Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Sit-Upons

Slowly but surely things are starting to come together in the screened-in porch room!

Mike is definitely wary about the preponderance of multi-colored pillows but I think it looks suuuper fun.

Eileen and I used our he-man skills to put together the lovely rocking chairs on Thursday - I cannot even explain how comfortable these are - for sure my favorite purchase in a while!
No pictures "during" - we needed all our hands
This was to show the chair and highlight the ridiculous floor tearing up that needs to happen
So when the bench came yesterday, Mike wanted to build it right away. But the Phils were on. And Cliff Lee was working on his 3rd shut out in a row!
What to do?
Build it in the living room of course! It's hot outside anyway.
Needed all hands again, but here he is finishing it up
Someone thought it was their new living room spot
Weirdo dog loves watching TV
So anyway, after Lee blew minds of color commentators everywhere with his stats, we took all the stuff outside and dressed it up!:
Zombie Dog
Lemon is showing off a new floor cushion as well - wrapped in plastic, obvs

See bug zapper, bottom right. We really need to replace those screens...
This is the view a stalker would have. Pretty.
So that's what we're working on now. Waiting for the tables. The rug is here but we need to at least hyper clean the floors and walls before we put that down (we might have to wait to tackle ripping up that outdoor carpet, it is pretttty determined to hang on).

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Little Mikey's Birthday

We want need to have some budget-friendly birthdays every this year, and luckily we are both summer babies, so nice weather always allows us to hit up the beach or something for our special day, which is my plan of action this year (yay Green Family vacation 2011!) but Mike decided on his own day o'fun!

It was nice to explore our area a little and get a better feel for some close-to-new-home fun.

After sitting in some awesome seats for a weird Phillies game on the day of his actual birthday with my Dad, I planned to get in on the bday fun Saturday since we both had the whole day off.

His ideal day (note: he's turned 28 not 8) was thus: out to breakfast at Lucky's a cute diner with stellar homefries, then hitting up the batting cages and mini golf at Maple Zone for some super competitive fun and then out for dinner (and ice cream natch) with our favorite Graham to round out the evening.

The batting cage was HILARIOUS - there was this super serious guy next to us who was wearing an ankle brace, gloves, and a tall tee (of course) and brought like 5 bats of his own, for softball slow pitch! Amazing. I couldn't take any pictures though he was quite large and scary, even in his ridiculousness.

I did however take lots of pictures of Mikey's day out :)
Strike a pose
Fine form
About to conquer the links
Sizing up the situation
BAMF (see sign)
HOLE IN ONE!
So competitive and we ended up tying!
Annoyed at tying
Super excited about tying. But NOT about that sunburn. Owww
I think we had too much fun Saturday - Mike slept until like 11 on Sunday. I haven't seen him do that in MONTHS.

Eventually, we made our way over to Mike's parents' house on Sunday for some fun catch-up and cake!

Custom Shmustom

Ok, I realize that these posts increasingly belong on whitewhine.com (you're welcome for that one) but we've run into yet another oddity that is really putting a kink in our plans.

We set out weeks ago to order new appliances.  Once through the level of hell that is Sears on a holiday weekend, we got those little items delivered.

There was a slight mix-up with the stove because our contractor had not installed the gas line yet. But no prob guys, we could just wait and then contractor man could install it.

Screeeeeech! (that's the brakes)

This ridiculous stove was like custom set into the counter top! So even though it appeared to be a standard 30" guy that we could switch out, it was only 30" between the CABINETS, the nice little overhang of Corian comes in just enough that the new stove won't fit. (insert a ton of curse words that I won't use because my mom reads this).

So now we have to decide what to do.  Corian can be shaved/cut but after reading some horrifying directiosns, including things like: " ...the resin particles tend to float freely and stick to everything as if they are magnetized... tape-seal and tent the work area and rent an air cleaner to extract the dust from the air. Obviously, wearing a micro-filtration particle mask is a must, and eye goggles may help, particularly if working indoors." Well obbbviously...


Ugh, so needless to say we're a little intimidated about this and considering we wanted to replace the medicinal white Corian in the next 6 months to a year we might just move up the plan and get a new counter top... and have no money for food to cook on our nice new stove ;)


In the meantime here are some pics so you can see - I was fuming and snapping away with my phone.
"Really?! You needed to wedge it in there?" "You didn't want to leave ANYTHING standard? You'd never want to replace ANY appliances"? "Bad word, badder word, cursefest"
30 inch range indeed - Lies!
New stove - clearly the right size
Oh little friend, I was so looking forward to using you soon!

See that jerk overhang?! Ugh.
Stay tuned...

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Now with pics! Bistro: Round 2

Remember when I emphatically said "But we must have a bistro table!"

Yeah I wasn't so much kidding.

Except I took it to a whole other level. It all started with these ridiculously comfortable rocking chairs at Sam's. Ever since wandering around the joint with Eileen and her 40 oz. icee and randomly coming across these exceptionally comfortable sit-upons I knew they had to be mine!

So I made a special trip with her (and icee, round 2) to pick up these fab guys. We rushed right over to the outdoor section only to find. GRILLS. Just grills grills and more grills. And pool cleaners, and outdoor lights, and coolers, and hoses, and 145 piece dining sets, but NO ROCKERS.

Distraught, I took to the internets, where luckily, I could pretend to be Cath and finally order my rocking chairs!

But as you know, shopping at 11pm can get a little dangerous. Especially when you have a "vision" for your porch. And oh, I've got visions.

So a quick pop over to World Market and I see all of their outdoor stuff is on sale. Ohhh boy.

Now by the time the month is over, our drab, I-started-to-rip-up-the-carpet-but-it-was-hard-and-that's-about-all-I've-done, is going to be a colorful outdoor paradise!

UPDATE: I was able to upload pics! This is the basic layout I sketched up:


And here are pics of the actual items going in:
A pair of these lovelies
With these pillows on them

And a little table in between them
A coffee table in the middle - juuust realized we don't even have one for the living room yet. Great job Katie...

Flanked by floor pillows - we're so boho chic
Then this lovely bench
With these pillows
And these! Mike was worried they look African... I'm not really sure where that came from?  But I'm entertained

The rug pictures were not cooperating, but suffice to say, it's neutral. Tan with a darker brown double border. It will make a nice grounding piece and for sure cover that carpet if it proves harder to rip up than we thought!


So. Who's coming over?!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Adventures in Unpacking

Ok, so we're getting somwhere. I'm even more overwhelmed than I thought I would be, honestly. I probably wasn't being realistic about how much work time and effort this would all take. Or maybe I forgot that we both actually have to attend our jobs and do something for 8-10 hours a day besides beautify our house... My b ya'll.

BUT we do have lovely new appliances! And 3 of them are even functional!
Love the fridge! That cooler / college fridge sitch was not the best of times
Incredibly complicated but awesome dryer
Spaceship / Washing Machine
It makes them taller and stores stuff! Genius

I'm easily impressed by all the buttons and dinging noises

Aaand some appliances that have yet to be installed (there's a microwave in all that mess!)
So there, my hoarder shame is on full display in the picture above, but honestly those boxes and almost all the kitchen stuff is put away now.  There have been some hilarious unpacking moments, mostly when Mike and I try to describe things to each other - as in,

Mike: "Where's the thing? You know the thing for the stuff?"
Katie: "The dog food container?"
Mike: "Yeah, thanks, where is that?" 
Good lord the years with Cath have trained me well...

This was the absolute best though. I was trying to convey, with all my powers of description and charades and everything I had, that I was looking for the water goblets.

Katie: "Where are the water goblets?"
Mike: "All the china is in the basement"
Katie: "No, no the goblets, those things that are like wine glasses sort of but the top is bigger and the stem is pudgy and short? I grab them for water when people come over and I don't want them to drink out of plastic cups we have from Bourbon Cowboy "
Mike: "Oh the regular wine glasses?"
Me: "Aaaauugh!"

Then I had the genius idea of just showing him everything, like, actual pictures. Almost everything we own was purchased in the past few years, it's still on most websites.  Still, this cracked me up to no end.

Here is proof of some stuff being put away - those glass cabinets are making me nervous. So much pressure! Everybody is going to see all my business! So I decided the smaller one would be filled with white kitchen things and the larger right double cabinet would be filled with nice glasses glass canisters with food in them.
Old fashioned strainer, some dessert places (and Lilly Pulitzer animal crackers) and my milkglass "collection "
In the larger right side I have mostly glass - bottom left - goblets! - and some cereal for good measure - which Mike asked if I planned since the cereal matched. Nope. Just love frosted mini wheats.
Here's a wider view. Ignore the partly taken apart cabinet and old stove
Oh! And the new couch was delivered! It's excellent for folding laundry on... 
But it's not all stress and mess. Mike's birthday is coming up and I found him this AWESOME present on Craigslist! He asked that I not spend more than like $25 so I was up for the challenge!

It is a vintage cooler on wheels! And it's a schnazzy orangey red color that will look even better when we do a little sprucing up to our porch. 
He randomly brought home sunflowers. See? We still like each other. 
Built-in bottle opener and cap catcher!
A side view, and the little water spout
By Sunday I needed a little retail therapy, so Eileen and I headed to Home Goods. DANGER. But awesome. I had a gift card, so the damage wasn't too severe.  I stuck with the white and glass stuff knowing it can move around the house and work in pretty much any room. Plus I'm a sucker for white lacquer - I might have said it 38.5 million times while shopping.
My treasures
I also found this cool Manzanita branch. Mike was not impressed. But I love  it! Where it will live in the house? TBD
And last but not least, another fun find was kitchen decor on ebay.  I want to have fun with the big blank wall along the back. And I've always always wanted big cast iron utensils like my mom's mom has in her breakfast room. I've been scouring the internets and found these bad boys.  See Vanna Mike showing them off / losing his mind below:
"Hey! I can eat soup with these!" What???