Monthly Archives: April 2010

Apr30

Pushing Through

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I am currently getting over a cold which, for me, always arrives alongside laryngitis.  As a result I was in bed at 7 pm (no joke) on Wednesday evening and fighting a low grade fever ever since.  But does that mean I didn’t go to work?  Of course not.  I am just going through hand sanitizer like hot cakes and confining myself to the realm of my cubicle in order to spare my co-workers my germs.  Despite my present condition, I was bound and determined to do something last night.  I was going to paint the brick exterior on our screened-in porch, but ran into a little problem.  Garden warblers.

They apparently have taken up shop in bunch of bitter sweet branches I collected last Fall. 

My first clues they had built a nest should have been their constant presence.  Every time I opened the door to go onto the porch I found a Garden Warbler duo flying about.  I thought they were nabbing bits of the vines to build a nest somewhere else, but then I heard the little tweets of newly hatched birds.

There are about four of five baby birds in there so I will have to wait until they leave their nest before I can remove this display and paint the porch in its entirety.  So maybe in a month I’ll be able to finish this project? 

Anyhoo, this little discovery didn’t stop me from making my outdoor drapes last night.   Since the two drapery rods are staggered, I began by measuring each individually and then adding 5 inches to that lenghth: 1 inch for the bottom hem and 4 inches for the pole pocket.  I then  proceeded to wind my bobbin and thread my needle.  After that I cut out 3 panels at 94 inches for the  lower rod and 4 panels at 97 inches for the top rod.

I knew I had my work cut out for me.

I had to sew a hem on three sides and then sew a pocket for the rod on the top width.  It took about 12 minutes to finish each panel, for a total time of 1 hour, 30 minutes to finish all seven.  I wasn’t as neat as I could have been about my hems, largely because they are for outdoors and I am not that picky.

By the time I finished it was almost ten so I just folded them up in pile until we have the chance to hang them tonight. I am excited to see how they look!  I will also paint a corner of the porch (far away from the bird’s nest) to see how the turquoise drapes and taupe stain mesh. 

Although we have a lot of items on our to do list this weekend, we are going to take a  break from house projects to go to a baseball game tonight and enjoy giant pretzels, a cold beer, and family time.  I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische

Apr28

Outdoor Oasis

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A aron and I are blessed with a small screened-in porch located off the kitchen and home office/craft room.  This little beauty has a mosaic red terrazo floor that was oh so popular in the late 60′s early 70′s.  It sits on top of the hill in the backyard allowing a full view of the grounds.  Best of all, we can stay dry during rain, in the shade during high sun, and mosquito free. 

While this little porch of ours is highly functional, it doesn’t mean its lovely.  We are currently in the process of painting the exterior of our home (by ourselves, no less) and now that the temperatures are rising, it is high time to get this porch in order.  My project tonight will be painting all of the brick in this area so I can move onto a more exciting project: outdoor drapes!

I’ve really come to like the addition of outdoor drapes.  They soften hard exterior lines and provide an element of dreaminess to any outdoor area.  After perusing multiple sources for off-the-shelf drapes, I quickly learned that these were way out of my price range.  They were almost $100 per panel for the size I needed!  Since I need seven panels for my tiny porch I would have had to spend $700 to outfit it, not including tax and shipping.  Whoa!

Perhaps I am completely out of touch with reality when it comes to the price of things these days, but there was no way I would or could spend that kind of dough for an unnecessary purchase.  On to Plan B: make my own!  Since I had to go to my wonderful $3/yd fabric store anyway for another project, I called ahead to see if they had outdoor fabric as well.  They did!  I made a beeline for the outdoor fabrics as soon as I walked in their front door.  There were a lot of florals that reminded me of beach condos and Golden Girls.  Not really what I was wanting.  I really wanted a fabric that would look good on both sides  since you would see it while sitting on the porch and standing outside. 

A 15 minute dig through the pile produced a fabric that would suit me needs.  A solid dusty turquoise that would look awesome with the taupe color we are painting our exterior and the already white trim work.  Best of all it looked the same on both the front and back!  21 yards and $63 later, I was back home and very pleased with my purchase.  Essentially, I will be able to produce 7 drapery panels for less than the cost of one alreadymade panel.  You can’t beat that!

Aaron has already installed homemade drapery rods using leftover fencing poles and some simple hardware from Lowe’s.  Since we used materials we already had laying around, the total cost for our rods was $6.  So far we are at a total of $69 for this project. 

Once the brick is painted tonight and the drapes made tomorrow night, the only thing left to do is find a complimentary outdoor rug and decorate the space.  This is already a favorite end-of-the-day loung spot for us, but I imagine we’ll love it even more once we’re done with all these tasks.  I’ll post progress as it happens!

Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische

Apr27

Damask in a Flash

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R ecently we remade our dining room into a home office/craft room for Hubs and myself largely because we have no need for a formal dining room.  This left our former office unused, dysfunctional, and as random storage space.  I am not really fond of the color I chose for this room; it’s Toffee Crunch and was selected because at the time I felt a deep caramel would look great.  Turns out the color wasn’t quite deep enough and does not compliment the honey oak flooring or off-white base boards.

I am reluctant to repaint because I have been on a painting crusade lately and really don’t want to take on another project.  So how to begin turning this room into something useful again without having to tape off, edge, and roll for a second time around?  Stencil it!  What did I have to lose?  If I absolutely hated it, I was going to paint it again (eventually) anyway.

Before you think I went all country chic on you, let me say I selected a damask stencil and reused some pale turquoise paint that I had leftover.  Turquoise with a toffee color doesn’ sound country does it?  So anyhoo, a quick lunch break jaunt to Michael’s ended in my owning a new stencil I was itching to try. To be honest, I’ve never stencilled before.  I was afraid I was going to have bleed through and end up with a turquoise blob, but lucky for me they were quite easy. 

The stencil had two parts: Stencil A that applied the base and Stencil B that added some fanciness.  I decided to use a foam roller to apply the paint because it seemed easier than a stippler.  Here are the first tries using Stencil A.

I eyeballed placement instead of measuring off because it would have made the whole task more time consuming and complicated than I wanted to undertake.  Overall, applying Stencil A went by very quickly and in only 30 minutes I had all three walls stencilled.  (I’m leaving the fourth wall blank for now)

While I let the paint dry, Little Man and I went to the local ice cream parlor and shared a rainbow sherbert. Yum!  Once we returned, I pulled out Stencil B and embellished every other pattern.  This second step went just as smoothly as the first, taking only 20 minutes.  Here are the walls looking all spiffy.  I like how it mimics the look of wallpaper.  (Warning: the color quality/trueness of these following pictures drops dramatically as the evening sunshine faded;  you’ll just have to trust me that there is no orange hue!)

I am going to my $3/yd fabric hot spot to pick up a nice print that has the same turquoise on the walls to make curtains for the windows and closet.  Then it will be time to replace the light fixture with a small chandelier (maybe) and paint the trim white.  Eventually this room will be a nursery when the time comes, but there’s no time like the present to get the job done!

Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische

Apr26

Putting it to Bed

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H oly rollers, what a whirlwind weekend!  We packed ourselves up early Friday morning and headed down to Charleston to see old pals and enjoy the sights.  It was absolutely wonderful seeing everyone and everything.  After making our rounds and a side trip to the family lake house, we were back home by early Sunday morning.  

A combined 9 hours of sitting in the car had made me anxious to move, hence upon immediate return home I went to work outside.  The omnipresence of weeds was quite depressing so I busied myself for the next several hours with ridding myself of these nasty beasts.  Have you seen dandelions with spikes?  They are terrifying, they hurt, and most of all they have the most difficult root to get rid of!

Four full lawn bags, multiple scratches, and a light sunburn later, I was about pooped.  Not that exhaustion kept me from finishing the new pine straw bed I had started the other weekend.  Here is where I had left it.

This area doesn’t get much sunlight once the trees are fully leaved and is predominately weeds hence turning this section into a pinestraw bed was a no-brainer.  I ran out of landscape mesh to block weed growth so I went to Plan B: newspaper.  Spreading newspaper and covering with pinestraw is just as effective a weed preventer as landscape mesh with the adding bonus of being biodegradable.  After spreading my news print, moving several wheelbarrow loads of pinestraw, and lining the bed with old railroad ties, the bed was done.  Such a simple, easy project had a major, positive impact on improving the backyard!

While I completed this project, Aaron worked on sewing the garden.  He planted corn, lima beans, pole beans, dill, basil, squash, and even marked each using old tobacco sticks.  We are both excited about our future harvest!

While we toiled, Little Man enjoyed a three hour (!) nap.  When he finally awoke, he came out to enjoy the beautiful weather and admire the huge hostas that recently appeared.

Like I said, it was a whirlwind weekend!  If you would like to see snapshots of our Charleston jaunt click on Downtown Charleston 2010 under the Photography tab or click here.  I hope everyone else had a lovely weekend as well.

Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische

Apr22

This Little Piggy had Roast Beef…

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…and this little piggy had none.  THIS (i.e., yours truly) went to the IHFC market and had a ball!  We moved to High Point, North Carolina August of last year because I took a new job.  It has now become apparent to me that we were very spoiled living in Charleston.  Great restaurants, scenery, shopping, and festivals abounded all year round.  That is not the case in High Point.  Nevertheless HP does have the furniture market twice a year and I was extremely anxious to see what it was all about.  Aaron procured us some guest passes from one of his customers and we were in!  It. was. unbelievable.  My mouth likely hung open the entire time.  The selection! The booth displays!  The prices!  So who made this amazing experience possible?  Bourgeoisie3D of course.  B3D is the brainchild of Emily Bourgeois, amazingly talented designer out of Charlotte, NC and her son John.  Their booth and work was (and is) divine!

One of the biggest surprises I had was how inexpensive everything is at the wholesale price.  For example,  Aaron and I bought a 5 x8 white wool shag/felted rug for $600 three years ago.  We could have bought the exact same rug for $200 yesterday!  and it would have been delivered to our door in less than 72 hours!  Besides the rug, there were gorgeous ceramics, lamps, furniture (of course), bed linens, draperies, and everything else to outfit a home for major steals.  The amazing part is that buyer’s get a further trade discount off of the ticket price.  It opened my eyes to how much markup there really is from wholesale to retail.  With that soapbox rave aside, let’s see the goodies!

One of the first booths that caught our eye was Shiner.  The guy makes everything out of trash, is super affordable, and just started creating these lovelies 5 months ago!  The word on the street was that he was enjoying major interest and success during market.

There were gorgeous displays throughout the booths that I had to record for future use.  So many ideas that would be ridiculously easy to recreate in one’s home!  Hubs and I both loved this hanging plate arrangement.

This vignette caught my eye because it was so warm and homey compared to most of the other exhibits.

I’ve been following Apartment Therapy’s coverage of the market so I could plan my own visit a little more wisely.  Their mention of the Gus line piqued my interest and was definitely on my agenda. They had an amazing exhibit that was tastefully put together and supposedly mimic their store in Toronto.  Their little poofs would be so easy to recreate and have the added benefit of being durable against kids and dogs.  The lady working the booth was so friendly and sweet; we really enjoyed chatting with her for a bit.

I love the Philippe Starck ghost chair, but don’t love how it is seen everywhere now.  It kind of takes the bang out of the firecracker if you catch my drift.  I thought these black ones though were a darling departure from the clear acrylic.

I also loved this hanging pendant.  The burlap cover provided it such a great effect and would be easy enough to replicate.

I can also imagine picking up a cheap Goodwill chandelier (one of the brass ones that are readily available) and wrapping it in jute to mimic this look.

I know this post is picture heavy today, but here are just a few more images to show what was available.  I’m already making plans to go the market in October.  This time with my pocket book in hand of course!

Apr21

Table for Four

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O ur neighbors recently and graciously gave us some furniture they no longer wanted.  We were more than thrilled to take it off their hands! Part of our new collection included four dining room chairs that are pretty basic, but in good condition.  I was excited to receive them because we were previously using a montage of chairs that had definitely seen better days; two were so wobbly they made dining a very interesting experience.

Our new chairs had a cherry stain and a plaid covered cushion.

It is not like the chairs looked bad as is, they just did not compliment our kitchen color scheme.  That’s nothing a little paint and new fabric couldn’t fix!  The first step was removing the seats.  This was easy enough since all it required was applying a screwdriver in the underside’s four corners.

Then I just used a chisel and needle nose pliers to take out the staples so I could remove the fabric.

I took the chairs outside and primed them with Kilz since I didn’t know if the stain as oil-based (I assume it was).  Once dry, the chairs got two coats of paint that is the lightest shade of turquoise (sadly, I cannot recollect the color name!).  Then a coat of Polyacrylic and they were looking much improved.  Finally, I recovered my chair pads with fabric leftover from the drapes in the kitchen.  I’m not really big on being matchy-matchy, but I already had it on hand.  Since it is so easy to change the fabric on these pads I can always recover it in something else in the future!

Without further ado, here are our new chairs.  We gave them a test drive this morning and they are good as new.  Joy!  The only thing I’d still like to do is add some type of stencil on the back rest.  The only fear I have is making it look too country chic, if you know what I mean.  I checked out the stencils at Hobby Lobby, but didn’t see any I liked.  Perhaps I’ll make my own?

Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische

Apr20

Bivalve Delight

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Y um, yum!  I’m still licking my chops from last night’s Mussels Bouillabaisse I whipped up.  Aaron and I were perusing Costco the other day and lo and behold I saw a huge pack of fresh mussels for a mere $13.  Holla!  I love mussels.  and clams. and oysters.  and pretty much any other type of seafood if I’m perfectly honest.  So in the cart they went.  I knew exactly how I was going to prepare them that evening:  Bouillabaisse, baby!

My interpretation of this dish is from the hip, so please don’t compare to official recipes.  I made mine up utilizing ingredients I already had on hand.  First step was heating up two 32 oz. containers of chicken broth in a large stock pot until near the point of boiling.  Then I added in the following:

  • Sliced mushrooms
  • Sliced red onions
  • Diced red peppers
  • Chopped celery

I let all this goodness cook on medium heat together for roughly 15 minutes.  If you like more tender veggies, cook ~5 minutes longer (I prefer mine with a hint of crispness).

In a large saucepan, I melted a stick of unsalted butter and browned minced garlic (3 cloves).  I then added roughly 20-25 mussels and stirred in the mix to coat.  I closed the lid for roughly 4 minutes until the mussels began to open. 

 Once all the mussel shells were open, I added the mix into the broth.

I cooked everything together for another 5 minutes and then served hot with crusty french bread (for sopping up the liquid).

Even though I did not have any on hand, a dose of fresh cilantro would have made this yummy dish even better.   If you like seafood I highly recommend giving this recipe a whirl.  It is sure to impress!

Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische

Apr19

Painter's Delight

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T his weekend proved pretty fruitful project wise, but boy am I sick of painting!  I painted chairs,  a wooden sofa frame, interior and exterior walls.  I find all this particularly amusing since I swore off more painting last week until Fall (you see how long that lasted),  but my anxiety got the better of me because I know my days of full on project devotion are numbered.  In just a few short weeks we’ll be spending (almost) every weekend at Hub’s family lake cottage.  I am oh so ready to be relaxing under shade trees, reading Canadian design mags (thanks Mary!), and watching the boats meander past. 

My first painting project was actually something I had begun a couple of weeks ago: the basement!  It was wall to wall beige when we moved in: beige carpet, beige ceiling tiles, beige walls. 

I realize that some people really like beige and that they are successful in making it “work” in their homes.  I am not one of those people.  I think I lack the imaginative capacity to incorporate beige properly or perhaps my optic cones just cannot process it normally. Whatever the case, it was soon history with a quick coat of primer.

I finally got around to applying a color this weekend and during the process learned an interesting fact. Martha Stewart paint only comes in eggshell and semi-gloss!  I was anxious to experience painting with MS and seeing how it compares to other paints coverage wise.  Alas, this experiment was not to be.  I am not a fan of eggshell because it is ridiculously challenging to achieve an even sheen using it and semi-gloss has a bit too much shine for a room featuring flourescent lighting.  I ended up going with my old friend Behr, opting for Gallery White in satin finish; it had just the hint of gray I was wanting. 

Two coats and a set of drapes later, the basement was semi-complete.

I say semi-complete because I still have to work on my photograph series for this wall.

Aaron stopped by a roadside trash pile the other day and picked up a locked metal trunk.  We were very excited to see what was inside!  After Hubs pried it open, we were thrilled to find several dozen old black and white photographs, hand tatted lace, news clipping and other treasures.  The plan is to spray paint a bunch of random frames black and mat the most interesting photographs for a monochromatic display.  I hope the end result looks as swell as the image in my head.  I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische