Bar Update

I can't believe how close we are to finishing up the basement bar.  I feel like it was just yesterday we were planning out everything we needed.  But now it's almost ready for a final reveal.  This past weekend we got the trim on the front and the back.

Look at how nice that looks.

J needs to attach the drawer fronts and measure where the wine racks are going to go, but for the most part it's ready to be sealed.  And yes, J wants to leave the underneath unstained.

We picked up this nice dart board at one of the local thrift stores.  It was a little bit more then we wanted to pay, but we really liked the design, so we decided to get it.

And when I tried to get a picture of the inside, this happened.  Toonces is one of the noisiest cats I've ever seen.  She's always a part of my photo shoots.

That's better.  Look at how pretty that baby is.  It's in really good condition.  The dart board only has a couple of holes in it.  Now we just need to find some old school darts.  And even if we never use this, at least it will look nice up on the wall.  It's going to be a classy man cave.

So the bar is getting to the point where it will be done and we can start thinking about cleaning up and decorating the basement.  I can't wait.  We would like to get a flat screen TV for down there (right now we have a huge 56" rear projection TV) and maybe a smaller lounge type couch.  We are on the lookout for some nice bar stools.  We're scouring Craigslist for a set that will work or ones that we can redo to make work.  Then maybe I'll be able to try out some of my new upholstering tricks I've learned.  Fun!  

I'm pretty excited to see this baby done.  I guess it's because it's one of the most ambitious wood projects we've done.  We've made our kitchen cabinet and our bathroom vanity, but this was much more complicated.  Maybe it will be ready for my birthday and we can celebrate my big 3-0 in our brand spankin' new basement bar.  Fingers crossed.      

The staining has begun!

We're one step closer to having a basement bar.  I started staining everything this past weekend, and boy are we happy with the outcome.  J decided to go with dark walnut and I can honestly say it was the way to go.  We both love how rich and lovely the color is.  I can not wait to see everything together.

We're going with one coat on the main bar and two coats on all the trim, for contrast.  So that means I have one more coat to go with all these little guys.  Then a clear coat later this week.  We're aiming for Wednesday(fingers crossed).

Here are the drawer fronts with the hardware.  Nice, huh?  I cannot wait to see this put together.  Who would have thought I would be so excited about a basement bar.

Now we just have to pick up the bar rail, get a custom piece of glass cut for the top, and find some nice bar stools.  Oh and fill the wine rack with wine!! ;-)  We're almost there.

Sorry for the blurry, awful photos.  These were taken pretty late last night.  I'll try and get some more natural light photos soon, but with all the rain we have in the forecast  I'm not sure when that will be.

  

What We Did Last Weekend

Well last weekend, a long holiday weekend, was supposed to be a fun filled weekend.  A weekend where we could enjoy ourselves and relax a bit.  Well, we defiantly relaxed.  J has been sick for over a week and he finally got me sick this past weekend.  It hit me like a ton of bricks on Friday.  One minute I felt fine, the next I just wanted to crawl in a hole.  Lovely.

But we did manage to get a few things done.  First we took a trip out to the UW SWAP store.  It's a store where university items go where they are no longer needed.  Labs, offices, etc all donate their stuff and then it gets resold.  We love the SWAP store.  Every spring they replace the mini fridges in the dorms, so the old ones are sold for about $10.  We have a couple mini fridges.  They sell all sorts of things and if you are in the Verona area, I would suggest you check it out (they are only open to the public on Tuesday, Friday, and the second Saturday of every month).

This last weekend we picked up this.

It's a huge 80 gallon tub that we're going to use as a rain barrel.  I think we might have the biggest rain barrel in the neighborhood.  And the best part, it was only $15.  Yay for weird giant tub thing.

J has also been hard at work on his bar, even though he's sick and I've told him he needs to rest.  He's got almost everything put together and now just needs to sand and stain.

Here is a picture of the front.  It looks a little plain right now, but it does have some nice trim that will go on it, as well as the top.

And here is a picture of the back.  It has three drawers and two pull out wine racks (not installed yet).  I'm just so proud of him.  This is the most ambitious project he's taken on and he's done an amazing job.

We picked up the stain and the drawer pulls last night.  I cannot wait to see what it looks like when it's done.  Now we just have to find a couple of bar stools that we like that are a reasonable price (harder then it would seem).  We also have to pick up the bar rail for the top, which is $78, WHAT?!?  I think i had a palpitation when I saw that price.  But the bar will still be cheaper, and nicer then any other bar we could buy premade.   So it's cool.

I will leave you with this cute little bird J got me because I didn't feel good.  He's so sweet sometimes.

March Update

Well it's been another month since I've last updated this blog, bad blogger.  But truthfully, it hasn't been that exciting around here.  Once J starts school, our lives become consumed by school work and DIY projects get pushed to the side.  But the exciting part?  J is halfway done with graduate school!!!  Yay!  Well sort of yay, that still leaves a year and a half to go, but halfway is a big milestone.

We've had some family drama in the last few weeks.  J's aunt had a mini stroke at the beginning of the month and while they were doing all the tests to see what caused it, they found that she had ASD, or Atrial Septal Defect, which is a hole in the wall of the heart that separates the top two chambers.  She has surgery today at the UW Hospital, so we're hoping all will go well.

I got some good news at work, we've received two (small) grants and are waiting to hear back about 2-3 more.  This is good news because without grants, I don't have a job.  It's can be scary at times, but as long as we keep doing good science and writing papers and applying for grants, hopefully everything will work out.

Just in case I do have to take a cut in hours, I've been working on really getting my business out there.  I've signed up for number of art shows this summer and I've been trying to make as much new stuff as possible.  I've also been taking online classes to help improve my photography skills as well as my knowledge of photoshop and illustrator.    

Things have been extremely stressful right now, but we're trying to keep an optimistic view.  Trying to not get pulled down by everything.  We have started a few new projects, one of them being the basement bar.  I'm hoping to have some pictures and maybe even some directions about that soon.

Well after that sort of depressing update, I leave you with this picture of Yoda, because she always brightens up my day.  How could anyone be sad looking at that funny little pug face?  Especially when it's topped with a pink mohawk.

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend. I promise to try and update this blog more often.  And I'll have new projects as soon as the weather decides to warm up a bit.  :-)  Take care.

It's been how long????

Wow, I haven't updated this blog for over two months.  What have I been thinking?  I need to get back on this.  So I'm going to try and be a little better and update this blog at least once a week for now.  I'll start updating more once we start back up with big projects (when J's back on break).

So what have we been up to these last couple months?  Well lets see.  We took a little break over Christmas.  No big projects this year, just a lot of traveling all over the state.  Which was okay.

We also had the tree in the back yard cut down.  And right after it was cut down, we got a huge snow storm, so now it's stuck under the snow.  I don't know if you can tell from the pictures, bu the yard bunnies are happy with the feast we've provided them.  I think even the wild animals will be happy when spring comes.

We've planned out and purchased all the oak for our home bar.  Which we will be starting soon, so I'll make sure to update on that.  I'm excited to get to work on it.

We had our appliances serviced.  Just their one year check up.  They checked out okay.  Apparently someone spilled pop on the dishwasher control panel (I'm not sure how that happened), and that's what's been causing all our problems.  So the repair guy cleaned it and told us if it starts acting up again, he'll come back out and replace the circuit board.

He also sent us a replacement refrigerator seal.  Apparently the seals on the French door fridges can have problems with tearing, so he said to keep the replacement handy just in case.  Unfortunately, we now have to store this large box.  Oh well, it's better then having the seal break and not having one.

We had a new digital water meter installed.  This was a huge headache, but it's over with, so I'm happy.  I'll do a full blog post on that soon.  Ugh.

Let's see, what else has changed around the house.  Oh yeah, I made a couple of sweater pillows.  These were made using sweaters I picked up at the thrift store for a couple of bucks each.  I just cut out squares and sewed them together.  I love the cardigan one, it's so cute.

Hmmm, I know a few other things changed around here over the last couple months, but I  can't think of them now.  I guess I'll have to do a second update when I think of them ;-)  

So we've busy, just not with big projects.  I think we needed a break after the last two projects.  We were pretty worn out.  But I think we're ready to start a few new things.  J's semester is a little bit lighter this time around, so we should be able to accomplish a few of the smaller projects we have planned.

Check back to see how our bar is coming along and don't forget about our three season porch, there are a lot of changes happening out there.

So what has everyone else been up to?  We have so much catching up to do. :-)

Thanksgiving Dinner

This year we are forgoing the annual Thanksgiving dinner at J's grandmother's house.  Instead we will be hosting dinner.  Now don't worry, it's just for my side of the family which consists of my mom and sister (and new baby).  Yeah, I have a very small family and except for my parents and sister, most of them live out of state.  So it will be a nice intimate dinner.

Now I grew up in a household that never had the traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  It just wasn't our style.  Since my dad is Italian, we normally had a pasta dish.  Linguine in clam sauce with shrimp to be exact, yum.  One year I did make duck in garlic sauce, that was pretty good and as close to a traditional bird as I get.  Now J's grandmother is all about the traditional dinner.  We always have a turkey and all the fixins, but it's just not my thing. (Not that I don't enjoy the meal at his grandmother's house, I just don't want to eat it every day).

So this year, since I am making dinner, I decided to do it my way.  J's a vegetarian, so a turkey is out, and well frankly, neither one of use want a Tofurky, blah.  So what am I going to do?  Well here is the menu me and J came up with the other day.  Okay, I made the menu and he approved.  ;-)

First, J hates stuffing.  He absolutely hates the stuff, so the traditional stuffing is out.  So a great substitution, the lovely wild rice mushroom stuffing.

 
Oh my, that looks delicious.  And J even gave it the thumbs up.  I won't be stuffing a bird with this, but I will be serving this as a side dish.  Wild rice and mushrooms, who could ask for a better combination.

Then as a salad I want to go with this spicy cucumber salad.

It's kinda a twist on the cucumber salad my mom always makes.  It's super simple to make, so I can have J make this.  Mmmmm, cucumbers.

I also wanted to make mashed potatoes with shiitake mushroom gravy, but we decided we would be pushing the mushroom theme too much.  So we decided on roasted potatoes.

Now I don't know if I'll make pesto potatoes, like pictured, above, but I will make roasted potatoes.  Maybe with a butter and herbs or even a sweet vinaigrette sauce.

Then we also want some bread and dipping oils.  And I have plenty of those, so we're covered there.  I also would like to make some homemade cheese.

I normally make ricotta using the recipe from smitten kitchen, but I have everything I need to make mozzarella.  So we might try and make some of that.  Or we might make both.

And you might say, what are you going to make for a main dish since you despise turkey so much? We plan on making stuffed portabellas.  I'd like to make some goat stuffed ones and some feta stuffed ones as well.    

We will be making large stuffed portabellas, not the small ones.  We will also be making some grilled veggies and possibly pasta to go with this.  It will be like the mushrooms we use to make sandwiches with, minus the bread.

And of course we can't forget about dessert.  We plan on making these delicious looking cookie bars I found the other day.

picture from RachelCooks.com

Just 5 ingredients?  Oh yes please.  J thinks we should make these this weekend to try them out and make sure they are good.  I think he might be right, wouldn't want to serve anything that didn't taste good ;-)    

So do you do the traditional thing for Thanksgiving or do you do something different?  Are you planning on hosting dinner or is that crazy talk?

Click on any of the links or pictures to take you to the recipes.  Or you can find them on my Pinterest boards.

Welcome Back

So I took a little break from this blog.  Nothing serious, just a little week long break to collect my thoughts and rest up a bit.  It's not like a lot is going on around here.  J is finishing up this semester of class.  I can't believe another semester is almost over, but I guess that's a good thing.  We only have two and a half years until he's done,  WooHoo!

We may not have been working on any ground shaking projects around here, but we have picked up a few things for here and there.

We picked up this medicine cabinet for the downstairs basement.  It was only $20 at the ReStore.  It needs a lot of love, but a little bit of cleaning and some new paint, and it'll be as good as new.  And it's going to look so nice downstairs.  We can get rid of that boring tiny mirror.  Now to decide what color to go with.  Yay, paint picking time!!!

And yes, I still need to take down that tape after priming the porch.  I should probably do that soon :-)

I also picked up this cute little scent warmer for the bathroom.  It was on clearance in the fall stuff at the hardware store.  It was only $6 and the little scent cubes were on sale for 75 cents a package.  I couldn't pass that up.  I grabbed this guy and a pomegranate and black cherry cubes.  Now the house smells delicious   

We also have been hitting up the Target clearance end caps for all things awesome.

I have had my eye on these green jars all summer.  I knew that the color was perfect for the upstairs bathroom, but I didn't know if I wanted to spend a lot of money on them.  Luckily, my waiting paid off and I got this guy for $10.  Yay!

Here's a close up look of how pretty it is.  I love the color and the shape.  It's perfect for the bathroom.

And because we seemed to be on a large jar kick, we also picked up this one for $10.  Perfect for the shelf in the kitchen.  It replaced our "fancy" bottle of New Glarus Belgian Red cheery beer wine (seriously, this stuff is amazing and it's my favorite wine.  If you are ever in WI you should try all one of there wines or beers).

We picked up a little oak bonsi tree for the study.  We've been eyeing them up, but they were a little bit out of our accessories price range.  But the second we noticed one in the clearance section it was in our cart.

And a side note, we have to have fake plants because Toonces eats every single real plant that is brought into the house.  Granted, she also tries to eat the fake plants, but at least that doesn't end with cat vomit on the carpet.  Sorry for the wonderful thought, but that's what we deal with here.      

We also grabbed this ice bucket for the downstairs bar.  I know, we haven't even started on the downstairs bar, but we couldn't pass it up.  Look at how cool it is.  It is mercury glass and has a great leather handle.  I don't think we will ever use it as an actual ice bucket, but it will look good on a shelf.  

And speaking of the bar, we picked up these excellent tile trim pieces at the ReStore.  We have never seen anything like them before.  They are ceramic tile covered with leather.  We picked them up for $0.50 a tile, which is a steal.  We looked up leather tile when we got home and found most tile priced around $4-$9 a tile, and we couldn't find any rounded trim pieces like these.  We don't have any exact plans for them, but we  knew we had to have them.  Maybe trim on the bar.  See all the cool stuff you can find at stores like the ReStore.

So not a lot of projects, but the start of decorating.  So what has everyone else been up to?  Do you love the Target clearance end caps as much as us?