Around here....

Lots has been going on around here.

 I graduated and we had a fun party!

We got to see our favorite band, Bon Iver, tape at Austin City Limits Live from the front row. It was life changing!

I flew to Colorado with my sister, stayed a few days with family, and drove her car back to Texas with her. 

Our garden is producing like crazy and we are enjoying being able to make meals out of what we've grown! 

We made our backyard more inviting and comfortable by adding a hammock, tiki torches, and a misting system. We've been spending a whole lot more time out there! 

And, we got new carpet! This was a huge undertaking, it was almost as bad as moving again. So worth it though. 

Looking forward to sharing a little more about most of these things in later posts! 

Outdoor Updates!

Spring is officially here in Austin, and the weather has been so beautiful. Aaron decided to take three days off from work over Spring Break while I was home from school, and we had the perfect project in mind- our front yard's landscaping. And it turned out to be more fun and rewarding than we even hoped! As soon as we were done we got the itch for another outdoor project!

The first thing we knew we wanted to conquer was these darn holly bushes that line the way between the sidewalk and the side of the house coming up to the front door. There were a few reasons why we wanted to change that area up. For one, the bushes were prickly, ugly, and half dead. There were some really nice (and expensive!) landscaping rocks underneath the bushes, but that meant that every piece of trash that flew our way and about a million leaves from our yard nestle in there and never come out. Also, the bed area was lined by some railroad-tie wood, which was rotting and had termites... ew, talk about the creeps.

So, Aaron started out by removing the bushes which took a few evenings.. those suckers were really in there good. I moved a large portion of the rocks down to the little patch of "grass" (all that will really grow there is weeds) between the sidewalk and the street in front of our house. Those rocks look so much better there than the weeds that were there before. Getting the railroad ties out was pretty easy, so after a few days of prep we were ready with a blank canvas!

We also removed the railroad ties around the other shrub that was to the right of the sidewalk.

The plan was to edge with limestone pavers. Limestone is a really pretty, naturally occurring rock here in Central Texas. We actually dug up several large limestone rocks when taking out the bushes and planting. We just cleaned them up and used them in the landscaping, I think they add a little something! We bought a few plants out at The Natural Gardener (which we can't recommend enough) and the rest, as well as the pavers and soil, at Home Depot.

We arranged the pavers, which was really easy. Aaron was able to break the ones we needed to using his drill and a tile bit. It worked great. We mixed Scott's topsoil, composted manure, and some native Texas soil up in the bed, and then all that was left to do was plant!

As for what plants we got, we tried to get a combination of low, full ones and also some that will grow and add height. We aren't big "shrub people". We got sweet broom, an indian hawthorne, begonias, jasmine on a trellis, a gardenia, trailing verbena, a mountain laurel, a lily of the valley, and a bulbine. 

The first weekend after we planted, there was a HUGE monsoon like rainstorm and we don't have gutters. Which meant water was flooding off the roof into the bed and while I'm sure the plants loved the moisture, all of the clay underneath the soil rose to the top, so we decided to add three bags of mulch to the top.

We spent around $200 on the pavers, plants and flowers, trellis, soil, and mulch. We pretty much love the way it turned out and I personally think we've already inspired a few neighbors to take control of their hot messes of yards. That's always a good thing!

Here's a before and after of the front of the house:

          

Customized IKEA Barstools

I got a CB2 catalog in the mail a few weeks ago and immediately fell in love with these barstools. They are just a perfect mix of modern and rustic, with their rugged seats and crisp white iron legs. I wanted them badly. But unfortunately I didn't have $378 to spend on the most wonderful barstools I'd ever seen.

Thats when my wheels got turning to DIY something. I knew the first place to go- IKEA of course! The gigantic store with all kinds of goods just waiting to be "hacked". There I found the unfinished birch BOSSE barstool for $39.99. I had been wanting to experiment with stain for some time now, and this was my perfect chance.

I bought two of these guys, along with some Krylon white spray primer and
Fusion spray paint in satin white. I also got a little can of Minwax Wood Finish stain in Jacobean.

The first step was to just take everything out of the boxes. I laid out the chair frames on top of bricks and just got to paintin'. The primer and paint dries REALLY fast, so this took just a few hours for one coat of primer and about 1.5 coats of paint. I can't recommend highly enough that you don't skip the primer stage. The paint goes on so easily and covers so well after.

The scary part was the seats, since I haven't ever used stain before. Let me tell you if you haven't either, the stuff is messy. I would recommend latex gloves if you have 'em, because that stuff was in my fingernails for days. First, you want to sand the top of the seat REALLY WELL. I put my husband to work on this job after I realized I hadn't sanded hard enough. I'd recommend a pretty rough grit sanding block. The fine won't really do much. Get it really nice and even though, because you don't want any scratch marks showing up on the seat once the stain is on. Also make sure that after sanding, the item is free and clear of dust and debris.

I then put a coat of stain, using a foam brush and going in the direction of the grain, over the whole seat. I let it set for about 15 minutes, and then just buffed out the excess with a rag. It was tricky though, because by 15 minutes it's already starting to get gummy. I found the solution for that to be applying another coat of stain the opposite direction, and then only leaving that on for about 5 minutes or so before wiping off.

A few days later I applied two coats of Minwax Polycrylic with a nice brush. I was debating whether I even needed to do this step, but I'm glad I did because they look so much more finished now. Don't skip this step! It seals the stain and makes the wood look very finished.

 So maybe by now you'd like to see the finished product?

Total cost for the pair: under $100. I know my version isn't as cool and organic looking as the CB2 version, but I love mine, and my favorite part is the DIY :) I'm looking for other things to stain now too! 

Updates!

Phew! It has been over two months since I last blogged. I thought for a long time whether or not I should even write another post on this blog or whether I should just take the entire blog down. I decided, at least for today, to write another post if for nothing more than to just document some of the many changes that our house has undergone in the last two months. After all, that is what this blog is about!

I got so busy this semester with school that I just couldn't justify spending time to blog. It was a fantastic semester though, and at the risk of being prideful, I am extremely satisfied with my 4.0 considering the sheer amount of work I had! I actually had fun for the first time in school, largely due to actual interest in the topics I was studying and making some friends with people I worked on projects with. I anticipate that I will have time to blog until mid-January, when I go back to school. This coming semester will be my last, but I have to take 18 hours at three different campuses. So needless to say until I walk across that stage on May 11, I don't believe I will be blogging much ;)

This semester we spent our free day (Saturday) mostly working on home-related things. So I thought I'd just round up some pictures of things that have changed in our house over the last two months. So here we go!

We rearranged the furniture in our living room. We also got a new couch at World Market- for a killer deal. We switched the rugs in our living room and bedroom so the new one in the living room ($20 from Ross) is a much bigger, better size for this room. I recovered the ottomans in painter's canvas. (ignore the mismatched blinds in the dining area behind)

The sofa is the luxe sofa with the charcoal velvet slipcover. Love it. It's so comfy and soft!

You can also see, we moved the dresser from our bedroom down to the living room and it is storing serving pieces and table linens.

 The new arrangement has the television in the corner. It really opened up the room a lot.

Over Christmas we were at Aaron's mom's. She has a large acreage and there are old family buildings on it. We found some pieces to bring home that I'll post about later. This is a piece of cedar we found, I installed metal brackets and put it on the wall above the dresser. We aren't sure that the wood is super old, but love the character of it. Still need to accessorize it (I just put it up this morning)!

 We also finally purchased and put up faux wood blinds on the three windows in the living room, which also allowed us to hang the curtains higher and wider. The blinds sure were an ordeal, involving three trips to Home Depot. The cause for all of the struggle was three windows that varied slightly in dimension.

Perhaps the biggest change and the one that has made the most impact is our painted cabinets! I am so in love with them. They make the entire downstairs feel lighter and brighter. I'll be sure to post our method and before and afters soon.

What makes them look even better is the brand new (convection!) range and microwave that we got on Black Friday with Christmas money from family. Aren't they just great? Cooking is a joy on appliances this pretty- and I love the features on this awesome range so much that I want to cook all the time. 

In September we (well I should say Aaron's awesome aunt and mom) added above cabinet lighting to our kitchen. It looks so great and warm!

We discovered a leak in our faucet so we had to buy and install a new one. We opted for one with a separate sprayer since the sprayer part was what was leaking on our old one, and if this one leaks we can just replace the sprayer. We weren't too upset about the leak though, because our old faucet wasn't totally our style and also spit out foamy stuff every time you turned it on.

One of my favorite additions to the kitchen is the addition of the shelving that Aaron built from scratch! We painted it in the same color as the cabinets and put the shelves right up against the cabinets to help them appear built in. I love to put my dishes on them and it cleared up some cabinet space!

Also found at the family property in a tiny little house that Aaron's grandmother lived in was this galvanized top. It appeared to be used as a top for some beekeeping contraption! I just hung it up in the kitchen for a magnet board and put a few of our Christmas cards on it.

Well, that's been our months in review. I'll post more details soon!