Born Again TV Stand

Today my productivity is falling a little short of what I need to accomplish. Which is why it feels good to have this project done and put in place. It's like making a to do list, and putting something on it you've already done, just so you can cross it off. But it still feels pretty good.

Anyway, in my grand tradition, this project has been about a year in its completion. Major hangups include procrastination, and choosing a color for the inside. Don't worry about the mess in the background - it's still on my to-do list ;)

I love the way it came out! And my little helper in the corner. Hubs helped me pick the color for the inside, and I think it's pretty fabulous. Here's the before picture:

As you can see, I chose to keep the original hardware. I actually really liked it, and it's one of the reasons I liked this piece of furniture in the first place. The challenging part came with the veneer - painting veneer is HARD. Especially with all the little crevices in the doors and drawers. There are some paint chipping problems, but I think it helps it to look "antique" with the peeling paint. If it gets too bad, I'll touch it up at some point.

Here you can see the spot where the paint isn't sticking very well.

Since I don't notice it from a distance, I'm not going to worry about it right off. I also had my handyman cut a hole in the back so I can keep the base to the surround sound and our dvd player on the inside. It has definitely cleaned up this little TV corner from what it used to be, and is another step towards us living like grown ups.

Here's a before picture of the inside of the drawers:

I really liked the look of the old newspaper, but in the end I decided to paint it green because it just all went together better that way.

And another picture, because I just like it so much!!

The Chickens are Home to Roost!

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Barbara and Gertrude:

We call them Babs and Gert. Though sometimes I like to call Gertrude "Trudy". They're super friendly, they eat lots of bugs, and they lay eggs. It's a total win situation for us! On top of that, they're effing adorable and totally hilarious. They are show chicken flunkies, so they are obviously the perfect chickens for us.

Like all women, they love the hubs more than they love me. It's possible I traumatized them a smidge; they had to ride in my car (including a trip to get some coffee in a drive-thru and a few stares at the chickens in my back seat from our friendly baristas).  I took my sister home and wanted to show them off to my family,  then when I tried to walk them into the house sitting in the rubbermaid bin they came in, first Gertrude flew out, and when I was catching her, I lost Barbara! They are fast, man! Luckily my brother was willing to help his sister out, brought out some fishing twine in an effort to net her, but she took off into some underbrush. Meanwhile, my sister Mary was trying to show Gertrude off to my dad, but the dog barked and she flew off again! My uncle lured her out with a slice of bread, so they were able to catch Gertrude, but Barbara was still on the lamb. Turns out her weakness is also white bread, and after my entire family came out to help, I was finally able to pick her up and get her back in the car. It was quite the adventure, and naturally include multiple members of my family. It does, however, explain a little bit why they don't want to be around me so much.

Currently their "coop" used to be Bandit's doghouse. He never actually used it, because he prefers my couch and despises being outside without me, so we added a second story and put their house up on blocks. It's how we roll. Other than purchasing the chicken wire (who knows why hubs only bought it 3' tall), the rest of their current coop was built with stuff we had lying around, I think they did a pretty good job:

We'll upgrade eventually, especially if we get more chickens. We'll see how we do with this dynamic duo first.

New Dryer!

We have a shiny new dryer!! It was quite the process getting this dryer. We went to every store, looked at all the different functions and styles, reviewed rankings and reports, weighed stackable vs not stackable, and finally I gave up and said, "Honey, just get a dryer." He picked out a Kenmore (honestly, not sure which one) because it was ranked pretty high regarding both value and function, and at the time it was on sale. However, I had to work all weekend and without me around to nag him, Mr. Fabulous didn't get the motivation to go get it til Monday, and it wasn't on sale anymore. *sigh* He's an even worse procrastinator than I am.

The decision to get a new dryer came after the hubs had been gone fishing for a month, I had been doing very little laundry with it being just me home, and our electric bill went down considerably. Our dryer was a hand-me-down from his parents that was probably as old as us, and definitely not the most efficient appliance in our house. We got the new dryer a week ago, and since then it sat in our living room and taunted me with all of its newness covered up by a cardboard box. I decided a good way to get the new dryer installed faster was to boycott doing laundry until I could use it. Like the majority of my household labor boycotts, this did not work. What happened was all the laundry built up in the laundry room and blocked the way for getting dryers in and out. And then I ran out of clean underwear. Well, at least the pairs I prefer to wear.

Last night I finally buckled under the pressure and decided to just do some laundry, and that action somehow prompted hubs to take the new dryer out of its box and put it in! Yay! So far I love it, though we have yet to see if its "fisherman approved". We tend to wash a lot of sweatshirts and jeans in this house, so even when I choose the "bulky" setting, my dryer seems to underestimate how long it will take to dry his stuff. Or maybe now I need a new washing machine with a more powerful spin cycle so my clothes aren't as wet when they go in the dryer (I have no idea if that's a new thing with washing machines, but I will totally use that as my argument for why I need one).

Turns out the real answer was I needed to read the manual and "bulky" is for things like jackets an pillows, and "heavy duty" is for, well, "heavy" items.

Instead of annoyingly beeping when it's done, it plays a happy little song! Yay! The laundry is done! How exciting! It almost makes me hate folding so much. Almost.

Here she is! Pardon my crappy cell phone picture.

I'm really excited to use the sanitize function, and the sweater rack! I'll let you know how it goes :)