It's Thursday?

I don't really have much to say today besides

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOTALLY AWESOME SISTER!!!

She's sixteen today, so everybody watch out and stay off the roads ;-) I'm going up to my parents tonight for dinner in celebration. Fun will be had. Oh, and that message is pink because she loves pink, I think her whole world is pink.

And since I'm here I thought I'd share a picture of my prison cell:

And those piles aren't NEARLY as organized as they were that first night. I am almost done though, hopefully I'll get my life back soon. Also, it's amusing and annoying how my handwriting sometimes is great, and other times these envelopes look like they were addressed by a drunk 5 year old.

Gasp! *pant* *pant*

Sooooo I'm exhausted. I haven't posted anything in a long time. Why? Because I have been up to my eyeballs in crap to do. Listen to what I did just ONE of my evenings last week:

1. Picked up my veil from the bridal store 30 minutes away.
2. Updated both my resumes and website (may or may not have to do with the fact I'm applying to a grad program)
3. Made and ate dinner.
4. Completely printed and cut out remaining wedding invitation components.
5. Weeded the front and back yards. (anyone ever seen Jumanji? Yeah, it was about like that)
6. Payed bills
7. Emailed almost every wedding vendor.

Yeah. One evening. Between 5pm and 11pm. They've ALL been like that lately. Mostly it's wedding stuff, but we just have so much going on these days almost none of my personal projects I'd like to do are going to happen for a bit.

With 3 months to go I'll be happy when it's all over actually. Then we can go back to being primarily lazy people with completely random stuff on the brain instead of guest lists, alterations, and postage.

Also, I actually began this post on Friday, but as you can see, it is not in fact Friday right now. What happened? Oh, just a storm of apocolyptic proportions. So mid-post, we lost power. And it stayed lost. Almost the whole weekend. It came back eventually, but it was a very very hot weekend!

Wait, what weekend?

We had a jam-packed weekend this time around! We were social Friday night, but then Saturday-Sunday Brian worked and I pounded away on wedding stuff pretty much the whole time!

It also included a fabulous trip home to my parents. My mom and I worked on wedding details for about 4 hours! It was tiring but awesome. It always feels good to get that much done. Then we had a nice dinner on the deck of pretty much all my favorite things: flank steak, baked potatoes, french cut green beans with almonds... yum. It all ended rather abruptly though when the dog ralphed under the table...

Here's a picture of said adorable ralpher:

Aww, isn't she an adorable 80 pounds of white fluff? BTW she's fine, she just ate something she shouldn't have.

Bathroom - Before and After!

Well, it's here, the moment all 2 of you have been waiting for! Pictures of the bathroom paint.

First I'll recap why this was necessary. The genius lovely seller was cheap as crap thrifty and painted the bathroom with the shower (and no fan) with flat latex paint. Obviously, this doesn't really fly in a bathroom. So it had to be painted. I opted for a soft yellow, we have an oak cabinet with the same laminate as the kitchen, so it made it a little tricky. My normal bathroom favorites (white or blue) weren't going to work in here!

The reason we had to do this now, is because the area above the toilet started to look like this:

yeah, I know, it's so hot you're just DYING for a closeup right? Here ya go:

seeeexy.

Well I sanded it down as best I could and got to work. the ceiling went up fairly easily, even though it wasn't 'ceiling' paint. Then came the wall color. I'm still not sure how this:

 

turned into this:

but it did. So I went back to home depot. The new color is still brighter then I wanted, but it gets the job done for now. Ok, time to oooh and awww.
This picture is not really that accurate, but it's the only one I've got of that view right now. This one below is a little closer to correct, especially near the backsplash.

Yeah, my mad make-two-bad-pictures-one-picture skillz have you jealous. I know.

I'll post more/better images once I get stuff actually decorated.

Slacking... but not really

So I've been a total slacker on the blog front... but I swear that doesn't mean I've been lazy! In fact it means the exact opposite! I've been swamped.

Lots of extra energy has been going into work the last few weeks, lets hope I get a breather before too long.

This week has been crazy wedding stuff week. I've worked more on invitations, had long conversations with my mom over the guest list, poured through iTunes, booked a videographer and hemmed and hawed over how to stay warm in my wedding dress during outdoor pictures. Also tonight is tuxedo-pickin'-time!

I also have finished painting the bathroom (for now). And hung curtains in my as-yet-unpacked studio. But alas, no pictures as the above mentioned mania keeps driving it from my mind.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall...

So when we bought our awesome dresser-turned-sideboard it came with a big mirror attached (off-center for some reason). After much to-do, the mirror has finally been brought new life!

I thought it would be nice to have a mirror in the entryway. You know, so I can make sure before I run out the door that I haven't forgotten anything important. Like pants. But I didn't want to hang it in its original state. It just looked a little fuddy-duddy.

So I got to work sanding sanding sanding. I also went and bough some Krylon enamel. You know the stuff that looks like a super glossy black car by the time you're done? Yeah that stuff.

Since I wasn't sure how it would come off the mirror (didn't want to take a chance, I'd never used that type of paint before) I carefully taped the edge, then taped newspaper down to that over the mirror itself:

 As you can see, my workspace was a lovely plastic painting dropcloth on the floor of our equally lovely garage (heavy sarcasm intended). I'd really like to fix it up someday. Then I got to spraying:

When it was still wet it looked like crap and I started freaking out. It was all uneven looking, and then Brian opened the garage door and tons of particles flew into it... So after it dried I sanded those areas down and repainted them. After sending Brian to Home Depot for another can of enamel as punishment of course.

After that was done it actually looked pretty good! There are a couple spots that weren't sanded as well as I thought, but at this point I think I'd run more risk of ruining it alltogether then just letting it go. I'm the only one who would see those spots anyway probably.

I then added 2 D rings and 100lb picture wire to the back. Then I found a stud in the wall I wanted, but it wasn't quite on center. Nothing is in our house I don't think, but it was close enough. Then with a big 4 inch nail I hung this sucker:

Woo! And here is a closeup of the bottom detail:

Say it with me:    'oooooh shiny'...

The last 2 pictures are crappy cell phone images. I forgot my camera at work yesterday so I'll have to take real 'afters' later that actually show what it does for the space.

Back and Bathroom Adventures

So we're back from our trip. We had a GREAT time! On Mackinaw Island we biked the perimeter on a bicycle built for 2, and played mini golf, and ate a lot. Fun was had by all:

We also spent a few days in Munising, awesome as always. But this year the fireworks were rained out! They are quite epic so I was bummed.

Also I've been working on painting the bathroom. I'll post about that soon.