Candy Corn Love

Well HEY!

First of all, thank you for the lovely comments on our deck! You all are the sweetest!! We are just so pleased with how it turned out.

Sooo, last week I was trying to get some crafty mojo going up in here. (That would be up in hea if you’re hip. I’m not.) I had a GREAT Halloween craft in mind, and I got all the way to the end…and it was just, well.

Wrong. :)

Since I had all the supplies for it, I wanted to reuse them somehow. So I took it all apart and I have a plan in mind for all the parts. (And yes, I’ll show you the unfortunate craft soon.)

I had three Styrofoam cones to reuse, and after a few days, I finally came up with an idea. I got some yellow, orange and white yarn at Wally World and started wrapping, and wrapping:

(The black on the cone is part of the unfortunate craft. Please ignore. Not needed.)

I didn’t use any glue – just wrapped. And wrapped. ;)

You see where I’m going with the yellow, orange and white – especially if you read the title of this post. I’m not so good at the teasers.

I ended up with some big yarny candy (I almost wrote carny – that would be a whole different craft!) corns!:

They are too cauuuute! And WAY better than the original craft. Believe you me.

They were so easy it was just silly – just time consuming. But because I just wrapped (and wrapped) willy nilly, it was a great project to do while sitting in front of the tube watching the new fall shows.

I just tucked the end of each strand into the back of the cone. Easy peasy! I think they’d be a fun craft for kids – maybe with big chunky yarn?

So. cute.

Next up, working with the actual candy corn. I’ve seen candy corn wreaths for a while now and finally tried my own. Again, ridiculous easy.

I started with a dollar store wreath and a bag of candy corn:

I wanted to start small for my first time crafting with candy corn. ;)

I needed something black to wrap the wreath with, so I just used black crepe paper. Anything would do – fabric, ribbon, even tape:

For the first row, I laid the candies out to check spacing, and then glued them on with my glue gun:

But after that I just glued them on, without checking spacing first.

And I glued. Annnnnnd glued. :)

I did a three rows on the front and then realized I wasn’t crazy about so much black showing through, so I just kept gluing:

(I apologize for the awful photos – the dark is sneaking up on me lately and I’m losing my picture taking light much sooner than usual!!)

The front is a couple layers deep, the sides have one layer. The second layer of corns on top were just placed to cover the black that was peeking through. It went MUCH faster than I thought it would – you’d think it would take forever and it didn’t. You just put a line of hot glue on there, then plop them on in a row, over and over. And over. ;)

Lots of repeating on these crafts. Wrapping, gluing and plopping.

But this is another mindless one that is fun and goes really fast – the perfect craft in my eyes!!

I hung it with more crepe paper on the kitchen window, then added my Ball jars to the window sill filled with more candy corn:

Again with the LED lights plopped inside. You can find them just about anywhere, but I get mine super cheap at the Dollar Tree. I like to have a bunch on hand, especially this time of year!

I love decorating with candy corn – it is so FESTIVE! :) And there’s no danger of me eating them – I don’t care for the stuff. Crafting with it – love. Eating it – yuck. ;)

Now if I was crafting with Chunky Bars, we’d be in trouble.

The wreath was a whopping $4 to create. I have no idea if it will hold up, so the cheap aspect is a good thing. ;) I will spray it with a sealer of some kind and store it in a Ziploc bag and see how it turns out. We may have a fun science experiment come next fall. ;)

But for now, the kitchen window is ready for fall!:

I love that candy corn is a little bit fall, a lot Halloween – so it “works” for the next couple of months. So FUN!

Got any candy corn crafts? I just think they are the cutest! Do share! (And link to them in your comment if you’d like!) Have you started your fall decorating? I plan to work on it this weekend – can’t wait! :)

The Deck Reveal!

Well, it’s been a loooooong time coming! Our outdoor spaces are finally wrapping up and we are THRILLED. The mulching was finished today, and a few minor patio projects are being finished up this week. I’ll show you that as soon as I get it cleaned up, but for now, I’m excited to share our deck space!

Warning: Picture overload. Don’t say I didn’t tell ya. ;)

It started when we decided to do the patio – we knew it was time to restain the deck and get that under control as well. It was looking OH so sad – when we had the deck built six years ago, we made the BIG mistake of staining it immediately after it was built.

The deck builder came by the day after we finished to tell us we weren’t supposed to do that. Which was AWESOME. Pressure treated wood shouldn’t be stained right away. Which would have been AWESOME to know. ;)

Have I mentioned our deck is about 800 square feet? Yes. We spent two whole days staining just to find out we weren’t supposed to do what we just did.

Live and learn. So after all that time, and because we stained before we should have (you should wait at least a few months to stain – now we know), it was in bad shape.

To make a very long story short – we were going to clean, prep and stain the entire thing over again ourselves. That was all fine and dandy until after about five hours of cleaning the railings and wanting to poke my eyes out. And I wasn’t even half way done.

That’s when we realized we had to decide where to dedicate our time – and we decided to hire out. I could have cried I was so happy! Did I mention 800 square feet – and that does not include the railings?

Happy dance.

The stain the company used isn’t what I wanted – at all. I wanted our deep red deck again, but that’s not how it turned out. But after all the hassle and time, I was just thrilled to have the furniture back on the deck and out of our yard:

It’s not at all what I envisioned but now I SO DO NOT CARE. :) It’s done and I’m happy. It is growing on me – I’m good. I’m especially good that we didn’t have to spend another 15 hours doing it ourselves.

See my mongo cabbage in that pic above? I heart them:

 

Gah…I’m so obsessed with this stuff! I found them at a local nursery (for $7 each)and they are as big as my head! BIGGER. I love these things. And the mums were on clearance at Lowe’s for a buck each – not sure why but I’m not complaining. :)

I don’t show the beast on our deck very often, but we do have a hot tub. It’s not the prettiest thing, but it is pretty darn awesome. We haven’t used it much lately, but it’s all clean now and ready for a nice (WARM) dip!

We moved the retractable pergola over the hot tub and it made that part of the deck look a tad better:

 

We had the hot tub placed down a bit lower than the deck when we put everything in. We would have made it flush, but it has a stereo system (I know! Fancy schmancy! It doesn’t even work anymore.) that we need access to, so we had to leave it up above the deck a bit.

On to the pretty stuff, shall we? ;)

I showed you our new outdoor table set earlier this summer and it’s held up great so far:

I got the plates from Target a couple summers ago, and the placemats at World Market this summer. I LOVE THEM. You’ll see them again soon. ;)

The mason jars are filled with split peas and LED lights – I’m obsessed with those little jobbies!

But the best spot, our very favorite, it rocks our world, we could sleep out there spot, is the other end of the deck. For about four summers now, hubs has wanted a gazebo – and he got his wish this year. ;) We found one for a steal at Sears earlier this summer:

It was on major clearance and now that we have it, I wish we would have done it four years ago. Every time I tell hubby that, he just smiles the “I told you so” smile. He’s always right…why have I not learned by now??

It feels like a ROOM – it’s also a fun new space to decorate:

And you know that makes me happy. ;)

You can see more about the DIY table in the middle up there here. It’s held up awesome and it’s one of my very favorite things on the entire deck:

LOVE it.

Love those pillows too – the square ones were all on clearance at Lowes. The rectangle ones are actually placemats from World Market:

I love their placemats – the stripe and floral are both the same placemat, but they have the different designs on each side. It’s like two pillows in one – for $4! (To see how how easy it is to make placemat pillows, go here.)

The furniture was a fab find on Craigslist a couple summers ago. The cushions that came with it fell apart (not because I left them out in the snow…cough…), so I grabbed up the brown cushions at Home Depot on clearance – in JUNE!:

I actually like these better than the old ones – they’re simpler and not so poofy. They are a bit rough though, so that takes some getting used to.

One of my other favorite parts of the deck is the candelabra:

It was a Wuslu.com find last year and it started out green:

I wanted it to have a bit more impact out there, so I spray painted it RED.

LOVE.

This shot gives you an idea of how monstrous our deck is:

And now you understand why I was giddy at the thought of NOT staining all of that. ;)

I love looking back – here’s  a shot the summer we had it installed – just days after we stained it (grrrrrr…):

Now it feels like we have three separate rooms out there, not to mention the patio.

We are THRILLED. :)

Of course, I love the space at dusk:

But even more when it’s dark:

The gazebo actually has LED lights in the pillars, which are way cool, but the light is a bit harsh. The garden lights are so much softer and prettier. :)

I got the light strands (I used two) at Target last spring, hoping I could figure out a way to use them. I wound them through the gazebo and they offer SO much light (when we want it):

It honestly feels like your inside (but outside) when they are on, it’s so bright. But it’s a warm bright – you know what I mean?

And I love their fun, whimsical vibe. We sit out there and just kind of sigh and look up and count our lucky stars (or light bulbs). ;)

So there you go – enough pics for ya? It’s been a long time coming, and we are so happy that we’ll get to enjoy some cozy fall days and nights out there. And on hot summer days, it’s much cooler under the gazebo, so we’ll be out there even more next summer.

I hope you enjoyed the little deck tour! We honestly couldn’t be more pleased with it. And the patio – well…it’s the cherry on top!! I will be back soon with that!

Wish I could have you all over for an outdoor party. ;) If you’d bring the sangria, I’d be tempted…

Last Minute Landscaping

Heya!! How was your weekend? Good I hope – the temps were pretty darn great around here and I took advantage of it!

All of the activity we have going on in the backyard has kind of spilled over into the rest of the yard – but not in a good way. Our front and side yards have looked like the back for the past month or so – AWFUL.

With all the workers walking all over and all the STUFF everywhere and dust and dead grass and moving furniture off the deck and back on and off again – it’s not been pretty around here. So we kind of gave up on the front too.

Hubby is a fareeek about our yard too – so that tells you what a mess everything has been. We just figured we’d wait till everything was done to make the outside presentable again.

Well, the back is thisclose to done, so this weekend, I attacked the thorn in my side in the front.

Shortly after we moved in to our house, I installed landscaping bricks along the front of the house:

I also tore out all the plants and put in the azaleas and lilies. Didn’t they look great?

Then, as time went on, the plants got bigger – the lilies looked GREAT, and the azaleas did awesome too:

And check out those petunias – wowza! :)

For a few years, it looked great! But lately I’ve noticed something every time I pull up to the house. It just looked MESSY.

A hot mess to be exact:

Numerous issues were going on – (most) of our azaleas are out of control. Which is great, but a couple of them are HUGE. They’ve at least tripled their size since I planted them. Nice problem to have, I know. ;)

But the lilies are being completely choked out. You can see how big and beautiful they were before. Now they just looked like weeds coming out between the azaleas.

Speaking of weeds – I’ve just ignored them lately. The landscaping is so tight behind those bricks that I can’t even get in there to get the yucky stuff out. We have a HUGE problem with critters dropping Mulberry tree seeds – so we have random trees popping up EVERYWHERE.

(You can see one coming up behind the azalea above.)

It drives me mad. Cuckoo.

And add to that, if hubby didn’t use the weed wacker every single time he mowed, the grass just looked like booty up against the bricks.

So I thunk and I thunk and tried to figure out what to do. And I decided to take the bricks out.

I had one of those “is this allowed?” moments I sometimes have with myself – I mean, I worked my tail off installing that brick (years ago). And it took me forever to get them all level (years ago). And they weren’t cheap (years ago).

So I felt like I had to keep them there, which is just silly.

But I don’t. So they’re gone. :)

It took a while, it took some muscle. It took some weeding. MUCH weeding.

And in the end, it was different, but a good different:

I still have some work to do – it needs more mulch, I need to cut into the lawn around it to keep the mulch in and clean up the line a bit, and after a good rain I’ll actually be able to get the landscaping lights down into the ground. Our soil is solid. Gah.

Eventually I want to run beds around our little sidewalk and down along the driveway and add more perennials. But for now, just clearing it out and adding a ton of mulch made a HUGE difference.

I feel like our house can breathe!

Originally I was going to just reinstall the landscaping bricks around the mulch, but goodness, those are so much work to get right and level. And I want to tie in this area with the rest of the front yard, so the bricks just won’t work anymore.

What’s especially awesome about this small change is that the landscaping lights were hidden behind the plants before, and now we have LIGHT! Over time, you couldn’t even see the spot lights on the house because the plants got so big. And it was a BEAR to get behind there to change out the teeny light bulbs in those things too.

I got a couple more lights to add to what we had, and now it’s even brighter out front.

I LOVE landscaping lighting by the way. It adds so much beauty to your house at night. And it makes it look more expensive – I swear. If you don’t believe me, drive through the fancy neighborhoods at night and check out the amazing difference landscaping lights make! ;)

And they are just so easy to install too – I just luuurve em.

While I was at it, I tore out the dead flowers from the window boxes and planted my kale and mums:

   

I think kale is such a beautiful option for fall – they hold up great in cool temps, they are unusual and just pretty.

I throw in a few (fake) pumpkins this time of year to fill in the empty spots, and I love how it looks. The first signs of fall are showing around here! YAHOO!!

I’d like to add extend the beds even further next year, move the lilies out a bit so they can breathe, then add some annual color along the front. But going into the fall, I’m just loving the power of simplifying:

Next up – mums in the porch planters and some front porch changes! Ohhh…I’m so nervous. ;) Can you guess what I have up my sleeve?!

Are you working on any last minute landscaping? The weather is PERFECT for it and fall is great time to plant trees and bushes! I am so motivated, I’m moving on to another overgrown spot this week.

And I hope to show you the backyard this week too – once we clean it up! :)

A beadboard island…again!

Well helloooo! Thanks for all the thoughts on the flooring – it’s helped a LOT. I’ll keep you updated on our progress. (Which I hope happens soon!)

Last week we saw some progress of another kind – we got our kitchen island reinstalled and I was so happy to have it back!

The guys doing the work had to pull off all of the beadboard and the corbels in order to get the island up and moved (into my office, which is why progress has stalled in there). But they came back with all the supplies, ready to rebuild the whole thing!

I felt bad, cause usually when they go back to a house to reinstall and island, they reinstall an island and move on. At our house, they had to redo all the “extras” I had done. ;)

I was pretty good – I didn’t hover. (Ahem. Too much.) And they did a great job! The guys bought a different kind of beadboard:

And I actually quite like it! I’ve never seen this one before, but the “board” and “bead” parts are both wider. I like that it’s now a little different than the beadboard backsplash.

They also fixed a couple things that had bugged me about my installation. I didn’t leave enough of an overhang with the butcher block on the cabinet side when I installed it, so I had them move it out a bit:

It always bugged me before -- it’s the little things! (That drive me crazy and then make me happy.)

And when I installed the beadboard around the island I cut out around the outlet, instead of installing the outlet cover over the boards, like I did with the backsplash. So they fixed that for me too:

The whole island needs a light sanding and another coat of paint, but I’m waiting till the flooring is done before I do that.

There was a little mishap with a ring of black paint on the butcher block countertop, but it was a small price to pay after all the hard work they did. And it was time for me to apply another coat of Tung oil on the counter anyway.

Many of you have asked how the butcher block has held up and I must say – I LOVE IT. At first I was obsessed with keeping it perfect, but I’ve long since realized perfect is impossible and wear and tear shows character. (If you keep saying that to yourself it finally sinks in. Realize it or go crazy I say.)

I hope I feel that way about the floors years from now. ;)

There’s a few small scratches here and there, but they aren’t bad at all – overall it still looks beautiful! We leave cups and and liquid on it all the time, and it holds up GREAT.

To take care of the black paint, I had to sand it down a bit:

I went after a few other minor scratches while I was at it. Then I just wiped it down and covered it with another coat of Tung oil:

You can see how it brings the wood to life – the oil is applied on the left of the wood below:

It needs to dry for about 12 hours, and then after a sanding with steel wool, you can do another coat. I only did one for now, but the first time I did it (a year ago), I think I did three coats.

It still looks fantastic!:

And now things are getting back to normal in the kitchen. We even got the new fridge yesterday – no more walking to the garage for a piece of cheese! YAHOO! :)

Now the plywood on the floors seems so much more manageable:

   

The island houses our trash compactor, so it’s so nice to have that back too. And the island is the hub of our kitchen – I couldn’t believe how much I missed it!

We celebrated it’s return by making cupcakes:

They were Halloween cupcakes, I admit it. ;)

One baby step at a time…we’re getting the kitchen back! Just in time to tear out all the floors! Ah well…I am not complaining!!

Overall I’m thrilled with my butcher block counters -- they aren’t nearly as much upkeep as I thought they would be. It’s all about treating them after they are installed and knowing they won’t stay perfect!

I’m so letting go of perfect. :)

Picking out the floors

Well hello! I’m happy to announce we have some progress with the floors in the kitchen and family room. Nothing is torn up, nothing is laid down, nothing is even picked out. But the insurance company has given us the green light to move forward and that is AWESOME news!

I’m clicking my heals over here! (OK, in my head…I’ve tried doing it for real and it ain’t pretty.)

I told  you a couple of weeks ago about the water issues we had in the kitchen – and since then we’ve lived with a big rectangle cut out of the floor, down to the plywood. Thankfully most of that plywood is covered with our island again (I’ll catch you up on that soon), but we’ve got that pesky problem of covering the hole to deal with.

That means picking out floors. And if I thought buying a new sofa was bad, wowza…that was nothin’. This is BIG people. Very, very BIG.

One thing we know for sure – we aren’t going back to laminate. I know – I professed my love of laminate here and I have loved our floors:

But that’s back when they looked pretty and shiny. ;) Over the years they have lost their shine – they are dull and will not clean up no matter what – I’ve tried absolutely everything. The only thing that works is getting down on the floor and working on one square foot at a time, and even then they are just dull and yucky.

Secondly, the water issue. Overall our floors have held up GREAT – but you just don’t mess with water and laminate. I’ve discovered it takes VERY little time for the water to seep into the floors and then spread. And they can’t be dried out – at least ours couldn’t. I believe there may be laminate flooring you can “patch” now (replace sections), but at least with the kind we got, it’s not easy (if even possible). And once bitten, twice shy you know…I just want to avoid this situation ever again if possible.

With real wood, or even engineered, the floors can be dried out and then repaired. Even then I know it’s not fun, but it can be done. (We’ve already ordered these to try to avoid water damage in the future.)

And now…because we’re tearing out the floors in the back of the house…we’re considering tearing out the carpet in the front of the house too. Mostly because of things like Christmas trees falling:

And (lots of) red ribbon staining the carpet. :) And our beautiful (late) pee cat (in the pic above) did her share. And the dog. And the cherry that was stuck to the bottom of my shoe while I walked around the living room the other day – that was awesome too.

Let’s just say, it’s not pretty. I will spare you the pictures. :)

So anyhoo…the insurance will cover most of the flooring, and we’re deciding if we’ll pay some extra to have the whole bottom floor done. I’m leaning toward yes. Hubby is leaning toward putting his hands over his ears yelling “nananananananaaaa I’m not listening!!” because of all of our mishaps this summer. I can’t say I blame him. ;)

I started out looking at engineered flooring, but our “Guy” says his “Guy” is saying we could do real hardwood for the same price. Specifically unfinished wood, finished on site (our house).

Say whaaaaa?

I’m still looking into all options – engineered, prefinished and unfinished. The unfinished and all the work involved is already giving me hives. With the sanding and staining and moving furniture out and US out and three animals and a fish out – HIVES.

Our Guy swears we won’t have to be out of the house, but I think he’s sweet talkin’ me. I’m definitely leaning toward engineered or prefinished. So he brought  me a prefinished sample today and I’ve been showing her around the place. ;)

I picked out the laminate floors to match our kitchen cabs, which I will do again – umm…never. Wayyyy too much reddish going on. I like the contrast with these dark beauties:

Check them out against the black island:

Oh la la!! :)

I tested her out with the sofas – in the living room:

And in the family room, with the rug:

My heart was beating a bit faster. ;)

But I think I may have squealed a little (out loud) when I tried it up against the white dresser in the living room:

OH my gah. That. is. gorgeous.

And then I about passed out when I put her up against the white molding and the drapes:

Oh be still my heart, I am in LOVE. Is it bad to pick the first sample you see? (Those last few pics are more the actual color – it looks reddish up above.)

But I still need to look around – I’m a compare 342 options and then research it on 289 web sites kind of girl. This site is by far the best I’ve found to explain the different options in flooring and what you should look for. Check it out if you are trying to figure out the flooring conundrum yourself.

I’d also like to check out wider planks too – the sample has 3 1/2 inch planks and I’d like to see the four inch. I also love the look of the hand-scraped wood, but our Guy has mentioned that many he’s worked with have had issues with those. I’m not sure of the specifics yet, but I’m going to dig deeper on that one.

And of course there’s the budget – if engineered is cheaper, we’ll most likely go with that. But he keeps telling us we can do real for the same price. I don’t even know how that’s possible, but I want to trust Guy. ;)

So…again, I ask you to help a girl out! Any advice? I know I’ve asked before, but I would LOVE specifics! If you could pick between engineered and wood, what would you do? What reasons? Have you had issues with either? Happy with one over the other? Did you go prefinished or finished on site?

I’ve never had wood floors and never thought in a million years I would – but here I am, looking at wood floors.

That is why I never say never. Ever. ;)

I’m hoping to make this the fastest, most well informed decision ever, so hopefully I’ll have an update for you soon! Thanks in advance for all your help, my Squeeeeezies. I REALLY appreciate it! :)