Productive Weekend

1. Baby Brevyn = snuggled

2. Flowers and two vegetable gardens = planted

3. 5 loads of laundry = done

4. Phase 2 of Spring Cleaning = done

5. Trip to Tractor Supply Co. where a baby duck crapped on Lee = completed

6. New hammock = hung

Quote of the weekend:

Lee and I are lying in the new hammock, taking a break from a long day. It's quiet, the sun is setting, the weather is perfect. He squeezes me close and says:

"Your hair smells nice."

Pause.

"It smells like McCall's." (McCall's is a country buffet restaurant back home.)

Now, to explain, we had been cooking BBQ beef in the crock pot all day, so he was just pointing out that my hair smelled like BBQ beef.

Gee, thanks. Way to ruin the moment.

Sweet Baby Brevyn

She's finally here!

Brevyn Joy Harrison

Born 4/9/10, 3:03 am

10 lbs, 3 oz

Britt is doing well and Heith couldn't be a prouder papa (and husband).

I can't even HANDLE those cheeks.

Mid-yawn.

She is perfect. I can't wait to be able to squeeze those cheeks again.

Congrats Britt and Heith!

Sugar Says...

Happy Easter!

The Difference Between Men and Women

I found something when cleaning out my office that I just had to share.

I finally went through the exercise of going through and throwing out all of the leftover wedding paraphernalia and documentation. We're talking lists and spreadsheets and receipts and contracts and timelines. You can't even IMAGINE how many lists I made during the wedding planning process. We're talking Excel sheets that were pages and pages long. I snapped a few pictures of the madness:





And then I found this. My husband's "to do" list for our wedding:



A crumpled up post-it note with a total of 6 items on it.

This was what he had to worry about for our wedding.

At least he knew it was important enough that he needed to write it down.

And, I can safely say, this is a pretty accurate representation of how our life functions today.

Me with 8,000 to do lists and Lee with a post-it note of what he needs to buy at Lowe's.

Office Project Numero Uno: Worktable

After realizing that I didn’t want to spend more than about $30 on a worktable for my office, and realizing that $30 will barely by you one leg of a table, I found this beauty in the Dairy Barn on our family farm and decided to make her mine:



Once we got her home we realized she was in pretty rough condition. Lee got to work sanding the table down and cut off a few inches of each leg because they were dry-rotted a bit at the bottom. One whole leg had to be replaced completely, but Lee made one to match almost perfectly.

Even with sanding though, the top of the table still had a layer of grime on it. You see, the Dairy Barn was not used for the purpose you would think – milking cows – at least not since I’ve been alive. It was used for cooking greasy delicious meals of greasy BBQ, fried fish, BBQ chicken, fish stew and greasy hushpuppies. And the table still held a bit of that deliciousness from every one of those meals:



(The left side is the original table top, the right side is sanded with still a bit of grime hanging around.)

I didn’t necessarily want a film of grease on my worktable, so what do to? Enter: the pressure washer.

These days, Lee’s answer for everything is the pressure washer, and I have to say it worked miracles. Ten minutes later, grime was gone and it was time to move on to painting and sealing.

The bottom legs got a fresh white coat of paint and the top was left as natural wood with about 20 coats of Deft sealant.

So here she is now:





Not bad for the cost of a can of Deft, huh? (We already had the white paint lying around.)

Although most of our furniture is more contemporary, I’m finding myself drawn more and more to the vintage / farmhouse / cottage look. I was a bit worried about mixing the two styles but I think everything is going to come together nicely. Fingers crossed.

Office Introduction

I mentioned last week that I finally started to clean out our loft, which serves as my office slash craft space. Although in reality it has mostly been serving as storage for leftover wedding crap and boxes of scrapbooking supplies that I don't use anymore.

The loft really is a cool space -- as you walk upstairs it's off to the right and has a half wall that looks down over the living room. It's a big space though, big enough to be a bedroom, and has a large walk-in closet.

And now I'm on a mission to make it a space that is actually functional.

Although I don't scrapbook much anymore (because I'm now leaning more towards super quick and easy photobooks), I still love being creative and need a space for working on random crafts, wrapping presents, and scheming my next home design project.

Here's a glimpse of where the loft was a couple of weeks ago:

Not an ideal space for productivity or creativity.

Again, living with this mess for a year and a half has given me a pretty good idea of what I'd like in this space. So, here's the wish list:

- A large worktable for craft projects

- Lots of storage for books and magazines, craft supplies, and wrapping supplies

- Storage/organization for the closet

- Curtains

- A table fan (because it gets hot up here in the summer)

- Possibly a little sitting/reading area

I'm convinced that having all of my supplies nice and organized and a nice blank workspace (without having to run downstairs to the dining table to wrap a present) is going to be super inspiring. We'll see.

So, now that you know the plan, I'll be posting small projects along the way and will keep you up to date on the progress.

Tune in tomorrow for the first installation: Project Worktable.

Hello Sunshine

I'm getting giddy just looking at this forecast. Is it possible we might have a warm Easter for once?