New Camera!

Move over three-second-battery-I-won't-photograph-green-anymore Cannon Powershot- my new digital SLR Nikon is taking over! (Thanks to a very thoughtful and generous husband, in celebration of my birth:)

Now I just have to figure out how to use it.

PS. We're 100% finished with the board and batten- it looks amazing! I've been waiting for optimal morning lighting to capture photos with my new buddy, so hopefully there will be some much improved photos tomorrow.

Board and Batten: Making Progress

I'm finally making some progress on the board and batten for our entryway. All the boards, trim, and doors have been painted (some need a final coat), and we're off to Home Depot to rent a compound miter saw and a finishing nail gun for the afternoon.

Call me crazy, but my birthday's coming up, and if my husband decided to buy a me miter saw I would be completely thrilled. There's been so many projects I've found that I'd love to do, but my excitement dries up when I see "miter saw" listed among the tools needed. Drat. We don't have one. So I'm tickled that one will be gracing our home with it's presence this afternoon in order to complete our board and batten.

Here's the before picture. It's so horrible that I'm almost embarrassed to post it. Not that the entryway was that bad, it's more that my camera is pretty much on it's last legs and has decided that it's not going to photograph green anymore. So half of my pictures turn out looking rather brownish.

Hopefully there will be a "finished" after picture within a few days!

Measure Twice, Cut Once

I have a confession to make. I sometimes lay awake at night thinking about board and batten in our entry way. It gets worse. This morning, it was the first thing I thought about when I woke up. (Is this a sickness, people?) I don't know why: my Strengths Finder says that I'm an Activator, and that once my mind is set on something I like to forage ahead with it, getting irritated with others who stand in my path. Yikes.

This has been a project on my mind for months, I just hadn't done anything about it. So today I did. I mocked it up with painters tape, read online tutorials, and took countless measurements. Then I measured again. And just for good measure (pun!), measured again.

Off to Home Depot I went, feeling a little fearful: I've never shopped in the lumber department, let alone gotten boards cut to my specs. 90 minutes later (yes, this took a while) I left feeling proud of myself that I'd conquered my fear, gone to Home Depot without my husband, and manged to get everything I needed cut to length. By myself.

At home, I excitedly pulled out the board and batten pieces to show my him how it will look. Except some of boards are too short. All of the vertical ones, in fact. Every single one.

Moral of the story: Measure not twice, not three times, but four times, apparently, before cutting. Or at least if you're me.

Decorating with Fur

We decorate with fur all over the house, especially on our chocolate brown couch in the basement. Here's my main sidekick when it comes to this type of accessorizing:

There is literally fur everywhere- Leo's shedding like crazy (the breeder calls it "blowing his coat" which sounds much more accurate than merely shedding.) It's coming out in clumps. My husband got like 19 brushfulls of hair off of him last night. I'm not exaggerating, it may be more. The weirdest thing is, you can hardly tell- he's got that much hair! Apparently Leo's spring shedding doesn't mesh well with Minnesota spring. There may be blooms in Arkansas, but we're still getting snow. Keep that fur on you, buddy! (And off my couch...)

Bathroom Ideas

It's been a few weeks, and no progress yet on the bathroom. We're still waiting for a contractor to come out to look over some things. In the mean time, here's what we're wanting to do with the new space:

I LOVE furniture style vanities, but have had an incredibly hard time finding one the right size (we have some unusual size restrictions). So the plan is to buy the dresser pictured above, cut a hole for the sink in the top, and install a sink. Trust me, I'm not weird in doing this. If Sarah Richardson can, so can I. Actually, I got the idea from her- genius. That's all for now!