Life's Tidbits

I’ve been on a bit of a buying binge.  For the most part they been pretty “small” thing, but they make SUCH a difference around the house.  The new tidbits are great additions to the condo decor and only make me want to buy more details for the house.  The husband has been joking that he might have to take the credit card away if I keep this up LOL.  All joking aside he has completely agreed with all my most recent purchases.

The library table (as the husband calls it) from his bachelor days is definitely on its last leg.  This side table has held up well and successfully made it through three or four moves.  The table has a number of sharpie pen “paint touch ups” and kind of rocks if you even slightly touch it.

Check out the full post here.

Like any year 2012 had its ups as well as its downs, but all in all when the tidbits are added up it was a great year.  As the year draws to a close I started thinking of how fast this year has gone by.  I’m not sure if I am just getting older or if life has just been so busy, but in a blink of an eye we went from January to December.

In no particular order tidbits that stand out are as follows:

Trip to Mexico to celebrate our 30th birthdays.  Being only 11 days apart and having Valentine’s Day smack in the middle makes for a very busy February.  Sipping piña coladas on the beach, reading and relaxing was the perfect way to begin our thirties.

Buying a condo was a HUGE highlight. I cannot believe we are home owners!

My first rodeo!  And I think the highlight of the rodeo was the mutton busting.

Passing the PMP exam.  This test had been on the to-do list for years.  It was nice to not only check it off the list, but to have passed the first time taking the exam … Plus my dad will finally stop bugging me about when I am going to take the test!! :)

Thanksgiving- As my favorite holiday it is no surprise that Thanksgiving is one of the highlights from this year.  Like every year the week/end was jam packed with food, wine, family, friends and laughter.

First Christmas Evealone with my husband in our new place.  I’ve always spent Xmas Eve with my friends/family or with the in-laws.  This year we flew out to Kansas City on Christmas Day.  We went back and forth about sending the evening with friends, but in the end decided to keep it low key.  I loved staying home and celebrating just the three of us (the husband, me and of course Sophi).

2012 was a very fun year!  But now there is much to look forward to in 2013 and it isn’t even here yet!

So far there are a few fun things on the docket for 2013 …

• My sister is coming to visit for a few days. I am even taking a day off so we can have a sister day!  It isn’t often we get time just the two of us anymore so I’m super excited for her visit.
• Throwing a baby shower for my girlfriend and then arrival of her son!
• A trip to Seattle to see my friend (HOPEFULLY)

And then of course there is … Surprises!  No matter how much of a planner I am life always throws in big and little surprises.

What were your favorite parts of 2012?  Any exciting plans for 2013?

Happy New Year!!

After painting the guest bath, master bedroom and the living/dining room the only thing left to paint was the master bathroom.  We had agreed to leave the builder grade paint in the guest room until we decide exactly what we plan to do with that room.  The guest room is pretty much a landing zone or storage room at the minutes, which clearly isn’t ideal.  Anyways, similar to the living/dining room choosing a color for the master bath wasn’t easy.  We ending up going with a color that’s a shade darker than our living/dining room after putting couple different samples on the wall.

Check out the full post here.

Our condo has a little balcony off the master bedroom. After moving in we put some old chairs on the balcony and sat out there every once in a great while. Lacking something comfortable to sit on didn’t make the space too inviting. When my parents and sister came to visit and see the condo for the first time my mom and I made a list of the stuff we still needed to purchase. The balcony furniture made it to the top of the list pretty quickly.

That afternoon the husband and my dad did “guy things”. Like going to Home Depot, installing a dimmer switch in the living room and I believe there was some sitting on the couch with beers in playing on the laptop/ipad (but I could be wrong…wink wink). Meanwhile my sister, mom and I headed out to do some shopping. We had no luck after going to World Market and Home Goods. Despite feeling a little defeated we headed over to Pier 1 Imports to see if they had anything. We walked in and almost immediately we fell in love with plicker (plastic wicker) red chairs. They were comfortable and complimented the accent red tamale wall in the master bedroom. My mom roamed around the store and spotted nested tables that she thought would work well on the balcony.

View Full Post

I find it odd that I’m perfectly capable of caring for a dog, but give me a plant and the thing is dead in less than a week.  I mean it’s a serious black thumb problem I have.  We offered to water our neighbor’s plants while they were on vacation and I made the husband do it since I was afraid I would instantly kill them all.  Despite my inability to keep plants alive I’ve always wanted to have a little herb garden.  The thing is when I got into cooking recipes would call for fresh herbs.  So I would buy a package of mint, for example, and then only use two tablespoons.  The rest would sit in the refrigerator and go bad in no time.  Those little packages cost like $2 and you can buy a pre-planted herb for $2.99.  The way I see it is my black thumb is not only killing the plants, but my wallet too … hahahaha!

Check out the full blog here.

And no we aren’t talking about the book in this post.  Although I have heard fantastic things about the 5o Shades of Grey trilogy; I just haven’t had time to read the books yet. They are at the top of my list after I finish the Book Thief!

Instead we are back to the painting theme of the last few weeks and referring to the 50+ different paints I looked at in various shades of gray for the living room and hallway.  I honestly had no idea that gray could have hints of blue, purple and brown. It’s crazy how one color can have three “looks”.  A color online is different from the color swatch and then the color swatch can look different depending upon lighting and decorations within a room.  It’s really crazy how a color that’s considered neutral can take on a life of its own.  We had to stop looking at color swatches in our old place, because they looked so different in our new place.

Read the rest of the blog here.

Don’t forget to leave your tidbit by commenting and/or add Life’s Tidbits to your RSS Reader :)

While doing “married things” {phrase coined by the husband} we ended up at The Container Store.  Clearly this is one of those places like Target or Bed Bath and Beyond, where I find things I never knew I needed but while we are there I think I really do NEED them.  I mean there is no reason we should have spent 1+ hours at The Container Store when it was sunny and 80* outside.  But anyways, while walking up and down each aisle we ended up with quite the large cart of stuff we “needed”.

Read the whole blog here.

Don’t forget to leave your tidbit by commenting and/or add Life’s Tidbits to your RSS Reader :)

Despite having his and her closets in the master bedroom we didn’t have a place to hang our clothes for the first 3 weeks we lived in our new place.

The husband took out the existing rod and shelf from both closets the weekend before we moved in while we were painting the bedroom.  It took some brute force and a little finessing,  but in the end the closet lost it’s “builder” look.

Read the rest of this post by clicking here.

When we toured the condo, we eventually ended up buying, I didn’t notice the cabinets didn’t have hardware on them.  In fact I am not even sure I would have ever noticed they were missing (until we moved in) unless the husband had pointed it out.  At first we assumed the hardware just hadn’t been installed yet; we were wrong.  Apparently the builder purposely didn’t add knobs to the cabinets. In his experience buyers “don’t usually like” the hardware he chooses and therefore all the units in the building come sans knobs in the kitchen.

This missing knobs tidbit also showed up on the report from the home inspector.  The seller agreed to have the hardware installed for us if we purchased and provided the knobs prior to closing.  Knobs were at the very bottom of our to do list in the weeks prior to closing. We had to start packing, work, attend a wedding, travel to NY for a family event and oh so much more. As you can imagine the whole not having hardware in the kitchen didn’t really take precedent.

Read the full post on our new by clicking here.

Please update your Life’s Tidbits RSS Reader to our new site:)

I have already told you about painting a red accent wall in our bedroom.  There were a few pieces of trim to fix, but all in all the accent wall in the bedroom is complete.  Because we had painted some sample paints on two of the three other walls in the room we had to paint the three other walls so they would all be the same color.  Why we didn’t put all samples on one wall to start is beyond me. It would have saved us some serious time to have left those walls as is.  There was builders grade paint already on the walls so we considered doing touch ups to the walls instead of picking a brand new color.  When we went to the Duron store to buy the paint and they told us that color/style only comes in a 5 gallon bucket. That was WAY too much paint and the cost wasn’t so pretty.  Back to the drawing board we went. 

While searching for a shade of gray for the living room I had picked up a Sherwin Williams color wheel.  We decided it was as good a place as any to start the search for a white/cream color for the bedroom.  Quickly we realized Origami White (7636) was very similar to the color already on the wall.  It was slightly lighter and had more gray/brown tones and less yellow in it.  We taped the swatch up on the wall for a few days to make sure we liked it.

As the designated paint runner I was off to Sherwin Williams to pick up the paint once we decided to go with Origami White.  I was concerned one gallon wouldn’t be enough paint for the three wall and inside of the closet and the husband was convinced 1 gallon was plenty.  He could tell it was making me nervous so we agreed on buying a gallon and a quart.  This way we had a quart of paint as back up for the closets OR if we mark up the walls while moving in.

I purchased the paint in satin, which is pretty much the same finish as eggshell.  After my last mix up with paint finish I looked up satin vs. eggshell before allowing the SW employee to place my order.  It took me about two hours to paint the edges and three walls in the bedroom. I also managed to put about 3-4 spots on the ceiling when using the roller extension.  Oopsies! 

But that wasn’t the only oops that happened while painting the bedroom.  Sophi backed onto the lid of a paint can while trying to rescue her ball from the plastic wrap.  Before I could grab her she promptly ran onto the small patch of hardwood floor that wasn’t covered in plastic.  So we had three little white paw prints on the floor to deal with.

Luckily after allowing the paint to dry on the floor we were able to scratch it off with finger nails.  Looked like nothing had ever happened.  As I pulled off all the tape and threw the plastic on the floor away I started to realize our bedroom was 95% completed!  I grabbed the can of ceiling paint and touched up the couple of spots I had inadvertently painted.  Then I screwed the light switch and outlet plates back on and what do you know it looked like a real room again!!

Here’s the before, during and after:

Although I would like to call the bedroom a wrap we still have a few things left to do. 

1.  Remove existing closet shelf/poll, putty/paint sed closet and then install the new closet organizers

2.  Decided upon, purchase and install blinds.

At this point we are 4 days away from move in. I am not convinced we are going to be able to get all that completed before we move in.  Our currently place is only 1/2 packed and the movers arrive Saturday morning at 8am.  We better get a packin’ don’t you think?!?!?!  We are hoping to at least complete demolition on the closets so the dust doesn’t get all over our furniture.  Cross your fingers for us!!

Don’t forget to leave your tidbit by commenting and/or add Life’s Tidbits to your RSS Reader :)