tulips make me happy.

My favorite flower is a daisy, but tulips come in an extremely close 2nd.  So close, in fact, that I might have a hard time choosing between the two.  I would be happy with either one, really.

Lucky for me.

Back in the fall, while I was away on a scrapbook retreat, my husband (and his mom) planted tulips for me in the front yard, along the sidewalk curve and in the space between our sidewalk and driveway.  It was part of my birthday present but up until a few months ago, I didn't know anything about it.

One day I began to see things popping up through the pinestraw..."what's this?", I asked Jeff.  He said, "Happy birthday!  Again."  Aren't they just beautiful?!

Everytime I look out my front door, I smile.  :)

Home EC Class: Project 18

Laptop Case

Lessons learned:
   working with foam
   loop attachment for a button

I'm very pleased with how this project turned out.  We have a fairly new laptop so I'm glad I waited to do this project until we had this one.  It really wasn't as difficult in parts as I thought it might be, especially working with foam. 

I think my style is to err on the side of "big" so there's plenty of room on either side of the case when my laptop is in there.  I scored on the fabrics at Joann's since they were 1/2 off when I went to get my materials for this project.  And I love how they coordinate.  :)

I'm heading to a scrapbook retreat at the beach next weekend and I'll be taking my laptop with me so I'm psyched to have a super-cute case to carry/protect it in.

whole lotta postin' goin' on...

And by postin', I mean, fence posts.  I do have a few more blog posts to go with those I've already put up, but in this case, I'm talking about fence posts.

Backyard fence posts, to be more specific.

My handy husband built us a fence in our backyard (with a little help from a couple friends :).  And it really looks great.  I definitely feel better about going out there now, knowing that no strange dogs (or folks) will be running through our space (that actually happened to me last summer -- the dogs, not the folks).

Our neighbors on either side already had fences up, so we just had to put up the back and the 2 front gates on either side in the front.  We opted for a 4 ft fence (though the sides are 6 ft where our neighbors put up theirs).  Jeff said we're putting up a fence for security, not privacy.  For keeping our kid(s) in, not keeping others out.  I like that.

We are ready for the warmer weather to stay!

welcome, spring.

I've probably mentioned this before but I love living in NC.  I was born here, raised here and would probably be content to live here until I die Jesus comes back.  One of the reasons I do so love living in this fine state is because we get all 4 seasons here.  Just about the time I'm getting tired of the season we're in, it's time for it to change anyway.  Love that about NC.

That being said, our weather here on the coast has been a little whack lately, with temperatures bouncing ALL.over.the.place.  Up in the low 70s one day, down into the mid 40s the next.  It's kind of obnoxious but temporary which is what I keep telling myself.  You just learn to dress in layers around here.

Uh, so I'm rambling here but I really just wanted to say that I'm excited about spring being right around the corner.  My husband planted some tulips in our front yard at the end of September last year (for my birthday.  while I was away for the weekend.  yes, he's a keeper. :), and they've been making their way out of the pinestraw, even starting to bloom their beautiful yellow and red/pink colors. 

It puts a smile on my face every time I look out the front door.

And speaking of, I made a (pinterest-inspired) spring wreath for said door.  Though I had one idea in mind, I didn't get enough supplies so I had to cut to plan B, which really was non-existent until I saw how plan A was (not) going.  So it's a straight-up miracle that this turned out as cute as it did...

For those who wonder how I made it (hi, mom!), I just used an 18 in wire/metal wreath frame that I already had, and covered it in wired ribbon.  Then I punched out the cardstock flowers, butterfly & dragonfly from a book I already had and attached them to the wreath with brads.  The "welcome" sign I cut out of cardstock with my cricut and a couple cartridges (Storybook and Lyrical Letters, I think) and then hung it with some string ("fun fibers").

The whole thing is VERY fragile precarious so don't breathe when you come to our door, m'kay?

living room walls makeover...

And finally, the living room.  I'm telling ya'll, my father-in-law WORKED while he was down visiting!  Last up was the living room which he painted Saturday while we were away doing ministry with our church.  When we got home, it was such a subtle change, I almost forgot that we were having those walls painted.  But they look really good, especially with the accent wall...

That white trim just pops now with the khaki color on the rest of the walls.  So thankful for my father-in-law's giving spirit and his more-than-adequate work!  Our house looks great!

[paint color(s) in the living room: Fish Market and Homestead Ballroom Gold]

kitchen walls makeover...

Next up on the list of walls to be painted was my kitchen.  I am so unbelievably bummed that I didn't get any "before" photos of the kitchen before my father-in-law started painting.  I was working (from home) that day and he was about 20 min in with paint already on the walls before it dawned on me that I didn't get any photos before he started.

I really thought I'd be able to find some photos of the kitchen that I could use as "before" photos -- just ones that I'd taken casually for other reasons.  But no.  Couldn't find any.  Even more bummed.

But it is what it is.  Or it was what it was.  :)  I think you can still appreciate how beautiful it is NOW:

See how nicely the shade of red goes with my Homestead Ballroom Gold accent wall?  I really love how my kitchen looks now.  And the paint on the walls helped motivate me to do some cleaning out to help "de-clutter" my countertops and get rid of some things that I hadn't used in years.  That's always a good thing!

[paint color in the kitchen: Pedicure at Lunch]

hallway walls makeover...

So the next thing that Jeff's dad painted for us was our hallway.  This is the only hallway in our house and it has the living room, Deacon's room, the guest bathroom and the office/craft room off of it.  It's not very much space as walls go, but painting it really made a big difference, I think...

Such a pretty blue color...I used the shower curtain in the guest bathroom as inspiration for choosing the color for the hallway.  I mean, there's nothing in the hallway to pull colors from, like there is in a bedroom or bathroom, right?  So I was at first perplexed about what color to do in the hallway.

But then I decided that maybe it would be nice to use a shade of blue from the shower curtain since I probably wouldn't use blue in the bathroom, considering the curtain is mostly blue, with some other colors that I would could go with in that room.

Okay, I'm rambling.

I'm totally diggin' the hallway now.  In fact, I keep flipping the light on every time I walk down, just so I can look at it.  :)

[paint color in the hallway: Manitou Blue]

master bedroom walls makeover...

Well, after almost 5 years in this house, we're finally doing something about these drab "bone" colored walls.

Jeff's parents are here this week visiting, getting in some quality time with Deacon and they are loving it.  But in between those special times, we're putting my father-in-law to work.  But he likes to work, so it's all good.  :)

He is a (fantastic) painter so we decided before they got here that we were going to have him paint our bedroom.  We were watching TV one night and a commercial came on for Lowe's or something that showed this beautiful shade of green in some room of a house and I don't know, I just went crazy over it.

Green is my favorite color, anyway, but with the white trim in the room they were using in the commercial, it just looked AWESOME.  So I said something about that and Jeff asked me if we should have his dad knock it out while he was here.

Knock it out, he did!  They flew in Tuesday evening, and when I got home from work Wednesday, it was done.  And oh, was it beautiful!  It is THE perfect shade of green for our bedroom...

I love everything about this color on my walls!  It's so sophisticated and classy -- everytime I walk in there I feel like I'm in a house on Bald Head Island or something.  Jeff really likes it, too.

Duane did a great job, yes?  I am so happy with how it looks.  And bless his heart, he's offered to paint any other rooms in our house, whatever we want/need.  So we're taking him up on his offer, though I feel more badly about that than Jeff does.  I hate for him to come down on vacation and we're putting to him work.  But he has assured me that he doesn't mind, and as I said before, I think he likes to work.  He likes to be busy, I'll say that.  Whether this seems like work to him or not, I don't know.

So in the spirit of keeping Duane busy, most of our walls are getting a makeover this week.  Check back soon to see what I mean!

[paint color in the master bedroom: Dog Park]

315.

It's where we live, ya'll.

But we have folks complain when they're trying to find our place the first time that they can't see our house number.  We're not all about turning on outside lights much, especially in the summer (read: BUGS.).

Oops.

Well, my husband had another brilliant idea to remedy that:

Mo betta, yes?

Home EC Class: Project 10

Hemming Jeans

Lessons learned:
   determining correct length
   working with heavy materials
   determining your machine's limits

I am so impressed with how my jeans came out!  And how EASY this tutorial was to follow.  "Too long" jeans is something I frequently have a problem with but I'm always hesitant to try hemming them -- I don't want them to LOOK hemmed.  I want them to look like I bought them that way.

I was so excited when I saw that this was one of the tutorials in my Home EC class because it specifically said they were going to teach us how to hem jeans in a way that you would keep the original (factory) hem.  Yay!

I found these jeans at a consignment store for $10 so I figured there really wasn't too much of a risk if I totally screwed them up.  But I didn't!  And I didn't really have that much trouble with my machine through some of the really thick parts of the jeans.  I did have to hand-wheel around the side seams on both legs, but to be informative, these jeans ARE a little lighter-weight than normal denim.  That was probably a smart move on my part, starting with something like that for my first attempt at hemming jeans.

So excited to be able to take these jeans out of my "to-be-hemmed" pile and add them to my wardrobe!  Thank you to my husband for snapping my photos for me!

kitchen sink remodel...

I have another home project post for you today.  When we moved in this house over 4 years ago (geez, has it been that long already?), the sink in the kitchen was a beautiful, pristine, spotless, stainless steel, double-basin sink.

As you can imagine, it has seen A LOT of washing, soaking, staining, etc. in the last 4 years.  For a long while, after trying to clean it and not seeing great results, I just turned a blind eye to it.  I HATED the way it looked but I just got over it.

Well, the time approached when I could no longer turn a blind eye and I quickly became beyond embarrassed by how it looked, and pretty much done with it.  I told my husband that and within 2 seconds (true story.), he was asking me what I wanted (what kind, what color, how big/deep, single or double basin, etc., etc., etc.).

My husband?  He's a problem-solver.  :)

I had a problem with my current sink, so he was going to fix it.

So over the course of the next few months we saved our pennies and began thinking, researching and looking for a new kitchen sink.  And faucet.  Of course we'd have to have a new faucet because the current faucet was also part of the ghastly sink.

Jeff found an AWESOME set that included, along with the main faucet, a hot water faucet, a purified water faucet and a soap pump (which I'm not sure I'll use much but whatever -- it came with it) on clearance.

Love that word: clearance.

We ended up with a really pretty brown colored, deep-set, composite granite, double-basin sink.  I didn't even know they made sinks in a brown color but it goes perfectly with the color of our countertops in the kitchen.

Again, the before shot is always SO embarrassing, but to really appreciate the end result you gotta show it:

Like night and day, huh?  I love the new deep basins because I can put dirty dishes in there and you can't even see them!  :)  And the new faucet is fabulous because 1) it has the stream or spray option with the push of that black button you see on the nozzle, 2) the nozzle pulls off from the faucet to be able to use as a sprayer and 3) it swivels SO much easier and nicer than the other faucet.

I am so happy with my new sink.  This project was a success due in very large part to our good friend, Matthew, who has mad skills in the plumbing department.  He and his wife and little girl live in Wake Forest but they came down for the day so we could put him to work installing our new sink.  Sweethearts, those Seerings.  :)

Oh!  I also got an outside shower out of the deal!  That was my brilliant husband's doing.  He decided that if we, er, I mean, Matthew was going to be down there messing with the plumbing due to the sink install, we might as well get an outside shower put in, too.  Something he's been wanting and that just makes sense around these (beach) parts.  :)

Jeff pretty much took care of this project, except for the plumbing part of it, of course.  But the design of the shower is his:

entertain in style...

Wow, this blog is turning pretty random, huh?  I'm posting about all kinds of things on this one, but not very frequently, sad to say.

Sorry 'bout that.

Here's another random thing to post about -- our brand new entertainment center!

THAT.MY.HUSBAND.MADE.

Beautiful, huh?  That's the only kind of work my husband does.  :)

I kinda of don't even want to show you what kind of set up we had before he got this built.  It.was.ghetto, ya'll.  GHE -- TOE.

But to appreciate the beauty of what we have now, I have to show you.

Ugh.  Yes, that is 4 TV trays with various and sundry equipment, and I attempted to cover all the wiring by throwing some fabric over 2 of the trays.  That pretty much just served to ghetto-fy it even more, and collect dust.

The entertainment center we had before we got this nice TV (from my oh-so-generous parents) wasn't going to work so we had to quickly get rid of it and kind of "make-do" with something else until Jeff could get one built.

That was us, making do.

But look at us now!

a gardening progression...

Nothing to post on the sewing front right now, but I do have something house-related to post: my husband has decided to grow a garden this year!  Not a topsy-turvy garden, but a full-grown (no pun intended, ha!), raised-bed, in-the-yard garden.

He did a lot of research on the front end, about dimensions, irrigation options, seeds, etc.  Then he got to work in April putting his plan into action.  I'm pretty proud of him...

[the board he used to measure his beds out, then he spray-painted around the corners and edges to mark]

He decided he wanted 3 raised beds and then decided how much room between each bed, how far back in the yard, which side of the backyard, all that kind of stuff.  He really thought of everything, taking into account that eventually Deacon will be old enough to play catch so Jeff didn't want the garden to hinder throwing across the full length of the backyard...plus, we'll eventually have a shed out in the backyard, so he decided which side the shed would be on and left room for that.

I'm telling you, everyone says I'm the planner -- maybe I've rubbed off on him in a few areas.  :)

He got a strapping young man looking for some extra cash to come out and dig the sod out around the whole area so he could put mulch down around the beds -- he'd already thought of the issues with mowing around each bed and decided to just make one big rectangle.  Such a smarty-pants.

The next thing Jeff thought of was how to efficiently water the garden once he got his seeds planted.  His brother, Tim, and his wife, Leslie, were down the weekend of Easter and they helped Jeff put in his irrigation system.  He'd already had a line brought out to the garden from the spiget (sp?) on the back of the house so all he had to do was put in each line (4 lines per bed) and connect it all.  Each line has holes that drip water once the water is turned on...

See how the soil is dark in spots?  That's the underground irrigation system after it's been on for a little while.

I'm telling you, the man is BRILLIANT.

So now we wait.   And wait.  And wait.

About a month later (the beginning of June), this is what we have:

The very early stages of banana peppers, watermelons, sweet corn, pumpkins, cucumbers, green peppers, yellow squash and zuccini.  Oh, and we bought a tomato plant to put out there.  The banana peppers are in the hanging basket.  Also, he started some of the watermelons, green peppers and banana peppers inside in pods and then transplanted them after about a month.

And this is what we currently have, as of this very morning, June 18:

Look at that!  The first fruits of his labor!  It's crazy but there is a tiny little watermelon out there, about the size of a large marble.  But it looks exactly like a watermelon, with the stripes and everything.  Jeff says it will likely get to the size of a small basketball so we have a while before we can pick it.  :)

We're excited about the garden, but we're trying not to have expectations that are too high with this being our first year attempt.  We'll see how it goes and make adjustments as we need to for next year.  If there is a next year.  :)

I'm sure I'll post here and there as we get more growth and veggies popping up...