And then I turned 30...

Here's where I stand with my 30 goals to accomplish by the time I turned 30. I fell short on a couple, but I think I did really great overall. The thing I didn't get to will just become life goals - who needs a timeline anyway, right?

1.    Clean out and reorganize the garage (5/26-5/27/2013)

2.    Redo the master bedroom & bath (Repainted 11/9-11/10/13), Bathroom scheduled to be done before yoga baby arrives in December. 

3.    Run a 1/2 marathon (registered 3/27/13, run on 9/8/13)

4.    Get paid to teach yoga (completed 2/21/13) 

5.    Meditate (at least once if I can't make it a regular thing) (Began 3/11/13)

6.    Buy a new car (completed 12/29/12)

7.    Try (at least) one new recipe every month (October 2012, November 2012 , December 2012, January 2013, February 2013, March 2013, April 2013, May 2013, June 2013, July 2013, August 2013, September 2013, October 2013, November 2013, December 2013, January 2014, February 2014, March 2014, April 2014, May 2014, June 2014, July 2014) You can probably see I ended up missing a few months, but I like this goal in general. I've loved trying new things in the kitchen at least once a month. Even when I'm busy, I can usually get in at least one new recipe. :)

January Cure; Week 5

January came to a close on Friday. This past weekend was Super Bowl partying and Super Bowl prep.

I'm really not sure if any of the items left in the living room or spare bedroom will get finished any time soon. For example, instead of fixing the coffee table, we may just buy a new one. The current table is looking rough and it gets moved around so much - though I really couldn't tell you why - that the legs are just going to get wobbly again. We have talked about tightening the legs and refinishing it though, so who knows what will happen (or when).
And I tend to just get lost in the spare room. There's a light at the end of the tunnel in there, but I really couldn't put a timeline on when I think I'll actually be done going through that stuff. One thing at a time though. One thing at a time.

January Cure; Week 4

January is almost over, but the cure will go on into February. As long as there are projects to do around the house, I will be "project"ing.
Here's how things are going...

Living Room
Replace the front door knob/handle (in progress, the wood is filled, but now we need to sand and paint)
Replace the garage door knob (relies on the completion of the front door since we're just moving the knob)
Fix wobbly coffee table legs
Tile around the fireplace

January Cure; Week 3

Another week of glorious home organizing and repair projects for you to read about! I'm really having so much fun with this. While I'm working I blast my favorite songs, have the robots clean the floors, and dance around the house.
Then that feeling of satisfaction when I cross an item off my list is so much more fulfilling.

I did some list tweaking, actually added a few things that should have been on it from the beginning, but didn't write down.

Living Room
Replace the front door knob/handle (in progress, the wood is filled, but now we need to sand and paint)
Replace the garage door knob (relies on the completion of the front door since we're just moving the knob)
Fix wobbly coffee table legs
Tile around the fireplace

Kitchen Remodel; Part 1

I don't really feel like writing much, so here are some pictures and captions of our kitchen remodel in progress...

This is what the kitchen looked like before we even bought the place. We had LOVELY composite countertops, mismatched backsplash, and one butcherblock counter, which they lovingly used as a cutting board. No fridge. Range without working display. Microwave that rocks gently when you push the button to open. High quality ceramic sink that broke every glass that so much as fell over. Ohyeah, and we hope you have a fridge... 

Then my husband and his dad came in and ripped everything out. 

And then they did manly things like cutting a new hole for the sink...

Then they had to see how it looked/fit, so they tested it out. PERFECT!

It's a mess, but by the end of the day we had new countertops, sink, faucet, dishwasher, microwave and ceiling fan, which you can't see. 

Last night we picked out the backsplash tiles and tomorrow we're going to Lowe's to pick them up - yes, one store actually had 26 sq feet of the same backsplash tile IN STOCK. It was like Christmas.

This weekend we're finishing it all - repainting the cabinets, walls/ceiling, sealing the countertops, installing cabinet hardware, lining all the shelves and drawers.

We need to do something about the window covering...bleeeeeeh. Still not sure what the plan is there, but we'll get to it. No big.

2012 Clean Out; The Fridge

Item #3 on the 2012 Clean Out list is THE FRIDGE!
Tonight, I was on a kitchen cleaning rampage and decided to power through cleaning out the refrigerator. It was icky, so it was about dang time.

Before:

No system. Stuff everywhere. 

Tall items in the front hiding shorter items in the back. 

The hot sauce is with the beer is with the yogurt. 

More of a system on the door; "Things in bottles"

Emptied, and with its contents strewn about the kitchen

The big complication is that our fridge door doesn't open all the way. The fridge is great, but its right up against a wall, so the door only opens to a 90 degree angle, which makes it difficult to pull out drawers and such. I had to pull the fridge out into the middle of the kitchen to get the drawers and glass panels out.

I got everything out, wiped down all the shelves - even scrubbed where necessary - and put everything back in in an orderly manner.

After:

Everything organized. Neat and pretty. 

Bread and eggs have their own shelf

It looks so empty...

Until you realize that's because I put everything on the door.

Our fridge didn't actually need a complete overhaul or anything, but it feels good to have one less thing on my list. Hooray for having a cleaned out fridge! The last time it was clean was when we got it, 6 months ago.

The Two Weeks of Winter in Los Angeles (and chandelier pictures, finally)

Whatever semblance of a Winter we had here in Southern California appears to have come and gone. It's March 3rd and shorts weather, so my hubby and I set out on a productive afternoon about the Valley.

After getting up at 9 to work out and then cleaning up around the house for an hour or so, we ran out to Nissan to drop Tim's car off for its very first oil change.
Then Tim suggested we venture through parts of the Valley he'd never seen before. So, we essentially drove my old commute to Northridge, which has its fleeting moments of "oh, that looks interesting", but is mostly brown and ugly. Tim had not had Chik-Fil-A since college, so we decided to have lunch at the one that had recently opened near my old place of work.

Then we ran to Target to see if they had something Tim wanted to get his dad for his birthday, and while there got started shopping for patio furniture. That ended up being our project for the day. On our way back from Northridge, we got a call from the folks at Nissan and ran back to pick up his car.
After that, we only went to another Target, Walmart (which I whined about), Home Depot, and Costco to look at things for the patio, and made a short run to the mall to see if we could find some birthday gifts for our siblings (which was successful, by the way).

We were in the market for something inexpensive and small, since we only have a patio and not an actual yard. We ended up finding (but not really loving) these:

Too high and a little more than we wanted to spend

Cute, but super flimsy feeling

At Costco, we actually found some reasonably priced bistro pieces. Of course they don't have any pictures of them on the website, but they are surprisingly cute and SUPER reasonably priced. They also had all different types of fruit trees at Costco today. We decided to get a small lime tree to put out on our patio. When would it ever hurt to have a supply of fresh limes?
We had to be careful not to buy too many big things that they wouldn't fit in the car, so we skipped getting a pot for the lime tree and decided to go to Home Depot a little later.

I'd decided earlier that we should take Panda to the park today, so we made a quick trip out to the park to play fetch before we lost sunlight.
Then it was back out to Home Depot for a giant pot and some other miscellaneous patio items - like an awesome planter box  to grow my own root veggies (yum).

And then we were home for the night, mostly because I was knocked out by a totally awesome stomach turning migraine for about two hours, but after my hour long nap, I am now I am feeling a little too awesome and awake for almost 1am and trying to decide if working out tomorrow morning is a good idea.

Totally separate from the above, but I don't feel like posting a whole separate post for this: After we had the dining room painted, we decided it was time to hang the chandelier we'd had in the garage for over a year - a Christmas gift from my parents in 2010.
At the end of January, I went to Portland to visit my sister and came home to a new chandelier and chain hung from our terrifyingly high 20 foot ceilings by my husband and father-in-law. I'm so glad I wasn't home for that. I might have had a panic attack. Anyway, here's what it looks like:

I can't believe how long it took me to post this. I literally just stood up from my desk to take this picture and came back to load it. *sigh*

Off to bed with me. Hopefully this blog makes sense. It's late and I'm not sure how coherent I am.

There's Gold In Them There Piles

My wonderful husband (who is wonderful, emphasis on the wonderful) uses something called the 'pile system' to sort his clothes in our bedroom. He's done it this way as long as I've known him. Since everyone may not be familiar with this system, this is when clothes are basically everywhere except in closets and dressers, but the wearer 'knows' exactly what is in each pile and what is clean, etc.

He knows it drives me nuts, but neither of us have made getting rid of the piles a priority. This weekend I decided to change that. I pulled all the unused hangers out of his closet over the weekend and, one pile at a time, I've been taking them down - getting stuff sorted and put awaaaaay. 

Right now I'm two piles in and I'm so happy with the way the room is looking already. The top of our dresser is officially cleared of unpaired socks and wrinkled dress shirts. 

The other three piles ended up in our old laundry baskets - I refused to just throw them on the floor after carrying them up all the stairs in our very tall house (split level with a 'master suite' on the '3rd story') That was a feat in itself.

The best part has been discovering what is actually in the piles. Last night I pulled a few things out and said, "oh, I was wondering why I haven't seen you wear this in a while"

If I keep this up, the piles will be GONE before the weekend and I can maybe even show off a beautifully clean and pile free master bedroom. 

2012 Clean Out; Under the Sink

Yesterday I found this. And tonight I got the ball rolling - starting with the first item on the list, UNDER THE SINK. I literally pulled everything out from under the kitchen sink and put it back in a pretty and organized manor. It looks so nice now. I should have taken a picture before I pulled almost everything out so you could see what it looked like when I started, but you kind of get the idea. 

During

After

2012 Clean Up

I found this on Pinterest. Not all of it applies to me. We don't have a real medicine cabinet, and we don't have a bed frame, so there is nothing to clean out from under the bed, but I am inspired. I'm going to start this weekend - maybe tonight if I have the time. Who knows?! 

I've been meaning to get the house cleaned up anyway, so all I have to do is keep myself from sitting on the couch. That will be my demise.

One Sheet, Two Projects

A few weeks back, my mom was cleaning out her linen closet and found that she had tons of double sheet sets, and not enough double beds for them. Since she remembered some of them belonged to my sisters and me, she called us up to come and claim them.
Mine, though lovely, were not exactly the best quality - not to mention I had four sheet sets and I only have one double bed at my house (before two weeks ago, I had no double beds at my house). So, I picked my favorite sets and planned to leave the others for good will. As it was, that was the day we were moving the desk from my parents, and we needed something to use as padding in the car. So, we grabbed one of the extra sheet sets and used them to protect the desk and car from each other.
When we got home, we had an extra set of sheets.

Rewind to last winter when we had our living room carpet installed and had to trim the bottoms of the doors to fit over the carpet, and were left with a tiny space under the door that lets all the cold air in during these frigid California winters - we hoped this would be fixed when we installed new door sweeps.
Fast forward to this weekend, Tim installed new door sweeps and they don't completely solve the problem, so - at his request - I made this bad boy:

I will admit I didn't want to do it. I don't like the way they look, and calling it a "draft dodger" is not something I plan to do, but it does work. Our house is tall and skinny so the bottom level is always cold and the upstairs is always hot. This lovely devise is actually helping to bring the temperatures closer together.

In case you were wondering where I got the stuffing for this project, the answer is... from the parts of Panda's bed that I cut off to make it fit into the corner under the stairs. Duh.

Since the cover was looking pretty beat up and I needed a solution to the gaping holes I'd cut along the sides - I didn't want to take the time to stitch up an ugly cover - I used the rest of that sheet to make a new cover for Panda's now re-sized bed.

She was very helpful. She kept coming over and sitting on it to make sure the fabric stayed in place. So considerate.

My Room!

Let me cut right to the chase...

When we moved in, the second bedroom looked like this:

A few weeks later, we got things organized and moved into it and it looked like this:

The walls were still that gnarly puke orange color, but we made it work for a while. Then there was some drama with the carpet. We didn't want to use the light colored carpet that would have to be pieced together for the living room, so instead of taking it back down to the garage, it ended up stored in here. Slowly, things just started to pile up in this room - like it was the place to put things to get them out of the way.

Then one weekend (two weeks ago, actually), Tim was inspired to fix the room and turn it into usable space, so we pulled everything out, primed, repainted, swapped the queen bed out for a double, got a bigger desk, moved all the worthwhile stuff back in, and tried to make some sense of it...

The room is actually a lot (a lot, a lot) more full of stuff right now, but its completely usable space, which is what I love. I can have my computer out. My sewing machine now has a permanent home on top of the desk, instead of in a box in the closet. I have been using this room as my own personal office/craft space. I pay bills in there, wrap Christmas presents, even nap - when the bed hasn't been taken over by Panda and other miscellaneous items.

It's pretty messy right now, but I love it.

Bar In Progress

One of the things we thought was kind of unique about our house - in addition to being bank owned and the amount of house we wanted for a whole lot less than we told ourselves we'd pay - was that it came with a wet bar. Unfortunately, it appeared as though this aspect of the house as not been touched since its original construction in 1975...

Since we moved in, we've been talking about tearing the awful mirrors down and making this thing look nice, but it always took a back seat to bigger projects - the living room, the bathrooms, my the office (which I will post about next).

Last Friday night, Tim caught the "do-er" bug.  So while I was at my aunt's helping with her Mark. party, he set about tearing down the mirrors, taking off the cabinets, and ripping off the counter top. The result was this...

The next day, we set out for Ikea to buy a slab of this stuff. It took all day, running around before we finally gave in and made the trip to Burbank, where we knew they'd have the butcher block in stock. They only had one shade available, so it was a good thing we liked it. We barely fit that thing in my car and then headed back to the West Valley to cut it to size - unfortunately, our wet bar is not standard counter depth. It took the rest of the weekend to get the counter top perfectly cut, including cutting the hole for the sink, and getting the sink...sunk.

The plan now is to scrape the walls and then re-texture them before we have some guys come out to paint the room. I also still need to finish touching up the paint on the cabinets before we can put them back on. I meant to do that today, but I didn't end up getting to it.

I pretty much love the new counter top. I'm really excited to see the wet bar finished. I'll definitely be posting pictures once it's done. :)

Yay! Productivity!

So, it would seem that in order to have a day of "getting sh*t done", I need to take a day off work.

I stayed at my parents' last night to dog sit, so today I am taking care of some things that are easier to do from their house as well as a few things at home!

1: Wash my car.

Didn't take any before pictures of this because it was gross...and I didn't think of it.
Yesterday my big sister told me that when she saw my car outside, she was tempted to write "wash me" on it. While my car was dirty, it didn't exactly have the layer of grossness required to legibly write "wash me", unless you somehow managed to write in the dog saliva on the inside of the back windows.
I scrubbed (and even Windexed parts of) my car to near perfect cleanliness. The paint needs some touch ups and wax, but those are not in the cards anytime soon. Well, maybe the wax.

I hoped to get back outside and vacuum out all the dog hair in the back seat, but since it got pretty hot today and I didn't want to stay at my parents well into the evening, this will have to wait until another day.

2: Paint my grandma's old mirror

I don't remember how long ago, my grandma gave me this awesome old mirror to put up in my bedroom. It's gold and doesn't really go with anything, but I like to have a kind of funky design aesthetic, so I put it up.
Almost 2 years ago, I officially moved out of my parent's house, so it was time to get pretty much everything out of there. I didn't have a place for the mirror at the time, so it stayed (I still have a lot of stuff in my old closet still too).
Last October, Tim and I bought our own place and we've been in a pretty constant state of mild renovation ever since. The living room was the biggest project since it took over a month and forced us to use the dining room for all things "living". 
It's still a work in progress, but we're onto minor details now, like the mirror. ;)
We were talking about putting a mirror up on the wall facing the front doors, and maybe adding some hooks to the wall there in case we needed to hang something. After a few trips to Target, Home Goods and Tuesday Morning with no luck, my mom proposed that we use the old gold mirror from my room and just paint it white.
She gave us the idea probably about a month ago, and today around 11am, I finally go to it.
Taping newspaper down to protect the glass was a paint in the arse. It's harder than taping for regular painting, because how are you gonna go back in with spray paint and touch it up? So I spent a good half hour to 45 mins just taping the damn thing.
After that, it was pretty smooth sailing. I discovered that you should give detailed pieces a good once-over for large chunks of fuzz and dust before you start painting, but that took about 10 minutes to remedy and I was back on track. Then over the next hour, I'd go back out and do another coat or some touch ups here and there, and then (like magic) it was done.
After I took off the newspaper, I noticed that I hadn't done a perfect job projecting the glass from the spray paint, so I had to go in with an exacto knife and carefully scrape the white off the mirror.
And then I packed it in the car and took it home to hang. :)


Taping down the newspaper.

 

Panda helped

First coat of paint

White paint on the mirror :(

Happily in place

3: Put up the tie-back knobs

A couple weeks ago, I found these cute butterfly knobs for $2.99 each at Anthropologie. I've been meaning to put them up this whole time, but we didn't have the right screws and we didn't have tie-backs yet anyway.
Last weekend we finally got around to picking up some tie-backs and the right screws, so I decided now was the time to get these things up! It took a whole 15 minutes to do all three of them...and they're all the same, so you don't need the whole process.
Here are some pictures:

And - because I realized I'd forgotten most of what happened in the seventh installment of Harry Potter as I walked in to the movie theatre for 7; part 1, I also read a handful of pages from HP7 while laying out by the pool. It was lovely.

Happy Weekend!