Snow day

Our first snow!

No, not ever, sillies, but the first snow at our new house hit today!!  I can't even believe it. We moved from where it snowed quite a bit to a place where I didn't think I was going to see snow very often at all - and here it is!!

Yeah!!

Pictures will be coming (I'm at work right now!), I promise.  All you Portlanders out there, be safe driving!!

Exterior...(basically) done!

Mark and I were talking the other day about how in the world we are going to do this remodel.  It is going to greatly effect all three bedrooms and our kitchen...and most stuff needs to happen simultaneously.  So, this is what we decided on...

1 - We will enclose the side patio (new part of master suite).
2 - We will begin working on the new hallway to our master suite (which also will add the new wall in wood room). Once new wood room wall is done (oh, and sheetrocking that room and putting in the new closet doors), we will move into the new "I'm not wood anymore!" room.
3 - Demo will begin on the master suite (finishing the hallway opening, tearing down the wall between the existing room and the patio and ... a bunch of other stuff including closing off the stairs and putting a header in the ceiling for a support wall that will halfway come down).
4 - The new wall will go up, separating the existing dining nook from the kitchen.
5 - Demo and new stairs and new bedroom wall will be put in the other bedroom and that hallway extended in doing those things.
6 - Finish the master suite (including new bathroom) and the "new stairs" bedroom.
7 - Move into my new beautiful master suite!
8 - Demo kitchen.
9 - Beautify and finish kitchen.
10 - Renovate hallway bathroom.
11 - RELAX!

Not so bad, eh? (But remember, plans can and certainly will change!)

Anyway, this is where we're at so far:

Phase 1: Master Bedroom Extension
Part 1: Enclosing patio
Status: Done!

By the way...see how sunny it is!?! Not normal for Christmas time around here!  I'm not complaining, though. (What made his really easy were two things: the patio being an extension of the foundation and the roofline already in place. If those two things didn't happen, we would not have thought about doing this.)

Getting down to business

Only my husband would wake up on Christmas day and think, "What a perfect day to start remodeling!" He's been outside happily (no joke) hanging new siding (he prepped them by priming and painting each piece in the basement this week and ripped the old siding off at the same time).  Here's some pics of the man and his work (and the sunny Christmas day).

Our siding is going to be "board and batten" style, like this (source):

Mark had this style in his mind since the beginning (he has been itching to get that plastic siding off since we bought the place), but I wasn't quite sold.  It was in Hawaii that I saw a bunch of houses that had that same style on the top floor with brick/stone on the lower floor and I was finally convinced it would look good.

Now, mind you, we are only doing this one side of the house because we are enclosing the covered patio - that whole side will be done and new.  We'll do the rest of the house later. I love mismatched siding. It reminds me of my first car. I think I had three different colors on that thing for a while.

Anyway, back to what I was talking about... Tomorrow, Mark is going to start framing in the enclosure of the side patio (which will become a part of our master suite). So, I guess without further ado, here is the plan!

Our house layout (top floor) currently looks like this (the living room and part of the entry is missing, I know, but we aren't really touching those):

And this is going to be the finished product:

Sorry about the not-quite-to-scale drawings.  The two guest/kid bedrooms upstairs are going to be a little smaller, but they'll be for kids in the future, and if (once we finish the basement) we have two more bedrooms downstairs plus another huge living area...I'm sure they'll have more than enough play room.  As you can see, we are also planning on turning the dining nook into part of the master suite, something I was not willing to do at first, but if we wanted 3 bedrooms upstairs, I had to make a sacrifice. I will gain a nice big window seat in my room - my own personal sunny reading nook (it faces west)!  Overall, I think our plan will work well!!

(We are completely ignoring the basement of our house for now...it's truly a gross dungeon...but we do have plans to tackle it in the future so that all 3200 square feet are fresh and new!)

Remodel news and first purchase

Mark and I have officially decided on a game plan. I'm excited to reveal the new layout...but not tonight as it's 12:48am.  However, I will reveal the first new thing we bought for our house remodel...a gas cooktop!

I'm deciding whether or not to keep a record of all we spend on our remodel.  I think that might be too scary.  We did get a good deal on this...barely used from craigslist. 

I promise plans before the weekend ends!

Merry Christmas!

I guess these last two weeks have been really busy for me since I haven't posted anything since the 14th!  Well, I was getting ready for Christmas...which is now here - MERRY CHRISTMAS ALL!!

We just got home from a very fun Christmas Eve at my in-laws house.  Their grandkids (my nieces and nephews) are sure spoiled!!! We ate Mexican food and tons of deseserts.  Very good times.

As you know, I've made a lot of gifts this year...I'll share with you a few.

I made my oldest niece two pillows for her room.  She has a "rock 'n roll" room and I thought she could use some cute pink glitter skull pillows (backed with pink polka dots on black fabric).  She LOVED them!

I also gave some people some of my newly fired pottey:

I had a little fun with the colors. The tan/brow speckled glaze is called Terrazo (which I LOVE), and the green is Grass Green. I needed to do another coat of green...you can kinda see the clay through the glaze, but you live and learn. 

BTW...my first glaze firing was a success!  My witness cone (see this post if you have no idea what I'm talking about) curled over perfectly, which means my kiln fired to temperature.  This is very exciting for me!  I am actually set to do another glaze fire on Saturday. Pray that one goes as well.  According to my Skutt kiln manual, "firing ceramics in your kiln is easier than baking a pie in your oven!" 

I have also made other gifts, but I cannot post about them yet as a few people have not yet received them from me.  I promise pictures of them later!

I've also been busy making crafty things.  I successfully completed two pom pom wreaths (talked about here).

My favorite goofballs were great models.  The mostly cream and white one I gifted to a friend...she added her own touch to it - send me a pic, girl!  The larger one I kept for myself as those are my "colors" and hung it on my curtain rod:

I have two more wreaths to make...not sure if I have enough yarn.  These are actually very easy. I think the hardest part for me was picking out what yarn to buy (I've never bought yarn in my life!)!

This year I did something new with my Christmas cards...I punched holes in them and hung them on a string of twine.

I like this idea because I can reuse the twine after Christmas.

Anyway...this is kinda a rundown of what I've been up to the last two weeks.  I plan to do nothing tomorrow but relax and eat and watch football!

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

Ice, Ice, Baby

Sunday morning we woke up to icy, icy roads.

Mark saw a cop at the end of our road at around 11:00PM on Saturday night and went to check it out and discovered the roads were transformed into a skating rink...and saw the cars. Two cars landed in the ditch about 10 feet apart on a road very near ours.  See them kinda just laid over? (This was taken on Sunday.) 

We decided to play it safe and not go to church on Sunday morning since it was still well below freezing. Instead, we stayed in all day, watched football, and fired the kiln.

Now, of course, it's raining and 40 degrees. Gotta love Oregon.

Christmas Projects

This Christmas I have been determined to make most of the presents I will give out this year. I love looking at blogs that feature DIY craft projects and websites that sell handmade items.

Some of my most recent favorite DIY loves are...

The Pom-Pom Wreath
Soft Trees
Kid-friendly Wreath Ideas (and the coolest milk jug wreath idea I must try and tackle!)
Reusable Sandwich Bags

Aren't those great?

I can also spend hours upon hours looking at all the sellers on Etsy - the best website for everything handmade. I discovered some great finds lately...

TwoSeasideBabes
vesselsandwares
thelittlereddoor
leandogpottery

Etsy is the place to look for anything handmade!

So, most of my "handmade" gifts are in the form of pottery and yesterday I was able to do my first bisque fire EVER!  I just came upstairs from unloading it and good news -- nothing exploded and (I think) it fired to temperature!  I am so so excited!!! Here are a few pictures from yesterday and today.

Here is my kiln...probably a couple hours into firing only.  It fired for about 9 1/2 hours!! I learned a lot from this firing, so next time it should not take as long.

We had a fire going downstairs while we were down there. I went down about every 2 hours to check on things. The temperature it fired to was around 1900 degrees.  It's "yellow heat" at that stage.  Peeking in the top peep hole of the kiln is NOT good for your eyes...but you could definitely see that it was glowing in there.

Here I am in my most awesome outfit opening the lid to peek at my stuff for the first time! I let the kiln cool for about 18 hours and everything was still warm to the touch!

Don't look too hard at this picture...you might see your present!  There are three darker pieces in the picture that are that way because I washed them off with water.  Everything gets sanded and rinsed before it's glazed. Then it's glazed and fired again...this time to 2200 degrees.

I have other handmade projects I'm working on, but I will post about them later...probably after Christmas!

Nighttime

Craigslist find

I bought these two chairs off craigslist this weekend! (Foreground and background)  They were cheap and cute and my plan is to reupholster them....myself!  I have an idea of what type of fabric I want and what I want to do, but I need to work up the nerve to do it.  I have a book that I'm going to use as a guide, and help from a friend, so it should be interesting!  I think that this project might wait until after Christmas, but who knows...it might be the perfect project for the week before Christmas when I'm not working!

You might remember, it was also my plan to have my living room curtains bought/made by Christmas.  Mark and I got some fabric samples this weekend and I'm still undecided on what to do.  So, that project has not been abandoned...it's just still in the decision phase.

By the way, Cliff loves our new chairs. They are his new favorite spots to lay.  I took this picture while we were decorating on Saturday.  So cute.

For those of you in Portland, stay warm! It's only 25 right now. Thirty degrees wasn't much of a high today. For those of you not in Portland, you're lucky!

Christmas-ized

Real tree. Getting the lights to work. Cliff being a big helper.

Making homemade garland.

My pretty West Elm stars.

Our mantle...not done yet. Yummy smelling greenery.

Decor isn't complete without my garage-sale nativity scene.

(Poor baby Jesus is still broken - Cliff knocked him out of his stable last year.)

My fun garland (without the addition of my stars).

The folksy tree.

Can you spot Cliff?

Where do you think he is right now?

Yup. Same spot.

Let the decorating begin!

I am so ready to start decorating my house for Christmas!!  This weekend I hope to get some decorations up, but my only concern is a tree.  I have a cat that just might terrorize it to the point of destruction, so I don't know if a real tree or an artificial tree would be best.  Mr. H is voting for a real one and I really want one too, but I just don't want Cliff (the cat) to make us go insane trying to keep him from it. We don't want to end up looking like this!

source

(Yes, I realize he was chasing a kid and not chasing a kid because the kid was attacking the Christmas tree, but still, I could almost see us turning out like this if we decided to do battle with Cliff.)

Regardless, I'm going to drag my boxes up from the basement (including our exterior lights) and get ready to decorate this weekend!  I hope all of you have fun decorating your house for Christmas!!