Oh, Hey…

Remember me? The one who supposedly updates her blog pretty often?

I know April was weak and May has been straight up silent around these parts, and I’m sorry. I’ve missed catching up with some of my blog friends and keeping people up to date on what we’re up to. But bottom line is that I just haven’t felt that inspired to write anything and haven’t felt super interesting lately.

But for those who are interested, a brief update…

We’re still trying to get Albie down here full time and there’s only so much blogging I can do to complain about how we pay rent for him in a gross basement apartment with guys we don’t know. I don’t feel like I can openly whine about the lack of a job market here in my town when he has a fantastic job in his town – I know we’re at least trucking along and should be thankful for both being employed.

But besides all that job search stuff, here’s what the Lange’s have been up to since my un-intentional blogging break:

• We celebrated our 3 year wedding anniversary (separately since it was on a Tuesday). No fan fair this year.
• My brother graduated from college (Go Wolfpack!)
• My sister almost had open heart surgery but she has postponed it for the time being.
• I still live at home with Finley and my Mom.
• I started a cute little herb garden.
• I am planning a friend’s baby shower.
• I am couponing and tracking my savings like a nerd on excel.
• I’ve only been to the beach 5 times but have already gotten 2 sunburns to show for it despite the reapplication of SPF 50.
•  I’ve gotten quite clumsy and have fallen down some set of stairs at least 4 times in the past month – what’s my deal?
•  I’ve started watching Grey’s Anatomy from the beginning and am almost entirely caught up to the current season.
• Starting Grey’s from the beginning means I have let all my other shows sit in a queue unwatched.
•  I have not read a single book in longer then I care to admit, longer than my radio silence on the blog anyway.
• We went under contract on a house, but it’s a short sale so we’re trying not to get excited. Two months and counting with no closing date in sight.

I really am sorry for the lack of posting, commenting, and tweeting. Besides feeling like I’m not super interesting right now, I hate to sound complainy and somedays that all I want to do.  I promise to try and be better and maybe even upload some pictures off my camera.

Thanks for being patient with me :)

Etiquette…

I stumbled on this cute post about dinner table etiquette and thought it was adorable so I had to share!

{Photo Credit to the Cup of Jo blog}

 I love etiquette and have quite a few books on the subject but this was real life tips that people should know about eating dinner. And to be fair, even though I took my little etiquette class when I was younger, I didn’t know some of these tips!

And I think I’ve blogged about this book before, but since we’re gearing up for wedding season I thought I’d re-post my favorite wedding etiquette book:

With my wedding over and done with for a couple of years I do find that I have to brush up on my “wedding guest” etiquette pretty often. I can never really decide what the appropriate gift amount is, or even if I have my husband wear a jacket in July here in the south to an outdoor wedding… Troubling issues aren’t they??

Even outside of weddings I’m sure I could brush up on a TON of etiquette situations – like when is a lie ok? What if you wrote a thank you note for a gift promptly then never sent it? Is there a nice way to tell people they have bad etiquette? (I’m guessing no, but at work don’t you just WANT to??)

Do any of y’all have your favorite etiquette books or websites?

Easter Weekend Recap…

I did not mean to take a break from blogging again but there hasn’t been much to report outside of our normal anyway!

Having a three day weekend is always fantastic, especially when you spend your Friday off crafting and day drinking with a friend. My friend Jenny is hilarious, she’s almost done nursing school and needed a day off worse then I did so we went to a fabric store and churned out ideas for curtains and pillows that we were going to DIY. We got our selves a big ol’ box of wine and set to work making ruffle curtains  that are going to be ahhhhmazing when they’re done.  We started watching Grey’s Anatomy for the first time and between that and the wine the day go away from us. Perfect for a day off! (Side note: Don’t drink and iron. I have a very painful blister to prove the reasoning. oops!)

Saturday morning, hangover in tow, I ran/walked another 5k. I know, who the heck am I?? I’m not sure either, and my legs are about over this stuff but this 5k benefits my mom’s company so it was worth it. I didn’t take any pictures at this one because I was doing it on my own and had locked my keys in the car after checking in. I beat my time  from the first 5k I did despite getting LOST for about 15 minutes (could I be dumber? who gets lost on a 5k path??) and even managed to run for a pretty good portion which I think made me want to die a little bit.  But woohoo! Done!

(Not only did I burn my arm while ironing, lock my keys in my trunk, and get lost during a 5k but I also fell down the stairs and have a HUGE bruise to show for it. How I manage to get through everyday is beyond me. I might be the clumsiest person I know.)

This past weekend though, my brother came in from school for the first time since Christmas and brought Ottis, his current foster puppy. As excited as we were to see Greg, Baby Ottis definitely got all of our attention and love. He is just about a year old and is mostly black lab. Ottis was hilarious, just awkward and full of energy, adding him to our routine with Finley was definitely crazy. I forgot how much fun puppies are!

I carried bones room to room to keep the dogs occupied and was constantly trying to teach Ottis manners even though he’s not mine. He was so cuddly and wanted to be by your side at all times, so things like sleeping and car rides became much more interesting.

On Easter Sunday we took the dogs to the beach to get some energy out and to introduce the ocean to Baby Ottis. We took lots of pictures and dug some holes. Even though it’s already April there is a part of the beach that allows dogs still so even though it’s a little bit further down and is boarded by rocks, the dogs still love it.

Ottis wasn’t a fan of the actual waves but was a huge fan of the sand. Greg took turns running with the dogs and by the end Finley wanted nothing more then to dig himself a ditch to lay in.

After the beach we had some brunch/lunch plans at a really yummy buffet before going home and relaxing some. My sister popped into town to introduce us to her new boyfriend and we got to see what the Easter bunny brought everyone. Luckily for all of us the bunny knew we are all of age and seem to be very thirsty:

My mom got some cute “Honey Bunny” bread and we got our first Britt’s of the year. We had some hibachi take out and last minute snuggles with Ottis. The worst part about fostering is by far the saying goodbye part, we were just getting to know baby Ottis and just like that, he’s gone. I think as much as Finley will be excited for his routine to go back, he’ll miss his cousin.

Happy Easter! Hope your weekend was as full as ours!

Pinspired: Painting Chairs…

Remember when I posted about how to recover the seats of old chairs? Well to follow up I wanted to show y’all how I actually painted the chairs.

I used these two links to get me started:

Source: cerniks.com via Katie on Pinterest

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Source: diyhomedecoratingideas.com via Katie on Pinterest

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Even after reading them I still researched ways to skip steps. I’m lazy like that. I wanted to avoid sanding and I wanted to avoid priming. After consulting my sources (Hi Dad!) I chose not to skip steps.

I bought these $1 chairs. Uh yes, I said they were each A DOLLAR:

Sorry for the crappy phone pictures, you can’t tell but they’re a darker wood tone. They were pretty neutral on their own but just didn’t match what we already have.

I took the seats off, de-glossed, sanded and primed them both in about 2 hours:

After letting them dry over night I spray-painted them a semigloss black that I think will match most of my existing furniture.

While painting I did run into this issue:

Seriously?! My paint crackled and not on purpose! It’s not all over the chairs but it’s enough to bother me. I let them dry and let the weather run through some of it’s craziness before I tried to fix the problem. Apparently it was due to the humidity and the fact that I was being impatient with the drying times. oops!

To fix the crackling paint I sanded those spots, which ended up being a A LOT, and then re-primed and re-painted.

The last step, assuming you don’t have crackling and need to basically start over, after letting them dry over night was a wipe on poly to seal it in and make it look really pretty!

Here are the products I used to work on my chairs:

I’m so ridiculously proud of my painted chairs I can’t even tell you…

Here is a quick before and after so you can compare:

I’m still kicking my self for not getting a better “before” picture to show the wood color but in person it was a pretty good transformation.

Have y’all ever painted furniture? Did I do anything differently then you would have done?

Can’t Win If You Don’t Play…

Tell me I’m not the only one who fell hype to the news this week and bought a lotto card!!

This is my first time playing the Mega Millions and I picked them all, mostly played some birthdays but used some favorite numbers too. With a 1 in 176 Million chance to win I’m sure all my dreaming about what to spend my winnings on is a waste of time but it’s still fun right?

Albie and I decided we’d probably do the installment payments and we’d pay off our bills first. We’d set up a bitchin’ retirement fund and start planning a vacation. Then when things are settled we’d really decide how to save/spend/ donate the money. I saw on the news to not make any rash decisions for the first 6 months you have your winnings, so I guess we’d follow that advice on BIG purchases but I’m not gonna lie – I’d be at the store the next day buying some stuff I’ve been so good at avoiding lately.

What would you do if you won? Are you playing the lotto this week?

Pinspired: Recovering Seat Cushions…

When I thought we had a house kind of lined up I started to think about projects I can do while I waited. I know there’s furniture I need/want and since time was on my side (and uh, still is…) I figured I’d tackle some things my self.

We always have a shortage of seating in our house. We’ve been using 2 dining room chairs as desk chairs for the past two years and when guests came over sometimes we brought in patio furniture. I’d love to not ever have to do that again. To start I have been on the hunt for some good deals. Like less $5 good deals and I’ve actually found some.

Thanks to some good sales here in the area I have found 4 chairs for a TOTAL of $8. (One chair almost broke the bank at $4 on but it’s fully upholstered and a neutral color so it wont need to be recovered.)

Here are the chairs I decided to repaint and recover:

Pardon the crappy cell phone picture – I was pumped to get started and couldn’t wait to use a real camera apparently.

To start I unscrewed the seats from the frame. Please look at how itchy this fabric looks:

I did like that they were neutrally colored but the texture wasn’t doing it for me and since they had to come off to paint the chairs I figured they could be recovered anyways.

I looked online for some resources on How-Tos and of course started on Pinterest where I came across this pin with a quick tutorial:

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Source: diyhomedecoratingideas.com via Lady on Pinterest

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So I stopped by my Dad’s house to borrow a staple gun and he of course was full of advice. In all my searches it seemed that most people left the original fabric on the seats and then just covered over it, he recommended against it and now after the fact I can say that it was probably a good idea.

Armed with a mega staple gun, a pair of pliers and a large flat head screw driver I set to work removing every little staple on the underside of the two seat cushions.

First I removed the black material to see just how many staples I was dealing with:

Then, with EACH staple I tried to pry them up using my screw driver:

Once I got a good start they EACH needed to be pulled out using the pliers:

I hope you are envisioning how long this took because for each seat it took me about 2 hours just to remove the staples and remove the original fabric. But once it was up it slipped off really easily:

Once it was off I laid my seat on my fabric to get a good size guess. I bought 3 yards for 2 seats so i knew I had more than enough but I wanted to make sure it would wrap around really easily.

Once I cut my fabric I started stapling. I started with the part that would face front since that is what people would see. I pulled reallllllllly tight and just started stapling:

Then I worked my way up the sides and on the back. I worked kind of back and forth just pulling tight every time. I worked all the way around and saved my corners for last so that I could fold the excess back as neatly as possible:

Once I was done I went around with a hammer and tried to flatten some of the staples that weren’t cooperating.

Once everything was as flat and as tight as I wanted it I went around the edge and cut off any excess fabric:

Then I flipped it over to check out my pretty new seat cushion:

Just to save you some scrolling here is a quick before and after on my newly recovered seat cushions:

This project from start to finish took about 6 hours to do both seats, it was certainly an investment in time but since the cushions came on $1 chairs and the fabric was found in a remnant section at a local fabric store I really only spent about $10 on recovering them. I’d say it was worth it!

I’ll post this weekend how I repainted the chairs and  show y’all how cute they ended up!

Finley Friday: 5th Birthday Recap…

Finley had his 5th birthday last Sunday and after he helped us cheer on the Wolfpack to win against Georgetown so we can make it to the Sweet 16 he had a good nap then he got his birthday treat:

Finley does about every tick in the book for his annual Smithfield’s bbq sandwich. He looks so cute while we sing to him and he just stares at his dinner so longingly. I get the biggest kick out of how he eats the top bun, then the meat in the middle, then practically INHALES the bottom bun, all to be done eating in under 2 minutes.

I’d say after helping us finish our first 5k, watching NC State win again and having a bbq sandwich dinner, this guy had a pretty solid 5th birthday :)