A Halloween Lesson

After 90 minutes and 600 kids, providing candy to the trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood left us with several things.

1. An empty candy bowl.  Actually that happened twice.  Once at 6:30 PM (45 minutes in), at which point I ran to the store and bought more.  Then again at 7:15 PM.  Yep.  We're those losers who run out of candy half-way through the evening.  Will gave out all our granola and fruit bars, too.  Probably the best part of the whole night.

2. A missing pug.  After searching the house, we found that Jackie had given up and gone upstairs to bed.  She had the right idea.

3. A realization that we officially have to get waaaay more into Halloween from now on.  Bring on the inflatable Frankenstein lawn ornaments!

Here are a few shots from our first Halloween in the neighborhood:

Meet mer-pug and sea turtle-pug.  The scariest sea pugs ever!

Will got very into his vampire role...

The line for candy at our house...

Happy Halloween, everyone!

"Cheesy" Homemade Ghosts

Because we spend most of our holiday decorating budget on Christmas trimmings, we usually don't do much when it comes to Halloween.  Our neighbors have been putting us to shame, so I wanted to put at least one Halloween piece out.  I've seen some pretty cute cheesecloth ghosts around and decided to take a stab at 'em.

For this project, I bought two 6" styrofoam balls and one 8".  A friend from work gave me some extra black acrylic paint she wasn't using for the eyes.  I used eye screws, Liquid Nails, and fishing wire for hanging, and found 2-yard packages of cheesecloth at Target for $2.50 each. 

First, I added a dab of Liquid Nails to each eye screw...

...then screwed one into each styrofoam ball.

I used a cheap acrylic paintbrush and black acrylic paint for the eyes.

It's important to pay attention to where the eye screw is while adding the eyes... otherwise you'll end up with a crooked face on your ghost.

Isn't he cute?!

After the paint dried overnight, I centered a yard-size piece of cheesecloth on each styrofoam ball (it goes right over the screw).  I know you're probably distracted by my massive biceps in this picture, but try to focus on the ghost.

Lastly, I tied on some fishing wire and hung them from a couple of small nails on the porch.  Voila!  Cheap, "cheesy" Halloween decor :)

Project 5: De-pig the master bedroom

My ideal sleeping environment usually involves soft, calming colors... some cozy bedding... maybe a little mood lighting.  Never has it involved pink and purple sponge-paint.

First, I admit that our critters sleep with us.  We started the horrible habit of letting Kirb sleep in our bed when he was a pup-  but Jackie has her own bed next to ours.  Since the cats pretty much do what they want, we end up with an over-sized pug, 2 semi-obese cats, and 2 humans in our full-size bed.  We've been dreaming of a king-size bed since we brought those (once tiny) kittens home in 2009.  The time has come.  Finally, a bed we can all fit in without gettin' in each others' business.  This addition has greatly improved our master bedroom situation, considering we were sleeping on our full-size mattress and box-springs on the floor until the bed arrived (mostly because we were too lazy to put the bed together knowing the new one would be coming soon).  If you ask me though, it's big, beautiful, upholstered lipstick on our pink and purple pig.  Time for a paint job.

This was taken before we made an offer on the house...

I chose a neutral color called "Clay Angel" from Valspar in eggshell.  The curtains are an amazingly cheap buy from Ikea ($30 for both drapes... BOOM!) and the coverlet was 50 bucks at T.J. Maxx.  Marshall's and T.J. Maxx are now our official bedding stores, by the way... king size bedding can be expensive!  I still need to hem the drapes.  I sort of like the puddling effect they have now, but as you can see, the animals spend a little too much time on them.  I've also considered grabbing some darker curtains next time we're at IKEA (and putting these in the guest room) to add a bigger punch of color.  What do you think?

Before:

Excuse the Instagram...

After:

All the Trimmings

I haven't posted any house updates in a while, so I thought I'd start by filling you in on some of the kitchen mini-projects.  First... new lighting!  Remember these?

After a lot of strategic ladder positioning, stretching, laughing, and a huge arm workout, we've got these babies...

It took me months to find exactly what I wanted... and of course when I found "the ones", they were at Pottery Barn... for a whopping 150 bucks a pop.  Times 3, mind you.  Not cool.  We'd been saving for new pendant lighting in the kitchen, but our budget was just not feeling it.  Luckily I searched the internet a bit and was able to find them on Ebay (brand spanking new) for 60% of the cost!  Woop woop!

Take another look:

Next, and not nearly as exciting, I had some major trim issues to tend to.  As you may remember, we finished the backsplash a long while ago.  Since I couldn't find any tile trim I liked, I had to buy wood trim to fit and attach instead.  

After I cut and hung the trim (with Liquid Nails, by the way), I used flexible white caulking to fill in the  joints and gaps between the pieces and the cabinets.  This helped to create a seamless look. 

Before the trim:

And after:

No idea why this picture above looks a bit pinkish, by the way...

Lastly, a bit more trim... but first, I should note: we got a new fridge.  Yaaaay!  No more used-to-be-white-16-years-ago-when-it-was-new fridge!  I had absolutely no idea that a fridge could function 16 years after its creation.  Well... I use the word "function" loosely.  So we upgraded to a newer model.  Unfortunately, we were limited to what would actually fit in the space.  Apparently the previous owners built the cabinets around the fridge?  I don't know, but there exists no fridge under the age of 15 that is the size of the one that came with the house.  Any fridge short enough to fit in the space, is more narrow.  We didn't have much of a choice, so we bought ourselves a slightly smaller fridge, which left about 1.5" of space on either side of it.  Don't get me wrong, I love a new stainless fridge (that produces ice and doesn't spray out water that tastes like rust), but it needed a little touch-up around the edges.  Here's a visual, since I'm probably not making any sense with my explanations...

Old fridge:

New fridge:

Again... Yaaay!  But you see what I mean about the space around it?  Just a little awkward.  So I headed over to my second home- Lowe's, I mean- and picked out more wood trim.  I wanted something that would match the style of the cabinets.  This is what I ended up with...

It's not perfect, but as we've learned after just 3 months in an old house, nothing's perfect.  Mostly because there are no straight lines.  Really.  

Now you've seen the details.  Check back soon for a full-kitchen update :)

Leaf Peeping in the New 'Hood

Yep, I'm that person who takes a million pictures of the autumn color changes and thinks other people want to check 'em out.  It happens to be our first fall in the new house though, so I'll cut myself some slack now that we've got the new, more interesting locale.  I have a feeling our perfectly cool fall days are numbered, which means I'll be attempting to get the last few outdoor projects done... and envying the pugs, who will inevitably be basking in the sun on the porch.  This morning I took a nice pre-coffee (yes, very risky) stroll around the neighborhood to catch a few shots before the leaves are gone and there's a foot-and-a-half of snow on the ground.   Here are a few...