Drill bit-ness

In the end of May we will have lived in our home for five years. For five years I've been staring at the guest bath cabinetry saying, "one day, I'm going to add hardware to you...one day!"

Well, one day became today.

It all started about two weeks ago. The hubs and his dad went to the NCAA tournament here in Cleveland, so I had a Sunday night all to myself. What's a girl to do without her leading man around? Shop and eat!

So I went over to Target, and since I didn't have anyone to cook for, I took my time strolling all the aisles. (I mean like, every aisle...) and I came across their cabinet hardware on CRUH-ZA-ZEE clearance! I picked up a 10 pack of knobs for $4.24 and a two pack of pulls for $5.24! Since I didn't want to ruin a good thing, I decided to stop while I was still up (I'm speaking casino lingo now...) and left Target. (Well, not riiiiight then. I mean, I still had time to kill before meeting my mother-in-law for dinner, so I took a quick trip over to the Easter aisles and left with jelly beans, chocolate covered Peeps (omg!) and some other goodies that will reveal themselves on Easter Sunday!)

Ok, back to hardware.

I only had one drill bit, which because its tiny, I'm able to wiggle around and around (and around) a hole sometimes to make the hole big enough. (You follow?) So I figured I'd be okay drilling into the solid wood cabinets.

This morning I get all excited and decide, "Today will be the day!". I grabbed all the essentials and sat down to get down to bid-ness.
I had the drill, tape measure, laser level (which, if you don't have one, buy one. Best moo-lah I've spent in a while!) and a pencil. What more could a girl need?

I start measuring the cabinet fronts, marking the center side to side and the center top to bottom of each drawer front, then used my laser (insert Austin Powers voice) and made sure they all lined up straight (because if they didn't, it would bug me- and since I only get one shot at making a hole in the front...figured it should be exact!)

I marked at first with a pen (then realized that's kinda permanent- I should use a pencil) grabbed a pencil, then couldn't really see it, so I kinda guessed for a little...then made the ultimate commitment with a Sharpie dot!

Once I had all my Sharpie dots in a row it was time to start drilling. (Remember how I mentioned before I only "had" one bit?) Right. I drilled a hole with it, wiggled it about, and nothing. It was too small and aggravating to try and make the hole bigger, so I made a trip to Home Depot (third trip in three days- I'm really glad its less than five minutes from our house!) to pick up a box of bits that came in a variety of sizes. I ended up with a set that has 31 different sizes. (I started to think, where else can I drill now? I gotta break these all in!!)

Alright, now I think I'm all set, so I start drilling and realize how messy this is. I stop, run downstairs and pick up our Dust Buster. (BTW, best invention EVER Black and Decker!) After every hole I drilled, pulled out the Dust Buster, sucked up the mess...this process repeated itself a total of 10 times!

I got my first handle up in no time!
Then came the tricky part...the two "drawer fronts" that aren't really drawers. Drilling the hole wasn't the problem. The problem was getting the screw in the back, so I could attach the pull on the front...

Things went smoothly from there. I drilled the rest of the holes no problem, added the pulls to the bottom two drawers on each side and then sit a road block. The screws were too short. (insert wa-wa sound)End result was this:

I searched high and low in the tool box and my Mary Poppins bag (more on that later) for longer screws. I find some (ta-da!) just to learn the threading was different. Then I get a stroke of genius. I go into our master bath and take a look at our drawers...

See the problem in the guest bath was that the drawer box added another 1/2" of thickness to the already 1/2" thick drawer front. The poor lil' screws that came with the hardware only accommodated for the drawer/door thickness...not the box thickness as well.

Well, when my wonderful father-in-law and hubby installed the hardware into the master bath, they removed the drawer fronts, drilled the hole, attached the hardware to the drawer front, then attached the drawer front back to the box...thus eliminating the extra thickness of the box and the too short screw!

So I did the same thing and it worked like a charm! Here's the end result:
So it went from this in the morning:
To this when I was all done:

If you didn't know...

The hubs and I are HUGE Disney fans. When we lived in South Florida, it was super easy for us to jump up to Mickey's house and visit anytime we wanted, so now living in Ohio makes it a little hard to house crash Cinderella's castle...

BUT, check this out. The Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival has started and guess what?! They have added Pixar characters to their line up! Ohhh how exciting!

Now if we could just fly down for a quick weekend...

Fun finds at ZGallerie

I know its been a while since I've done a post of 'fun finds'...but here I am again chit chatting about super fun/cute/quirky things I've found at ZGallerie ('cause let's be real, ZGallerie has got it going on!)

Lets start here. I love pugs (we have a puggle, Jack) and these two bookends, pug and dachshund, I just can't get enough of 'em...actually, the dachshund one reminds me of Slinky Dog from Toy Story! I'm pretty sure having this on anyone's desk would make you more productive...and if nothing else, you could bring up your bowling score!

STRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKE!
Sometimes when I sit on our couch, I wonder what time it is. With this rug, I wouldn't have to look much further than my feet to find out!

See, now these are totally practical. Light the candle at one end, then eat your cake with the fork. Perfect ying and yang going on here for me.

I have a thing for cupcakes. Mom got me a babycakes maker for Christmas, and I tell you what- I have been making cupcakes for everything. From celebrating birthdays to celebrating because its Tuesday!(I also like this tea cupcake kit because I gave up coffee for Lent, and now I'm a connoisseur of all things tea!)

And with Easter right around the corner, who couldn't use a cute lil' rabbit?

Ok, if I walked into your house and you had this vase, I would probably say, "nice to meet you, but your vase is looking at me and its freaking me out. Buh bye."Call me crazy, but vases shouldn't have noses.

Now if you had this umbrella stand at your front door, I'd say you were a very practical, fun person and we should be friends!

And last but not least, this luggage tag makes me smile- because really, how many times has that iffy-looking person picked up the wrong bag (and it was yours!)

Domino effect

You know how they say "bad things happen in 3s". Well, in our house we've escaped this phenomenon for a while, and then it all hit at once. (Because it always hits at once. That's just the way it goes...) Started with our wine refrigerator, then our stove and then our sump pump...all in the matter of two weeks.

Back story: when we got married, we honeymooned in Hawaii and stopped at the Maui Winery. We picked up three bottles of wine for us. One to open on our first year anniversary, one to open on our five year anniversary and one to open on our 10 year anniversary. To keep them fresh, he bought me a wine refrigerator to keep them in. Well, after two years, the fridge died, so we went without one for a while. Now for the story...

For a Christmas gift this year, my mom got us a new wine refrigerator! We were so excited to have slightly chilled red wine again! I rearranged the eating area furniture to include a wine bar now...made it look all bar-ish (with a basket that held the cork screw, bottle toppers...)Oh yeah, I was excited!

I'm a red wine drinker. I enjoy it over white, don't know why...but I just do. So once night I open the wine fridge and see I only have a white left. After the shock wore off, I decided to just be a big girl and suck it up (or, down in this case). I did (it was a pinot grigio) and promptly recorked it, and laid it back in the fridge. I wake up the next morning and find WHITE WINE ALL OVER! I get super frustrated, curse the bottle of white- then swear I will NEVER drink white wine again (because, of course this was the wine's fault!). I cleaned up the white mess and moved about my day.

Throughout the day I noticed the thermostat on the front of the fridge was going up a few degrees. For a day and a half I watched the thermostat rise from a crisp 65 to 80. Obviously the stupid white wine attacked the fridge in our sleep...thus obliterating our wine fridge. (Worst part, because of the spilled wine, it was leaking before I took it back. Our fridge became a total lush.)

Because it was only the middle of February, we were able to take back our drunky-Mc-drunker fridge and decided to exchange it for a fancy toaster oven with preset options and a digital display! (We came home with it and it took me 25 minutes of reading the users manual to figure it out! AWESOOOME!)

Why a toaster oven, you might be asking...here's where the domino effect comes in.

For at least six months, our oven was acting the fool and taking vacations at the same exact time I was trying to make dinner. So, I would have to plan to turn on the oven at 4pm so I could put dinner in around 5- it honestly took more than an hour to heat up to 350. I was able to deal with this for a while...but then the wine fridge decided to take a trip to drunky-Heaven, so the hubs said, 'Lets get a bigger toaster oven, because the stove is a piece of crap'. I'm all in.

Putting the toaster oven on double duty worked out awesome for a while. And then one night I decided to just give the 'ol stove one more try. It was an epic failure of mass proportions. This is when I decided we needed, not wanted, NEEDED a stove that actually worked.

We special ordered it and were told it would "be delivered in about three weeks". I figured, I've gone without a real stove for half a year, I can wait three weeks. But then, only a week after we ordered it, it arrived! TADAAAAH! Maybe our luck was starting to change...Don't the grates look like spiders? I LOVE 'em!!

Alas, our luck had not changed because, based on the scientific law of "bad things happen in 3s"...we had not reached our third problem. And then it happened. On the morning of February 28th our basement flooded. (Insert sad music). Turns out it was because of the massive amount of flooding we incurred the night before, along with our house loosing power, coupled with our backup sump pump battery was dead...resulted in water in the basement. Good news was our neighbors are awesome and lent us a wet/dry vacuum to suck up the water and a fan to circulate the air...but really, it was just horrible. I cried like a baby when I walked downstairs and saw my desk area under water. So that was our third problem, which was solved with a new sump pump

And there you have it, our domino effect. Thankfully the hubs and I smile a lot and laughed when the next thing (and the next thing) happened.

Now we are back up and running on all six cylinders! Thank God!!

Bit by the bug

I've never understood when people say they are going to start "Spring cleaning". I assume people keep their homes relatively clean year round...so what would make Spring the magic time of year to break out the big yellow gloves and get down to bidness?

The other day I was opening the front door, looked out and saw my neighbor Windexing her glass front door. This made me think, "Gosh, I haven't Windexed mine in a while"...but I didn't want to break out the blue stuff right away (I didn't want her to think I'm a stalker or anything)...so I waited an appropriate amount of time ('bout 2 hours) and then wandered over to our front door, sprayed it down, sniffed the ammonia fragrance that means its "squeaky clean", wadded up some paper towel and went to town.

Wow. It was grosser than I thought. Himph.

This lead me to Windex every vertical surface downstairs. The mirror over the console got a wash...the sliding glass door got washed (and, ew. That was just covered in Jack-snot). Then I started thinking bigger. Larger than just what can I spray Windex on...what else really needs to be cleaned?

AH, HA! The laundry room! (It was around this point I realized I had been bitten by this spring cleaning bug they talk about...)

So the next morning, energized by my new bug bite, I grabbed a bucket of water, a new sponge, moved everything out of the laundry room, pulled out the dryer and looked down at Dust Bunny Cemetery. Apparently this is where all the dust in our house goes to die.

It wasn't too long before that fresh bucket of water was disgusting, had lots of floaters (eww!) and needed to be switched. When I was armed with a fresh bucket, I removed all the dust from the back of the dryer, removed the dryer vent, got all the yucky (but strangely smell-good) fluff out, walked outside and cleaned around the exhaust panel for the dryer...came back inside, dusted more, got another fresh bucket of water and then started all over again on the washer.

And then, while my knees were screaming at me for not putting something cushy under them while doing all this manual labor, I stood up and reorganized the shelving unit!
(This might sound like a boring task to some, but organizing makes me happy...maybe a little too happy.) I grabbed some small plastic bins (the kind one of my friends stacks to the ceiling in her closet, each filled with a fabulous pair of shoes!) and pulled out the labels and Mr. Sharpie.
(I get complimented on my handwriting a lot, and in times like this...I want to pat myself on the back for it...check out those letters! Daaaaang!)

Now, I'm like most girls (women), when I buy something and receive a nice bag (like, from Pottery Barn or Macy's) I keep it. Because, you never know when someone might ask for a nice, sturdy, bag with a handle. (It has yet to happen, but when/if it does, I'll be ready!) So I keep a few on hand at all times. They now have a place of their very own to call home! Right next to the washer! I still have to pick up a decorative hook to hang the big bag on...but for now, they are organized (smallest in the front) and have a home.
Here's some more photos of our super clean, fresh and organized laundry room!Looks like we have a thing for purple floor cleaners, eh?

When the hubs got home that night I wanted to suggest we eat in the laundry room (because it was now the cleanest room 'da house!) but decided that would just mess it up...and I refuse, let me repeat REFUSE to have crumbs in our freshly cleaned laundry room! Although...knowing this fact, I now realized how badly our kitchen was in need of a cleaning...

Thanks Google!

For fun, I just Googled "erinteriors, Ohio" and was surprised to see all my blog posts pop up. Then something I didn't recognize, an article about the Christmas house I helped decorate!

Check it out here.

They mention Erinteriors room, The Children's room, about half way down!

How exciting!

Vinylmations

The hubs and I have a small obsession with Disney and recently (in the last few years) they have come out with a new line of collectible vinyl figures. They come in two sizes, 3" or 9", and they are all the same basic shape. Mickey Mouse. From there, they have different artists draw over the Mickey form, creating mini pieces of art.

There are so many different collections to choose from but the most exciting part of collecting vinylmations is that you don't know what your getting. All the boxes are blacked out...so all you can choose is the collection, from there, its all luck.

Our collection started out small, about 7 from our first trip down when they started selling them...from there, it grew...
(See why its called an obsession now?)

So for a while, we were able to display them all in the corner cabinet in the family room...this one:

Well, then it started getting out of control. Vinylmations started popping up in really random places throughout the house. Over the fish tank. On top of picture frames- it was getting to be like an infestation of super cute Mickey shaped things. Suddenly they became less of a "oh, I can't wait to buy more" and became instead, "that one is cute, but where the hell are we going to put it?"

Then, genius. I had a vision. What if they were all on shelves. What if they were organized into a little vinylmation army? (Rather than hovering over the poor fish...) And so I went on a mission to allocate black shelves. (It wasn't so much a "mission" as, just going to Target, finding the ledges, and buying them...)

I knew exactly where the ledges were going to go, around the Mickey Mouse tapestry (which, honestly the wall was needing a little color-love, so this worked out perfectly!) (Notice the large E2 over our front door, that's our thing. We are both named with E names, so we call ourselves E-squared!)

Once the shelves were up, now it was a matter of organizing them. Do we keep the collections together? Should I keep them together by when we purchased them? And then I realized, really? Who am I kidding? They are going to be organized by color and what goes together. Cutest ones in front. Not so cute, back line. Our most favorites (for whatever reason), front line and bottom shelves. Ones that we acquired but could do without, back line, top shelf. In the end, it looks like this:

I feel so relived about moving the small vinyl army into one place, that looks nice, adds color to the wall...and, now there is more space for us to get new ones! (That's probably the best part!)

(And, just to keep you excited about how cute these little vinyl-creations are, here's one of my favorites...Ursela from The Little Mermaid! EEK!)

Brit-Brit

I used to be a closeted Britney Spears fan...then she shaved her head, had her lil' meltdown, psychiatric hold for a few days...whatever, I quickly moved out of my closet (covered in Britney posters!) and rooted for her. Loudly.

Now even though I have never actually purchased a Britney Spears cd (or download, or whatever the kids are calling music these days...) I sing all her songs, watch her videos in awe and click on her face when a new article pops up on people.com.

So today her newest single "leaked"...

My head hasn't been popping this hard since Miley Cyrus released Party in the USA...

I'm such a teeny-bopper (and I love it!)

Valances

One of the many perks of my career is making friends with my clients. So when one of my clients had leftover fabric from her window treatments she offered it to me! I was so excited I couldn't wait to go home and make the first stitch.

Well, it took a little longer than I anticipated (just a few years)...but thankfully, this weekend with my mom driving the fabric train, we made valances!

Before we got to the actual train station though (I don't know why I'm using a train reference here, just go with me...haha) we had to grab supplies.

First stop of the day was at Home Depot (my home away from home!) and grabbed a staple gun. (Side note about Home Depot, my mom would rather have a root canal than go to Home Depot. She detests it. I have no idea why...I could spend a very long time there; but she was driving and I didn't want to be left 'cause it would have been a super cold walk back to the house...so our trip was about 7.5 minutes, that includes driving into the parking lot, finding a space, locating the staple gun isle, checking out and leaving the lot. Mom doesn't play.)

Second stop was at a store mom is more comfortable in, Joanns! We got a little side tracked with the food Cricut machine (they were doing demo's so of course we watched for a while...) then put the train back on its tracks, and went back home.

Mom is a pro at all things involving sewing. She taught Home Ec. for the longest time...and while we were at Joanns she bought me some needles and thread to add to my empty sewing kit. (My sewing kit might have been empty- but check out my tool box...that's all I'm sayin'...)

If I had a train conductors hat, I would have put it on moms head 'cause she knew exactly what she was doing. Most of the time I asked, "do you need help?" "what's that do?"

The only time I knew for sure what was going on was when I used the staple gun to adhere the fabric to the piece of wood...

So here's what the kitchen looked like before:
Here's me watching mom work:
Mom using her thinking cap:
And the after:
Close up on the window:

We did this project on Saturday and every time since then when I walk in the house, I smile (big) because I'm so happy with the way they came out!! WAHOO!

Follow the herd

When you have a driveway that's this long, How do you keep the interest of your guests that have to walk it on a cold February day?

Simple, you have someone make super cute signs to get your baby shower guests excited about what's ahead. My first idea was to cut out baby feet, attach them to signs and have the guests follow the path of feet to the front door. Then I thought, "why reinvent the wheel. The shower invites are a safari theme- what if I made safari themed signs?"

So then I put on my thinking cap. I'd need two sheets of paper, one with a saying on it, then a backside...and some room in between the two sheets so I could put a stick through them so we can put them in the ground...after a while, my brain started to hurt, so I took a step back and went to the craft store.

I found the PERFECT safari paper...and solid black paper to attach to the back- but then I hit the wall. How do I attach the two papers? Laminate them? I kept walking around, thinking, thinking, thinking...I stumbled upon St.Patrick's Day garden stakes that had holographic shamrocks or hats on them. 50% off. SCORE! (I could somehow attach the two papers, then stick the St.Patrick's Day piece inside...) This idea was actually starting to come together!

Then I realized in the scrap booking isle they have 12x12 sheet protectors with two open sides...so if I taped the one open side....EEK!

Then it was time to feel like an evil genius creating something spectacular (think of when the lightning went through Frankenstein...yeah- it was THAT exciting!)

So, to start I used the Cricut to cut the letters (Don Juan cartridge) and attached them to the safari paper with paper glue. Let 'em sit over night.

Then tape the two sheets together, slide the page protector over them, tape the top and insert the St.Patrick's Day garden stake:

Eureka! Next step was putting them in the ground to lead the way to the front door!The last two signs by the front door read

I had a difficult time trying to find safari themed quotes to use...I didn't remember that Mac's web browser is "safari"...so when I typed it in, all these Mac blogs were popping up...error messages...I felt like one of those Bing! commercials!

I ended up with 10 signs:
- Don't feed the animals (which was on the invitation!)
- Follow the herd
- Giraffe crossing
- Zimbabwe 3000 miles
- Passports required
- Rrrrrroaring good time ahead
- Swing on over
- Watch for monkeys
- Its a jungle out here
- Come inside

I was so excited at how well received they were by guests at the shower!