Exploring H-town

This weekend Matt, Lucky and I took a mini road trip to Houston to visit Brian (who yes, had the nerve to move so far way!). Brian officially moved just over a month ago, but between the holidays and our trip to Vegas this was our first free weekend to get to visit him. I will start with...Houston was way farther than we thought. I guess Matt and I were thinking it was just going to be a quick pop over. And some of you may feel that way, but for some reason the trip seemed to take awhile. To be fair, on the way there, at 10pm they took 45 from 4 lanes to ONE! Huge fail. We made it to Brian's about 11pm and Lucky and I snuggled up while Brian and Matt walked to check out a few nearby bars. I envy their energy!  Saturday we woke up, made some Eggs McLunde and went exploring.

Our google research led us to check out the Kemah boardwalk. On the way out there we passed the NASA space center and spontaneously decided to stop. Only six bucks per vehicle! Sweet! We parked, got to the entrance and BAM, $28/per person. We all decided we would rather spend the $28 on crablegs so snapped a quick pic and went on our way.

at the space center

 Proof that we were there! That counts, right!

The start of our adventure at the Kemah boardwalk.

Is this not the cutest looking Starbucks. Yes we stopped and yes, bought another mug!

The center of the boardwalk.

We debated on which ride to choose - I was originally feeling quite ballsy, but chickened out and we went with the standard ferris wheel!

We searched all over the boardwalk for crablegs. Would you believe that at the "aquarium" restaurant, no crablegs.

We finally found a really cute little place that had the most amazing crablegs and oysters. I think we sat and ate round after round for about 2 hours! And would you believe the bill came to about $28/each! 

 We ended Saturday with a walk to a pizzaria, a stop at "pub fiction" and the Hangover II (which I will say crossed a few too many lines for me - but I knew what I was getting into so I wasn't wishing for the 2 hours of my life back).

This morning we woke up and went to Crescent City Beignets for a Cafe au Lait and Beignets. Around noon we drove home (no traffic!) and went back to the home renovations. Details to come...

Uncle Brian let Lucky come visit as well and we are so thankful he did. It is so nice to be able to take her with us on trips since she has so much anxiety going to the boarding places. We even got to take her to get pizza with us!

Curious to the noises from outside!

Great to see you Brian! Love, us

A Simple Saturday

That is a lie.

Saturday was anything but simple! Exhausting and awesome, maybe...but simple, no! Matt accepted my challenge to teach me how to tile. As I have mentioned in previous posts, we have been doing some small, nothing crazy/expensive, home renovations lately. (i.e. repainting the door to the garage) We are focusing our efforts on the guest bath and the laundry room. Why? Because they are small so we can make a BIG, noticable difference without breaking our budget.

So Saturday we woke up, enjoyed our lattes and got dirty! Literally! 8, yes, 8 hours later my body hated me but we had the start of something beautiful! Matt tells me that this project is a nice little reality check for me because I just think all home projects are easy and can be done in minutes! Well between the work, the waiting, more work and more waiting...this will be a full week of a project.

Here is the breakdown:

Step 1: Take a picture of the "before." Please take note of the VERY white cabinets, door and trim! All recently repainted. Matt is finishing the doors to the cabinet, but that is another post.

Up close of the FABULOUS linoleum flooring we are about to rip up!

Pink spot under the washer that I SWEAR was there when we bought the house. Yucky! Also, that is where Lucky's kennel is so it is kind of dirty. I definitely swiffered before we started! Counterproductive? Maybe!

We wanted Lucky to be a part of the experience so we blocked her in so she wouldn't be roaming around the house all willy-nilly! 

 Step 2: Take the baseboards off. Goal is to get them off in one piece so you can easily put them back up. Our baseboards were nailed in like a hurricane was going to come through. Needless to say, 2 of the 4 did NOT come off in one piece. Oh well, Home Depot sells more!

Seriously, it is like no one took care of this room! Granted this is behind the washer, but still! I am SO excited to have brand new, white baseboards!

 Step 3: Rip up the linoleum. This is where the pain starts. Not. Easy! I think it took us 2 hours just to get all the stuff ripped up. The top layer came off really easily....the glue/paper stuck to the floor. Not. So. Much.

So close. You can notice on the left is where we are still working. 

Step 4: Lay out the tile
Step 5: Realize you are not being careful enough and break several pieces

 Step 6: Realize the tile cutter a friend let you borrow is NOT going to do the trick

Step 7: Go to Home Depot and rent a tile cutter. Get an extra set of slate because the stuff you have keeps breaking

Step 8: Freak out a bit because you wonder how a washer is going to sit on the slate without breaking it....EVEN though you asked everyone at Home Depot if it would work. 

Step 9: Have sweet husband talk you off the ledge.

Step 10: Eat lunch, refuel!

Just so handsome! The tile cutter was hilarious. By the end of it Matt was SOAKING in "crap."

Step 11: Start cutting the tile
Step 12: Realize you measured wrong
Step 13: Convince yourself it wasn't you, the tiles weren't all cut to the exact measurements
Step 14: Determine you did, in fact, measure wrong
Step 15:  Mix the morter

 Step 16: Start laying the morter and putting the tiles on

Step 17: Step on the tiles waiting to be "morted?" and break them

Repeat steps 8 and 9

Step 18: Figure out a way to make your measurements WORK (i.e. cut some smaller tiles and make it look like you did it on purpose

Step 19: RUN OUT OF TILES

Repeat step 9 - but in this case, wifey comes to the emotional rescue

Step 20: Run to Home Depot to get ONE LAST set of slate before the grout gets hard - Alex to the rescue to continue "morting"

Step 21: Look at your work of art and feel super proud
Step 22: Your body tells you it hates you
Step 23: Realize that you don't get to do the next step for 24 hours!

Matt has since done the grout and it looks amazing. I feel so proud of our accomplishment and think it is really fun that it is something we did together! Now we just have to wait 16 hours for the grout to set and  another 3 days for it to "set" before we put the sealer on in. Then the new baseboards come up, new cabinets, a little touch up paint and voila!

I was going to wait until it was completely finished, but like I said...that will be DAYS...so I figured I would share a sneak peak at our progress.

Blogger Novice

Bloggers out there...how do I make tabs across the top to have different "pages' - I cannot figure it out!

Wreaths! Wreaths! Wreaths!

Matt spent the weekend in New Orleans at a bachelor party - and I spent the weekend crafting!!! Saturday Julie came over and we crafted for HOURS! It was so fun!!! We started with a trip to Michaels that ended up with the two of us taking over an entire aisle, spreading out our treasures and deciding what to make. We started with the idea of a wreath. One wreath turned into 2, which turned into Valentine's party decor! What a great day. Check out our results below!

Supplies all set up with a chick flick playing in the background!

Even Lucky wanted to participate

The base of the Valentine's wreath...spraypainted of course!

$5 for 20 Foam hearts, cut out scrapbook paper and mod podge'd it on!

Add a little bit of ribbon!

Julie found 3-D clay for painting to give it texture. It is our new favorite thing!

more hearts...

Finished products...

P for Pelcak!

 Our next wreath was for Spring!!! They started out as the same idea, but by the end we each had our own tweaks!

We put texture on those pots, painted them, added some moss inside - a little toule and a hand-painted "spring" sign!

Julie's pots

Pinterest Projects

After Matt used my pinterest boards for some Christmas gifts - it had me thinking I should go in and do some of the ideas I "pinned" for craft-time!

Project Number 1: $4.96

Someone's creativity on pinterest! They used wooden letters...but since those can add up in price - I went a little 'el cheapo!

Bag 'O Letters for $3.99 (plenty to use for other projects!)

Surprisingly I had enough of the letters in white - AND, get excited...I already had the white canvas in the closet...just hanging out, waiting to be used.

After laying out the letters I painted the canvas with paint - I already had as well - to cover up some of the smudges.

Peeled off the sticker backing of the letters and added them to the wet paint. The letters were still different shades of off white (although it is hard to tell in this picture) so I needed to cover them all with white. 

One $0.97 can of white spray paint later...

The final now hanging in the recently "redesigned'' guest room. Pics to come!!!

Project Number 2: $2.99
Here is where the idea came from. (And I do still want to do this one!)

On Black Friday Matt and I bought these amazing flameless, timer-set candles. They come on every night at 6pm for 4 hours. Just. Fabulous. So that being said...we replaced several candles around the house so I was storing candles in a drawer and wanted to do something with them. Enter...pinterest idea. I haven't decided if I like the end result or not. When all the candles are lit it looks pretty cool. I think I am going to put it in the master bath on the ledge next to the bathtub.  

I had these rocks from an old fish bowl and other random projects in a ziplock bag in a drawer. So $0.00 there. I bought the base from Michael's for $2.99 and then...wait for it...SPRAYPAINTED IT! Yes, I might have a small spraypaint problem, but it does seem to fix everything. 

Added the above candles - all that were sitting around in a drawer. Some are white and some are cream but I think it works. 

I tried burning the taller ones down for a bit to let them run onto each other.

So those are the projects for now. This weekend we did a lot of other home projects and I am so excited to post the finished projects...when they are ready!

Door Duty

Last weekend Matt gave our laundry room door (to the garage) a makeover! There was a double issue with the door. The first situation was the fact that the white, metal door had yellowed and was scuffed all over from the previous owners (yucky). The second issue was my special painting job. Who knows why I thought that that you could just paint right on the metal WHILE the door was in place. Dripping and splotching ensued and the situation was disastrous. So while our lovely, clean painted laundry room looked great...the door was quite an eyesore (see below)! That has been the case for about 6 months and I am excited to say it now looks amazing...and like a new wood door. Matt did a great job!

More awesome "renovations" to the laundry room coming soon! GET EXCITED!