Weekend Project Update!

The weekend was a complete and utter disaster... Neither of my two to-dos are finished... Unfortunately I got sucked in to the wonderful world of QVC and HSN and spent most of the weekend vegging out watching people talk randomly about objects... Seriously, those channels are hilarious!

Anyway... we did get to Ikea and grabbed the curtains, as well as another piece for a super secret project coming up in July. The store was ridiculously full, and when we got there the queue went around the whole building to the front door. On a Sunday!! Does no one go to church anymore?

So while I didn't finish the spare room, I did manage to clear the bed, wash all the linens and set that up. But the other side of the room looks less pulled together...

This is our "still to sort" pile. Do I at least get points for being honest? haha

While I didn't get anything on the to-do list completed and spent countless hours laughing at home shopping channels, I DID manage a living room switcheroo that I am kinda proud of.

We went from this...


To this...

The clutter on the sofa table has since been cleared.

Andddd I finally styled the coffee table! W00T!!

See what I did to cover the lattice? Those are the beautimous placemats I picked up at Pier 1 and they work perfectly to distract away from the imperfect paint job. Love!


THIS is why I spend a third of my day straightening rugs! (And pillows on newly made guest room beds!)

Weekend Project: Finish Guest Room & Paint Cabinet

This weekend I am headed to my favorite Swedish home store to take advantage of the crazy deals on offer. With Monday being a public holiday, we're looking at a lovely (albeit rainy) long weekend. But I am totally ok with that!

Rainy days will force me to focus my attention on things I can complete indoors. Can you say guest room? Yes. Come hell or high water this is the weekend I am going to finally finish that room.

I also plan to rehab an old cabinet that I've dragged across three continents with me. I love love love my Oregon pine antique book case, even with it's missing pane of glass and lack of hardware. The fake fiberboard back and scratched surfaces. It has character and I love it... but plan on totally cleaning her up over the next few weeks, starting with a good sanding and few layers of paint this weekend. Right now she is standing in the entry, but I plan on relocating her to the guest room. Eventually I hope to do something about the backing, replace the missing pane of glass and get some cute hardware deserving of her. We've come a long way together her and I and I am confident that with a little makeover we will spend many more happy years together with (hopefully) a lot less globetrotting.

Apart from the above, I am hoping to find time to clear out and organize my closet. Reorganize the pantry and clean the fridge if I find time.

Top priority are the curtains though...

Weekend Project Update!

So it's Monday and I am a day late on the update. As I said, it's been crazy around here with me playing catch up on the day I missed last week.

I made some incredible progress on the spare room. (Nope, still not "guest room" worthy).
So again, you remember the before:


Here is the "after":

Look! Much more carpet to be seen in this one. And I believe you can also see the blue of the sheet.

Here is the detritus after the battle:


SEE! I got rid of a bunch of stuff. Just not enough to completely free the bed, but getting there. In fairness three of the 4 boxes on the bed need P to take a look. Also, there is a bunch of stuff that will go out to the shed, just as soon as we get one... like the tent for example.

And honestly, I did get a little distracted...
This cute little rooster plate was sweet, but absolutely didn't go with our decor at all. It was a gift from my mom, and I was sure I could find a use for it, but it has spent the better part of 2 years in a box in the garage, until this weekend!

Armed with my new best friend a can of white Rust-Oleum spray paint and some scrapbooking rub-ons, I created....


a cute little plate to corral the hubs' keys, change and sunglasses when he walks in the door. (He has the annoying habit of emptying out his pockets onto the nearest surface as he enters the door). Ultimately, I feel that I could have used a bigger rub-on, I just didn't want to have something too ornate competing with the detail of the plate. One day I may scratch that off and replace with a nice vinyl "N" decal... but for now I am happy with it.

On Saturday we had gloriously cool weather and thunderstorms (and it's been pretty cool ever since). It was the perfect day to whip up some soup. Chicken and brocolli. Yum! Oh, I should come out with it and let you know that our new chicken stock (never tried it before) is so intensely salty that it completely overpowered the flavors and was much like eating a bowl of sea water... but it looked good, didn't it? I ate it anyway... nothing that some buttery bread and a splash of milk couldn't fix!


I also tackled this project (sneak peek below), but I want to do a proper post on this, so I will save it for a day when I have more time.
SO there you have it... our no-cost weekend project update. (Another confession... I DID end up spending money... although it was VERY well spent. Hint: There are some "giveaways" in some of the pictures above. More details soon, promise.)

HOLY COW!!

It's 1:30 am on Friday morning. We should be in bed dreaming about our awful road trip today, but we're up and our adrenaline is pumping. Why you ask?

At around 10pm we decided to call it an early night to rest up for tomorrow. Before we went off to bed I wanted to make sure that I had all my papers together so that there would be nothing they could ask for tomorrow, that I wouldn't have on me (You'd be surprised at the things they want to see). I gathered all my immigration files, did a quick check for our passports... and discovered that they weren't where they should be.

PANIC STATIONS!!!

We just spent the last 3 hours going through the boxes in the spare room taking each item out and digging right to the bottom in search of our passports... then we realized that our social security cards and birth certificates were tucked into our passports as well. I know... a tidy little identity theft bundle pack just waiting for someone to pick up.

My dear husband, always looking on the bright side (hah!) proclaimed this a good thing... if someone was using his social to pay taxes, we might get a refund this year! haha

I, on the other hand, could think of nothing but the 1 year wait to get a new South African passport ordered from the consulate in NYC. Except, I hear that the wait on passport applications from within South Africa are taking up to a year at the moment, so who knows how long this could take if I apply abroad!!!

We traced our steps and wracked our brains and finally remembered taking them to HR Block when we filed our taxes... then I remembered that I had taken all my business receipts on that trip... then I thought to check my tax archived documents and discovered that my 2008 business receipts weren't in there... and so thankfully we then had a bigger item to look for... a large clear plastic folder instead of two small books!

We headed back to the black hole to recommence digging when my incredibly smart husband thought to pick UP one of the boxes we had gone through three times and voila! The clear plastic folder was hiding underneath!!

SO we have all our important documents AND my 2008 business receipts. And, on the plus side, I managed to remove a further two boxes and one HUGE bag of unnecessary papers from "the hole". Progress people!!

If I wasn't fired up enough to get that room sorted out this weekend, this little incident was just the cherry on the sundae. We also realized how much old crap we're holding on to. I think the garbage men are going to hate us come Tuesday morning, because we'll be doing some serious purging this weekend.

I'll show you the pile of trash on Sunday! (It's pretty impressive already, actually).

Weekend Project: Spare Room, and Only Spare Room

I know it's only Thursday today, but we have to take most of tomorrow off as we need to take a trip out to San Antonio to do some icky visa stuff. I can tell you that we need this trip like a hole in the head, however it absolutely has to be done. The trip out there and back, coupled with the wait time once there is about 7 hours and will leave us out of the office for MOST of the day.

I am kind of happy about this, and kind of annoyed. However, MOST of the day means that we are likely to have a couple of hours free on Friday which technically makes this a long weekend for us.

Now I am sure that with this being a long weekend, you're thinking of all the amazing projects we could tackle. Alas, we're on a saving kick now. This week we sat down with our finances, and for the first time in months tallied our total debts. We were shocked to discover that we currently owe double what we thought. We immediately set about drawing up plans for total debt obliteration and I think this 4 month plan will work well for us if we stick to a tight budget and put some of the house-y stuff on hold for a while.

Ultimately, there are plenty of odds and ends that we can do around here without spending a penny and I am looking forward to sharing some no cost before and afters with you in the coming weeks. I am debating whether to set a small weekend project stipend of $10 or so, for incidentals... but I am going to try like heck to do it all at no cost, at least in the beginning.

This brings us to this weeks project. Remember the spare room?
Oh hell, here's that picture again to remind you...


While I have made progress this week as promised. But it still pretty much looks just like the picture with tidier, more organized edges. Hah!

My mission for the weekend is to get that room sorted so that I can at last refer to it as the "guest room" in place of the "spare room".

We're going to be out of the office for most of the day tomorrow, but as soon as we get back, I am going on the attack!

Will be back on Sunday with a weekend project update. Stay tuned!