Friday, May 27, 2011
Part of the grand plan for my new house involves a dining room table. Yes, I have big dreams. I'd like a place to sit an eat.
More specifically, I want a white, slightly distressed table, not to big, but big enough to easily seat 4, not expensive, but well made and sturdy. Turns out, that combination is pretty hard to find. No one apparently wants a white kitchen table. I'm not quite sure why.... I think it'll look super.
So, since I have something very specific in mind for said table, and I couldn't find it, I decided just to make it myself. I found a table and 4 chairs on sale on craigslist for $150, which I actually only paid $140 for because no one had the right cash to make exact change for $150. I had big plans to sand and paint the table (which is currently a plain pine color) before I moved, but I started packing, and that project never happened. I did manage to get the 4 chair cushions off before the movers came, so I decided to send the wood part of the chairs with the movers, and keep the cushions to reupholster while I was home. Mostly because my mom can sew WAY better than I can, and everyone needs a good mother/daughter project! Over the last week or so, we've slowly plugged away on reupholstering the cushions, and I'm excited to say they're DONE! And they look super, in my humble opinion. Here's how it all went down.
First we went to JoAnn fabric and found a pattern that would work with the table (white) and the wall color (chocolate brown and grey/taupe). Then we spread it on the floor, and put the old cushions on top. I'm not really sure why we did that, but it made for a nice way to show you the old cushions and new fabric...
That quantity of staple prying undoubtedly results in the formation of lots of blisters...
Now I just have to sand the table and chairs... then prime them, the paint them, then paint them again, the sand them, then glaze them, then poly them... And I'll be done! I'd say I'm at LEAST 20% of the way to a new dining room table and chairs...
I can't wait to show you the finished product.
It may take a while.
A girl's gotta have ambitions.
PS. I'd say I did about 17% of the actual skilled work on this project, and my mom did the rest. So props to her. I do claim responsibility for most of the hard labor, though!
More specifically, I want a white, slightly distressed table, not to big, but big enough to easily seat 4, not expensive, but well made and sturdy. Turns out, that combination is pretty hard to find. No one apparently wants a white kitchen table. I'm not quite sure why.... I think it'll look super.
So, since I have something very specific in mind for said table, and I couldn't find it, I decided just to make it myself. I found a table and 4 chairs on sale on craigslist for $150, which I actually only paid $140 for because no one had the right cash to make exact change for $150. I had big plans to sand and paint the table (which is currently a plain pine color) before I moved, but I started packing, and that project never happened. I did manage to get the 4 chair cushions off before the movers came, so I decided to send the wood part of the chairs with the movers, and keep the cushions to reupholster while I was home. Mostly because my mom can sew WAY better than I can, and everyone needs a good mother/daughter project! Over the last week or so, we've slowly plugged away on reupholstering the cushions, and I'm excited to say they're DONE! And they look super, in my humble opinion. Here's how it all went down.
First we went to JoAnn fabric and found a pattern that would work with the table (white) and the wall color (chocolate brown and grey/taupe). Then we spread it on the floor, and put the old cushions on top. I'm not really sure why we did that, but it made for a nice way to show you the old cushions and new fabric...
The first order of business was to take the old fabric off the cushions. This involved me, a flathead screwdriver, a pair of pliers, 2 days, 3 bandaids, and I approximate the removal of 1000 staples. There were three layers to remove: backing, welting, and actual cover fabric.
In the end, we had a pile of old fabric, and uncovered chair cushions. While I was de-stapling everything, my mom was busy cutting the fabric, ironing backing onto it (the fabric was super-stretching and would have gotten all wonky when we stretched it over the cushion without backing...), and cutting and sewing welting to finish the cushions.
Once all the fabric was cut and ready, we stapled the fabric onto the cushions. It was probably the easiest part of the whole process!
Then we stapled on the welting around the edges, and voili! Reupholstered seat cushions! I think they look way better than the old ones...
I can't wait to show you the finished product.
It may take a while.
A girl's gotta have ambitions.
PS. I'd say I did about 17% of the actual skilled work on this project, and my mom did the rest. So props to her. I do claim responsibility for most of the hard labor, though!
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
(Preface: I wasn't sure how to spell palette... so I googled it. Google told me to spell it this way. It doesn't look right to me, so if it's wrong, blame Google.)
With graduation a whole 24 hours behind me, and nothing to focus on except the terrors of my first day of internship, I've decided now would be a good time to flash back to an old post, and give you a sneak peak of the walls I'll be blogging within in just under a month. You may recall this post from March, when I told the world that I'd matched, and introduced you to a pillow.
A very mysterious pillow.
Well, that pillow was bought (only one of them... in hindsight, I shoulda bought two...) to be the inspiration for the downstairs floor of my soon to be house.
Which looks like this:
With graduation a whole 24 hours behind me, and nothing to focus on except the terrors of my first day of internship, I've decided now would be a good time to flash back to an old post, and give you a sneak peak of the walls I'll be blogging within in just under a month. You may recall this post from March, when I told the world that I'd matched, and introduced you to a pillow.
A very mysterious pillow.
That looks like this:
Which looks like this:
And during senior seminar, when I was (supposed to be) learning all things important for internship, I was also making a mood/idea board for my living room.
Which looks like this:
And THEN, I was at Lowe's buying (more) moving boxes, and picked up some paint swatches, which turned into a full out downstairs color scheme, which looks like this:
That is not my house, btw. Now, obviously I'm not going to paint all four of these colors in one room. That would be silly. They will be variously located throughout the downstairs... but it's hard to make a whole fake downstairs fit in a single image.
These colors are by no means set in stone. Until they are on the walls, they can change! But you get the general idea. The current plan is as follows:
Kitchen: Blue walls with white cabinets.
Living room: Beige walls with orange accent wall.
Dining room: Chocolate brown walls with one beige wall.
Hallways, stairways, etc: Beige.
So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, it to send me ideas for cool accessories, furnishings, etc to put in my house. I've already found a nifty purple pendant light for the dining room, I'm working on refinishing a table for the dining room also. I will need a white buffet/server sort of thing for the kitchen, a rug for the dining room (in addition to a couch...), and some random accessories. And I like cheap things. Like good quality on super-sale sort of cheap. Not fall apart cheap. Keep that in mind.
Ready.... GO!
Graduation weekend is over, and you can officially call me doctor! Which means the "MD" part of "Human, MD" is actually legitimate!
Graduation festivities started on Saturday. But the week before that was super busy (hence no posts), so I'll give you a run down of that too.
I had to be out of my apartment Sunday (two days ago), which happened to be right smack dab in the middle of graduation weekend. Since my family would be in town for the weekend, I didn't really want to have to deal with moving stuff out over the weekend. So the plan was to be totally moved before they got here. I finished packing for the movers on Monday, and on Tuesday morning, they came and packed all of my belongings (sans a months worth of stuff that I'm hauling around in my car) and trucked them to a storage unit in Atlanta for a month, to be delivered to my new house when I actually own it.
While the movers packed, Betsy played with Wyatt outside, so he didn't feel unloved. He was feeling a little panicky.
We came home from the beach on Thursday, I packed, cleaned and loaded my car all day Friday and Saturday morning, and then my family came into town Saturday afternoon! My parents drove down, and I picked my sister up from the airport in the afternoon.
There was something graduation-related every day, but the schedule wasn't TOO packed. Saturday night was a senior banquet. Sunday was the hooding ceremony (where we get cool doctorate hoods that are long and heavy), and then after that we went to a family friend's house in Lexington for a graduation party. It was so nice to see my adopted NC family again before heading to residency, and I really appreciated them all coming! And my friend came home and surprised me (and his family) by showing up at the party! I was so excited he could make it!! Thanks to Betty and Darren for hosting the party, and to your whole extended family for coming and celebrating with me! Bobbie even made me this awesome cake!
Graduation festivities started on Saturday. But the week before that was super busy (hence no posts), so I'll give you a run down of that too.
I had to be out of my apartment Sunday (two days ago), which happened to be right smack dab in the middle of graduation weekend. Since my family would be in town for the weekend, I didn't really want to have to deal with moving stuff out over the weekend. So the plan was to be totally moved before they got here. I finished packing for the movers on Monday, and on Tuesday morning, they came and packed all of my belongings (sans a months worth of stuff that I'm hauling around in my car) and trucked them to a storage unit in Atlanta for a month, to be delivered to my new house when I actually own it.
While the movers packed, Betsy played with Wyatt outside, so he didn't feel unloved. He was feeling a little panicky.
After the movers left, we promptly jumped in the car and drove to the Outer Banks for some R&R. We LOVE Ocracoke, the southern-most habitable island in the NC Outer Banks. It's remote, not commercialized, accessible only by aircraft and ferry, and has beautiful beaches! We camped at a state campground, cook on a grill, walked the beaches, laid out in the sun (and got sunburned... whoops), went to bed early, woke up early, drank coffee, chatted with other camping people, and in general had an excellent time. Here's proof:
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| The beach is so pretty. Note the lack of other people. |
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| Bananas grilled with butter, brown sugar, and chocolate. Best dessert ever. |
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| Betsy doing a cartwheel. What good timing I have. |
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| Man fishing at sunrise/sunset. |
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| Grilling kielbasa and bread. I liked to turn everything into a sandwich. |
There was something graduation-related every day, but the schedule wasn't TOO packed. Saturday night was a senior banquet. Sunday was the hooding ceremony (where we get cool doctorate hoods that are long and heavy), and then after that we went to a family friend's house in Lexington for a graduation party. It was so nice to see my adopted NC family again before heading to residency, and I really appreciated them all coming! And my friend came home and surprised me (and his family) by showing up at the party! I was so excited he could make it!! Thanks to Betty and Darren for hosting the party, and to your whole extended family for coming and celebrating with me! Bobbie even made me this awesome cake!
Awesome, right?
Monday was the real commencement ceremony, followed by the distribution of diplomas.
And then I was a doctor.
There are LOTS of pictures, but they are currently stuck on my dad's and various other people's cameras, so I'll post some of them when I get them!
It was a wonderful weekend and I was so happy to have my family here to share it with!
Now I begin a month of homelessness, while I wait to close on my new house. Until then, I will be hanging in NC for another day, heading to PA for a few weeks, going to my sister's graduation, taking a family vacation to Italy, and then repacking my car and heading to Indiana for residency!
I hope my car is ready for some serious driving...
Saturday, May 7, 2011
I have a long standing love affair with the Toyota 4Runner. I'm not sure when it first started, but sometime back in high school I fell in love with them. For no particular reason. I try to convince myself that I don't need such a big SUV (when I get a new car, in like 100,000 miles when my Camry dies). But then I see a shiny sparkly dark metallic grey 4Runner driving down the road, and I decide that I would promise to ride my bike more places to make up for driving an SUV. Really, I promise!
I don't like the new model though. It's too big. And boxy. I like the '96-'00 model, and the '01- '09 or so. Then again, I also said when the '01 model came out that I didn't like it... and then it grew on me. So we'll see what I think in 5 years...
To prove how deep my 4Runner love goes, I need to show you something. When Sarah and I drove around the country, we played a game, called the 4Runner game. It's very easy. If you see a 4Runner, you yell, "4Runner!", and you get a point. Slowly this morphed into just a tally of how many we could spot. And by tally, I mean we really kept a tally. In our notebook titled, "Random Journey Fun". I recently discovered this notebook while packing, and thought I should show you all the first page...
I don't like the new model though. It's too big. And boxy. I like the '96-'00 model, and the '01- '09 or so. Then again, I also said when the '01 model came out that I didn't like it... and then it grew on me. So we'll see what I think in 5 years...
To prove how deep my 4Runner love goes, I need to show you something. When Sarah and I drove around the country, we played a game, called the 4Runner game. It's very easy. If you see a 4Runner, you yell, "4Runner!", and you get a point. Slowly this morphed into just a tally of how many we could spot. And by tally, I mean we really kept a tally. In our notebook titled, "Random Journey Fun". I recently discovered this notebook while packing, and thought I should show you all the first page...
See all the tallies?!?!?!? Yeah, that's a lot of 4Runners. Granted, it was a 6 week trip. But that's still a lot. If you look at the bottom of the page, you can see our grand tally: 885! We were pros. You can also see Sarah's drawing of a 4Runner, and some random comments about the start of our trip. We really meant it when we titled the book, "RANDOM Journey Fun". It also included a drawing of a green wave, an albino prairie dog we hit while driving, a crossword puzzle we tried to make, and small articles cut out from the USA Today 50 state facts section.
Good times.
You think if I mailed this in to Toyota as proof that I might be the most loyal 4Runner fan EVER (that doesn't actually own one), they'd send me a shiny new (used 2008 limited edition) 4Runner? I think so too.
I'll try that right now.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
My packing today has been very productive. If you looked in my apartment, you'd beg to differ. It looks like a hurricane vomited closet contents and dining room chairs all over the place. I have lots and lots of boxes (15 or so), but the mess just keeps GROWING!!! Granted, I've totally emptied out my desk, bedside table, bathroom, and half my closet. But that's not much comfort when I'm hopping over stuff to get anywhere.
I did make a couple discoveries during my packing today. First, I've discovered I need to throw away running shoes.
This is a basket full of shoes. Seven pairs to be precise. Seven pairs of old running shoes. Not current. Not even one pair back. These are at least two pairs off current running shoes. Yes, I do this it's reasonable to keep one, maybe even two. But seven? That's overkill. So five of these seven pairs are heading to good will world. Two I cannot part with. Sorry.
And then there's this:
To translate from the fuzzy camera phone picture, this says "My Esbestos Friend". Yes, I know it's really Asbestos.... but I think we ran out of A's or something. Let me tell you about this picture friend. Sometime in college, Sarah and I went up to my parents barn (retreat property) for a little R&R. I don't remember the details, but I think it involved wanting a project, and stopping at walmart to get foam cutouts and picture frames. Somewhere along the road, "my bestest friend" turned into "my esbesos friend". And a picture frame was born. This doesn't really fit with the planned decor of my new house, but it's totally coming along anyway. For the memories. And since Sarah is my asbestos friend, i think she's volunteered to come to my new house and make sure there's no asbestos flooring in my kitchen...
More packing tonight. Hopefully I'll find the floor soon!!!
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