Keepin It Real

Living with a DIY-er

April 13, 2015 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

I’m one of those people (and according to the blog-o-sphere, I’m not the only one…) that always has a project going… or two or ten. I’m sure it drives my husband CRAZY, since that is not his normal M.O. But one of the most rewarding things for me is to get to the end of a weekend and have accomplished a TON of projects. This was one of those weekends!! (And major shoutout to my husband for helping me ALL WEEKEND LONG). I’ll be sharing a lot of those projects over the next week, but I just couldn’t resist giving you a glimpse inside my brain with this project.

My husband is a youth pastor and since they have a Sunday night youth program, he is usually gone for 3 or 4 hours on a Sunday night. So this weekend, after working on projects all weekend the logical thing to do would have been to sit on the couch, rest my incredibly sore back and fold laundry. But that doesn’t sound like me.

Instead the dresser I bought for Baby Girl’s Nursery was taunting me from her room. You see one of our projects this weekend was to assemble the bookshelf/changing table I bought off of Amazon. Another was to install the light fixture (also Amazon… I might have an addiction). And the last major project we did this weekend was that the husband spray painted the crib. Which means that the bulk of the pieces for baby girl’s nursery were falling into place.

When I bought this dresser I knew I wanted to go with a white and gray theme for the nursery and this dresser was definitely a distressed off-white. But I loved the shape of the dresser and thought… I’ll just make it work. So we bought paint for the crib that sort of coordinated with it, but (long story for another day) that didn’t really work out, so we settled on just white spray paint. After all, everything else in the nursery is white white. But painting this guy seemed like a lot of work, so I convinced myself to live with it.

But like I said… the taunting. And here I was at home by myself, about to relax and be productive when I gave in to the taunting. After all… I had ALL of the supplies without leaving the house. and maybe I could get it done before the husband got home, so it wouldn’t even bother him that I had added ANOTHER project to our list.

So I did. I laid down paper, because no way my preggo self was moving this beast anywhere. Grabbed my paint brush, a roller, Floetrol, and the leftover paint from the kitchen island (Behr’s Marquee in Quiet on the Set), opened the window and got to work.

Here she is in all her off-white distressed glory. (don’t get me wrong, I loved the distressed look, it just wasn’t what I wanted for this room)

nurserydresser1

And after a quick coat of paint: (and you get to see the light fixture we bought, this guy)

nurserydresser2

This really was a quick project. It took me about an hour and a half to paint all the visible parts (yes if I ever move it I may have to paint the back or something, but for the next few years, she is staying RIGHT HERE). I put the top drawers back in and then gave them a quick coat of paint as well, but I’m going to hold off showing you the finished product until I can get the handles back on… but I promise more juicy nursery updates in the next few days!

nurserydresser3

The big pieces in the nursery are SO CLOSE to being completed, now we just have to fill it up with all the fun things she needs!!

And the good news is, this project went so smoothly I had time to finish it, clean up, AND make zucchini bread so the husband would forget I just keep adding projects 🙂

Filed Under: Keepin It Real, Nursery

Bringing Up Baby

December 18, 2014 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

In case you thought my life was starting to get boring and that CLEARLY I didn’t have enough going on with the move and the holidays and a busy year for my day job, we thought we would add in another (not so little) extra.

Lexie is very excited to announce that she will have Baby Guard Dog Duty starting next June! That’s right, the husband and I are going to have a baby! Like everything else, I’m sure I’ll overshare on the blog about this whole adventure, so if reading about that isn’t your thing… skip over those posts! And if you have ever met our dog, you understand that this picture is QUITE humorous because Lexie would not guard anything from anything. She might however break your kneecaps with her tail of steel since she’ll be wagging it excitedly while she has a toy in her mouth.

If you are curious on some of the details: I am at a little over 12 weeks now, so I’m headed into my second trimester. Tomorrow I’ll post some weekly updates that I’ve been trying to write (see them here), but let’s be honest, I’ve been moving and working so they aren’t SUPER consistent… but I am trying!

The short version of what you can read tomorrow is that I’ve had crazy intense nausea and massive amounts of sheer exhaustion; all of which people tell me is a good sign. Although it took everything inside of me not to punch my doctor when she was so excited about my nausea. Apparently round the clock morning sickness and exhaustion make MJ pretty grumpy!

And I do have to give a massive shoutout to my husband for being a Rockstar during the moving process: he (along with a little help from my parents) packed the ENTIRE house up while I mostly laid on the couch. HUSBAND OF THE YEAR AWARD. The morning sickness is starting to let up (and I’m hoping for one heck of a nesting phase) so I’ve been able to do quite a bit of the unpacking.

We are going to find out the sex of the baby, but I’m thinking that won’t really happen until February because of our doctor’s visit schedules. The husband is completely convinced it is a boy, but I’m pretty sure that is wishful thinking on his part. And that leads me to my next story: how we found out. You know how some people have cute stories about how they tell their husband’s they are pregnant? Well, first of all, I have no poker face, so I’m pretty sure he would know immediately anyway, but in our case? He found out first.

What’s that you say? How on EARTH does something like that happen? Well, he was convinced we were pregnant and we decided to take a test, well at the time I was getting up to go to Camp Gladiator at 5:30 3 mornings a week, and this happened to be one of those days, but all the pregnancy tests tell you to take it in the morning, so I did. I was in a hurry, so I looked at the test (one of the ones with two lines if you are pregnant, one if the test worked but you aren’t pregnant) and there was one line. So I tossed the test on the counter, told my sleeping husband he was wrong and we weren’t and went to my workout class.

When I got home from CG, he said… are you sure we aren’t pregnant? There are two lines on there. So of course I run in there and look at the test, and sure enough: two lines. One dark one (the control line) and one VERY VERY faint line. Well turns out faint line or dark line… a line is a line (and yes we googled that). So my husband told me we were pregnant.

But we are over the moon excited about this and its already been a crazy ride, but we are excited for the next chapter of our lives!

ps… Extra shout out to our awesome friend Claire for writing the sign… SO JEALOUS OF YOUR CALLIGRAPHY SKILLS!!

Filed Under: Keepin It Real, Life, Pregnancy

A Tiny Update

April 28, 2014 By amusingmjblog Leave a Comment

I’m popping in here to give you guys a small short update. I have a larger post later this week on the piece we just finished for my church, but it has a ton of photos and info and I just didn’t get it done this weekend… so I thought I’d share the quick and easy update my husband and I did last weekend that is making a big difference!

About a year (maybe 2?) ago I saw a USB/Wall Outlet and decided it would be PERFECT for my kitchen/mail area. I can’t remember where I bought mine, but you can buy a similar one here. Anyway, its been one of those projects that just has never surfaced to the top of my list, but last weekend I stumbled across the box and decided that now was the time to switch out the outlet. Last week I showed you guys our mini-mail/command center on our kitchen counter.

Well now, that tiny little outlet looks like this:

outlet

And I don’t have to go scrambling around to find one of those little square adapter things. BRILLIANT! I would give you instructions but I know ABSOLUTELY nothing about replacing outlets, I just followed the instructions on the sheet of paper that came with the outlet. The basic gist of it is: pay attention when you remove the first outlet and put EVERYTHING BACK WHERE IT BELONGS. OH… and remember to turn of the breaker for that outlet before doing anything. I like to do these during the day so that I can turn off the power to the whole house because it makes me feel safer.

Safety side note: for my job I had to attend an OSHA 10 Hour Safety course, which is really an OSHA (Let’s show you pictures of every injury that could happen on a construction site) Safety Course. So I don’t play around with safety. Neither should you!

And just in case you guys are as mesmerized by how fast vegetables grow as I am… here is my veggie garden right now: