are lucky enough to have it stick around for the long haul)....we'll see if we have enough money to do everything though.

But for now, our first floor bathroom is finally complete!  This is a bathroom that I didn't use for the first few months that we lived in the house because it smelled like pee.  According to our inspector, the toilet had overflowed too many times and even the subfloor would have to be replaced.  EWWWWW.  So I refused to use the toilet until the room was fixed up.

Clearly this is a BEFORE. Check out the ugliest light imaginable, the pastel wallpaper, and the blue PLASTIC tile, and the old corner sink.

But don't forget the nasty, nasty laminate floor that doesn't match the rest of the room..

Midway through construction.  The new subway tile is on the walls and we were in the process of fixing up the ceiling.

Finally, the AFTER!  New subfloor, new floor tile, new subway tiles on the wall, new toilet, and paint on the walls!

New mirror, new vanity, new faucet, etc.  The new light above is not shown.

While I wish I could say that CP and I did most or all of this ourselves, we did not.  We have never tiled before and we got a ridiculously low quote (probably because the bathroom is so small), so we had a professional do it.  Maybe one day we will try tiling....but I doubt it's as easy as it looks on DIY or HGTV.  :-)

Either way, it's DONE and we can worry more about the upstairs now!!

Almost wordless Wednesday

CP has been really busy plastering, priming and painting lately.  Last night we finally got a chance to install our custom closet in our master bedroom.  We do not have a large closet by any means, but what we did install will at least help with space, since CP and I share the closet.

This is obviously the before.  The paint color was awful, the walls and ceiling were in pretty bad shape, and we just had two hanging racks on either end of the closet.

Another before picture

Another before.  As I mentioned, the walls were in bad shape, so CP had to fix the plaster.

Obviously an after picture.  It's hard to see, but there is now a shelf running the length of the top of the closet, with hanging racks below, another shelf that runs the length of the closet halfway down, and another hanging rack on the left side.

Here's another after picture.  We installed two slide-out pant racks on the right side of the unit for CP's pants (and probably some of mine).

I can't wait to fill up the closet!!

How to organically revive your lawn

Our front lawn was apparently neglected before we bought the house. I don’t know if the previous owners dumped too many chemicals on the lawn which stressed it, or simply neglected it but towards the end of last summer the grass was yellow from GRUBS.

In case you don’t know, if these disgusting creatures make an appearance on your lawn, your lawn is unhealthy. The grubs will eat the lawn roots, which results in patches of dead grass. We had grubs and dead patches everywhere.

In order to fix the problem without resorting to harsh chemicals or ripping up our front lawn entirely, this spring we have formulated a 6-part plan to fix our lawn.

1. Rake the thatch. When the days start getting a little warmer in the spring, rake your lawn. If you have an unhealthy lawn like we do, there will be clumps of dead grass stuck together that you can easily rake out of the ground (aka thatch). Rake all of that up and get it off your lawn.

2. Aerate the lawn. You know when you see 4-inch long circular pieces of dirt that look like poo on athletic or school fields? Well that lawn has just been aerated. You can use a manual aerator that you step on to make the holes (if you have a small lawn) or rent a machine (like we did). According to what we read, the shoes that you see in Sky Mall that have the spikes on them don’t really work because they don’t go far enough into the ground.

3. Buy compost to spread over the lawn.

We waited a week between aerating the lawn and having the compost delivered. The dirt that you see in the picture is 9 cubic yards of compost. We called a local landscaping company and ordered the compost to be delivered on Friday afternoon. We tried to get ½ in of compost on top of the grass and added more in some parts (for instance on top of where we had two dead trees taken out last year). Compost will add nutrients back into the soil and fill in the holes from the aerator machine. Surprisingly, it didn’t take us very long to spread the compost- only half a day.

4. Buy grass seed. We went with an organic brand called Jonathan Green. Make sure to grab a bag of a seed that suits YOUR lawn. For instance, in our back yard we used a high traffic seed (because of the dogs) whereas in our front yard we used a full sun seed. Spread the seed over your lawn- you can either use a seed spreader or do it by hand.

5. Buy mulch. We bought six bags of a brand called Mainely Mulch which is like a straw that has no seed in it. We then spread that over the compost and seed to hold the seeds in place and to retain moisture.

6. Water water water. In order to get the seeds to germinate you need to water a lot in the beginning.

Cost:
Aerator rental $ 65
9 cubic yards of compost $ 265
Grass seed (1 25lb bag) $ 50
Mulch (6 bags) $ 120

Total $ 500

Crossing my fingers we have a better looking lawn this year!

How do you take care of your lawn?

Pinterest

Every day more and more of my friends are joining Pinterest. I was annoyed at having to get an invite, and still think that having to get an invite to join the website is silly, but I’m glad that I did. I annoy CP on a daily basis by showing him something I found on Pinterest…a new recipe, a piece of furniture for our sunroom, DIY crafts, etc.

Not everything that you find on Pinterest works. For instance, I showed CP a picture of a coffee table made out of two skids. His comment was, “That will never work. They use the crappiest wood for skids and even if you sanded them there would be all kinds of splinters and it would never hold anything.” Point taken. I’m glad that I have him around for some logical thinking because otherwise I was starting to get excited about the new coffee table I was going to make! Ha.

So far I have mainly made food off of Pinterest. Here are my comments in case you would like to pin these items.

Sock bun/ Curly Hair Without Heat

(Me with my sock bun)

I tried out this technique one night when bored (see picture above). The video at the end of the post was easy to follow and sure enough I had a sock bun (which I loved as a hairstyle- will definitely be doing it again). The next morning when I took the bun out though, my hair was nice and curly but too poofy. I blame this on the fact that the tutorial tells you to put it high on your head. I will try this again with it lower on my head.

Pepperoni Pizza Monkey Bread

I made this recipe for the Superbowl- but without pepperoni. The recipe was pretty good (I used Whole Foods pre-made pizza dough), but would have liked a little more flavor. The outside pieces of monkey bread were great because you brush the outside of the pan with garlic butter, but the inside were kind of dull (despite the fact that I brushed them with the garlic butter as well). I would probably not make this again.

Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread

Delicious. I would definitely make this again. I took it to a party and everyone loved it!

Caramel Brownies

The overall brownie taste was good, but somehow my brownie texture was more like fudge than a brownie. I did use pre-made caramel sauce from Whole Foods so that might have been my issue. My coworkers LOVED these despite the not-quite-right texture.

Skinny Spinach Macaroni bites

The idea of putting healthier mac and cheese (with spinach to up the healthy factor) into a muffin tin is a good one…but the mac and cheese didn’t have a lot of flavor. I would not make this again.

2 Minute Salted Caramel Mug Cake

Last but certainly not least, the mug cake. One night CP declared that he wanted dessert. This doesn’t happen very often so I was shocked. He suggested going for ice cream; I suggested that he help me try out this fast recipe. I made sure that I had all of the ingredients and ended up making the salted caramel chocolate mug cake (I substituted white chocolate chips for the salted caramel pieces). OMG. I couldn’t believe that it worked but after two minutes in the microwave, there it was: a delicious, moist, and gooey chocolate cake that I whipped up in minutes. In hindsight finding this post was probably a bad idea because I know that I have the ingredients on hand and will make the cake again!

Have you pinned anything good recently? Leave the link in the comments so that I can check it out!

*All images taken from Pinterest (other than my hair picture)*

DIY wreath

Have I mentioned recently that I love Pinterest? Despite the annoyance of having to be "invited" to join the site, I have been having fun pinning! I pinned an awesome acorn wreath and used the idea to create my own!

Here is the final product:

It was so easy!

Buy one straw wreath from Michaels (this one is 12").

Pick up half a grocery store bag of mini pine cones from your yard (really you can use anything that has an interesting shape/color!)


Using a hot glue gun, start to glue the mini pine cones to your wreath. I started off moving straight across the wreath....but with different sized pine cones I changed my strategy and started shoving pine cones wherever I could fit them in.

Here is a closeup. At first I was worried about seeing the straw wreath behind the pine cones (should I spray paint the straw either brown or black?), but decided not to worry about it too much. Turns out it wasn't a big deal.

The whole project took me a few hours to complete but I think that the time was totally worth it! After finishing I tied a silver ribbon on the wreath and hung it on our front door.

Success!

Veteran DIY people- do I need to spray the wreath/pine cones with anything?

What have you pinned lately?