Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Wicked Awesome Wednesday #27

You know what time it is...time for our 27th Wicked Awesome Wednesday party! The power outage and Irene threw me off, I somehow lost a day in my mind!

Here are some projects that caught my eye last week:

Evie from Brown Paper Packages hand painted some wallpaper.

Colette, Heather and Angie are three sisters who blog at Burton Avenue. Angie made these light house candle holders from scratch:

Terri at A Creative Princess made a Show of Shutter to show kiddie artwork. Love this idea!

Sommer from Designer Garden made over this old cedar chest for a girl's play room:

Patty from Patty Trends made these chocolate coconut truffles...mmmmm, chocolate!

Larissa Hill Designs made this cute pillow using a photo of a baby:

Krista from Krista Artista made her own wallpaper stencil. Check out her detailed tutorial:

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Monday, August 29, 2011

It's been quite a weekend. As most of you have heard, we had a lil' hurricane here on the East Coast.

It got very windy here. Loads of rain. On Sunday, we lost power around noon. Cable and phone shortly after that. All is well, no storm damage to the homestead. Phew!

On Saturday, we started to batten down the hatches. Handy Man turned on the generator to test it out. The battery was low, so he fiddled with it and charged it up.

After we lost power on Sunday, he went to turn on the generator, and... it didn't start. The battery didn't hold the charge. Gaaaah!

Rob had to MacGuyver the thing, using the battery from his lawnmower and some extra wires. Don't ask me how he did it, but it worked.

Nice mullet, MacGuyver

My MacGuyver. Sans mullet.

Power came back on around 3:15 this afternoon. The first day of school was supposed to be today, but it was cancelled. The first day!! Gah. I'm tired. The house is a mess.

Back to normal this week, I swear. Watch for Wicked Awesome Wednesday, and a "house snooping" post on Friday.

If you were in the hurricane's path, how did you fare? Everyone OK?

House Snooping

Do you ever check out houses while you’re out driving around? We do it all the time, especially since we moved to our current house, which isn’t too far from the coast. There are some really fancy-shmancy houses right near the coastline.

I just found this house the other day. It was huge!

Here are some of the views of the water from this house. Not too shabby, eh?

When we first moved here, Rob was really interested in buying a house really close to the water. But then we saw the prices some (modest!) houses were going for, even if they were rundown shacks. Yikes! We live further inland, but we’re still within easy driving distance to the coast. We still get the fun of being able to see the ocean whenever we want, without the huge price tag.

We still like to look at all the fancy houses along the shore, and wonder what they cost. I also wonder what it costs to heat some of those houses during a New England winter!

Do you ever peek at big houses when driving around? Do you wonder what they look like inside? (I do!!) If we see a “for sale” sign on a house we’re curious about, we like to snoop around on the real estate web sites, so we can see pictures of the inside. (Told you I’m nosy!)

BLOG NEWS!

Tomorrow, October 1st, is the first anniversary of our blog! I really can’t believe that it’s been a year.

In honor our our 1st Blogiversary, we’ll be doing a giveaway that starts TOMORROW! Be sure to come back and check it out.

A great big THANK YOU to all of our readers over the past year! We really appreciate all of our readers.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Wicked Awesome Wednesday #26

You know what time it is...time for our 26th Wicked Awesome Wednesday party! We had over 115 projects last week, wow!

Irene from Our Ugly Home made an accessories holder using a $4 frame and some burlap:

Ashely at A Blonde's DIY Life showed us how to make a crib skirt:

Mike and Melanie from The Frosted Gardener fixed up this sweet little side table:

Michelle and Nate from Decor and the Dog made over their laundry room. You know much I love cute laundry rooms:

Amanda from The Ivy Cottage Blog made personalized tool belts for a construction themed birthday party for her son. How cute are these?

Nicole from Blissfully Blessed made this pretty Strawberry and Lemon Cream Dream Tart:

Lydia from Pudel-design (who lives in Germany) painted this driftwood table:

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Monday, August 22, 2011

Have You Seen These (Longaberger) Baskets?

You won't believe what Handy Man bought for me the other day. Three Longaberger baskets, at a flea market. For $20!

I love me some Longaberger baskets. I have one for my recipes, and I have two Christmas baskets.

Have you ever seen these baskets before? They are stamped "1999" on the bottom, if that helps.

Twenty. Bucks! One has a wood lid, two have fabric liners, and one (the blue one on the right) has a plastic liner as well.

For any of you who have bought Longaberger before, you know how expensive it is. These are in like-new condition.

I'm not sure what I'll do with them, but I'm happy with them. I have some other Longaberger baskets.

Brownie points for Handy Man!

Friday, August 19, 2011

Handy Man is Going to be in a Book

Handy Man is going to be in a book!

Yes, a real book you can actually buy in the store.

No, we're not kidding. It's kind of funny how it happened.

Remember when I showed the new shed that Rob built in the backyard? Last year, a very nice man named Gordon Thornburn, who lives in England, sent me an email. Turns out, Gordon had written a book called Men in Sheds. It showed photos of men from the United Kingdom, in their "natural habitats," so to speak...their sheds.

Here is an interview with Gordon about his book, Men and Sheds.

Men do love their sheds, don't they?

"Workin' on my shed."

Handy Man's finished Masterpiece

Gordon said that he was working on a new book about men and their sheds from all over the world, and would we like to send him some photos of Handy Man in his shed?

Yes, please.

The new book is called The Pocket Guide to Sheds.

Click here to read more about Gordon, and see a list of the other books he has written.

The book has a release date of August. This month! We don't know the exact date, but you can put it on your amazon.com pre-order list, or run (don't walk) to your nearest book store and place an order. Because you know you want to buy this book! It looks like a lot of fun, and we can't wait to see it.

We'd love it if you'd show Gordon some love and buy his book when it comes out. (We aren't receiving any compensation to promote this book. We just think it's fun!) You can also purchase the previous book, Men in Sheds.

Oh, and for local family and friends: yes, Rob will be signing autographs. ;-) (Just kidding...or not!)

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Wicked Awesome Wednesday #25

You all know what time it is...time for our 25th Wicked Awesome Wednesday party!

Here are some of the projects that caught my eye from last week's party:

You are Talking Too Much painted this old bench with chalk paint:

Art is Beauty made a really fun happy hour rolling bar cart, complete with a graphic:

Suzy from Suzy's Artsy Craftsy Sitcom made a Brady Bunch Cake! Love me some Brady Bunch!

Alexis Anne from Clean, Smart, Simple Style made over her laundry room. I seem to keep featuring laundry rooms, for some reason I'm a sucker for a pretty, made over laundry area:

Billie from Billie Mitchell Photography took some beautiful photos of her colorful family room makeover:

Kia from Kiwi Chic says she has the best ever cupcake recipe:

Angie from Gathered and Sown gave some easy to use instructions about how to "de-smell" your vintage fabrics. Great tips here:

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Monday, August 15, 2011

Window Mirror on the Wall

Blogger is annoying the crap out of me today, I'm having a lot of trouble adding photos. Please bear with me.

I talked a little about some changes I wanted to make in the master bedroom on my Color Inspiration post in July.

Here is the wall color now. It's really hard to photograph, but it's a beige color. I might change it, but I'm feeling really lazy about painting, especially with all the crazy angles in the dormer.

We also bought a new, blue comforter for the bed, after much debate and shopping:

We also bought a cute bed skirt:

Guess what happened though: the stupid bed skirt didn't fit! I washed it (according to package directions). Then, I air dried it. It was about four inches too short, all around. We bought it at Bed, Bath & Beyond, and they let us return it.

Aggravating! We bought a different skirt, but I don't have a picture of it, yet. Don't you hate it when stuff like that happens?

Remember this small, red, window mirror?

Handy Man found this window/mirror for $4 at a yard sale! I like it. It's bigger than the red one, and takes up more "visual space" on that part of the wall.

Only $4! Can you believe it?

I like it. Handy Man just couldn't pass it up for $4. We haven't done anything else yet, we kind of lost steam. But the little changes are nice. I'll show you a picture of the new bedspread soon.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Changes, and an Update

Wow. What a couple of weeks it's been!! I missed posting on Friday again. I don't know what happened. The day just got away from me! I thought I'd have more time for the blog during the summer, har har.

Handy Boy has been in day camp, but my days are filled with errands, chores, visiting friends and family and even some fun, creative stuff. And now? It's August 14th, and POOF, summer is almost gone.

Don't worry, I'm still blogging!! I just need to get my "stuff" together. I'm making a few small changes for now:

I'm going to continue to post on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I'm cutting out my Sunday posts for now.

I won't be taking many sponsors for my sidebar for a while. If you'd like to trade buttons, give me a shout.

We're still doing Wicked Awesome Wednesdays, so don't worry about that!

I really meant to work on some of my categories this summer (like recipes, and before and after), but that didn't work out. I'll get to them...someday. I really want to work on the before and after section.

I'm looking for some guest posts for September. If you have a crafty, recipe or DIY blog and would like to do a guest post, send us an email! I may not be able to take everyone, but please talk to me if you're interested.