0 Springtime in Georgia - Our Backyard

The minute the first 70 degree day hit here in Georgia (which, ironically, was only a few days after our epic ice storm), I started itching to make our backyard a more comfy family hangout.

When we bought our home, the yards in general were a giant mess.

You can sort of get an idea from this old aerial photo.  We have no grass, just dirt.  The front yard is a very steep hill, so no play area there.  And we're on a corner lot, so our backyard faces the side of our neighbor's house, which limits play area in the backyard.  The house is also positioned strangely, where no area gets very much sunlight.  That factor becomes increasingly frustrating every year when we're trying to pick out flowers to plant and everything I like the look off is a "full sun" plant.

Up until now, none of this has really been too big of a deal though.  Our first year in the house we built a giant deck, and other than when friends are over, we've hardly used it.  We've always just been out and about more than at home hanging out.

But baby girl changes all of that.  She loves to be outside, loves to play on the deck.  She looks out the windows with so much enchantment of everything out doors.  So, of course, I want our backyard to be more appealing while we're hanging out there with her.  I also want there to be more play area for her, even though at the moment she only moves around on all fours.  She's so close to walking.  I know by this spring / summer she's going to be walking around.

We're using this new motivation to clean up the backyard.  There was a lot of undergrowth and trees in the backyard area that we DO have, which made the backyard look even smaller.  My husband and his trusty new chainsaw from Lowe's have been clearing all that out.  He even signed my nephew up to help while he was over hanging out with us this weekend.

I'm sure if she was big enough, baby girl would help daddy out too

Last night we retrieved my husband's old fire pit that hadn't been used in years and years and years and even had a little bonfire and s'mores on the back deck.  Today was another 70+ degree February day, and we cooked some of my husband's secret recipe burgers (best burger you will ever have, guaranteed).

Kiddos learning to make the secret recipe burgers

And here's a couple of views of the backyard as it stands today.  You can see it's an immediate view into our neighbor's garage.  Hopefully we can get some evergreens to put at the property line (which is almost their driveway) to give a little more privacy. 

And this is off the back corner of the deck, the most insulated part of our property.  My husband cleared this area out and it's where we hope to put a swingset.  You see I wasn't kidding about the dirt part either.

1 I'm back... and not as good a blogger 6 as ever... and I wouldn't haveit any other way

I'm back!

I miss blogging.  Why have I been MIA for awhile?

Because I don't have time to take DSLR-quality photos.  Because I forget to take before photos.  Because when I want to do a project, I don't have time to photo document every single step.

But I want to keep blogging.  Why?

I recently ran across some of my old diaries from when I was growing up in my Mom's attic.  It was so awesome to read through them, and be taken immediately back to moments from when I was 8, 9, 10, 11... years old and remember things that hadn't even crossed my mind in 20 years.  Those events and moments would have all been forgotten forever if someone hadn't given me my first journal, and if I hadn't been diligent about writing everyday.  I'm so thankful that I can forever look back and remember those moments.  They'll never be lost, because they've been written.

And even for last year, there are many parts of my pregnancy that have already flown out of mind.  Going back through the blog entries brings me back to the day I wrote them.  And I want baby girl to be able to read through and see the photos one day and see exactly what was going on in our world as we were getting ready to welcome her into our lives.

So I'm back.  Because I want to save my blog entries, and I want baby girl to be able to look back one day and know exactly what was going on in our world during her first years on this planet.

So here's to low-quality iPhone photos, more special moments than projects, more links to I-copied-how-this-blogger-did-something than tutorials of my own.  Because life's about more than keeping up with the Joneses (blog).

0 4 Months, you must be kidding me!

Our little angel turned 4 months old last week!

It is amazing how quickly she is changing.  Sometimes it seems like she gets bigger every night.  She responds to us with whole-face smiles that absolutely melt your heart.  Her daddy can make her break into the cutest giggles you've ever heard.

I've always heard little girls have their daddies wrapped around their little finger, but this little mess definitely has BOTH her mommy and daddy wrapped around her's.

And because this little baby has WAY more cute dresses than any baby her size needs, we did a wardrobe change halfway through taking her 4 month photo...

0 I'm back and it's Gameday!

Well, I meant to take a month off from blogging to adjust to going back to work, but that turned into 2 months. How quickly time flies!

Now we have a 4 month old baby who gets chunkier every day. It's so hard to process how fast she's growing. 

Our little dawg is ready for Gameday today and I'm working on some posts for this upcoming week. Hope everyone has a wonderful Labor Day weekend and stay tuned!

0 I Hate Orange (Bathroom Re-Do)

As Georgia Bulldog fans, we're used to saying "I Hate Orange"  All of our biggest rival schools have orange in their team colors somewhere.  So it's strange that the bathroom adjacent to the baby's room was painted orange.  You might think a bright color like orange would be vibrant and brighten up the bathroom.  Instead, it made it feel more like a dungeon.  Not to mention my husband hates orange.

A project we started the weekend before baby was born was painting the bathroom.  It was an awful, awful shade of orange that was dark and just ugly. It's a jack and jill type bathroom that attaches two bedrooms together.  Since baby girl's room is pink with blue accents, and the other bedroom could be a future girl or boy's room, I thought a bright shade of blue would be perfect to brighten the bathroom and tie in to the blue in the nursery.  It also isn't a girly color in case distant future baby is a boy!

We really lucked out recently in discovering that our local flea market sells Sherwin Williams "mess ups" for $5 a gallon.  Amazing!  We bought some when we painted our new dresser, and we also bought some for this project.  Obviously the only downside is you can only get what they already have.  Most colors they only have one gallon of, but some colors they have two gallons.  If we ever need more than one gallon at a time, my plan is to find 2 or 3 gallons that are colors that are "close" to each other, then mix them in a 5 gallon bucket.  But this is a small dresser, so 1 gallon was more than enough!  We were perusing through the little flea market shop one weekend with my parents when I saw the perfect color blue.  It couldn't match the blue accents in baby girl's room any better!

$5 Gallon of Sherwin Williams paint

I'm so happy with how this color turned out!  I printed off some cute kidsy artwork online after making a few adjustments and put in white frames from Wal-Mart.

My only problem... I don't know what to do about these mirrors!  Currently they lean up against the wall and overlap slightly.  I was ready to hang them on the walls after my hubby was done painting, but  theres a note on the back from the manufacturer that says do not use wire, only hang with included hardware.  There's no hardware taped on the back - I bought these 4 years ago from Hobby Lobby and can't remember if there was ever any hardware taped to the back.  So I guess until I figure out the safest way to hang these really heavy things, they're going to remain leaned up against the wall.

0 First attempt at painting furniture: A new dresser

Being a new mom is like living in a land of "half-finisheds"  Half the laundry is put away before the baby cries and I get distracted.  Half a sandwich is eaten before the baby needs to eat and I get distracted.  Half of a bathroom project is done (it's painted, but nothing put back on the wall).  Half of this blog entry was written for 3 weeks until I could get back to it.  And until recently, half of our yard sale dresser was done.

If you'll remember, 3 days before baby girl was born we scored this dresser for $25 at a yard sale.

I'd been wanting a dresser for our basement guest room, and this seemed like the perfect one to attempt painting my first large piece of furniture.  

So I started scouring the blog-world for tutorials on how to paint furniture.  I found this one at Centsational Girl the most helpful and this one from Just A Girl.  I used a mix of these tutorials on the dresser.

For the paint of the dresser, we used a $5 gallon of Sherwin Williams paint.  $5? That's right!  Our local flea market has a store that sells "mess-ups" from Sherwin Williams where the paint color didn't turn out quite right.  It was a little difficult finding the right color there, because I wanted the dresser to be as white as possible, and most of the paints they have are colors.  But we ended up finding a great creamy off-white.

Originally, I had only found the CG tutorial and I was going to follow all the steps in it, so we started by sanding down imperfections and brushing on the Zinsser primer with a Purdy brush.  

As you can see, you might start to get discouraged when you've got the primer on.  It doesn't look very pretty with the primer.  You can see lots of dark areas through the primer.  Trust me, it gets better!

After the primer, I lightly sanded everything again to make sure I had a smooth surface to apply the paint.

Between the primer and painting on the first coat of paint, I found the Just A Girl tutorial, which suggested using foam rollers instead of the Purdy brushes for a super smooth finish.  I could see lots of brush strokes in my primer, so I was worried that my final coats would be the same.  I went to Wal-Mart and bought foam rollers and brushes before starting to put the coats of paint on.  

The paint went on nice and smooth without any lines, but you could still see some brush strokes from the primer below.  It did not look bad though.  I used the tiny foam brushes to get paint in the areas the foam roller couldn't reach.

You can see how quickly the furniture starts looking nice in the photo below.  Half of the top has been painted, while everything else is still just primer.  It makes a big difference to get that first coat of paint on!  You can especially see it in the photo of the top and the side.

The top has paint, the side only has primer - so don't be discouraged if your piece looks awful with just primer!

It took 3 thin coats of paint, and I think I put a 4th thin coat on the very top.

Then it was time to seal it!  We bought the Varathane water-based sealer recommended from the other blogs and I applied it with the foam brushes also.

We bought new pulls from Home Depot.  I considered for half a second spray painting the lion head pulls that came with the dresser because I was annoyed at spending more money on pulls than we spent on the dresser itself (it cost about $50 for 16 new pulls).  I'm glad we went with the new pulls though, because I really like the modern look the new pulls gave the dresser!

And because everyone likes a good before and after...


The original home for this dresser was supposed to be our basement guest room, but we ended up liking the finished product so much that we put the dresser from our bedroom in the basement, and moved this one up to our room!

You want a similar looking dresser from Restoration Hardware (that doesn't even look as good as our's, in my opinion).  It'll only cost you $1,995.  Our dresser cost under $100 total after buying new pulls and paint.

And here it is in its new home...

End result: A nice smooth finish!

1 The Good Life

A year ago we were leaving for Puerto Rico for our destination wedding.  We stayed and were married in Rincon, Puerto Rico at Casa por Fin, Dogman's Beach.

We rented two other houses next to Casa por Fin for my family and my husband's family (Tres Amigos was across the street and Villas at Tres Palmas was next door).  The houses were bordered by a marine reserve to the south, so there was a ton of privacy on the properties.  Our wedding party stayed in the same house as us, Casa por Fin, but we had an apartment separate from the rest of the house on the top floor with its own entrance.

I'll share more wedding details on our anniversary, but for now some fun things to do in and around Rincon!

Rincon is on the western side of the island, a couple hours drive from the main airport in San Juan.  A large portion of Rincon's locals are Americans who came for the surfing and never left.

One of our adventures was visiting the Camuy Caves, which were an hour or so drive from Rincon.  The natural beauty of the caves was awesome!

Camuy Caves, Puerto Rico

Part of our wedding party at Camuy Caves, Puerto Rico

Waterfall in Camuy Caves, Puerto Rico

Camuy Caves, Puerto Rico

Another outing the entire group went on was to the bioluminescent bay in La Parguera.  I have to admit, I was skeptical the entire time.  It was an experience that sounded amazing . . . if it really worked the way it was supposed to.  You take a boat at nightfall to a bay that has microorganisms called dinoflagellates that produce a chemical spark of light when disturbed in the water.  It's supposed to be as if the bay is glowing.  So the whole boat ride out I'm nervous because this whole crazy thing was my idea, and we've got a long car ride back to Rincon where I'll hear about it!

But, the bay was just as advertised!  None of it shows up in the photos, but when I would move my arm across the water it was as if there were diamonds all over my arm sparkling - really cool!  Oh, and I can;t forget to mention how good the empanadas were that were provided on the boat ride... yum (that's what I'm stuffing my face with at 3:44 in the video at the end of this entry)!

Boat ride to the bioluminescent bay in La Parguera

Bioluminescent bay in La Parguera

Bioluminescent bay in La Parguera

We spent most of the rest of our time preparing for the ceremony, lounging at the pool, and as you'll see in the video below eating great Puerto Rican food (mmm, beans and rice, mofongo, and empanadas!)

My friend and bridesmaid Caroline brought her camera along and got enough clips together for this video.  It makes me so happy and sad to watch it!  I want to go back!!