Tea Time and Primetime

This weekend turned out to be quite productive, despite it being pretty cold. First, I did a little mini-project on Friday evening. This one was inspired by Centsational Girl's similar project. I was excited to make my own tea towels for the main floor half bath.

First, I bought same floursack towels from Amazon.

And some craft paint and fabric medium for the stamps.

I mixed the craft paint and fabric medium one to one and rolled it onto my stamps with a mini foam roller. To get each stamp even, I rolled the paint on the stamp each time.

Anyone recognize the stamps? I had gotten these for our wedding - the larger leaves were used for the Sunday Brunch invitations and the smaller ones for the place-cards and program. :)

I think they turned out pretty well and look good on our hook. I still have more blank tea towels, so I may try to find more stamps and make some for the kitchen.

The second project was the start of the very large task of painting the basement. Since our entire house was beige when we first moved in, we have been wanting to add color downstairs for quite some time, especially since the pool table is beige, making the downstairs a sea of beige-ness. We also realized that we would need to carry whatever color we chose all the way up the basement stairs because there was no clear break point for it downstairs. We are not painting the main floor, but the wall that the stairs is on will be painted, so it needs to blend well with the main floor (this will make more sense in pictures). The first step was to prime all the walls. From our experience in painting this bouse, we are well aware how the walls tend to absorb the first coat of paint, so we knew we needed to prime. First, here are some pictures from before this weekend. And yes, family is no longer a journey to forever. We decided to remove the wall decal. J never did like it and I don't really get it. We'll have to find a nice picture to put there.

I washed down the walls and prepped the area on Friday afternoon. And then, we painted all day on Saturday. I did the "cutting in" or the areas by the trim and ceiling, and J rolled for me. It took me from 9 - 5 just to do the detail work, so I am super thankful that J helped me. It took 1.5 cans of primer, which was exactly what we had on hand, so that was nice. We will need two coats of color paint, so we determined that we need 3 cans of paint for the color.

Today, I ended up going back over a few places and making touch ups, and I ended up removing the shelf that is pictured here over the bar.

Now it is gone. We don't know whether we should re-install it or not once we are done painting. What does everyone think? We were having a hard time deciding whether to keep the shelf or not.

There she is - all primed and ready for some color. Of course, we haven't exactly decided on a color yet. We have set ourselves a deadline of before next Friday so that I can pick up the paint on the way home from work. We want to paint the color fairly soon, but next weekend is pretty busy, so we will have to see when that actually happens, but definitely within the next two weeks. We knew this project would take some time and planned for that, so we are okay with our stark white basement for now. Actually, as J noted, it is actually a welcome change from all the beige. More updates to come.

In other news, I tried to sand down the awkward piece of unfinished wood above the fireplace (you can view it from some of the pictures above). And I discovered that sanding indoors creates a lot of wood dust. So, that didn't quite turn out as planned. I still feel like I am smelling the wood dust, but it may be my imagination. I aired out the room as soon as I noticed the problem (which, by the way, made it really cold). *Sigh* I did manage to make it less splinter-y, which I suppose is an improvement.

All in all, quite a lot of work for one weekend, but it was nice to make headway in this large painting job that has been hanging over our heads.

First Snow of 2012

As it turns out, I wasn't feeling too hot today, so I was at home during our first snow of 2012. I was actually quite content to lay on the couch and watch the snow fall. It was nice not having to worry about the traffic, too. Good timing, huh? (By the way, I promise I wasn't feeling well).

Anyway, in the afternoon, I went out and snapped some quick photos of the house. I thought I would share!

Wow - two posts in 24 hours. I think that may be a record!

A Change in Plans

We were all set to go to Annapolis this weekend. We were going to see J's cousin and her family and then go to a cookout at a friend's from college. But, as it turns out, J caught a cold from his co-worker and we ended up staying home this weekend. So, instead our weekend was filled with homemade chicken noodle soup, herbal tea, video games, and... finishing up the painting job in the living room. In all honesty, although we were bummed to miss out, it was nice having a relaxing weekend at home after all the holiday running around. We also watched Michael Moore's "Capitalism, A Love Story," which was a documentary about the housing market collapse. He is pretty strongly opinionated, but he brought up some good points about the intertwining of politics and the economy. Anyway, back to painting. I decided that it was high time I got the doors in our foyer to match and to paint that bay window, as I mentioned in blog post: here.

Here is a before shot of the bay window. Notice how the curtains don't really match the color of the molding.

And here is the unpainted closet door next to the painted front door. Yea, that needed to be fixed.

Here is one of the many blemishes I wanted to cover on the bay window by painting.

Check out how peachy the paint was.

See the difference in colors? Sidenote: I was using Sherwin Williams Trim and Cabinet paint in Snowbound.

Here she is all painted. It took about 3 coats to actually get a good covering. I recommend multiple thin coats of paint, especially when using a brush, which can leave stroke marks.

Same color!

Here is the front door with the bay window and J playing on the Wii.

And now the curtains match!

I cannot tell you how much cleaner it looks. I am making sure the base is super dry before I put anything back on it, so that will have to wait a few days. J was really impressed when it was done, and I was super happy with the results. We also finally used up that can of trim paint, which I had used to paint:
the master bath
the master bedroom
the guest bedroom
the kitchen
and now the front door, closet and bay window

Not bad for one can of paint. I will need to get more. I am slowly getting rid of all of the peach trim paint which means it will take me a while to get it all completed.

I thought I would share a few tips, especially when it comes to painting trim.
1. Before painting, take a damp rag and clean off the surface. Wait for the surface to dry. I do not do any other prep work for trim. For walls, I use a damp, almost dry, very large sponge (like you would use to wash your car) to clean them.
2. Have a moist, clean paper towel on hand. I never tape around my projects, but I always have a damp paper towel, so that I can wipe off any mistakes. Before (latex based) paint is dry, it is very wipe-able. After it is dry, it isn't. The key to not using painter's tape is mostly practice. Use it a few times, while you work on perfecting your strokes.
3. Use a small trim roller whenever you can. The coverage is more even and it goes a lot faster.
4. I don't get my painting done in one chunk of time. Instead of washing out my brush and roller every time I take a break, I wrap them in pretty damp paper towels and place them in a plastic bag. Everything stays moist for when you are ready to work again. Don't let the paint dry out.
5. I use a small, angled brush. Smaller brushes give you better control.
6. Paint in the same direction of the trim (parallel not perpendicular).

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a safe and fun time. We had a relaxing break, celebrating Christmas and New Year with family and friends. I took down all of our Christmas decorations today. I expect that some people keep theirs up for a while, but taking them down made the New Year seem like an official fresh start. We had added additional decorations after Christmas because we decorated for a NYE gathering with some friends. We decided not to have a huge party, but just a few friends over. Here is a re-cap of the food, decor and our little party. We probably ate about 1/3 of the food available. I had asked for help with the appetizers, so we had a lot of food! But I guess that is better than not having enough. 

First food is called white trash, which I made for family and co-workers for Christmas. It consists of cereals, nuts and m&ms which are mixed with melted white chocolate and cooled on cookie sheets. I used my own version of a double broiler for melted the white chocolate. I have had trouble with it in the microwave in the past, so I found using a double broiler helped me not to over-cook the chocolate. 

For our party, I made buffalo chicken dip. Easy & delicious recipe. First, spread out 8 oz of cream cheese

Second, mix together shredded chicken from a rotisserie chicken (I use the whole chicken) with 1/2 c of buffalo wing sauce and 2 Tbsp. of melted butter and spread on top of the cream cheese.

Third, add a layer of blue cheese dressing (until it covers the chicken mixture) and finish by sprinkling mozzarella cheese on top. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. You can prep everything the day before and then bake when people arrive. This made it easy for me.

Here is the sparkly garland I picked up at Target after Christmas. I thought it would be festive for NYE. I also decorated downstairs with extra Christmas lights but completely forgot to take a picture before I put everything away.

Oh, and I randomly picked this up at Hobby Lobby. :)

Our dining room table prior to being filled with immense quantities of food.

Caprese sticks (grape tomatoes, mozz, and basil drizzled with olive oil and balsamic). If I may say so myself, these were delicious.

Before all the dips.

The champagne cupcakes I baked for the party. From the Georgetown Cupcake recipe book.

Two of our guests. But check out all the food!

More party pics.

A big Thank You to Jen for coming early and helping me!

The girls:

I cannot believe it is back to work starting tomorrow. The holidays always do come to an end. Although, I am excited about some of the house projects we have planned for the new year. We are planning on tackling the basement soon, so I am looking forward to seeing that room get some paint and decorations.