Weekend Project

Ok, so it's taken a little bit longer than a weekend. This was definitely a labor of love. We decided we would host a small Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year. SO, it got me motivated to finally get us a dining room table. We've spent 2+ years eating around our various coffee tables, so I decided it was now or never! We don't have the money to just stop at Pottery Barn and drop a few grand on a gorgeous table. But thanks to pinterest, I found some awesome DIYs for old farmhouse tables (my favorite!) Lucky for me, my husband has a constant itch to get his hands on saws, drills, any kind of tool and do some woodoworking. So I asked him if he would help me build a table (and by help, I mean let me drill some holes and use the saw, but I really have no idea how to do that sort of stuff-YET). So we set off on our adventure- we spent many hours at lowe's, lots of time drawing up plans, measuring, looking at pictures, etc. We finally got all our supplies and luckily, our landlords let us use their miter saw and drill press AND their huge empty garage. Here's a little photo log of our journey. . .

The wood set out the night before

getting ready to build the frame

Frame all built-Jared (Gideon's brother) did this part with Gideon. Thanks a million Jared!

All finished, ready to be stained

*We used pine*

Wet Stain

*I used dark walnut stain*

There is also a bench that goes with it, but in my prideful arrogance, I was SURE it should be the same length as the table . . . oops. Gideon now has to trim it down before I can stain it. I also have to finish weathering (beating with a chain) the table and the bench and give it a coat of sealer. SO when those finishing touches are complete, I'll post a picture of the final product in our house. But I have to say, I LOVE my table! I'm so glad I have a husband who is willing to take on these projects for me. All in all, we ended up paying about $130 for all of the supplies, stain, wood, etc. I'd say that's a success!

86 Days of Love

Finn turned 3 months on Sunday. I am hurrying to type this as he is cooing in his swing, feasting on his hands. He is so time consuming these days, but I love it. I'm usually covered in puke by 10am, and by noon we've both gone through a few wardrobe changes. He smiles and gets excited when we play with him now, and it's so much fun! He is getting to be quite the little ham. He holds his head up amazingly well. I think we're going to be getting him a bumbo this week. He now cries a faint, annoyed cry most of the time before falling asleep. It's really funny except that I feel bad for him when he does it. He weighs about 12 pounds and is about 25 inches long. He's so big! He also sleeps through the night MOST of the time. Although there are days. . . or nights. . . you get the point.


Things are busy around here the past few weeks as we are moving AND painting our entire new apartment. All I can say is thank goodness for instructional paint videos on the internet. And diet coke. Here are a few before shots of the new place (sorry for the poor quality. . . from the iPhone).

Have A Seat

We finally got our new couch this week! We love it.

Lately . . .

I very carefully brought this fabulous dessert home from Miriam's house for Gideon. I took great care not to spill a single drop in the car on the way home. Put it safely in the fridge. The next day, I went to take it out of the fridge for Gideon to enjoy. Stupid fridge, stupid clumsy elbow that smacked the fridge and stupid hand for letting go of the cup. You should have seen the way that pudding and strawberries mixture soared through the air and splattered so beautifully in one smooth motion. The usual cry/laughter ensued.

Gideon surprised me with a new coffee table he found on craigslist. He had Ben bring it to the house while he was at work so he didn't have to see my face, "in case I was disappointed." SERIOUSLY?? Disappointment not even possible. I love love love it. I have the best husband on the planet. Even more than that coffee table, I love my hubby.
ps: going to re-paint and stain the table. Work In Progress.
You may be wondering why my living room is in shambles. Reason: We bought a new couch. SO, we sold our old couch. Problem: New couch doesn't come for two weeks. Gettin real familiar with the floor once again.


Found this little beauty at an antique yard sale. LOOOOOVE it. I think someday I will take up hunting down old furniture and refinishing it and selling it. But that would require a garage. Or at least a spare room, as I've recently learned the hard way: you can't spray paint inside your house. One step at a time.

Note: both of our hair is growing out. We are quite the rebels here in our house.

If You Give A Mouse A Cookie . . . .

Last week, Gideon received a desperate call from me at TJMaxx. You know the kind:

"Honey, it's on sale! More than half the original price!"

"I dunno...do we really need it?"

"I guess we don't technically neeeed it. But come on. Do we need pillowcases?"

I convinced him of our dire need for this more than adorable bench. He said he was worried that it would make me want to decorate the rest of the house. I assured him it wouldn't. But one week and about a million craft/discount stores/spray paint cans later. . .

Our family room (still a work in progress). This is pretty much the entire house. Our bedroom is to the left past the T.V. You have to go through our room to get to the bathroom. Tiny but we love it!

This little friend from TJMaxx started it all. I'm a sucker for stripes and I love the soft blue.

I ordered two of these cute little baskets in white to put under the bench to store stuff in. They're out of stock until JUNE. Worth the wait, though; they were a steal from Crate and Barrel's sister children's store, Land of Nod.

The Entryway:

This has been this way for a while. Except you have to picture Gideon's bike in the entryway to get the full effect of how we live. Overall, we love it. I am proud of myself that almost everything was from a second hand store or spruced up all by myself. I found some great deals! It's no BH&G cover, but it's much better than the previous bachelor pad feel we were living in!

2010

I've been trying to be healthier in the new year. Hasn't gone too well. Went running a bit, but so far 3 miles is my max. My excuse is 22 is the new 40. Ate a cucumber for a snack, but then I felt bummed for various unimportant reasons, so I made some chocolate chip cookies. I've been doing a lot of unnecessary baking since my new kitchen aid came. Thanks mom and dad! I love it, but it has an amazing super power ability to shrink my pants, and my poor husband is making himself some soup because I used up all my cooking energy baking cookies. Oops. But I love it. I've also been keeping a better house. I started with putting the laundry away today, and ended up organizing my entire closet, which desperately needed it. Then I cleaned out the cupboard with all of our random stuff. I sent Gideon to the D.I. with so much junk, already accumulated in 6 months of marriage! Scary. But it felt good to clean everything out. Lucky for us, our little place is really small and it only takes a few hours to DEEP clean it all. Speaking of the D.I, Gideon's new year resolution is to not bring everything back that I send there. He LOVES that place, and for good reason. He found me an awesome pair of True Religion jeans for Christmas from there, and his most recent fixer-upper purchase: one of those cute candle melters! It works PERFECT, he just needed to get a replacement light bulb from wal-mart. I love my thrifty husband! I also bought some really cute fabric and am going to attempt to sew pillows for my couch. My crafty sister in law is my role model, so we'll see if I can live up to her! It will be fun either way. More pictures of that to follow. Finally got our house slightly decorated, so here's some pictures per request of Caitlin. It's nothing special but it's a little bit cozier now with a few things on the wall.

Finally figured out what to do with the odd space above the sink.

A bookshelf. Simple, but hey, it fills a lot of wall space.

This is the Draper temple, where we got married. The picture has our name and wedding date on it! It's my favorite.

We finally got a clock! I love TJ Maxx so so much. And in case you're wondering, our TV stand is our landlord's old chest with their grandmother's things inside. We looked inside. It's special.

Cookies. Batch 273.

The little candle warmer Gideon fixed up from the D.I.

TV . . .

Ever since we got married, Gideon and I always take a nice slow stroll down the TV section at costco and dream about the beautiful new TVs. Well, our old faithful TV went through a slow, painful death this week and finally has left us! Woo hoo! So we finally broke down and got a new one. It was the most exciting thing we've bought since we got married and it was so exciting! I know it's kind of pathetic that I'm posting about a TV, but nothing else I can post about has pictures, and my family keeps asking for some pics. Sorry we look so tired and gross. . .it's because we were setting up the TV after I picked gideon up from work around 11 p.m.

That's Ben's fluffy 80's hair from behind the instruction manual. He's been staying with us all week and it's been so fun! We will be sad to see him get moved up to Salt Lake. :(

Sugar Cookies . . .

I really want a kitchen aid.
But they were good and people ate them.
Yay.

Cooking

Why is this so hard? Every time I try to cook or bake something, it starts out like this

and it usually ends like this

Grated my fingers. Twice. I'm pretty sure there was some flesh in my cheesy potatoes. Which, by the way, didn't even turn out.



While baking a cake I somehow hit my head on the counter.
And yes, that's mascara smeared all over my face from crying because my head hurt so bad.
I mean who knew that baking a cake could land you a huge goose egg and a headache for two days?

A Week of Bliss

Ok, so it's been mostly bliss; except for when I missed Gideon like a crazy pathetic fool while he was at work. I actually snuggled up with one of his dirty t-shirts that smelled like him. And watched Oprah. Which, by the way, was about a woman who is standing trial this fall for shooting and killing her abusive policeman-husband. I am so glad my husband tucks me in at night and softly strokes my hair and kisses me on the forhead instead of kicking the crap out of me! But that's just a side note. So...the first week has been great. Top ten things I love about being married:

1. Waking up in the middle of the night with someone to snuggle up to
2. Coming home from a long day to a big hug and a kiss
3. Cooking dinner for someone other than myself
4. Nice conversations with the bathroom door open. If ya know what I mean.
5. Someone to scratch the unreachable awkward part of your back
6. Someone who laughs at all my clumsy moments. But he hugs me too.
7. Sleep overs in the living room
   
8. Midnight cake and a movie
9. Uncontrollable smiles 24/7
10. Budgeting our tiny incomes

This week has been a total blast. Gideon has been late for his morning class almost every day because we seriously stay up late goofing around, organizing our closet, making plans, deciding on baby names for all 25 of our unborn children, etc. It's more wonderful than we ever thought. Last night was probably the highlight of the week:

First...we had dinner. A success FINALLY. Can't go wrong with a crock pot. I love whoever invented those. But of course, we threw some excitement in there when I realized I couldn't open the canned corn because we don't have a can opener. Don't worry; this man is resourceful.

That's right. He used a hammer to pound open the little can on our doorstep. I hope our landlord's didn't see.

I cut my hand on the shard later. THEN, we decided it was a perfect night for a movie. Since we don't have a couch...

The mattress was our only option. Sleepover in the living room! Then we decided we needed some cake to go with our movie. So finally around 12:30, after baking the cake (and taking it out of the oven with my shirt because we don't have any oven mits yet) and running to redbox where I convinced Gideon to watch New In Town (so cute you should all see it. Good clean fun. PS He loved it), we finally watched our movie and kept laughing pretending like we were on a first date or something.

And the final part of this really long and boring blog post is....now we have a couch!!!

I came home from work tonight and Gideon had me close my eyes and hide in the bedroom until he finished his labor of love. He got it all moved in and washed the cushion covers, vaccummed it out and everything. He even covered it with some sheets because he knew I would think it was yucky (50 bucks at D.I....that screams germs).

This man knows how to keep his wife happy. Vaccuming my sofa? I knew I picked a good one. Then he made me dinner and graciously gave me the last piece of cake for dessert.

The cake had a mosquito on it that I found two bites in. I almost vomited. But it's the thought that counts, right?

And the top pic of the week:

This is what happens when you let your new husband put your clothes away. I was in the kitchen and he came out like this. He said it would be a great pad for wrestling matches! Oh my goodness. I died.

A Bed

Gideon is so good at doing all the husband-manly stuff around the house. I'm so glad he knows how to connect the DVD player, hook up the internet, put a bed together, and tie a mattress to the top of a tiny car!! It was quite the adventure getting our bed all put together, but he did a great job. It was so funny driving that mattress down from Sandy on top of our car! I can't believe it made it, even through some rain! Thanks Gideon.

We managed to fit our entire queen bed frame completely dissembled into our little kia, but it had to poke out the windows. The mattress managed to stay tied to the top, thanks to some good ol' fashioned boy scout knots from Gideon.