Outfit: August 14

 

Shirt: Cha Cha Vente
Shorts: Cisono
Tights: DKNY
Boots: Hunter

I'm always a little proud of myself when I actually remember that rain calls for some sort of alteration in dressing procedures. I'll happily prance around in my boots on days that are barely damp, then when it's pouring, tell myself that sneakers and jeans will be just fine and totally won't mean my legs are cold and wet all day.

(I also like that everything but the boots came from discount/dirt cheap stores (hence, no links.) We'll talk about that soon.)

   

Here it is with complete bundling for optimal warmosity. Clashy sweater is "Maurice's" (I want to say it came from Victoria's Secret or something... it's really old. Need to get some new cardigans. Ehhh.) Hat is Sproinger.

   

I am super into this shorts-with-tights thing (as my pinterest will attest.) I like shorts, but hate having bare legs. I like tights, but am not super gung-ho about skirts... so basically, this is perfect. I'm so glad we're getting into the season where I can wear such a combo without looking completely insane (especially since Michigan decided that fall begins in August this year. I actually saw a tree changing colors already.)

   

 ^^^ and of course, the secret weapon to protect the toes of your tights. It won't, however, stop this from happening. Damn dogs. I really liked those tights, too :-(

Peeing in Your Wedding Dress By Your Own Damn Self

Things I love: Fluffy wedding dresses, staying hydrated, my bridesmaids.

Things I don't love: Having the third help me handle the first in order to deal with the consequences of the second. 

I figured this trick out just prior to my wedding, as my dress was (as you can see) particularly unruly and I didn't really love the idea of employing a small army to help me keep it out of the toilet water (though my bridesmaids were willing, bless 'em.) Had it been a bit easier to get in and out of, I might have just taken it off, but no- that was a complicated, multi-person operation as well, involving a whole bunch of lacing and carefully placed safety pins and chicken cutlets- not to mention being topless in a public restroom.

And of course, I'm the kind of person who has to pee every thirty minutes, and more often when I'm nervous. And as a confirmed germaphobe, I was definitely NOT doing this, especially with tights on.

Luckily this little trick is cheap and amazingly effective- plus it's easy to stash some extra trash bags in the bathroom, or find some at most venues if you run out. (A garment bag works well too, and lets you skip Step 3 since it already has an extra hole.)


Step 1: Start with a poofy dress.

Step 2: Add a large, sturdy trash bag.

Step 3: Tear a hole in the bottom of the trash bag that is just wide enough to fit your feet through. Aim to keep it small- it will expand as you pull it up your legs, but you want it to fit tightly.

Step 4: Step into the bag and pull your feet through the hole. This is WAY easier if you take your heels off, but in case of super gross bathroom floors, it can be done. Stand near a wall so you don't topple, though.

Step 5: Pull the top of the bag up and start loading your dress-fluff into it, while keeping your feet pretty close together so you don't widen the hole too much. Some of the dress-fluff will inevitably try to escape through the foot hole, but it's not a big deal and you can just shove it back up in there.

Step 6: Shimmy the bag up your body carefully, making sure to get all the dress-parts, ribbons, trains, etc into the bag.

Step 7: Once the foot-hole is around your waist, you can gather the slack at the top of the bag and hold it in one hand, leaving the other free for... bathroom... tasks.

Voila! Look at you, using the potty all by yourself like a grown-up! Once you're done, just rip that sucker off like the Hulk (make sure you step AWAY from the toilet water first) and go back to your party. (It's not really worth trying to re-use the same bag, since the hole will get all loosey-goosey.)

Disclaimer: If you're wearing a dress that easily creases, I can't promise that this won't wrinkle it a bit...but that might be unavoidable even with bridesmaid assistance.

Also, for anyone interested, my dress was designed by this gal, who I can't recommend highly enough! It also was a lot less dirty and rumpled back then, haha. 

DIY Wood Refinishing with Vinegar and Steel Wool

Our old dining room table was unwieldy and falling apart, so we decided that rather than move it, I would try to fix up an old wooden table we had on the porch. It was covered in about an inch of dust, pollen, spiderwebs, and acrylic paint splatters, but was nice solid wood and was a good size and shape for our new place. I've been wanting to try ebonizing some wood with vinegar and steel wool for a while, so this seemed like a good opportunity.

The basic idea is that when you combine vinegar, steel wool, and the tannins that are naturally present in wood, you get a chemical reaction that oxidizes the wood and makes it look sort of... old and dark and crazy. Different woods have different amounts of tannins (with some having barely any at all) and react differently to the process, so the results are kind of a surprise (I wouldn't recommend doing this to any furniture that is super precious to you.) You can also add more tannins to the mix by pre-treating the wood with black tea- some types of wood might require that, though this table did not. I have no idea what kind of wood it is, unfortunately.

Anyway here's a lil step-by-step for you:

Ingredients

• One piece of wood furniture 
• Electric sander and sandpaper of various grits (you could probably also use chemical strippers but I was on a mission to do this as non-toxically as possible.)
• Safety gear!! Use gloves, goggles, and a dusk mask when sanding. Seriously. Trust me. "Carol never wore her safety goggles and now she doesn't need them", and so on.
• Some rags 
• White vinegar 
• A glass jar with lid 
• Super super super fine steel wool (get the one with the most 0's) 
• Crappy paintbrush that you're okay with throwing away (I used a foam one) 
• Your finish of choice- in the pursuit of non-toxicity, I used pure tung oil mixed 50/50 with a pure, non-toxic citrus solvent*. I was pretty happy with this choice a few days later when I managed to spill some solvent in the car, and instead of fumigating me to death, it just smelled like oranges. (Still, the solvent is strong and can cause irritation, use it somewhere well ventilated.) I couldn't find either thing locally so ended up ordering those exact ones on Amazon.

Step 1: Sand the heck out of your table

   

This is as close as I got to a before shot, unfortunately, but you can see the old finish. This step will take you way, way longer than you think it will. And your arms will go all numb and wobbly and crazy. I think all told, it took me like four sanding sessions over several days to get the thing down to naked:

   

(Granted, I'm pretty weak-armed.) Sand with the grain of the wood and keep the sander moving to avoid scuffing up your wood strangely. If you're going for perfection, start with a rough grit paper to get all the finish off, and then move towards finer grits to make it nice and smooth. I was pretty lazy about it, because I was fuckin' sick of sanding and wanted it to have kind of a rustic vibe anyway. There were spots where there was still a trace of stain left, which I thought might give it some interesting color variations (and it totally did, so chalk one up for laziness!) Make sure you dust all the sand off before moving on to the next steps. Also, WEAR YOUR SAFETY GEAR. I managed to get sawdust in my eyes even WITH goggles, I can't imagine how awful it would've been without them. And you don't want to breathe tiny particles of wood/stain/polyurethane/etc. Gross.

 
Sandy!! 

Step 2: Mix up your stain and let it brew. 

Fill your jar most of the way full with white vinegar and then shove a blob or two of steel wool in there. Now, I am told that the longer you leave that in there, the stronger your stain will be (most people recommend at least 24-48 hours, and possibly much longer), but as you'll see my stain was plenty strong and I only left it for about... 18 hours. Some folks had their steel wool dissolve in the jar, or at least discolor the vinegar, but that didn't really happen for me and it still worked just fine.

 

 

Step 3: Do a test swatch somewhere inconspicuous 

This is less to show you what your finished result will look like (because it will continue to "develop" for days and who has that kind of patience? Be adventurous!) and more to make sure that your wood has enough tannins for it to work at all. Find a bare spot on the underside somewhere, paint a little of your vinegar mix on, and see what happens. If there's no sign of change after half an hour (and it may be faint since it's one coat, but still) then try painting some black tea on the wood, letting it dry, and then doing the vinegar. You might have low-tannin wood in which case you'll have to do a tea coat first. 

Step 4: Grab your paintbrush and slather that bitch up!

   

Here's my table after one coat and about 40 minutes (the remaining traces of stain are really apparent at this point!) 

   

And here it is wet with the second or third coat... whenever it had a fresh coat, it looked much paler/browner, and then would go all gray purple as it dried.

   

And here it is dry, after about four or five coats, which is where I stopped. Purpley! Interesting! Let it dry and continue to develop for at least a few days. Because sourcing the tung and solvent was such a pain (I tried to buy it locally first and looked EVERYWHERE) it ended up sitting for about two weeks before the finish went on, and it definitely darkened and got a little bit more brown and less lavender. 

Step 5: Put on the finish

 

I don't have pictures of this process I'm afraid (bad blogger! Bad!) but it quite literally took five minutes. There are a lot of options for finishes- polys, tung blends, waxes, oils, etc. I like the pure tung & citrus solvent because it's nontoxic and doesn't leave it super shiny, but still gives it a bit of protection. I mixed the two half and half and rubbed it into the wood with a rag. Give each layer a few days to dry, at least (and check on it periodically to wipe away any oil that seeps out and pools.) I ended up only doing one coat, because I liked the way it looked (it darkened/browned/de-purpled it slightly more) but I think I should probably do a second because it has a few scuffs.

 

This is a pretty accurate representation of the final color (pretty different than right after it was applied!) Remember though, like I said, what you get will most likely be different- some come out really grayish, some blue, some purple, some red, some almost jet black. But I haven't seen a result yet that I didn't like. This floor might be my favorite so far... that is GUTSY. 

Anyway, if not for all the arm numbness I could see this becoming a very addictive hobby. I just found out that Ikea sells unfinished wooden bookshelves.... in any case, please send me a link if you decide to try it, I never get tired of seeing the results!

*Full disclosure, those are affiliate links, so if you make a purchase through them I get a weensy kickback. But those are the actual ones I ordered and I'll vouch for 'em working!

The Great Cherry Tree Massacre of 2013

So the lovely and overly-laden cherry tree in the backyard of our new place first suffered this indignity at the hands of recent storms...

   

And then we realized that some of the branches were pressing rather dangerously onto some power lines (probably thanks to their newfound cherry-weight.) We called the electric company to take care of it and... well... they certainly did.

 

 

The fact that they were using a cherry picker did not fail to amuse me.

   

That poor tree is right by an electric pole with wires going off in two different directions, so it basically got its ass kicked in a bid to avoid disaster. I'm glad it's safer now, but it does look a bit sad. And now we have a clear view of the pole. Yaayy..........?

   

I'm sure it'll cheer up and fluff out a little next year. From what I've read you're supposed to prune cherry trees pretty thoroughly anyway so that they produce better fruit, so... here's hoping this counts! Certainly means there'll be fewer cherries for me to clean up, I guess. I wish I'd gotten a picture of them shoveling all the cherries off the patio, haha. It looked like a cranberry harvest out there.

PS: this is what it looks like when a robot brontosaurus throws up:

   

I don't know why I thought that was so funny. Probably because I'm a child.

Must Paint... Everything Clean... Everything New... Paint....

In the depths of my paint-induced hysteria, I can't get this clip from Southpark out of my head. Meanwhile, my sister (who came to help today because she's either a saint or insanely bored, I'm not sure which) can't seem to stop pretending to be Bob Ross and mumbling "Happy Trees... Happy Walls...."

We all cope in our own ways.

   

After two days, we have one bedroom at about 97% and one at 70%, I'd say. Left to do is the hall (small), the living/dining room (not small), and the kitchen (small, but we still need to pick a color.) My right wrist is a limp noodle and I'm getting sort of a paint-brush-holding claw thing going on. This shit is way more tiring than I remember.

We're using Mythic paints, which are crazy overpriced but smell even less than acrylic craft paint, which pleases my sensitive little self very much (honestly we don't have much choice- I wouldn't be able to live in a place that was paint-fumey.) The cans lied to me, though- it said that each gallon would do 400 sq feet...it's becoming very apparent that is referring to a single coat, and you most definitely need more like 2 or 3. Which means another hundo or two needs to be plunked down on paint. Awesome. (And no, I'm not using primer, because we're painting over very pale colors, and because I'm not entirely convinced that there's actually a difference between primer and flat, white paint anyway.)

The other nice thing about Mythic is that it seems not to make you go blind immediately if you get it in your eye.

   

That'd be my sister's bespeckled contact lens. I can't tell if she was just lucky and ONLY hit the lens, or if she hit everywhere else too and it just dissolved. I told her to wear the goggles!

In other displeasing news, my laptop's power cord has decided to pretty much stop working, despite my many attempts to save it. A replacement has been ordered but for some reason the predicted shipping is like, 22 days (WHAT?)... hopefully it'll be much faster than that, but if my presence becomes spotty, you'll know why. (But probably only a little spotty. It's not like I have multiple other internet-enabled devices or anything.) I'll line up tomorrow's post but the rest of our fixin'-uppin' posts will probably go up well after the fact. Overdramatic Siiiighhhhh.

Home is Where the House is

I haven't said much about this publicly because just about anything can happen with real estate and I didn't want to make any premature announcements...but this morning, we closed on our first house!



 

We're not moving far, just a few towns over, but it's a bit bigger of a city and a bit more popular with our age bracket, so we're really looking forward to that. Not to mention the part where we have a house. I've been making Zoidberg cracks all day.

The woman who sold it (who we met this morning and who could not have been any sweeter) had lived there since the 80's and taken fantastic care of it. We're going to paint, swap out some fixtures, that kind of thing, but it really doesn't need much work. Nevertheless, I thought I'd do a little video tour to record what it looks like right now, so we can compare it to the "afters" somewhere down the line. 

It's... a little shaky. Sorry about that. I still haven't figured out how to film with my phone while walking without making it all queasy. If you'd rather just check out the photos, they're here. (Also, I promise my husband isn't quite such a twit in real life. Cameras really bring out the best in him.)

I am super excited to jump into the home-decor-n-fixin-uppin's (I ended up with memberships to two different hardware stores before I even made it home from the closing today.) Expect some DIY posts, starting with the table I magically turned purple...

Going to Camp!

I have been watching in envy as all of these crafty and entrepreneurial summer camps cropped up all over the country- most of them are too far away and way out of my price range, but they look so fun! So imagine my absolute glee when I learned that Craft-A-Way Camp would be happening practically in my backyard! And it's only two days long, and very rustic, which lowered the cost into something I could actually feasibly handle. I set sail tomorrow and am SO excited (well, not for the uber-rustic toilets, but everything else.)

I don't know why the summer campy vibe is so trendy right now but I really can't complain, I kind of love it. It's a little bit retro and a little bit crafty and a lot nature-y, which pretty much ticks all my "I like it" boxes.

So... here's a little fantasy pre-camp shopping:

1. Jansport Right Pack in Aqua Dash- classic backpack, modern color (well actually it's kind of a retro color, but you know what I mean. Mint is in.)

2. The Perfect Everyday Shirt from Conversation Pieces in Summer Peach Stripes. That title really says it all.

3. You gotta make friendship bracelets! Purl Bee has a great tutorial. I have always failed miserably at friendship bracelets, but I should probably give it another whirl.

4. Tom's Chambray Trim Classics. I used to really not be into the look of Tom's, but the older I get the more I like them. I don't know what that says about me. I have a really cheapy faux pair that I'm test-driving this year to see if I want to commit to the real things (I'm tempted by the wrap boots but I know they'd be less practical. Sigh.)

5. Me & Arrow Key Ring. Uh, so much cuter than my battered old carabiner.

6. You can't have a Wet Hot American Summer without retro track shorts. American Apparel has a ton of them in different styles and colors, as long as you don't mind emphasizing the "hot" part...they're definitely in hot pants territory.

7. I can't explain why but I've been hankering after a classic style Stanley thermos. I want to carry my dainty herbal teas around in something that looks like a lumberjack would use it.


There were so many other things I wanted to put on this board- I might have to do a part 2 later. But for now, I have to go pack up my less-exciting-than-this stuff (though I did use this as an excuse to buy a backpack. And a sleeping bag, because Pog was kind enough to barf on the last one and throwing it away seemed less daunting than dragging a pukey sleeping bag to the giant-size washers at the laundromat. Luckily it was a cheap one.)

I'll be back with pictures of my crafty-camping spoils, and hopefully at least 90% of my blood left intact (damn you skeetos!) Happy Camping!