Light'em Up

This post is actually a pre-post to a post I'm super excited about.  We are finally getting our exterior lighting put on today….as I type this in fact!!

Before we closed on the house I would drive by at night just to take a look a few times a week.  To be honest, if you hadn't known the house was here, you probably would have missed it.  There were never any lights on outside and minimal lights on inside.  Our neighbor recently told my hubby how nice it is to drive by at night now and see lights on and know people actually live here.  LOL!!

Lighting is HUGE in my book - H.U.G.E!!!.  It can really make or break the feel of your house - indoors and out.  I will do a whole post on interior lighting at some point, but we are still working on that.  I also need to learn how to take good pictures of lighting.

We really could only go up in the exterior lighting department and none too soon as I'm having a huge outdoor party here on Friday.  I will post about that next week.

Let's take a look at what we currently have.  These are the lights at the front door.  I'm not even sure if one of them works at the moment.  I actually don't mind the shape, but they are weathered and not the welcome I would like when people come to our house.

Here are the lights by the back patio door, or should I say light?  The one with the globe is full of dead bugs, geeerrroooossss!!, and the other, well I'm not sure what ever became of it or if it ever really came at all.

Then we have two lights off the deck.  One with a globe and one without.  Maybe the globe it went with the patio light somewhere, ya just never know around here.

Finally, we have the lights on the garage.  Oh wait, there aren't any lights on the garage!!!  I can think of nothing more uninviting then having no lights on your garage.  And I can think of nothing more dangerous then having no lights on the front side of your garage that has the sidewalk leading up to your front door in front of it!  I am most excited about getting lights on this section of the house.  People will actually be able to come over when it's dark and not have to guess where they are walking before they run into the stairs!!  It's gone be a game changer my friends!

Up in the light department means up in the inventing department!!  Can't wait to show you the results!
Here's a teaser!

I'm in love!!!

Have a great evening friends!

Pieces of a Puzzle

I hope you all had a fabulous weekend.  Weekends are always crazy as we try to cram everything we can into Saturday so we can rest on the Sabbath day.  It can get hectic but I wouldn't have it any other way.  It's so nice to have one day that we "chill".  In addition to getting things done around the house I was spiritually fed with being able to attend our church's General Women's meeting for the upcoming General Conference and see my children participate in our annual Primary program.  It was all very uplifting and filled my soul.

I am happy to report for todays blog that I finally got some of my decorating juices flowing again.  It's been awhile and long overdo in my book.

Decorating this house has proven to be harder then I originally thought.  It is truly like putting a puzzle together.  You try this here and that there, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  Sometimes you try several things and nothing seems to work and other times you find several things that come together all at once.  For quite awhile I've been stuck in the "nothing seems to work" phase, but Friday I finally hit a spot where several things came together and I am liking where things are headed.

Part of the problem with putting this whole decor thing together has been the fact that certain things have to happen before other things can happen.  As a result, things look undone in one area while you wait for another area to get to a certain point.  Another difficulty has been that this house is much different than my last house so things I hung on walls and decorations I used on shelving just aren't working here.  Lastly, I take a long time to decide what I want and where I want things to go, but when things start to click, many things fall into place.

I'll show you an example.  Since we have lived here the computer has resided on this piece in the main living room of the house.  It became a dumping ground for paper work and other junk.  Not exactly what you want people seeing when they come into your home.

I lived with it because the plan was to put the computer in the pantry on a desk.  But the pantry has been under construction for awhile and has also become a dumping ground of sorts so I've been in limbo with making the switch.

I've come to realize that things in my house will hardly ever be perfect and so at some point I just have to move forward and go for it.  Friday was that day for me.  I took everything off the piece in the living room and transferred it to the piece in the pantry.  The desk in the pantry is not going to stay.  I eventually want to have it just be a floating shelf with corbels similar to these:

{Source}

{Source}

   
But for now, this will do:

It's nothing fancy and who knows when the desk I want will happen, but I made the transition anyway because I was sick of looking at the mess in the living room.  Once I had the piece in the living room cleared off my creative juices were able to start flowing and I went "shopping" in my own house for pieces I had that might work.  I am really liking what I came up with:

I just may or may not have sat on the couch the rest of the night and just stared at it, it made me that happy inside.  My creative streak didn't end there and I figured out what to put above my piano and how to use a lot of pieces I had from the last house in this house.

Decorating and accessorizing is my favorite part of the whole design process, but you have to have good bones to make it look good.  We've been working on the "bones" for awhile and I like what they have set up for me to do.  Now I just have to put all the pieces of our house "puzzle" together.

It's coming, it's coming!!!

An Oasis Amid Chaos

HAPPY FALL!!!!  Who is not excited for this glorious time of year?  I just love it!  The cooler temperatures and change in light have done much to add to my energy level.  I usually have TONS of energy later in my pregnancies but it has been slow going this time around.  I am blaming it on all the stuff we've done.  I gotta blame it on something!

I have a new spring in my step and am excited and have the house decorating juices flowing.  It's small steps, but it's coming!  In a few weeks we will hopefully be starting on the master bathroom remodel and I will have an update on the plans for in there soon.  I'm excited!

Today I thought I'd share something I think is really important in the overall feel of your home and in the way you feel in your home.  That is the master bedroom.  All too often we put our master bedroom off because "it's just the place we sleep", but to me it's so much more.  It's my and my husband's space.  It's where we retreat after a long hard day.  It's where we rest, rejuvenate, and reconnect to ourselves and each other.  To me, it should be the first room you finish and the focus of your efforts to make sure it is the ultimate oasis.  It's purpose is so much more than just sleep!

Now I may seem like a huge hypocrite in saying this because currently our master bedroom is anything but an oasis.  There are clothes and piles of things all over the place which can only leave after the master bathroom is done.  It is painted orange, and while it's a good orange, it's not my idea of an oasis color (although it is prefect for fall ;).  

While I can't control the whole room, I can control my bed and a few months ago I finally got new bedding and pillows and I do my best to make the bed everyday (I hate making beds, but love the way I feel when they are made).  It's not perfect (the blanket does wrinkle) but  it is a bright spot amid a house still in chaos and just doing this one things has helped my spirits immensely.  

Sooo, if you are wondering where to focus your energies, and perhaps that extra decorating money, put it into your master bedroom.  You deserve an oasis and place where you can recharge and mount your energies for each new day.    You won't regret it, I promise!!

Make it a great Tuesday!!

The Birds and the Bees......and the Bats, the Lizard, and the Spiders - LOTS OF SPIDERS

On Tuesday I was on the phone with Apple support for over 2 hours!!!  I am not the most tech savvy person around so I'm having some problems with my pictures transferring.  Even after 2 hours we hadn't solved the problem but I'm well on my way and hopefully by the end of the week it will be better.  It has made me vow to be more in-tune with my computer and learn more.  There is just sooooo much to learn it can be overwhelming at times.  Anyone else have this problem?

As a result of my tech problems, there are some pictures missing from this blog.  I have made note of where the pictures will go once the problems are resolved.  A little use of your imagination never hurt anyone, right?

Today I thought I'd give you a little insight into the plethora of wildlife we have been exposed to since moving here.  The thing that is funny to me is that we didn't move that far away from our old house and our new backyard backs to our old neighborhood so the increase in creature sightings has been a bit of a surprise.

Let's start with the birds.  As luck would have it, birds LOVE cedar sided houses and for a few weeks our master bedroom wall was singing with the "tweet-tweet" of birds that had laid eggs in the side of our house.  I love birds, but I'm not a big fan of them making a nest in the side of my house.  As a temporary fix my hubby pinned up some screening material (once all baby birds were gone of course).  We will be sliding thin sheets of metal up underneath those holes and recaulking them in the next few days.  Even with the the screen material they were knocking on the siding Saturday morning trying to find a new home.  I knocked back and that seemed to deter them for now.

{Insert Pictures of birds and siding}


The bees!  This is probably one of my favorite things about this new house so far.  Last Christmas I bought by hubby equipment to start his own hive.  He took a two day course on beekeeping in the winter, bought a few more supplies, and then purchased a nucleus hive (a hive with an established queen) in the spring, and we officially became beekeepers.

That was the beginning of quite a journey.  The first queen and her hive started out great but then we are pretty sure they got attacked by a virus which wiped out the whole hive.  They were so weak they actually started getting robbed by a wild hive.  It was crazy to see.  Bees were duking it out to the death and I got my first bee sting!  Ouch!!

With the decline of the first hive Greg's friend graciously gave us a second hive, but for some reason the queen didn't like it here and we think may have swarmed (flown off with a portion of the hive to start a new hive).  A hive is nothing without a queen, so we purchased a 3rd queen and introduced her.  She was doing well for awhile but when Greg got in there a week or so later she wasn't laying any new brewed (new worker bees) and the workers were making cells for raising a new queen.  To make a long story short, we are on our 4th queen for the year.  His friend says this is pretty uncommon.  We are hoping to get them established enough in the next few weeks so they can make it over the winter.  If they don't, we will start again next year.  In fact, I'm thinking of taking the class this winter and getting my own hive.  A little friendly husband and wife wager my just happen to see whose hive does the best.

My handsome Beekeeper!

Lots of happy bees!

As an interesting side note, my husband names all his queens "Verla" after his grandmother who always had a beehive hairdo.  So cute, if you ask me!

{Verla #4 is alive and well!!  She's the one in the 
middle with the long abdomen}

The Bat

When we got back from Europe I noticed quite a bit of scat on our front porch.  I looked up in the eves for a hole somewhere that would produce the mystery animal that had left me the present.  I could never see anything and so it remained a mystery for several weeks.  Then one day a few weeks ago I went and investigated again and when I looked up there he was.  A cute little bat hanging from the eves.  I don't mind bats but I really didn't want him pooping on my porch.  I was going to look into how one gets rid of them, i.e. encourages them to go hang somewhere else, but I haven't seen him since.  Greg did see a dead bat on the road a few days later.  I hope it wasn't him, but it would take care of my problem.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of him!

The Lizard

A few Sundays ago I was getting ready for church and started to hear my boys yelling for me to come take a look at something.  From the excitement in their voices I could tell it was not something I was going to enjoy seeing.  Fortunately the hubby was home and by the time I came on the scene the little creature had already been captured.  He was actually not little at all and was one of the biggest lizard I've seen around here.  He was also living in our basement which just gives me the heebees if I think too much about it.  I would have come out of my skin had I found him myself.  I HATE fast, slimy, crawling things.  I'm not a screamer, but I guarantee I would have screamed had I saw him loose anywhere near me!  Yuck!

I SWEAR he was 10x bigger in real life!!

Little Miss Charlotte

One thing we definitely do not lack are spiders, and lucky for me they don't really bother me - unlike many of you reading this.  I seriously just don't get the fear of them.  I do fear if they are poisonous or not, but not them in general.  In fact I will go to great lengths to catch and release them if I think they are harmless.  We do spray for them so don't think I just let them run willy nilly all over the place.

For the last few weeks we've had a special guest spider living on our deck.  She spins a new web everyday and it's so big I'm expecting to come out one morning and see "Radiant" or "Some Pig" spun in it.  I'm pretty sure she's a harmless Garden Spider so I let her be and she is actually just as afraid of me as many of you would be of her.  She scampers away every time I come to look at her.

Greg found a bigger version of her in the woods a few weeks ago while doing a service project.  He said it was at least 3 inches long.  Even I would have jumped a little coming across something that big.

Well there you have it!  Some of the many friend we have here at "The 8 Cow House".  We love them all - just some a little more than others.

Happy Hump Day!!

Update on Granite Countertops and How To Get a Stain Out!

I hope you all had an awesome weekend!!  We were loving the cooler temperatures.  My awesome hubby got up and ran a race Saturday- WHICH HE WON!!!  I was so sad I hadn't drug my kids out to watch him.  He said the coolest part was having the police escort.  The coolest part for me was him winning a complete car detail!  So proud of him!!

I had a different post planned for today, but I'm experiencing some technical difficulties in getting all the pictures I need uploaded so it will have to wait until Wednesday.  Instead, I will be talking about my granite countertops.

To be perfectly honest, I'm having a love-hate relationship with this surface!  I love the color and how it goes with my paint color choices but I am hating how I NEVER seem to be able to get it clean.  It is a really hard surface to see if it is clean unless you are standing in a certain light and I always seem to stand in that light AFTER I put my cleaning stuff away!  Grrrrrr!!!!!  A friend did lead me onto a great cleaning product which has seemed to help so the countertops and I are getting a long better.

I month or so ago I was really having a hard time with them when they got their first stain.  Granite is porous so it will still stain even after being sealed if you are not careful.  I had gotten a bunch of peaches and set a box on the counter while I made time in my schedule to blanch and prep them for a yummy pie!  It took me a few days and unbeknownst to me, a peach started rotting in the bottom, leaked through the cardboard box, and onto my countertops.  By the time I discovered it and extracted the box from the counter the damage was done.  Major frowny face!

It left this awesome stain:

See that rectangular orangish stain?  It made me sad!

I did a little research to see if anything would take it out.  Luckily I found the solution pretty quickly and it was an easy fix.  Turns out, all you need is a little bleach!   Bleach will take stains out of granite without effecting the color of the stone itself.  AWESOME!!

I took a gallon freezer bag, cut it on two sides, laid it flat over the stain, secured the edges with painters tape and then took my turkey baster and squirted some bleach underneath the bag and spread it around.  You can leave it on there for 24 hours!  I did it for a few hours and it lifted the stain quite a bit!

In full disclosure - this guy handled the bleach!  He's super protective of me doing anything in my prego state.  

In the picture above you can see the wet mark it left when we took the bleach off.  That went away in  a few hours.  Sadly, I also discovered all the stain was not lifted.  I still have to repeat the process but the initial one got most of the stain out.

There you have it folks.  Don't be afraid of stains (most of them) with your granite.  Good ole bleach will save the day!

The Front Door

My Facebook feed has been full of tributes to 9/11.  What a horrible horrible day that was!!!  I will always remember where I was.  The first day it didn't seem real but as the days went on the awfulness sunk in.  It was a low and dark time for our nation.

I watched a great video today on when President Bush threw out the first pitch of the 3rd game of the World Series that year in New York.  Despite what you may think of him as a president, I really appreciated hearing how brave he was and how much he led by example during that time.  There was talk of a very real and prominent attack that could happen during that game.  It was a very dangerous thing for him to be in such a public place at such a vulnerable time.  He said something I really appreciated and I will paraphrase,  "I couldn't expect our nation to get on and live their lives again, if I wasn't willing to live mine.  If it was my time to go, it was my time to go.  You can't lead a country if you are constantly worried about your own life."

Go HERE to watch the video if you'd like.

Life has gone on since 9/11 but I do hope we always remember that day!

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Speaking of moving on, it's about time I update something on the house!

Cooler temps are headed our way and I can't wait!  I may even have to wear a sweatshirt this weekend.  Woohoo!!

With the cooler temps I will finally be able to paint my front door.  But before I could even think of doing that, the door needed a little repair first.

To say the previous owner of this house was a redneck is probably putting it lightly.  He was great in every sense, but definitely a hoosier.

Remember the burn pile?

Need I say more?

Well the burn pile was not the only thing he "gifted" to us when he sold us the house.  There is a window in the basement with a hole in it.  I'm pretty sure it's the result of a firearm of some sort.  We will be replacing the whole window as a result.  Unfortunately the front door also had some damage from an unknown source.

It's been covered over by the ever trusty Scotchtape all these months.  I had originally thought the whole door would need to be replaced, but it is a gorgeous door and just needs a little TLC.

I called around to different glass places to get estimates on how much it would cost to fix it.  If I had had someone come to the house it would have cost about $500.  Ummmm, I might as well get a new door at that point!!  Luckily I ended up finding a place way in downtown St. Louis that would do it in a few hours and for about $100 if I brought it to them!  That amount of savings was worth the drive for me!

A few weeks ago it worked out to have my contractor here most of the day while I ran the door downtown.  They were able to do it in about 3 hours.  It was a gorgeous day and my brother-in-law was in town so we took Kidlet #4 to the zoo and went out to lunch with the hubby!

I could not be more happy with the results!!  The owner was apologetic that the glass didn't match perfectly but to be honest I'm not sure he could have gotten a more perfect match!!

Now that the glass is fixed, I'm onto the exciting part of picking a paint color and replacing the door handle and lock!!  I have waivered between going super bold and doing a yellow, sticking with the awesome orangish I used on our last house, or possibly going blue.  My tug was towards a blue.  I have always wanted a blue door but blue can be tricky.  I was a bit afraid of it lending too periwinkle as well as too dark that it looked almost black.  I finally came across this door and I LOVED it.

{Source}

It's called" Mineral Alloy" by Benjamin Moore

The girl who used it has a similar color house and trim so I'm planning on picking up a sample this weekend and testing is out.

My second and third choice are these colors:

"Newburg Green" by Benjamin Moore

"Gentleman's Grey" by Benjamin Moore

Young House Love  used these colors in deciding the exterior color for a house they were asked to decorate.  I hope to be able to show you on Monday the final results.

I think we would all agree that the door can really only go in one direction ----- UP!

Hope you all have a great weekend!!!