Drip No More

Our exciting Saturday home improvement project was installing new faucets in the master bathroom. We actually painted and retiled our bathroom about 5 years ago, but didn't replace any hardware. Our water in Phoenix is very hard and tends to leave a lot of mineral build-up. Just recently, both faucets in our double sinks have started leaking. We went from this ...



with a relatively small amount of fussing and cussing (at least on my part) -- to this ...



One thing our Oldest Daughter has told us about is the Simple Green cleaning product. It really does loosen and remove a lot of the gunk and it's earth, kid and pet friendly. Buy the large concentrate bottles at the home improvement store, then dilute it into spray bottles. Works great!

Many years ago when the girls were young, we rented a house from a wonderful Italian couple. They had a large family and treated us like part of it. We would go over in person to pay rent and they would always have a bag of home-baked treats for us and little gifts for the girls for every holiday. They were so nice! The husband was a plumber by trade and, Murphy's Law says, the house we rented had continuous plumbing issues. He would come over to fix things like the shower head or the kitchen sink and his Italian-accented comment that we still use to this day is ...

"It's the got-dam spigot, the got-dam spigot!"

You know, it's a darn good thing that hubby can do these fix-ups around the house because it's a man's job! Have you watched the new show "The Marriage Ref?" The episode from last week had Tina Fey, Jerry Seinfeld and Eva Longoria-Parker as judges, refereeing disputes sent in by married couples.

The one that really got to us was a couple who had only been married for 8 months. She has the formal dining room set up with all the fancy trappings (including the place settings) for Thanksgiving and that is the only time of the year that anyone is allowed to use that table! No kidding ... she actually has a couple of chairs set up near the table so she can sit and reflect on the Thanksgiving holiday all year round. Her husband suggested that he might play cards with friends on it and she nearly popped a vein.

Another issue with the same couple was that the wife felt the husband should handle everything outside the house, including building a porch. She said that since he is a man, he should just know how to do this stuff. She even bought him a porch kit but he said the instructions were in Japanese so he couldn't read them.

Tina Fey and Jerry Seinfeld sided with the husband and Eva Longoria-Parker sided with the wife. It was hysterical. We laughed so hard, we had to keep rewinding and playing it over so we could catch all that they were saying. Definitely a show we'll keep watching!

Cutting Up Furniture

Apparently we're not happy unless we have a project to complete with minutes to spare right before we have company or a holiday. I was just starting to feel like I had Christmas under control when Saturday morning hubby decides we must go buy the big screen TV we've talked about for years. We host the family Christmas Eve dinner every year and that was only 5 days away.

The big problem, though, has been finding a TV stand that we like to hold the big screen. When we bought this house, we got an entertainment center that is 11 feet wide and nearly fills the entire wall of the family room. And the color, that matches our family room tables and kitchen cabinets, is a white-washed maple. We've looked for a very wide TV stand in this color range and never found anything we liked.

So we decided to cut up our entertainment center, taking the shelves or tops off. Talk about scary. Hubby, who is very much a handy man, is more the full-time executive in his day job. He doesn't get to play with power tools in the garage much. However, he bought new blades for his jigsaw and router and off we went.

Here is the original entertainment center, which is actually 5 separate pieces.



Here he is making a cut on one of the shelf units.



Here is one of the pieces with the top cut off. The cuts and routing left raw strips of wood on the top of each side. We purchased a veneer strip that matched very closely, although it can be stained to match even better if necessary. You iron this on with a regular clothes iron to activate the glue. So, yes, any of the nabes out during this process saw us ironing our furniture in the garage. Don't make eye contact with the crazy people!



And here is the finished TV stand with the 52" screen. Thinking about the Bowl games and Super Bowl probably pushed him over the edge this year. And I must say I'm excited to watch the cooking shows on the large screen.



We are thinking about taking the shelf tops that we cut off and turning them into wall-mounted shelf units to hang on either size of the screen. They have pretty crown moulding around the top so this might work well to give us some display shelves. So now we are just 3 days until Christmas Eve and I'm heading out to finish up my Christmas shopping.

What's goin' on ...

We are now on the downhill slide of home improvement ... thank God. The tile is being laid in our home office and master bedroom this week. We cozied up in the guest room last night -- cozy being the operative word. It's amazing how small a full-size bed feels in comparison to a king. And the puppies would not be denied. They are used to sleeping up on the bed with us and proceeded to carry on until we picked them up. Is this where the term dog pile came from?

Here are a couple of shots of rooms with completed tile. The grout still needs to be sealed and then a good cleaning and everything can go back where it belongs.

dining room

family room

We took a field trip to Ikea Sunday. Hubby and I had never been to the store they opened in Tempe a few years ago. Youngest daughter had shopped there previously and went along. What a veritable wonderland of shopping. First of all, it's huge -- 2 stories of everything from complete room layouts of furniture and appliances to holiday decorations to linens and rugs and silk plants and dishes. There is a restaurant and a children's play area and a little cafe where you can buy amazing cinnamon rolls for $1.00. It's a good thing we don't live anywhere near this store because I would put my car on auto-pilot for the cinnamon rolls alone.

In addition to the cinnamon rolls, we bought a very nice hanging rack to go behind the door in the laundry room for my aprons. I love aprons and I use them constantly. The granddaughter also has a number of kid-size aprons. We bought very cute matching Christmas aprons a few years ago. Got home from Ikea and, while we were still high from our sugar buzz, hubby put the rack up.

apron rack

I am throwing a baby shower for a friend in December. This is her first baby -- they're having a boy. They live in a mountain town a few hours outside of Phoenix and love the outdoor life, especially fishing. I decided to hand-make her invitations scrapbook-style and found the cutest little stick-on bears to embellish with. I scanned all the bears and printed the one that looks like a little pregnant mama on the front of the envelopes. I think they turned out really cute and I can't wait for the shower.

baby shower invitation

A Sneak Peek

Hubby had a cold over the weekend and I managed to catch it just about the time the tile guys were driving up Monday morning. Have been wandering around here in a cold medicine haze with snot for brains. Nonetheless, great progress has been made on the laying of tile. Here are a few photos, starting with the kitchen looking toward the entryway and office.



Next is the dining room. I just love that spice cake paint color. And the warmth of the gold tile makes me very happy!



Can't wait until we're done. We will be dismantling the office soon, which means all the computer equipment is getting disconnected so we can move the furniture out of the room. But, in the infamous words of the Terminator -- I'll be back!

Under Construction

The tile guys will be here this week laying new tile.

Will be back when I can.

Dust on the Fridge

Remember that beautiful song by Kansas ... "Dust in the Wind." It looks like that inside our house right now.



If you've watched "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" on TV, you know that demolition is the FUN part of the process. They turn it into a party and everyone smiles and oohs and aahs and there are hundreds of people running around in blue shirts to help. Well, it's not like that here!

Hubby rented a Demo Hammer to break up and remove the white tile throughout the house. In addition to the flying tile fragments and jackhammer loud noise, the dust floating through the air kept setting off the smoke alarms. Since they're hard-wired into the house with our alarm system, you can't just take out the batteries to make them stop. The neighbors probably think I'm the worst cook in the world after two days of this.



Hubby blasted out and shoveled tile and made numerous trips to the city dump. I helped with a little shoveling and carting tile. I was better with the shop vac, cleaning up in his wake. He is a one-man tasmanian devil when it comes to stuff like this.

You know they love their manly tools. A few years ago, I came home from work on a Saturday afternoon and he called me into the back yard. "Honey, come look what I got today." He's standing there with a chain saw -- on an extension pole -- to trim the tall Queen Palms in our yard. Big grin, pulling on the start cord and revving the engine. Scary and cute!

So now we're cleaning the dust off of everything. Finally got the kitchen back in working order yesterday and needed a little comfort so I baked a bundt cake last night. It tasted great -- no tile dust!

We're planning to get all the baseboards painted before the new tile is laid and, fortunately, we won't be doing that part ourselves. We have real, honest-to-goodness tile guys coming in a week to do that. Yay!

So when I was a teenager, I babysat for a family in our neighborhood. The mom was always so much fun to talk to, I'd go hang out with her even when I wasn't sitting. I remember she climbed on a chair to get something from the cupboard over her refrigerator once. She gasped in outrage and said something very unladylike. Her husband had written the date (quite a few months earlier) in the dust on top of her fridge and a note ... Clean Me. Still makes me laugh!

In celebration of a new shower curtain

This is what my life has become. I have been reduced to taking pictures of our bathroom. We have finished painting the guest bathroom (Spice Cake) and bought a new shower curtain and rod. And, it looks pretty snazzy, if I do say so myself ... and you know I do.

Hubby was excited about getting one of those circular shower rods that extends the shower curtain outside of the tub at the top, giving you a lot more elbow room. Once he installed it and we hung the new curtain, we both stepped into the tub, closed the curtain and just giggled. Then our youngest daughter and granddaughter came over, went in to see it and did the same thing. Maybe we should charge admission. It really is great to have the extra room while showering.

We are going to be replacing the white floor tile as well. You can see our sample in the corner by the tub. There's a lot of gold in it. Looks very pretty and we're planning to have everything done before Thanksgiving when company comes to visit from Denver.

The bathroom looks so nice -- all fresh and new and kinda elegant for a bathroom -- that I thought maybe we should call it The Royal Bathroom. Then I read in one of my favorite blogs (http://4badbill.wordpress.com) that they had a bathroom in Scotland they called The Royal Flush ... for entirely different reasons, but still. Is this synchronicity or would that be sink-chronicity?

Painting and Snowflakes

So we made great headway on the family room and kitchen yesterday. The kitchen actually slowed us down because of all the dismantling of curtains and blinds from the windows and taping around all the windows and the cupboards. I am thrilled with the color. It is soft and warm and has a bit of a glow to it. Here's a picture of the big wall in the family room during the painting process. This is the 14-1/2 foot high ceiling.



And I received my package of snowflake charms from China that I intend to embellish our Christmas cards with. They are exactly what I wanted and took less than 2 weeks to arrive.



Now I just have to come up with a clever verse, layout the card, do the printing, assemble the cards with ribbon and charms, do the addressing, buy some cute holiday stamps (I loves me some cute holiday stamps) and I'm ready to go. Once I get all this done, they'll probably be in the mail by Christmas Eve. You know there are ONLY 81 SHOPPING DAYS LEFT 'TIL CHRISTMAS ... let the panic begin!

I thought the customs declaration label was kinda cool ...

Dishcloths and Painting

We are slowly making our way through the house painting. My hubby is the all-time prep it right guy so we spend 3 days taping to every 1 day of painting. And I know he's right. Just do it all correctly from the start and there won't be as much clean up work. But I've always been kind of an eyeball it and get it done gal. When we hang pictures, he'll measure and get out his level. I just stand back and point. There, slam that nail in right there. Looks good enough!

Last weekend we finished the dining room and hallway. This weekend we will move on to the family room and kitchen. Our highest ceilings are in the family room at 14-1/2 feet and hubby climbs up and down that tall ladder like a kid. My balance just plain sucks so I try to stay on the ground and do the low stuff like baseboards. He does accidentally drop the roll of blue painter's tape all the time so we have perfected a circus act where I (the lovely assistant) whip it up in the air and he catches it as it sails past his head and comes back down. I don't know why I find this so amusing, but I guess it's a good thing since we still have many days of taping and painting left to do and it helps break up the monotony.



We are painting the family room and kitchen in a dark caramelly beige called Plateau, which should look very nice and goes well with our whitewashed cupboards. Here is a picture of the paint swatch next to a card I have framed over my kitchen desk. This card always makes me smile. It starts with a quote by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee." Then it reads, "One morning we ran into a neighbor at the store and she asked brightly, 'What was it as your house?' 'Fourteen below,' we replied. Her face fell. 'We had minus twelve,' she said, and you could see that her day was ruined."  - by Richard Ketchum. I received this card from a friend in the early 90s and thought it was so clever, I framed it and it has hung in my kitchen ever since, everywhere we've moved.



There's just been too much going on to focus on my larger knitting projects right now so I've been amusing myself -- when I'm not too sleepy in the evenings -- by knitting some of the dishcloths in the 2010 Dishcloth Calendar I blogged about last week. Here are photos of two I've completed - the Purly Waffle and the Sweet Heart cloth. I learned something new on the Sweet Heart, which was making bobbles, a kind of 3D knitted bubble that pokes out.



Now back to the circus!

Color Our World

We are painting! Yay, our white walls are going to have some color -- double yay!!!

So we're starting with the living/dining room. We'll also do the kitchen/family room, down the hall and one bathroom. All the bedrooms and office were painted in the past.

The first color we've chosen for the living/dining/entry/hallway is called Spice Cake. Sounds delicious!

And I doubt if I'll be be blogging much until we're done ...