Our Unfinished Basement

In the spirit of all this organizing, my sewing room, in the basement, is definitely next on the list. It’s going to be a long, long process though. :)

But before I start showing you my sewing room, I want to show you the basement and what we’ve already done to it. The clean, full basement was definitely a huge selling point, and for us, it’s also definitely a huge testament to what paint can do.

So when we bought the house, the basement was all a sort of pinkish color. Floors, walls, ceiling. Part of the ceiling had really terrible drywall work but most was unfinished.

Here’s our basement when we first moved in.

As basements easily become, it was a catch-all. Eventually we knew we wanted a few defined areas: a tool room, my sewing/craft room, a little living space, and a home office-type space for Brandon.

We opened up a few walls that were down there and also decided to take down the ceiling drywall and paint all the ceilings (the open joists) white, which we had done in a previous house. It’s a lot of work but it keeps the ceilings seeming higher and leaves everything open for access to pipes and plumbing.

We bought a Wagner Paint Crew Plus Spray Painter and also used Grandpa’s trusty Wagner Wide Shot Power Sprayer.

(Update: First we primed with Zinsser FastPrime2 – a water-based primer/sealer to make sure we had good coverage over the old joists – with no bleed-through of stains or tannin.  Then we painted with Conco’s High Hide White in Satin…it was an inexpensive paint we got at Menards that had great coverage and still looks good a few years later!)

Did I say it was messy? We were painted disasters for many many weekends.

But the amazingly bright ceilings were worth it!

Here’s a shot of the ceilings partially done. What a difference.

Here’s a shot of the future living space and sewing room with the ceilings painted (but you can still see the pinkish walls).

We painted all the cinder block a very light gray and we painted the floors with Valspar Oil Gloss Floor Paint in Lake Country.

Isn’t it so much more bright and open? Paint is so amazing.

Here’s our tool room before we got started.

And then after we got our hands on it.

And, to be fair, since these “after” pictures show the basement totally empty (we were painting the floors after all!), here’s a picture of Brandon’s sort of home office/computer workshop.

It’s very “lived” in, we’ll call it. We’re definitely not finished working on the basement. We have lots of plans for peg board and other organizing, but in the meantime we’re so happy with the lightness and brightness.  Speaking of brightness, I forgot to mention that Brandon added a ton of fluorescent fixtures up in between the joists, so they’re not really visible but they give off so much light! We put natural colored bulbs in them so that it’s not too industrial office feeling down there.

I’m not really ready to show you the disaster that is my sewing room yet, but it’s a heap of fabric and crafts just waiting to be organized, and I’m getting started! I will keep you posted along the way.

What about you? I know you have amazing paint stories…or spaces that desperately need to be organized? Tell me tell me!

Aerogarden Update #11

Or, Update #1 since the big bowl wash out!

And, boy what a difference washing out that bowl has made!

The basil has never looked this good!

The sprouts are getting big, too! The cilantro has gotten so tall, it’s falling over…but it’s got little cilantro shaped leaves! And the baby basil is growing steadily, too.

These sprouts look pretty different from when I started this Aerogarden earlier this year:

After I washed out the bowl, I was re-reading some of the information I found on AerogardenGrowers.com early on, I saw that cleaning out the bowl was totally given as a big refresher for tired looking plants. I know I had gotten the idea somewhere, but if only I had re-read that advice earlier! Oh well. It’s still exciting to see this new Aerogarden grow and to see the existing basil doing so well. I love watching the sprouts grow every day! It’s so amazing to watch little green things grow. :)

What about you? Do you grow anything in an Aerogarden or otherwise? Do you love watching the sprouts as much as I do?

Baskets and Bookplates

So, even though I know my house (and in particular, my living room) is full of unfinished projects, I also know that any decorating I do will be eclipsed by the insane messiness that is my daily life.

I am just a mess.

The thing is, in general, the messes don’t bother me (except for their detracting from my pretty decorating).  I get blind to them. There are little piles of things all over, and I generally know what’s in each pile, so they don’t look messy to me. My problem is that if things don’t have a specific place, I’m scared to put them “away” in a random place. Because if things are hidden away in a random place, I will most certainly never be able to find them.

As I’ve stated, my current solution is just to leave things all over the place in piles. But a better solution, for my marriage, for my decorating, and for getting ready for company coming, is to get organized and find a place for things to live.

My friend Nicolette is on a mission to help me organize my house. (We bartered. In exchange, I remodeled her wedding dress.)

One of our first small steps was on the living room bookshelves.

I like a fun, busy look on bookshelves, but there is definitely a fine line between fun/busy and just plain cluttered.

First, we cleared off non-book and non-decorative items from the shelves. (Here’s what the bookshelves looked like when we first put them up…they are a great catch-all!)

Then, I found some baskets around the house that match the wood tones of our floors (a suggestion from my designer friend, Valerie). Besides matching the floors, the baskets can now be the catch-alls…thus cleaning up my junk and keeping the bookshelves looking neat. 

Here’s where we are now. It’s not done, but it’s looking much better.

But in the spirit of organizing, I wanted to label the baskets…so that there’s never an excuse to not put something away, and so that I can always be assured that I’ll be able to find things later.

So I got to work.

I wanted the labels to be changeable, so I dug out these bookplates that I got on clearance from the scrapbooking section of JoAnn’s a while ago.

You’re supposed to be able to glue them right onto whatever your project is and be done.

But my baskets were a little too textured.

So I decided to glue the bookplates to thin cardboard, then glue the cardboard-backed bookplate to the basket.

I traced the bookplate out onto cardboard from a mailing envelope, cut out the cardboard, used Loctite super glue gel to glue the cardboard to the bookplate, then the whole thing to the basket. Slip a little piece of paper (a little paper label, if you will) inside the bookplate, and you’re done!

Labeled baskets with organized contents…all neat and cute on the shelf.

This small change is really making a difference in my “picking up the house” process. I can’t wait to keep this organizing trend going!

Upcoming organizing projects with Nicolette include the kitchen, the huge pantry, the rest of the living room, the closets, and the guest room/junk room.  So, pretty much the whole house.

Of course I will keep you updated.

What about you? Any good organizing ideas and tips? Of course, I keep pinning good ideas on Pinterest, but I’d like to hear/see any others you’ve got!

A Cold Stone Creamery Birthday

When I saw this lemon soda float picture from MyRecipes.com in my inbox earlier this summer, I thought that it’d be something fun to serve at a small birthday picnic. I figured I could buy a couple of tubs of ice cream ($10 total at Aldi) and some sparkling lemonade and other flavored sodas (maybe $15 at Aldi), set out some cute straws and tall cups and be done.

Looks delicious, doesn’t it?

But we don’t do things that simply in the our household.

I didn’t know how I could keep the ice cream cold while serving it in an adorable way (taking ice cream in and out of an overstuffed freezer just isn’t what I imagined Martha Stewart would do). 

Then my friend Pam mentioned to us that Cold Stone Creamery does catering, Brian looked into it, and that’s how we ended up with this in our back yard!



Inside the refrigerated Cold Stone cart were 50 double scoops of ice cream.



They provided us with 4 toppings, fudge, and caramel, and I found even more fun toppings to serve. Cookies, mini Reese’s, chocolate chips, M&Ms, cashews, sprinkles, star-shaped marshmallows….you name it, we were prepared to put it on ice cream.





I still wanted to have some ice cream floats (it was my original idea after all!), so I found Goose Island Root Beer, IBC Cream Soda, sparkling lemonade, and some grape and orange soda to serve with big fat straws and tall clear cups. :)







And my friend Pam (who suggested the Cold Stone cart) made this awesome cake that looked like a melting ice cream cone.



My friend Jessica and I had fun decorating the setup with some paper garlands, paper lanterns, and paper fans. We made the blue polka-dot ones out of napkins! (As I was cleaning up the back yard, I purposely left up these vines for decorative purposes. I was inspired by Pinterest, of course!) ;)




(And at night, these paper lanterns lit up!)

Everyone had a ton of fun picking out their ice cream and toppings :)


It was still just a small picnic, so there was lots and lots of ice cream to go around. (We also served food, I swear!) It was a super fun way to celebrate a birthday.



Happy 30th Cold Stone Creamery birthday to me! :)

See these pictures bigger at Flickr…so you can zoom in on details and deliciousness! :)
(And feel free to comment comment comment on posts to help me feel awesome!!)

Birthday

Today, I turned 30 years old. Whew.

I’m hoping to celebrate with a lot of ice cream this weekend. If it turns out as cute as it is in my head, I will post pictures. :)

Today, my friend Jacqueline sent me  these cute flowers that look like a cupcake.

I did a lot of yard work. Then the mower broke. So after a nice dinner with Brandon, we attempted to fix the mower. Our efforts are so far unsuccessful.

And, my little cilantro sprout is growing so big! It’s only been 2 days since I last posted a picture!

Happy birthday to me. :)

Mansueto Library

I’m turning 30 tomorrow.

But in the meantime, I went to my alma mater, the University of Chicago today to take a tour of their newest library. It was amazing.

Look at this gorgeous reading room.

The books are all stored in the basement in huge bins. There is room for 3.5 million volume.

The basement storage facility is fully automated. The books are all barcoded. When one is requested, a crane is put into motion and retrieves the proper bin.

Then the bin is sent upstairs to the gorgeous reading room for your bookly enjoyment!

It was a great tour and a great day. I wonder if I would have studied more if I had such a gorgeous study spot when I was there. ;)

See these pictures bigger on Flickr.

Aerogarden Update #10, or, Starting Over

Since I killed my cilantro sprout, and since my basil wasn’t looking fantastic, I decided to overhaul the Aerogarden.

I carefully lifted out the top (now with just the basil plant living in it), lifted out the bowl, dumped the nutrient-(over)filled water, and thoroughly cleaned everything.

As I was cleaning the top (the basil was still in it, so it was getting jostled a lot), a little gray caterpillar fell out of the basil! I didn’t take a picture for you (boo!) because I was so shocked and relieved to find the culprit that had been eating my basil! So I killed the poor little guy and now I know what to look for when my basil looks sad and has bite marks in it.

Anyway, the whole thing got a nice clean makeover. I refilled the water and added new nutrients, I trimmed down the basil so I could lower the light a bit, and I totally replanted the cilantro (new seeds, new grow sponge) and another basil. I know that I haven’t been all over using basil like I used the cilantro, but I figure with 2 plants (and who knows how long my big one will last) I’d have more basil for recipes and will hopefully use it more.

I did all that cleaning and refreshing on August 16. When I checked on it today, just 5 days later, I’ve already got little sprouts!

A cilantro seed sprouting.

Two tiny basil sprouts!

Don’t worry, as soon as I took these pictures, I replace their little plastic domes. I don’t want to mess anything up like I did last time!

What about you? Have you done any replanting lately?