life – Laughingly Ever After

Let me tell you about my best friend!

December 19, 2016 mrs_ellyk Comments 0 Comment

Well, if finally a happened! We got a kitten! I hadn’t really been expecting to get a new kitten but Matt and I had talked about it before. I really wanted Julio to have a kitten before he was too old (and grumpy like his sister) to enjoy one. I’m constantly showing Matt cute kittens for sale on FB but it hadn’t really gone past that point. Then a few weeks ago, Julio was standing on the floor while Hal was on the bed and he bear-hugged her off the bed. At this point, I knew Julio needed a friend.

As it happened, my coworkers wife is the director of adoptions at the local SPCA. I was casually looking at their website a few weeks ago when I came across a cute little one-eyed kitten. I sent the link to Matt. While he wasn’t really ready to get a kitten, he asked a few questions, to which my coworker asked his wife and finally Matt said I could go meet her after work.

I got to the SPCA and told them I was there to see the one-eyed kitten when they told me she’d been adopted about an hour before. 🙁 As I was waiting for my coworkers wife to come out and see me, I saw a little orange tabby being walked out of one of the rooms. Then she was walked back in with a cone of shame. I immediately fell in love.

I was taken to the kitten room and that’s when I found Lutzy (like Lucy but with a tz)! She’d just been spayed and was still groggy from surgery and falling everywhere with her cone of shame. Since she wasn’t available for adoption that day, I was told they would hold her till the next day. I took some pics and video and Matt and I talked about it that night. The next day I went to pick her up only to find out she had a hernia. Since she would need an additional surgery, I had two options. I could adopt her “as is” or we could foster her until her surgery and then adopt her. I was more than happy to foster her until her next surgery.

Last week little Lutz had her hernia surgery and on Wed she was officially ours! She’s a little bugger and is currently back in the cone of shame for a few more days.

She is getting along very well with her brother and sister. Julio will play with her and she’s forcing him to learn to cuddle. 😉 She’s even doing well with the grump herself, Halle. Hal has growled and hissed at her a little but mostly she just meows loudly and crossly at her. Last night Lutz got brave and went to lay on Halle. Hal wasn’t really happy about this but Matt and I thought it was pretty funny. It lasted long enough for me to get a few pics! 😉

All in all Lutzy is fitting in well. She just needs to learn the rules of the house (which is going to take some time).

Paint me a picture!

October 31, 2016 mrs_ellyk Comments 0 Comment

Okay, so last week I posted the pic I bought at our neighborhood yard sale. The plan, paint over the original canvas (pray it wasn’t priceless) and update the frame. I really had no clue how long something like this might take. Honestly, I kind of thought it might take me a while.

Saturday morning while Matt was out golfing, I decided to start painting and see what happened. I made a makeshift painting station in the garage. One side has a small ledge a few feet up and a couple inches wide so I tape a sheet to the wall and was able to prop the canvas up on the ledge. From there I just started mixing colors. Originally I wanted to go more grey but my paint turned a little more green so I just ran with it. I started off with my brush just mixing colors on the canvas. (Really I should have put a white layer on first but I knew I didn’t have enough paint for that.) So I just kept going, mixing paint and brushing it on.

Once I had the whole canvas covered, which didn’t actually take more than 15-20 mins. I stepped back to check out what I had. It wasn’t bad! I liked the color gradients, so I grabbed a palette knife and started building the colors on the canvas. At this point I was just mixing the colors together with the palette knife and swiping it on the canvas. And it looked pretty good. Once the majority was done, I realized I needed to add a little bit of coral, since the bedroom is basically coral and white! 😉 A little red, yellow, pink and white and I had something that resembled coral. I had no clue really where I wanted to add it and decided on a to just put it near the bottom and hope it didn’t look dumb. It turned out pretty good and is really only a small touch of color. After that I was done!
I texted a few people pics of it and they all thought it looked good.

This is upside down. I couldn’t decide which way I was thing to hang it.

Later that afternoon I decided I was going to work on the frame. I ran up to my craft room and grabbed some rose gold and off white paint. I used the rose gold to neutralize the brassy yellows currently on the frame. Then I mixed my off white with a bit of titanium white and added water. Lots of water. It was kind of messy but the result was a nice, worn looking frame. (I will say, the titanium white really wasn’t needed.) The last thing I had to do was paint the outer edge of the canvas. In hindsight, I probably should have painted that white first and then taped it off but I didn’t do that. I had to very carefully paint white around the edges of my newly painted canvas. In the end, I ended up with a little more white here and there but I didn’t really mind the way it looked so I just left it. I did go back and try to fix one corner of the canvas I wasn’t super happy with. It was a little flat. I can’t say it helped but it didn’t hurt it either. Just added a little more color and texture.

I let everything dry overnight and Sunday morning Matt helped me reattach the canvas to the frame. Then I got up the nerve to actually sign it. It was really stressful. 😉 But I got my name on the corner and it doesn’t look awful.

Now it’s hanging over the bed in our guest room! I think it turned out really good!

Priceless?

October 24, 2016 mrs_ellyk Comments 1 comment

Over the weekend we had a neighborhood yard sale. This happens 2x a year and I’ve gone to all of them since we moved in. I’ve managed to score some pretty cool items, for cheap too. Last year I got a bag of pink Christmas ornaments for $5.00, much to Matt’s dismay. (This led to the purchase of a white Christmas tree! 😉 ) At the same house, I found some really large 24×36 wooden frames. I think they were $1.00 for both! They are currently hanging above the buffet in the living room waiting to be made over.

This year, my usual partner was actually participating so Mom said she would go with me. I managed to snag a few free baskets from a friend at our first stop. Mom found a large outdoor lantern and some pics at our 2nd stop (and spent almost all of her money!) After that it was kind of slow. It didn’t feel like many people were participating this year. As we were headed back to the house we stopped at a sale just down the street. There was a large painting sitting off to the side. Mom and I were talking about it when the sellers came over. Apparently it had been “Aunt Ida’s”. They said they weren’t sure Aunt Ida ever liked the pic but she had had it for years. It was about the size I was looking for for over the guest bed but the painting was not really my style. While a nice landscape, it just wouldn’t work in the house. I asked how much and when the lady said $10.00, I knew it was coming home with me.

I told Mom Matt was going to kill me but the frame alone was worth probably $50.00 or more. So my grand vision, paint over the existing canvas. Yep! Matt didn’t care that I’d bought the pic but he was curious as to how long it was going to sit in the garage. I might have a few ~~or five~~ other projects currently sitting out there. :O

Yesterday, I ran to Michael’s to get some Gesso. I knew I could use that to cover the existing print and also to add more texture. So right now it’s in the garage with a few light Gesso coats on it. Since I hadn’t used Gesso before, I didn’t want to get ahead of myself and get paints too. Plus I wanted to use a 40% off coupon for the paint set so I ran back to Michael’s at lunch to get some paints and brushes. Now I have to figure out what I’m going to paint. Or just see what happens. I want to go for something pretty abstract. I’m hoping that equates to easy.

I’m hoping to have it finished this week so we’ll see what happens. For now, let’s just hope the original wasn’t some priceless piece of art!

It started with curtains

August 16, 2016 mrs_ellyk Comments 1 comment

Before we moved into the new house, we knew we would need new bedroom furniture. Matt didn’t want to buy anything while we were still in the townhouse, since we had no clue what our new bedroom space would look like. We ended up getting my old bedroom set from my mom and have had that for a few years now. It was a decent size in the townhouse but we figured it would be too small once we moved.

We’ve been in the new house for over a year and the bedroom just doesn’t fit. The furniture is too small and the room as a whole was feeling kind of blah. I told Matt the time was coming for a makeover. I will hopefully have a little money from my grandmother and I told Matt part of that was going to redoing our bedroom! Well, I’m still waiting to see how much money I might have but the bedroom makeover is under way. It all started with curtains.

I ran to Home Goods at lunch one day looking for a few more baskets for my closet. I hadn’t planned to buy new curtains but while I was there I decided to see what they had. I figured finding 6 curtain panels, in the right size, at Home Goods was probably impossible so I was SHOCKED when I found 3 pairs. That I LOVED! Needless to say the curtains came home with me. We got the curtains hung and I was in love! They were so light and airy and made the room feel much more cozy. Of course, now the bedding didn’t match. I found a set at Stein Mart I liked and mom was able to get me a discount. With new bedding and curtains, the room was coming together. I’d decided I wasn’t crazy about the pics I had over the bed though. Not that that was a necessity at this point but I had causally started looking.

The other day I ran to a junk store by my office. It was recently purchased and the new owners have taken it upon themselves to start sprucing the place up. When I first started going, it was a total hole! Now it’s almost like a real store. Anyway, while I was in there the other day I saw a painting when I walked in. I glanced at it and kept moving. As I was headed back to the front I noticed someone carrying it around. I started talking to her and she ended up giving it back to me. Whoops. I really loved the frame but was a little disappointed the “painting” was only a print. I ended up buying it with thoughts of removing the print and painting something myself. I went as far as to find all the paint supplies I needed on Amazon.

I got the picture home and waited for Matt’s reaction. He was very “meh” about the whole thing. While he was playing golf on Sat morning I propped the new pic up above the bed and immediately decided it was perfect! I hung it on Sunday and it really adds to the room. The pics are kind of hard to get a good feel but so far everything is coming together beautifully! Now we just need the big stuff, like new furniture!

If you are interested in the bedside tables, you can find that post here.

One Round, Two Firsts

May 6, 2016 mrs_ellyk Comments 0 Comment

Well hello there! It’s been a while. Life has been kind of busy lately. Matt and I always seem to have something to do lately, whether it’s playing golf, doing stuff around the house, or just being lazy. I feel like we are so much busier now days.

Three weeks ago I started weekly golf lessons. Our club is offering a weekly Ladies Clinic this Spring/Summer. As soon as I heard about it, I knew I was going to sign up. I recruited a few friends to join me and the past few weeks we’ve had close to 40 ladies attend, which is amazing. The first few lessons have covered the short game, chipping and putting. Neither of which I’m great at but I think I might have picked something up from the putting clinics.

Anyway, I’ve made a new golf friend and we’ve been playing or practicing a few times a week since clinic started. We’ve even made the husbands go out with us. 😉 Since we are about the same level, she is a good person to play with.

I told Matt a while back my goal for this summer was to get my first Par. We have a couple of short Par 3 holes and I’ve had my eye on #3 for my first Par. Yesterday G and I went out with her husband to play a quick 9 scramble since Matt and a friend tee’ed off a few minutes before us. The goal was to eventually catch up to them.

We get to #3 and I hit a pretty decent drive off the tee. I end up right on the fringe of the green. All I need to do is 2 putt and I’ll have Par. Well, I totally ended up blowing my putts and finished with a Bogie. Boo!

Lately I’ve been hitting my driver pretty well off the tee on #6 and yesterday was no exception. I hit a great drive to the bottom right of the fairway. Now I just need to get it over the “schmutz” (aka the crap/rough/hazard) which is sort of a problem for me. I grab my 3 Wood and end up hitting a great second shot to the front of the green! Holy cow I’m on the green in 2! I’m about 20 ft from the hole and have a great first putt just short of the hole. Tap in the second putt for Par! YAY!!!! Of all the holes I thought I’d Par, I didn’t think it would be #6, a Par 4 hole!

At this point I’m feeling pretty good! I’ve gotten my Par. Now I just need to get my ball over the schmutz on #8, a short Par 3. The past few times I’ve played, I’ve completly jacked this hole and ended up not even finishing because I’ve lost at least one ball off the tee. I’ve been practicing hitting my irons off the tee at the range just for this stupid hole. I tee up and hit. “Just make it over, just make it over!” The ball clears the schmutz, lands on the green and rolls…..and stops about 5 ft short of the hole! Holy cow! I now have a shot at Birdie! A few deep breaths later, I tap the ball into the hole! YAY!!!! Cue minor freak out!

We finish #9 and Matt is waiting for us! I proceed to give him the play by play for my awesome accomplishments for our round! It feels pretty good to know that I am actually getting better at this game and that one day I might actually be able to keep score! 😉

Christmas 2015

January 26, 2016 mrs_ellyk Comments 1 comment

One would have thought I’d be jumping at the chance to decorate the new house for Christmas however, that wasn’t exactly the case this year. I couldn’t find my motivation, but I think I couldn’t find motivation because I couldn’t find my vision! I had no clue what to do with the new house this year. I knew I wanted candles in the windows and wreaths on the windows.

After Thanksgiving, I ran to Michael’s and picked up some garland for the porch. I really wanted to use spot lights for the outside of the house but due to the elevation, we couldn’t get them to look right. So we ended up outside one night just putting white lights on the garland. As it turned out, it looked good.

The house Christmas Eve. The neighborhood did luminaries.

The white tree topper. I found the gold topper and added a bow.

As the outside was coming together, inside was slowly getting started. I think the tree was up for a week without any decorations, whoops. Slowly I started to make my way around the house. I purchased a 6ft white tree from Amazon in November that I planned to put in the dining room. I bought a bag full of pink ornaments at our neighborhood garage sale back in the summer, so I needed a tree. 😉 Matt was not happy about the white tree, hehe. I also had my dad build a rustic box for the dining room table. I filled it with leftover ornaments, and it may still be sitting on the table because I love it!

The stairs got some light garland I found at Kirkland’s on sale and the fireplace ended up with some greenery picks from Hobby Lobby. The tree was put in the back corner of the living room and was slowly decorated. It wasn’t my favorite tree so I’ll have to try harder next year. My nutcrackers filled the tops of the built-in’s beside the fireplace. Then I have to figure out what to do with my newly acquired buffet. Mom gave it to me a few months ago and I still need to paint it but it’s currently on the back wall in the living room. I added some wooden frames above it and put leftover wreaths in the middle. This might have been my favorite decorating idea! The frames will also be painted and I will put some pics from our last trip to London in them at some point.

I didn’t take a ton of pics this year.

The story of Cujo

October 22, 2015 mrs_ellyk Comments 1 comment

**Blogging has kind of fallen by the wayside as of late. To be honest, almost all the blogs I started out reading are no longer around. Blogging seems like it’s becoming a thing of the past. I will probably continue to update this randomly. I have a few more projects I’m about to start so I will continue to post those types of things. **

Back when I was maybe a Sophomore in High School a friend and I were at McDonald’s one weekend night. (McDonald’s was in the heart of our “loop” so people would go there and hang out waiting to see people.) Anyway Jennifer and I were sitting around when our friends, Norman and Chris, came in. Norman and Chris were Seniors at this point, and they came over and started talking to us. Norman asked if we wanted to go see Cujo. Jennifer and I said yes so the four of us hopped in Norman’s car and headed towards the country. I have no clue where this place was but it was probably only 15 mins from downtown.

When we get to where we were going, Norman turns off the car lights and we all roll down our windows. We make our initial pass down the road with Chris standing up through the sunroof yelling Cujo. On our way back by the house, we hear someone yell and then we hear a shotgun blast. Chris ~~falls~~ ducks back in the car and Norman floors it. Jennifer and I are in the backseat dying with laughter as we drive off. Chris is totally freaking out because we just got shot at. And by shot at, I feel pretty confident the guy didn’t actually shoot at the car.

Needless to say, we did not see Cujo that night but it made for one hellava story.

Fast forward about a year. The company dad worked for was always hiring guys I went to school with. One day, dad comes home and asks me if I know a guy named Norman. I tell him I do, and I proceed to tell him about the Cujo story. The next day dad goes to work and decides to ask Norman about Cujo and why he’s getting his daughter shot at. I think that probably freaked him out more than us getting shot at. Of course dad wasn’t mad but I think that makes the story even funnier.

There are a few random stories I might try to blog. Details to all are a little fuzzy but some of them I’d like to write down.

Frosty

September 10, 2015 mrs_ellyk Comments 0 Comment

I know I’ve talked about this a bunch so I won’t rehash all the details regarding our door debacle. Anyway, a few weeks ago, a car guy Matt knows, posted some window frosting he’d done for a local hotel. At that point, I had no clue how I was going to get our door frosted so I asked Matt how to contact him. He gave me his email and then I basically begged him to come do our door. He agreed and we started talking details. I already knew what I wanted so he drew it up. Matt and I agreed on a design and then I decided on a film. The film was ordered and once it arrived Matt’s friend cut it and set up a time for install.

Last Friday he came over around 10:30 to start on the door. It only took about 30 mins and man does it look amazing! It’s pretty subtle from the outside during the day but I LOVE how it looks from the inside and outside at night.

Flea market find!

September 3, 2015 mrs_ellyk Comments 2 comments

Matt and I knew that when we bought a new house there were various items that would need to be upgraded. Our bedroom furniture is on that list. We are currently in possession of my childhood furniture set. However, this set did not come with bedside tables so a few years ago I bought some cheap side tables from Walmart. We couldn’t have anything too large in our old room at the townhouse. These fit nicely even though they were cheap.

Since we moved I’ve been randomly keeping my eye out for various pieces of furniture. Hence the dining room table sans chairs right now. 😉 About two weeks ago I was on FB on one of the buy, sell, trade sites I follow and someone posted a set of small chests for $120.00. I commented for dimensions and said I would be interested if the first deal fell through. The next day I received a PM from the lady. The chests were available, and they were just about the right size! I im’ed Matt and he said “whatever”! I PM’ed the lady back, asked if she would take $100.00 for the pair and the next day I went to pick them up. They weren’t in perfect condition but they were in good condition. I just needed to decide on a paint color and I was in business.

For a while now, I’d been looking at new chests. The only problem was that most of the new chests were 1) more than I wanted to spend and 2) too tall. Our bed is pretty low so we needed chests that were under 30″ tall. Most new chests are several inches over 30 which I knew Matt would complain about. The used chests came in right at 28″ tall which makes them only a few inches taller than the bed and not uncomfortable while reaching up from the bed.

The weekend I got the chests, Matt and I ran to Lowes to look at paint colors. I ended up choosing Morning Fog by Sherwin Williams. It’s a really pretty light greyish blue color. I was a little worried there wouldn’t be enough contrast between that and the wall color but decided to just go with it. First I primed the chests and drawers with Kilz. Then over the next few days I painted the chests, and then the drawers. Within a week I had everything done. (Which was kind of shocking!) Originally I had planned to use the pulls that were on the chest and just spray paint them but then I realized almost all of them were pulling apart and Matt didn’t really think he could fix them. I searched on Amazon and fell in love with some antique looking glass knobs but they were $17.00 for a set of 4. I would need 12 and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to spend $50.00 on knobs. In the end, that’s exactly what I ended up doing. The chests were really cheap so I figured I could splurge a little on knobs.

For just over $150.00, I was able to get us new bedside tables and they turned out AMAZING! The knobs really add a little something and the color blends nicely with the room. Seeing how well these turned out, kind of makes me what to buy the Hurdal dresser and chest from IKEA, paint them and add the same knobs. (Side note, we saw these at IKEA and they are quite large and sturdy which is the only reason I’m really considering them.) That would redo our whole bedroom (chests included) for under $1000.00. I told Matt I’m not really ready to take on this project but it might happen soonish. 😉

image3 (3) — Before: Our small crappy little tables.

image2 (4) — The chests before, during, my knobs, and after.

Patience paid off!

July 29, 2015 mrs_ellyk Comments 1 comment

For the past year I’ve been drooling over this one specific dining room table that I kept seeing on Pinterest. Of course, none of the links listed where the actual table was from. I searched high and low and one day I finally found a blog that stated where the table was from, Restoration Hardware. I immediately went to their website and found the table I’d been lusting over was the Salvaged Wood Trestle Dining Table. And then I found the price. No matter how much I loved this table I just couldn’t (and Matt said no!) see spending that much on just a table.

I began searching for something comparable, specifically with the same or similar style legs. I found a few that were similar but either they weren’t solid wood or they were out of my price range. If i was going to spend $1500+ I figured I might as well just buy the one I really loved. Here are a few similar ones I found: Harverty’s Avondale, the Randall from Wayfair (which is really cheap and mostly made of veneers), the Manor House also from Wayfair (which I can’t currently find online but was listed for $2500.00), the Arcadia Extension Table from World Market (again mostly veneers).

Once I’d decided I probably wasn’t going to find my table, in a price range I liked, I started looking at other options. There is a wholesale store called Nadeau in Raleigh that has solid wood pieces from India. A coworker and I would run over at lunch and look around. I finally decided that I’d most likely just buy a table from there when the time came and while it wouldn’t be my RH table, I could probably find something with that similar rustic feel.

I started following Nadeau on FB and IG since they get shipments in quite frequently. And then last week it happened, my table on their FB page! I freaked and immediately commented to see how much the table was listed for and how big it was. They responded and I showed Matt. The table was still a little more than I wanted to spend but it was THE table! I even waited another week before I went to check it out in person. I was able to get the guy to hold it for the rest of the day so I could go home and measure our space. Once we knew it would fit, I told Matt he had to go see it so on Saturday we ran to Raleigh to check it out. The table is made of solid mango wood and 7’3″ by 3.5′. Matt agreed it was nice and I bought my table. It was delivered yesterday and I can say it is spectacular! It looks beautiful in the space. Now I just need chairs and a rug. I’ve had the rug picked out for a few months now but I’ll wait to purchase it since the table was a little more than I was hoping to spend. I’m hoping the rug will help me decide on what chairs to buy. For now the dining room is coming together. 🙂