On the fence

Remember our awesome backyard makeover a few months ago?

Awesome, right?

Totally.

Remember how I mentioned that all that was needed was a pool fence?

Well, in the name of ending suspense...I present to you...

OUR POOL FENCE!

Are you excited? Amazed? Stunned? It's okay, I'll give you a minute to collect yourself.

I'd say it sort of detracts from the overall beauty of the backyard, since you no longer have an unobstructed view of the pretty blue water and rock fountain. Maybe like a 20% detraction.

BUT it's a 100% improvement in safety! Safety first!

So really it's like an 80% overall improvement. Unless you're taking into account that safety is more important than beauty, in which case you'd have to do something highly math related to factor that in. Will someone do that and let me know? Math is so...numbery.

Also, there is still time to swim! The pool is still warm! Come one, come all! Seriously, we'd love to have you.

Extreme Makeover: Bed Edition

Oh HEY! It's me!

Sometimes, I do content writing work for Dallin's websites. I've written for all kind of people...dentists, raised access floor companies, elderly transport services, etc. It's pretty awesome, especially because I get to tell people I'm sleeping with my boss.

(**Side note: You guys are the first people I've ever told that to. Side note over**)

Then Dallin feels like he has to pay me for my services (the writing ones, not the sleeping ones), and then I feel like I have money to have fun with. It's fairly to moderately spectacular. After receiving one such paycheck, I finally got us some new bedding! This was much needed. We only had our old set for 2 years (we got it when we got married), but it totally faded when we washed it, and I may or may not have accidentally cut a small slit in it. So I've been tempted to do this for pretty much forever and I finally bit the bullet. It was metallic. And awesome. Here are the results of my bullet chomp-fest:



It's nothing fancy, but hey, neither are we. I loves it. Especially the pillows. Also especially the fact that it incorporates the quilt Dallin's mama gifted to us when we were first wed.



Something must be done with the space above our bed. I can't decide if there's enough room for a full-blown photo collage, or if just several pictures in a row would be better. To be continued...

Extreme Makeover: Master Bathroom Edition

When we moved into our lovely home (almost a year ago!), the ONLY room that did not get touched AT ALL was the master bathroom. The laundry room was painted, closets were painted, even the pantry was shown some love, but we decided that the master bathroom was something that we could hold off on. AKA we were sick of house projects.

Well, the last couple months have found me itching to do something to our master bathroom. Why? Observe:


While these pictures were taken after our shower curtain and towels and such had already been removed, this was the general idea of our bathroom. Ho-hum.

So, about 5 hours of work later and....

Ta da!

Let me point out some of the features of this, our new bath space:

• painted a nice, neutral gray
• new shower curtain and towels
• new light fixtures
• framed mirror
• decorative touches, including the wall sconces, flowers, and apples

All done pretty cheaply, I might add.

I LOVE IT.

Oh So Crafty

I follow a fair number of craft blogs. For your convenience, I have defined "craft blog" below.

Craft blog (n): Your chance to show Katie how creative she is not, and what she cannot do.

I am not a crafty individual. This stems mostly from my lack of sewing skills. Which stems from my lack of a sewing machine. Which stems from my lack of sewing skills. Which obviously makes perfect sense.

But yeah, I can't sew. I also can't decide if I ever really want/need to learn how to sew, when there are sew many (haha) other sewing wizards out there.

Sew is a weird word. Sew sew sew.

ANYWAY my point is, most of the posts posted by these crafting blogs I follow tend to require some sewing. So I read them, sigh a non-sewer's sigh, and move on.

But of course, when I see a craft that requires naught but a hot glue gun, Modge Podge, and spray paint, I'm all over it.

And so began my journey to create these boxes. They're from Make It and Love It.
Cute, right? The basic idea is this: cardboard box; spray paint; Modge Podge fabric of choice onto front of box.

So simple. And so needed. I've seriously needed storage boxes for the shelf in my laundry room for a long time. That thing was clutter central. It was the perfect spot to just throw something that didn't really have a home. I so should have taken a before picture of this shelf. But I think my subconscious self, terrified of utter embarrassment, stopped me. So...

YAY!

I ended up changing things up a bit from the original design. I bought cardboard boxes instead of assembling my own. I tried making one on my own and did not love it very much, the poor thing. Buying new, clean packing boxes was pretty cheap and infinitely easier, and I could still pretty them up like I wanted to.

I also ended up changing the spray paint step. I spray painted two of my boxes before I realized it was a five-coats-necessary pain in the tush. For the other two, I slathered on some of the extra semi-gloss we had from painting the house. SO much easier.

And, obviously, I nixed the cut-out handles. EASE is the name of my game.


So, there you have it. Now all the stuff that was thrown onto our shelf is thrown into sort of categorized boxes.

We'll see what I come up with next. If anything.

Backyard

When we first visited the house that is now our own, the backyard was a scary, scary place.

Totally overgrown with weeds. The pool was a toxic swamp. There was a ginormous mound of dirt up against the wall that was probably covering some sort of horror. Anyways, it was uuuuuugly.When we moved in, we made the pool blue, cleared out all the weeds, leveled out the grave, and left it at that. No time (read: no money) for pretty-ifying.

A few weeks ago, since we thought we had money, since we got our tax refund, and since our entire air conditioning system hadn't blown yet (which is another story for another time), we decided it was time to do a little Extreme Makeover: Backyard Edition.

Here are some pictures of our journey:

Dallin put in a whole new sprinkler system, because he's awesome and (somehow) knows how to do things like that. He dug all the trenches and laid all the pipes and set all the heads and everything. Tell me that's not hot.

Then all the holes got filled in, and he dug a trench for our little brick thing that would separate the rocks from the grass.


Then that brick (wall? path? divider?) was laid, and the ground was cleared of weeds and leveled as much as possible to get ready to put the rock and grass in.


Dallin's mom leveled out this part. Thanks, Dixie!


And then...rocks!



And then...grass!


BAM!


Still to come...a pool fence. Right now our only defense against unwanted swimmers is a "high up" doorknob on our back door. And an immobile baby. But the gate will soooo be in by the time she starts moving on her own.

HUGE thanks to everyone that helped. You know who you are!

And since a backyard is no good unless you enjoy it...



This little girl in a swimsuit is just about as cute as can be.

So..who's ready for a BBQ?