The Man in the Mirror

Like most of you I have an addiction to this little website called Pinterest.com. I love her, she loves me, we have a relationship. It's getting pretty serious. Well on one of our late night dates I found starburst mirrors.

After clicking on an embarrassing amount of links they were running in the $200-300 range. If I'm paying $300 for a mirror it better roll over kiss me in the morning, get up and make me some sugar glazed bacon! After doing way too much shopping I said the words, the words that so often get me knee deep in supplies and frustration, "I can do that." How hard could it be right? How long could it possibly take? Mmm hmm.

Actually compared to some of the other projects that were tackled last year *cough* the bathroom *cough* the tea room, it wasn't too bad.

Plan A: Bamboo as the long attachments. Alas Klamath Falls, you let me down. Small town = no supplies.
Plan B: Wooden skewers used at BBQs for shish kabobs. Mmm shish kabobs. Mmm summer. Anyway! Turns out they are seasonal.
Plan C: Floral sticks used in bouquets. Bingo!

Just grabbed a mirror, oodles of hot glue, a cross-stitching ream, picture hangers and champagne colored metallic spray paint and primer in one. You know how I roll with the paint and primer combos. Heaven knows I hate myself some primer like I hate losing Words with friends by one flipping point!

Got all my supply goodness and I was ready to go! So I found the middle of the back of the 7" mirror...a few times...and made a mark so I knew where to make the rest of my measurements. I have a queen size bed and knew I wanted my sunburst mirror to take up most of the area above my bed. I cut my floral branches all 15" and then glued the branches 2" in from the edge of the mirror. Here is where the tricky part came in. Do you know how many 2mm tiny sticks it takes to go around a 7" diameter mirror?! A ridiculous amount that's how many! Oh and they turn your hands red. Oh and everything you touch red. Oh and it lasts for days. It looked like I had just killed a man. Note to self; next time I kill someone don't blame the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol blame it on the floral sticks. On it!

After all that was done I thought it would be a good idea to attach the picture hook so it would adhere to the back of the mirror itself and not the layer of spray paint over the back of the mirror. Then I just did some quick gluage of the sewing ream to the front of the mirror for a more complete look. Please disregard all of my straight "middle of the mirror" lines. That's how awesome I am.

I sprayed the back first as more of a test than anything to make sure it would cover alright. It did after a little coaxing.

After three coats of paint to that backside and four coats on the front side here is what I was left with.

Not too shabby right? For 90% less than the retail price on the mirror I really wanted, I would say that this will work awesome. Oh what?! The bedroom walls are a different color? Of course they are! Can I keep any room the same color for more than a year? Haha! Is the pope Jewish?! Wait...that's not correct is it? Oh well you get it. More on the redecorated master bedroom coming soon. You know you're excited.

When I Grow Up

2011 had a lot of good and a lot of bad. I am more than happy to have a fresh start at an old life. This year will bring a lot of changes. Some great trials are coming my way but great rewards will be reaped.

2011 New Years Resolution For Self:
Lose 10 pounds -- DOUBLE CHECK! (lost 20 Lbs)

2011 House Goals:

Apply more of a personal touch in my home -- CHECK!

Have a garden and not kill it -- CHECK!

Rebuild deck off of the backdoor -- UNCHECK!



Remodel Bathroom -- CHECK!



Overall I think I did very well on my goals. I've taken a few days to think of 2012 goals and resolutions(think about it the two are very different) and I think I have picked four very difficult but attainable ideas.

2012 Resolution For Self:
Be the happy that I want to be.

There are so many expectations of females my age. It seems we only fall in two categories; party kid or mother. I am neither and that has been something I have struggled with for years. This year I will do what makes me better, what makes me closer to the Lord, and what makes me genuinely happy and not the happy that people expect me to be.

2012 House Goals:

Update master bedroom
I'm thinking more light hearted and less dramatic.


Repair and dress up the hot tub
I love how inviting it feels.


Rebuild deck off of backdoor- Here's hoping :-)
Love the different directions of the wood. I hope I can be that fancy.

Cheers to fresh starts. Cheers to changes. Cheers to the truth.

POUTer Room - The Final Chapter

After WAY too long the guest bathroom is finally finished being rebuilt. I believe that this is where we left off.



The walls and tub were in but missing texture, paint and general functionality. Yeah that sounds about right.

Next came the shower surround tile. This was the number one thing I was worried about, well that and just being able to shower...at my own house...and not outside. You should never have to see your breath as you are showering. That's just a bad sign all around.



Then of course, my favorite part, paint!




Finally everything started really coming together.






Oh yeah and then another paint change...


This is how fine it is looking now.



Oh yeah.



I love how it has turned out. There are still cosmetic things to do like some shelving above the potty, and then of course a bedazzling here and there. I'm on it guys don't worry. I'll post more as those projects occur.

All I have to say from this...



...to this, was a lot of work and I will probably never do it again.




So down the road, remind me that even the smallest bathroom is a huge pain in the well you know, okay guys? No seriously. NEVER AGAIN.

Oh yeah, I did add this little ditty on the door frame itself behind the door. I figured those other people (or that darn meerkat in the wall)left those spindles and ball between my bathroom walls for me to find. Why couldn't I leave a more obvious trail?



Dang sentimentality.

POUTer Room - Chapter 2

A week into the project and I am ready to start taking lives. Seven days without your OWN shower does that to a person. Luckily we have great friends that let us drag our disgusting exhausted selves to their house to shower. I'll tell you what, there's nothing like showing up at your boss's house late at night for a hit and run cleaning. Good Times.

I would say that I had the most fun during demolition. I do not remember sweating that much like, ever. I'm sure it was pretty sexy.



Removed the vanity and found this AMAZING linoleum.







Beside the cardio, here is the other reason I loved demo



We found these in the walls. I call them secret treasures, Joe says they are garbage. It just goes along with my sentimental nature. I like to think of all the reasons they would be in the walls. It's very likely that maybe a mouse or a sewing meerkat carried them in there but I like to think that a family just like ours put them in there for future renovators to find. Just let me have my moment of rose colored glasses, okay?

After removing all the debris we removed the tub. I think I still have fiberglass in my lungs. Or I've got the black lung. One of the two. Underneath the tub actually looked pretty darn good which always makes for happy renovators! All except for the 3' by 3' whole where the drain was.



I don't ask questions about why our house is the way that it is anymore. Suck it up, fix other's mistakes, and keep going. The hubs patched that bad boy right up and we were on our way to a new bathtub and plumbing.



Bathtub CHECK!



Plumbing CHECK!

It's at this point that I always start to get a flutter in my tummy.



It's sheetrock people! SHEETROCK!

...You know what comes after sheetrock? Texture. You know what comes after texture? PAINT! Oh yes. My love for paint and colors will never cease to thrive like a river out of a mountain. That's pretty freakin' deep. Just so you know...

As we speak Joe is tiling that beast known as the bathtub surround. I haven't heard any swearing or throwing things so I'm going to say that it's going well. I could be wrong. He might have slipped in thinset hit his head and is unconscious. Hopefully he got the tile all up before that happened though. I can deal with head trauma. No Shower is just too much for this kid to handle.

POUTer Room - Chapter 1

Flashback to October 2009. Joe and I are looking at homes to start our family in. We have looked at probably 20 houses including the one we currently reside in and are getting incredibly frustrated considering we are up against a deadline to be out of our apartment. I would like to say it's because we got kicked out or something amazingly rebellious but we were just overanxious and young and put in our 30 days notice like, uh 60 days too early. After returning to our home for a second viewing this was the picture that still haunts our renovating dreams.

Yeah...

Then my husband said those words that give hope to every young girl in love with an idea of home remodeling, "I can fix that babe." Little did I know it would be almost two years and countless ideas later that we would be ready to open Pandora's box of bathroom remodeling.

You think that I'm joking about how awful this bathroom is. Here are a few more pictures just to help clear things up for ya'll.

This would be the nasty dirty vent that tries to dehumidify the room.

No that's not a mouse hole, well it might be, it's just someone being lazy and not finishing a job. Oooh and that trim.

My camera does not capture the RADIANT 1970s glitter that is in cooperated in that bathtub surround. You can still see those classy diamond shaped outlines though. Winning!

My personal favorite, uneven, dated light switches. Gah.

I have decided that I am going to do the opposite of what I usually do on projects. I am going to expect the absolute worst to happen. Hence this set of blog post titles. If I plan for the most awful of awful to happen the result has to be better than I think right? Please, please, please tell me that's how it works.

We start tomorrow people. If never another post gets written it's because Joe murdered me and buried my body underneath the dry rot that is our guest bathroom.

Made For You

I would generally say that Joe and I are an "unlucky" couple. Since I don't believe in luck really I believe in preparation and opportunity I guess I would go as far as to say that we are an unprepared couple. We fell for each other in a ridiculous almost embarrassing amount of time and planned a wedding even faster. There was no baby on board the opposite actually we were just ready. I've never really told our wedding story probably because I tried to block it out. It was a crazy ride with filled without any alcohol and too many anxiety pills. Sorry about writing that (mom) but it's true and I am nothing if not overly honest and a bacon lover.

I am a planner to a fault. Ask my poor husband, my parents, my boss, those weird neighbors that watch us while we are in our hot tub ANYBODY. Yet I wasn't that girl that planned her wedding. Mainly because I'm not the marrying type but that's another blog post. So when it came down to it I just sort of winged everything which of course increased the anxiety. You see the vicious cycle here?

Well let's start with the fun stuff DRESSES. I love to dress up so my favorite part of the wedding was trying on dresses here were a few of the contenders.









After about 30 dresses. I chose this one



I would say that the venue is the next most important thing. Funny thing about that. I had that picked out for a long time. It was a large six bedroom house in the Cascade mountains that my family stays at in the summers. Because it was large enough the guests from out of town would be able to stay there as well so two birds with one stone right? Wrong! I had sent the down payment I had spoke to the owner we were good to go as far as I knew. TWO days before the wedding my sister in law called to get the directions and the owner said that she was waiting for a confirmation E-Mail from me. To this day I look for that E-Mail and have yet to find one but whatever. Needless to say she rented the house out to another family. AWESOME. At this point I kind of just decided to not get married. I was so over everyone's drama and all the choices that weren't really mine to make.

I worked up until the day of my wedding I left late Friday to make the journey north to meet a man I hadn't seen in weeks and tie myself to him forever. I remember stopping at a Subway along the way and just watching people, something I do a lot, and just thinking about how I was going to change my life forever. I sat and stared at that engagement ring and people for probably an hour and a half. Which inevitably led to me being late for the rehearsal dinner. Thankfully my BFF Kaelyn was already there telling me to breath and getting me a brown paper sack to breath into. Thank God for her.





I have to show a picture of my bachlorette party cake because it was amazing.

I'm so sorry Grandma and Grandpa please cover your eyes.




The next morning I put on my dress...and it didn't fit. You see I have a tendency to not eat when I get stressed out so in the two weeks between my last fitting and my wedding day I had dropped 14 pounds. Here are the picture to prove it.





To this day the look on my mother's face still cracks me up!

We ended up getting married in the park by the river which was beautiful but it was pooring down rain as it often does in Salem. I had to have four helpers carry my dress so it and I didn't get soaked. SO MUCH FUN!



The ceremony went smoothly and I actually got him to say "I will" which was my greatest fear. I had so many dreams about him saying no which would have uh...sucked.

So here we are two years later to the day and he still says "I will." I wonder often why he picked me. He is such a good man. He would do anything for anyone at anytime. After three years of being together he can still make my knees weak with that smile. I guess unlucky works for us.