ChoreSwap

I had a brilliant idea this morning. As I was picking up around the house and thinking about the long home to-do list running through my brain, I had a thought. I need to organize all of our closets. We moved in, threw stuff in them, closed the doors and haven't looked inside since. I need to take an afternoon and just ORGANIZE, make storage bins, etc. That sounds dreadful.

Then I remembered the time my mom came to visit and we did that in the condo. She spent all afternoon with me and it made it more fun, gave me more perspective ("Name 2 times you might ever use that. Seriously - throw it out.")and gave me an extra set of hands.

My mom is always willing to come help, but it's hard to get our schedules straight, and there aren't too many ways I can help her back (since her house is seriously immaculate. All the time.).

Here's the brilliant idea. My friend Ashley and her husband are also new homeowners. What if we each made a list of chores/tasks/whatever we wanted to accomplish, and helped each other do one task in each house each month?

Let me say that I love doing home projects with Zac (for the most part), but there are just some things that would not be fun together. Like organizing closets. And spring/fall cleaning. And making pillows. Things that would be fun with Ashley!

I won't feel bad asking her to spend her entire day helping me do something because I'll do the same for her. And - my mom likes her, so we can sucker her into helping too! :-)

Our first task is to each make a list of 12 tasks we want to tackle.  Here's what I've got so far:

1. Organize all the upstairs closets
2. Spring cleaning (in the spring)
3. Fall cleaning (in the fall)
4. Make this planter (for both of us, of course!)
5. Make pillows for the bay window bench in the living room
6. Go through my entire wardrobe and purge, organize, and re-style

What other things would be fun to do together?? And of course, we'll blog the process!

Monogrammed Towel Wrap

I found this cute towel wrap for a steal at Sam's Club a few weeks ago, and snapped it up as a graduation gift for my cousin, who graduates from high school in a few weeks.

I wish I could take credit for the towel wrap, but it came this cute. Ruffle and bow and all! All I did was add the monogram:

I LOVE to applique, and I decided to try something new this time. Instead of using a blanket stitch (like my Gramma taught me!) I decided to try a zig zag. I've had my eye on it ever since seeing some of Heather's cute applique over at Olive and Ollie.  

I set my stitch length to 0.5 and left the stitch width up at 3.5, which is my machine's natural zigzag setting.  Lessons learned:

1. It is a totally different look than the blanket stitch.  I love the way it adds a lot of depth to the letter.
2. It seems like it will be a lot more secure than a blanket stitch in holding the letter onto something that is bound to be washed a lot.
3. Doing corners is ridiculously hard. Or probably really easy - I'm just not sure how?
4. You should never try a new sewing technique for the first time on terrycloth.  What was I thinking??

All in all, not too shabby! This would be a super easy towel wrap to make, especially if you found a huge towel at Homegoods or a similar store.  You could just chop off one end, and re-attach it as a ruffle, and some velcro and elastic to the top and tie on a cute ribbon.

Or you can buy it at Sam's already "cuted" up and just add the letter...

Too cute for words

Seriously??

Sophie is watching the Spelling Bee.  Well, actually, she's watching a bug that is nested up on the ceiling.  But it looks like she's practicing for next year!

New Friend Friday

Hi everyone!

It's New Friend Friday at The Girl Creative, so I thought I'd meet a few new friends!

Welcome - I hope you enjoy my blog!

How does your garden grow?

It's been 5 days since we planted the vegetable garden, and I can't believe how fast everything is growing! Still bummed I have to wait approximately 75 more days for tomatoes, but it's pretty cool how hearty everything looks.

You can see "before" pictures from Saturday here.  Here are the shots from today:

Tomatoes look yummy...

Peppers are looking awesome!

Zucchini has tripled in size over the past few days...

And, the lilies in the backyard finally bloomed today! They look great when you're walking into the backyard.

This one has a lot of flowers!

Aren't they gorgeous?? I don't like how they smell, though.

Oh - and since you were probably thinking, "I sure wish Tara would post more pictures of her cat," this is what I see every second that I'm outside:

She is pitiful.

We painted the box tonight, but by the time we finished it was too dark to get good pictures, so you'll have to come back tomorrow to see it. The color is really fun though!

AND - I think the insect culprits that keep eating me are noseeums. Tonight while we were painting, I was sitting down on the patio. And I have 9 - no joke, 9 - bug bites ON MY BUTT.  This is sort of funny, of course, because I have a line of bug bites on my butt.  But it's less funny as I try to scratch them without looking totally ridiculous.  And yes Dad, I sprayed bug spray (twice!). But not on my butt, apparently??

Zac wants a Jeep. SO bad.

Zac LOVES Jeep Wranglers. Like, thinks about them all the time, loves them.  He used to have one of those ridiculous high jacked up ones that are probably totally unsafe with no doors a Wrangler, and he definitely misses it.

I think they're cool, but also totally impractical and I'm not sure I ever want to put a future child of mine in the back seat of a topless Jeep. Zac's newest quest is to change my mind.

We were at Findley Market a few weeks ago and saw a cute young couple with a baby loading their purchases into a Wrangler.  Kid you not, Zac pointed to them and said, "Tara, look! Look how happy they are!" He then proceeded to tell me that if he had a Jeep, he would "wear a baby like that guy" (who had the baby in a front sling).

Cute, right? Ignore the part that the Jeep probably isn't what made them happy and that (someday) Zac will "wear a baby like that guy" whether he has a Jeep or not!

BUT - tonight. This catalog came in the mail:

It is a catalog full of crap for your Jeep.  Emphasis on crap.  The following conversation took place tonight at our house:

Zac: "Check out the catalog I got today."

Tara: "Interesting."

Zac: "Look how happy that family is."

Tara: "Mmm hmm."

Zac: "See all their friends already going tubing? They're meeting their friends to go tubing. We could go tubing if we had a Jeep."

Are you serious? I should clarify that I am definitely not ready for a happy family yet (though tubing with friends sounds fun) so I'm not sure where this comes from.

Oh - and since he won't read my blog, I feel like I can share these things with you. When I asked if he read my blog, he said, "Why would I want to read your blog? I LIVE your blog!" Fair enough.  His mom reads my blog though (Hi Lo!) so hopefully she won't spill the beans that I've been talking about him...

Building with Wood, Part II

I had to work late tonight, but Zac decided to go ahead and keep building.

Dilemma: the weather here is stormy tonight. So in all of his infinite wisdom, he just kept building - in the dining room.

So this is what we have to show so far:

For our first wood project, I'd say it's pretty good!

With the lid (no hinges yet)

It looks huge, but apparently we have GIGANTIC patio furniture cushions, because only two sets will fit! Not sure where the other two will live yet... bummer!

It took less than 2 minutes for the Soph to get in on the action. Which means the box has cat hair and the cat has sawdust. Dining room is still a mess - so who cares??

Still needs to get painted and the top and bottom securely attached, and then we'll be able to store half of our patio cushions!  More coming soon!

Building with Wood, Part I

I wanted to wait until we were finished building our masterpiece, but I'll end up with way too many pictures and you'll get bored.

So... here's the beginning. We're building a box for the patio where we can keep all of our cushions. I found Ana's blog Knock-Off Wood right before we bought our new house, and I've been dreaming about building things ever since.  Since it involves power tools, Zac was in.

We have grand plans for a table, craft desk and sewing desk, office furniture, etc., but we decided to start with something clearly labeled BEGINNER so that whatever we mess up won't be on something we hope to have forever (ie: dining room table and chairs).

We started with a big pile of wood (they're 8 feet long!) which was probably the most overwhelming part.

My good-looking and talented boyfriend soon cut it down to size, with a lot of help from me. And I'm serious about that! I did the measuring and moving of boards. Important work!

By the end of the day yesterday, we had made this!

I built this piece today while Zac was at work - by myself!  Is it perfect? Nope. Is it totally awesome? Yes! I built that BY MYSELF.  Pretty much, that means I rock.

Sanding this small piece already had me re-evaluating how much I want to refinish the kitchen cabinets!

Not a bad start, right??

Oh - and what happens when you don't have a garage and you're worried about rain during your building project? Your dining room looks like this:

YUCK!

We can't do anything tomorrow (both of us have to work late) but hopefully by Thursday we'll have everything put together.  It's going to get a pretty color paint, which is the only thing left to surprise you with, so you'll have to wait for that!

The cutest herb garden ever!

You may remember when I planted herbs last week and said I had a special surprise coming for you. Here it is! Remember this fence over my garden?

Well... it seemed like the perfect place to hang our herbs!

How cute is this??

Excuse our chives, which seem to have had better days! But seriously - is this not the coolest thing ever? We wanted to keep our herbs in smaller pots this year because otherwise they grow totally out of control.  We use them all the time in the summer, but we don't use very much (4 basil leaves in the pasta salad tonight was plenty).  

The hanging bars and pots are actually from IKEA and are supposed to be hung in a kitchen for utensils. We spent about $20 on the bar and pots, but I think you could do it even cheaper if you used pots you already had on hand or some other recycled idea. We have a 6th pot to add (mint) but since we just stole it from our neighbor's garden today (thanks, Rob!) we haven't hung it yet.

So there you go... a space saving and totally cute herb garden!

Oh - and check out the hanging baskets on the other side of the fence. I love the fence!

We had a GREAT Memorial Day and the 80 degree / sunny weather we've had for the past week finally broke tonight. It started raining about 20 minutes ago and it's the perfect end to a great weekend.

To get you excited for this week... here's a sneak preview of something we started working on today that you'll get to see more of this week!

Wonder what all of that wood is going to become??

Happy Memorial Day!

P.S. I'm linking to:

  

 

  

Happy Summer!

I spent today doing this...

And apparently, when I'm not home, Sophie likes to do stuff like this:

Zac came home and caught her in the act. This reminds me of the time she ate half a pack of bagels.