Now… a word about my pantry, my house in general and the real estate market in Dallas. It’s crazy pants, y’all. As most of you longer timey readers will know, I came from Minneapolis which is certainly not the most pricey housing market in the land. That being said, we lived in the city and bought our house in 2008, so paid what I considered a decent-slash-TON-of money for a 900 square foot 50′s ranch with an unfinished basement, teeny yard, 2 bedrooms/1 bath with a tuckunder garage. While we lived there, we made it nicer going the DIY, Ikea and occasional hired gun route, but it was just a 50′s ranch with a lot of Ikea, Home Depot slate and Lumber Liquidators hardwoods on the floor.

SO when we started house-hunting in Dallas, my head nearly exploded. Houses down here are GIANT, and cheap according to my internal home-value meter. Of course we were looking in the suburbs versus the city, so of the houses were of the more giant variety. Our particular suburb wasn’t even in existence until the 60′s from what I understand and almost all of the homes we looked at were built in the early 90′s or 00′s. Compare that to our previous ranch, built in the 50′s and positively the youngest kid on the block in Mpls, where most of the homes around us were Tudors built in the 30′s.

So…. what’s with all the background info? Merely me trying to help you understand why I was a bit disappointed with the pantry in our new house. Here’s a photo I snapped while it still had the seller’s dry goods in it…

Not a walk in. I was disappointed. I KNOW that seems awfully snobby, especially coming from a teeny dollhouse where my ‘pantry’ was the Ikea pine shelving that Mr. Bug installed in the basement, but a LOT of the houses we looked at had walk in pantries and I had visions of this dancing in my head…

Unpacking in Texas got off to a rocky start due to my obsessive need to organize. It was slow going. Finally, being driven insane by the boxes everywhere and general chaos, I relented and just started shoving things in their eventual homes, without organizing or making it pretty. Last week the laundry room got its mini-makeover, so this week it was pantry time! Here it is in its current basket-loving state…

Hello white basket farm! Of course, I’m plotting to eventually come back and make it SUPER pretty inside. Like every single other person who even GLANCES at home design blogs (what’s the proper term for that kind of blogging BTW??) I fell hard for this pantry with its grey walls, stenciling, antique wooden boxes and cute trim on the front of the shelves.

{source}

No matter, that will have to be stage THREE (1 being ‘just getting unpacked’ and 2 being ‘ORGANIZE!!’) Stage three will be the ‘make it super pretty’ stage.

So. Regarding the organization part. In my last kitchen I had a small cupboard area that I used as a pantry. In that system I kept all my opened packages of food (pasta, snacks, etc) as well as the unopened items needed for that week’s menu in the kitchen pantry area. ‘Backstock’ went to the Ikea shelves in the basement, which we took to calling ‘Super Target.’ I realized once I started organizing in the new house that I needed a similar system, which sort of bummed me out, because I had visions of a pantry full of artfully arranged stacks of canned goods dancing in my head.

After moving things around a bit, this is what I came up with: cannisters, snacks, partially used goods and cookbooks went into the pantry. I have a separate cupboard for unopened things and partial bags of canister goods (flour, sugar, etc.) Spices, small baking packages and oils/vinegar all have separate homes. Don’t worry, I took photos…

First of all, the canisters. I prefer to put most things into a canister. They look nicer and are easier to scoop from! The bulk of my canisters are frosted glass Ikea ones. They aren’t my favorite style, but Mr. Bug and I got them at one of those crazy early morning sales where you have to go and shoulder your way in, so they were all $1 a piece and when we were setting up our old kitchen we needed a LOT of them at once! The rest of the canisters are the more sweet kind with the wire clasp closure (also from Ikea), along with a few extra large glass-topped ones from Target (for bread flours) and an odd assortment of new clear canning jars and the older blue glass Bell jars.

I went nuts with the labels this time around. I started with a template I found through this post on My Sweet Savannah. There wasn’t a label for everything in my pantry, though, so I just grabbed the background from a label I liked, removed the existing words and then downloaded two different fonts with an old school style to make my own. For font dweebs (like me) they are Birmingham and Bellerose, both downloaded from dafont.com. If any of your happen to have my taste in fonts and the EXACT SAME ITEMS in YOUR pantries, here s a PDF of the labels… I warn you, this is not the nicest artwork out there, and the ‘cutting’ lines are not super helpful (especially if you try to use a paper cutter) but I managed to make them work… I put them on with packing tape so they’d be easy to clean and water repellant.

I used a lot of baskets from my stash while organizing. I managed to find (mostly) white baskets. There was one golden brown one that I had to include. It annoyed me because it so OBVIOUSLY didn’t belong on the shelves, so I watered down some Annie Sloan Old White chalk paint and white washed it. That’s it below in the lower left hand corner. I also have a brown Longaberger banana basket that I keep onions and garlic in but I didn’t have the heart to whitewash that one.

In the top of the photo you can see the giant white ‘snack’ basket. A nice catchall for bags and boxes of snack foods. My almonds and popcorn are also on the snack shelf, along with a few other items. The next shelf down has a white basket of beverages and the whitewashed basket with general pantry items. Another white cube-basket (not pictured) holds opened boxes – Uncle Bens rice, pasta – that sort of thing.

You can also see the hanging labels in this picture – I bought those in the office supply area at Target and make labels with my label maker. They work especially well on baskets and cloth organizing cubes (I attach with a safety pin) – anything that isn’t easy to slap a label on!

I had the baskets below on hand and they’re perfect for paper and plastic bags – paper on the left, plastic on the right. We call the basket on the right the snake charmer basket. They didn’t get the white wash treatment – since there’s two of them and they’re sitting on the floor, they didn’t look so obviously mismatched!

A view from across the room… the door to the left of the pantry is the laundry room.

And now for all my other little hidey holes. First up is the unopened pantry items and canister ‘backstock’…

I had the riser for the cans – it’s getting a little dinged up and I really want to swap out for more attractive bamboo risers, but since it’s still perfectly serviceable, I controlled my urges and re-enlisted it!

On either side of the cooktop and hood I organized baking supplies and a lot of my oils, vinegars and spices.

Baking items are on the left side. There are a few things in this area that I would like to get canisters for and move into the pantry (corn meal, etc.) It isn’t super logical that I’ve broken up my opened containers between the baking shelf and the pantry area, except I’ve ALWAYS organized these items separately from regular cooking supplies. I think my mother did the same thing!

On the other side of the stove I organized oils, vinegars, salts, larger spice jars, coffee-making supplies (coffee maker/sink are close by) and on the very top shelf is a box with backstock for my spice jars.

I organized my spice jars in one of the drawers of the kitchen island so they’re easy to grab while I”m cooking. Here’s a slightly goofy photo to give you perspective.

I had to buy all new spice jars (again, Ikea.) My previous ones matched the frosted glass canisters – they were sort of tall and skinny and kept falling down in the drawer! These are shorter and fatter so more stable – super bonus? They’re bigger! Yay! I hate having all those little half filled spice jars in my back stock!

They’re all labeled and alphabetized. I had two different cartridges of label tape – one clear, one white. It’s driving me nuts that the labels don’t all match and I’ll probably swap out eventually. Because that’s how I roll!

Next up? Who can say? Although I am closing in on having a functioning sewing space! Holla!

And, turns out, sanding furniture.

So… a few years ago we bought new sofas from Ikea, upgrading from a very beat up old beige leather number and giant green pillow back loveseat to the white slipcovered sofa and loveseat from Ikea. Right now we have the more pricey beige slipcovers on the sofas, although I prefer the look of the white ones, the beige hides Lucy slobber a bit better. After we brought in the white sofas I scoured secondhand and antique shops for side tables. Everything that I brought home got the black spraypaint treatment.

Here’s a shot with two of the tables in their black sprayed glory.

I liked the tables well enough, but they showed off every bit of white Lucy fur that came drifting through the air and our new place is much lighter and brighter than the Minneapolis house. I initially thought that I’d just paint the tables white to brighten them up, but then I remembered the sanded down dining table I’d recently seen on My Sweet Savannah…

{My Sweet Savannah}

I loved the traces of black paint, but really, I hate sanding. I know I have a electric palm sander somewhere, but we haven’t really gotten to unpacking all the tools yet. Lucky for me, the sandpaper had been unpacked, so I went and grabbed some 100 grit paper and tried an experimental rub on the table. Turns out spray paint is more than willing to be sanded off. I sanded off an on over the course of a few days. I started with the little half-moon table that was last spotted impersonating a sofa table…

Here it is stripped down…

Mmmmm… much better.

I left a lot of the black paint in the nooks and crannies, especially on the legs – here’s a slightly blurry photo…

I almost left the legs completely black for a more farmhouse look.

I used 100 grit sandpaper for most of the job. The hardest part was making sure I’d sanded every side of the stupid cross braces on the bottom. I kept washing off the sanding dust and bringing it inside to wax, then I’d realize I’d missed a spot. I was distracted because in addition to sanding I was acting as a IT tech for my mother as she struggled to install Skype on her computer. Great googly moogly.

I eventually got all the paint sanded off as well as the original stain – this piece was stained a fairly deep shade of brown when I brought it home. After I managed to get ALL the black paint off I washed it and sort of felt it up to make sure the surface was smooth. Then I treated it with some Annie Sloan clear wax – which is supposed to be used on painted furniture, but I figured it was better than nothing.

I applied the wax with an old paintbrush we had in our stash. I sort of slathered it on, then rubbed it off right away with a hand towel. It has the consistency of butter at room temperature and is sort of stinky, although the smell went away by the next morning. I let the wax dry overnight, then rubbed it again with a clean cloth. The wax deepened the wood tone a bit and gave it a ‘finished’ feel.

Another shot of the cute little leg.

This shot shows the color a bit better. It also shows off one of my very pressing concerns right now. Pink chairs. I bought them with the thought of making slipcovers or painting/reupholstering them. But they are totally growing on me! So… pink chairs… yay  or nay? If I do anything to them, my current inclination is to reupholster with a natural/light color fabric and lighten up the wood or whitewash it – not full on paint.

The table has now been relocated to the other end of the sofa. It was just hanging out behind the loveseat before because I didn’t really have a place for it. But we FINALLY unpacked our bedroom the other day and I needed a little table to snuggle in between two wing chairs, so there was a bit of side table merry go round happening.

Next up is the sanding of the other side table. I’m sort of dreading it because not only did I spraypaint that sucker black, but it had already been painted white before I bought it. I am going to need LOTS of patience and advil to get down to the bare wood. Especially if my electric sander remains on the MIA list…

This space was a bit of a challenge. Our Minneapolis laundry area was in the basement, with tons of room for Ikea storage. The new space is just big enough for our washer and dryer, so it was all about editing to fit everything in that we needed. In fact, storage in general is turning into a bit of an issue, something I did NOT expect with as much room as we have! We’re used to the whole basement to stash things in, so even though we have so many more ROOMS we actually have a lot less storage space.

The laundry room is right off the kitchen, which I like. Mr. Bug is head washerman in our house, and in Minneapolis he’d be in the basement FOREVER, folding, sorting and monitoring the temperature of the dryer. I missed him. With the laundry room so close I can keep track of him while he engages in his obsessive laundry practices.

We were also happy that the laundry room has this charming little window. Last night after I finished organizing and showed Mr. B where everything was, he asked for a cute little curtain to go in the cute little window. One curtain, burlap, coming right up. With a nice little topiary for the window sill!

We also splurged and bought a new laundry basket from Target. A basket-looking one, although it’s actually some sort of resin or plastic. I looked at real wood baskets, but they were so much more expensive and I was a bit concerned about damp clothes damaging the wicker or sharp wicker basket parts snagging the clothes. This laundry basket replaces the well used plastic one that Mr. Bug tearfully left behind in Minneapolis. It served him well for many years and it was a difficult parting…

There was one built in shelf, SORELY in need of a paint job! I really wanted to do that first, but we’ve agreed to just get everything unpacked first, and then come back for the little updates in the second pass. From left to right we have two clear plastic tubs from Ikea, stacked. Top one has vacuum bags and attachments, bottom one is lightbulbs. The white basket is full of new/unused/clean supplies for cleaning, like rags, sponges, etc. There’s a few bottles of vinegar and Windex, then a white Ikea box with floor cleaning supplies and one bin of general cleaning supplies – Pine Sol and Goo Gone. Finally there’s a magazine file with all the user manuals for our appliances.

I don’t know if it’s really visible in the photos, but everything is labeled with my P-Touch labelmaker. I have a nice box of hanging labels that I use on baskets and things that I don’t want to stick the label to – in the lower right corner of the picture above you can see the basket’s label.

Mr. Bug had this little 2 shelf bookcase when we moved in together. It’s older, but solid wood and I painted it white last year. Top shelf is laundry soap, bottom shelf Dryel and dryer sheets. Our dusters are tucked back in the corner and found a teeny wastebasket in our piles of stuff that actually fit really well. The white basket is for dirty hand towels and such from the kitchen, as the rest of our hampers are on the 2nd floor in our bedroom. I was super excited to find THREE of these white baskets at Ikea in the As-Is section! $7.50 each!

Items that are left for the second pass of the laundry room are painting the shelf and the pole… MAYBE painting the walls? Hooks behind the door for the dusters, aprons and Mr. Bug’s wet swimming trunks, a nice little rug or mat and possibly a 2nd laundry basket. Oh, the luxuries of two laundry baskets…

There you go! Tour over… Here’s the view from the laundry room, looking out through the kitchen and past that to the entryway, stairs to the 2nd floor and beyond that, the formal living room which in the new Bug abode will be the formal dining masquerading as a poker room…

Today I’m all on about our television. When we moved into our last house four years ago we splurged and bought a 40″ LCD TV. (Sidenote: I cannot BELIEVE how much TV prices have dropped in the last four years!!) The TV was fine, we got an espresso veneer TV stand from Target, plopped the TV on top and commenced with watching as much NCIS as possible. I love me some old people TV, after all. The only real problem we had with the TV was that it only had 2 HMDI ports and we really needed 3, so we were forced to watch DVDs on old school video/audio connection – you know the kind with 3 separate plugs? Eventually we ended up cancelling cable all together in favor of a lower monthly bill and Netflix on demand. I missed Abby and the gang at NCIS, but the whole TV thing was FINE. I didn’t think about it much at all, except that I hated how dusty the cords  got.

Cue to the new house. One of the cool things about the house is that it has two fireplaces and one is in the family room where we planned to put the TV. The previous owners had their TV mounted above the fireplace and I hoped that they might leave the mounting brackets when they moved out so we could just put our TV right in. In fact, we sold our TV stand before we left Minneapolis because we agreed that we really wanted it above the fireplace instead of right next to it.

Lucky us, the sellers did, indeed, leave the mounting bracket.

They also left us those awful white shelves in the nook to the right of the fireplace. And now we get to the point of this post… peripherals. Since flatscreen TVs have become so popular, I’ve really liked the super-uncluttered look of wall mounting. But where to put the cable box, DVD player and ever important Roku box? I really dislike the look of a half-used media table, sitting off to the side with no real purpose other than to hold DVD players and such. All that wasted space, what with not holding the TV. And when you throw a fireplace into the mix it makes it even worse. It’s just so…. awkward. What is the point of that elegant TV mounting if one still ends up with the exact same media stand off to the right, partially decomissioned, but still pressed into service to hold the lowly non-mounted supporting cast?

My problem was also compounded by the difficulties for my symmetry-loving pea brain in deciding what to do with the shelving on one side and the doorway on the other. That doorway leads to my new sewing room. My preference would be for either doorways or storage on either side. This is how the previous owners laid out their furniture:

I didn’t care for walkway left on the left side, or how it made the room oddly empty and yet tipping over to the right. I also wasn’t a fan of blocking those lovely, tall windows with big bulky sofas. I played in my 3D software, trying to come up with a furniture layout that worked for me, and it finally came to me that I didn’t HAVE to make access to the sewing room my #1 priority! Right now this is how I have the room…

Note the lovely broom handle, just visible through the doorway into the sewing room…

Also! You can see that I removed the awful shelves. Seriously, people, I almost refused to look at the house because I thought the shelves looked so bad! Here’s a closeup…

They’re actually three separate shelving units that are white melamine with ‘brushed stainless’ supports. I just think they are so bizarre, from the odd choice of style with the rather rustic fireplace to the spacing – see how the little gap between the middle and lower unit is used for the peripherals? I was so not into that.

I thought of putting a sideboard or dresser in the space – something with character that could hold the cable box and hopefully hide it out of sight in some way, but that put me back in the spot of having an orphaned media stand, taking up space that should rightfully have been reclaimed when the TV was mounted on the wall.

I found this photo on Cote de Texas! The nook space and fireplace reminded me of our new layout and I am a huge fan of hidey hole spots!

{Cote de Texas/Dana Wolter}

While I’m not usually a huge fan of drapery unless it’s actually attached to a window, I even liked it in this case to soften up the edges and downplay the jagged arch of my room. Plus, I could install portieres on BOTH sides of the fireplace to balance out the space and add a bit more sound-muffling fabric – the giant room with tile floor echoes like a gymnasium! Here’s a rendering of what I’m thinking…

As longer time readers might now, I have a MacGyver-like need to reuse, thrift or fabricate my home furnishings. As much as I love Pottery Barn, it’s much more fun to struggle for furniture solutions, right? I wandered around the house, measuring and plotting. Eventually I realized that one of the sections from the ‘built in’ windowseat in Minneapolis fits the nook perfectly! The bonus? I already have the cushion made!

Here’s the windowseat in the Minneapolis house. It already looks so odd to me! Did I really live there?

Unfortunately either the cable box grew after I measured it, or I am incapable of using a measuring tape. I removed the shelves (HEAVY!!), leaving giant, unsightly holes in our hard-to-repair knockdown walls. I took apart the windowseat section to cut a hole in the back for the cords to pass through. I bolted the burlap-wrapped top piece to the bench and reattached the legs, moved into place, unhooked all the cables, passed through the hole I’d cut and then… the cable box didn’t fit. I needed 15 inches and only had 14 and a half. I think I’d measured the depth of the cable box rather than the width.

Grr. Here’s how it looks now.

It’s hard to see, but for the Ikea-philes out there, this is a Billy bookcase – the one that’s meant to go on TOP of doorways as a bridge. We added the plastic feet from the Ikea kitchen section that are meant for kitchen cabinets – you have to actually go to the Kitchen section and order from someone there. The plastic feet are awesome because they are meant to work with toekicks (also bought in the kitchen section) that come with easy to use plastic mounting rings and matching iron-on veneer. The toekicks are easy to cut to size with a handsaw and finish with the veneer, making it really easy to make it look built in. Since the shelves are only 11 inches deep we added a slightly wider (15″) piece of burlap-wrapped MDF to the top so Lucy would have enough room to laze about like a walrus.

Unfortunately, this solution is not walrus-friendly – see how the cable box has to sit on top (on the left?) We’re in a holding pattern. Here’s the current options…

Option #1: Do some more engineering. I COULD take the whole thing apart, drill new holes and move the center supports to make enough space for the cable box. Apart from being YET another project, this might be the best solution. I’d planned on making a slipcover for the entire unit to hide away the clutter and to eradicate the espresso finish from my sight. I’m SO over expresso finish, aren’t all y’all? My main concern with this option is that these bookcases aren’t really meant for such overengineering and I’m concerned the resulting piece will be wobbly.

Option #2: Find a bench that DOES fit. I’ve looked a bit and the problem is that most entry-type benches that have storage places where we can put DVDs and perpherals aren’t meant for media so the cubbies are all narrow, similar to our current situation. Also, most would need pass-through holes cut in the back and that’s not super easy to do.

Option #3: Back to some sort of media cabinet. This is Mr. Bug’s favorite option – he’s not a lover of secret hidey hole nooks like me! We’re in agreement, though, that if we DO put a cabinet in the spot, we’d like something that’s more of a sideboard or dresser nature rather than a forlorn media cabinet sidekick. I’d like something of this nature. But I would like it to cost about $750 less than the Pottery Barn pricetag of $999. And potentially less green.

{Pottery Barn | Ellsworth Entertainment Buffet}

Oh, who’m I kidding? I love green.

So. Where do YOU guys put your cable box? Especially if you’ve got your TV stuck to the wall?

Oh the problems of technology.

Also, I snapped a photo of my sewing room. It’s TRASHED, people! Ugh. Moving stinks. Check out my lovely new cutting table! A craigslist find that rules the world. It’s currently sitting on bed risers to get it to the right height, but someday the plan is to attach some fencing finials to the legs for a nicer look. In the meantime I plan to hide the ugly bed risers by just piling all of my supplies on the floor…

ANYway… today I have a little update on my continuing battle with house-related OCD (oh, who’m I kidding. I’m happy to throw my OCD any which way, not just at the house.) Upshot is, I refinished my salad bowl and I’m so overly pleased with myself that I’m likely driving Mr. Bug insane… “Hey, Dan, wanna see my salad bowl? Wanna touch it? Do you like the color? Want to hold it? Should we have salad for dinner tonight???”

You get the picture.

So here’s the bowl in question:

This was a wedding gift from a dear friend. I’d always wanted a giant, wood salad bowl and getting to register for one was one of the reasons I relented and registered for wedding gifts at all. I had a hard time with the concept of telling people what to buy us. As much as I loved the idea of artfully tossed salads in my fancy wood bowl, I have to admit it’s barely been used. There’s only two of us, after all. The scale of the bowl is a bit off for two-person dinners!

The bowl lived in the lazy susan in our old kitchen, but usually ended up stacked under my wok, which I actually DO use a couple times a week. When I pulled it out of the moving box and unwrapped it, I was so dissapointed to see how much it had gotten beat up from  playing mattress for a wok.

I piled the bowl on the ‘donate’ pile and went back to unpacking. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it… I mean, it was a WEDDING gift. And I love salad. And wooden things.

I checked out the details on the crate and barrel site. No information on what to do if the bowl looked like beavers had been chewing on it. Only notes were that it’s made of Mango wood with a walnut stain. I tried rubbing mineral oil on the scratches to see if it helped, but it didn’t. I finally raided the painting supplies for some sandpaper and went after it with a 100 grit piece of paper.

I was amazed by the results! The stain came RIGHT OFF!!

Granted, it created a crazy, fine grey dust that probably gave me lung cancer, but it was AMAZING (also amazing, my new stove was delivered a week ago and it still has papers taped to it.)

Here’s how it looked after I sanded the inside.

After I finished the inside, I flipped it over and did the outside. I toyed with the idea of leaving a strip of stain near the lip of the bowl, but decided to go simple, and just removed everything.

Once I finished sanding with the 100 grit, and brushed off with a paper town and then went over with a 220 grit.

Then it got a nice bath with warm water and dishsoap.

Then I put it out to bask in the sun like a lizard. And dry off. Speaking of lizards, there are GECKOS in my yard!! They are freaky fast, people!

While my salad bowl sunbathed, I searched the interwebs for ideas on ‘finishing’ the bowl. A lot of the sites I looked at said to just leave without any further coating. I wasn’t a fan of that because the wood seemed really dry and I was concerned it would crack. In general, the options seemed to be tung oil, mineral oil or some sort of food-type oil like olive oil. There’s also special butcher block oil that I actually have and probably could have used, but I decided after reading everything to go with mineral oil. My bottle of butcher block oil didn’t list the actual contents, olive oil seemed likely to go rancid at some point and I just happened to have an unopened bottle of mineral oil in my stash.

I bought the mineral oil originally to polish my stainless steel appliances, but in the end pretty much just let Lucy polish ‘em with her tongue. The mineral oil made the bowl really made the wood pretty – darker and richer.

Done! I’m SO glad I figured out a way to reclaim my salad bowl. Now. Perhaps I should start unpacking….

A few other things I’ve been up to…

I managed to organize my spice drawer. My old spice bottles kept falling down in the new space, so I swapped out for these short, fat ones from Ikea. They’re way cuter than my previous spice jars, which were ALSO from Ikea, but had frosted glass and a mean, modern vibe.

They’re alphabetized. And there’s a label maker still smoking from doing its duty.

In VERY exciting news, Mr. Bug and I decided to replace the carpets on the first floor with hardwoods floors, so that was done last week. Here’s a not-very interesting before and after, notable only because I’m standing INSIDE my sewing room! Yay! I was a bit concerned about haveing carpets in my sewing room – all those teeny thread bits and pins hiding out!

Yay!

And with that, I’m off!

P.S. I’m so enthralled with the effectiveness of sandpaper that I’m linking up!

Since I can’t even say for sure if my sewing machines even made it onto the moving truck, I thought I’d commit the blogging no-no of reblogging. My own photos. For those of you who follow me on Twitter or Instagram, this’ll be repeat.

We’ll start at the closing. It went well. We closed on the Texas house first, then we closed on selling the Minnesota house. I was totally sad by the time we headed out – the couple who bought our house seemed super cool and they would have been great neighbors. Except, of course, that’d mean all 4 of us would be living in our teeny-tiny house. (Awkward… she sang to herself in a lilting tone…)

Goodby Edina Realty!

It was super odd riding off into the, um, south? With Mr. Bug, Lucy the hound and all the liquids that the movers wouldn’t take packed into our teeny car. We felt super untethered and willing to engage in a little cross country pillaging. A couple of modern day car-pirates, bent on destruction and personal gain.

But alas, Mr. Bug and I were in too much of a hurry for hijinks on the interstate. We had movers on the way and appliance deliveries scheduled. Also, we’re like old people on car trips. We can make it, oh, about 45 minutes before we have to stop for snacks, restroom breaks and manic searches for wifi to check facebook and work emails. (Sprint 3G + Iowa = SUCKY!!)

Iowa was first. We had so much stuff in our car Lucy was crammed into half the back seat. She was a total drama queen about the whole situation, sleeping in impossibly uncomfortable positions that she concocted just to make me feel bad.

We stopped at a rest stop near Ames, Iowa. It had really cool windows. As I held my phone up above my head, trying to figure out how to get the  artsy angle that I always see on cooler blogs than mine, the rest stop attendant told me my phone was ‘real neat.’ I was a little surprised and suspicious, immediately assuming he was an Android user somehow intent on taking a shot at my iPhone. I have too many opinionated Android users in my life. I honestly think the attendant may have just liked that I have a white phone rather than the usual black.

OK. I give. What’s the secret to photographing the cool angles of architecture. Someone spill. Please?

After Iowa was Missouri, which turned out to be super pretty. At least, I have a vague memory of pretty. The bear started to get carsick partway through and I was understandably distracted. Here we are at the Kum and Go in who-knows-where Missouri. What’s not pictured is me ‘surreptitiously’ stuffing a giant, yak-covered dog bed into a teeny-tiny gas station trash can. I had to remove the cover of the trash can with my bare hands to get it to fit and let me just say it was WAY less gross touching the dog-yak-bed than the trash can lid.

And here you thought this was a sewing blog.

Obviously, I have the cool photo angle for Sonic down pat.

Friday night after a ‘grueling’ 6 hours in the car, Mr. Bug and I checked into our hotel. We usually stay at Red Roof Inns when we travel with Lucy – usually the rooms are pretty decent, with a nice amount of pillows and pretty clean. That was not the case in Kansas City. Let’s never speak of this again.

As anyone who made it through the marvels of elementary school is undoutecely aware of, Kansas City is not actually in Kansas. At least not all of it. I expected to wake up in the morning to have the GPS send us off down I35 the rest of the way to Texas, but I was wrong. The GPS had other plans. We followed her lead and headed straight down through Missouri to Oklahoma. It was a very, VERY pretty drive, marred only by the crushing disappointment of having my first armadillo sighting  be of a not-so-recently deceased armadillo at the side of the road.

The photo above was snapped as we crossed the state line into Oklahoma. I’m afraid my car-pictures do not do justice to the beauty of Oklahoma. Trust me.

Finally after two days on the road, one sick basset, a growing love affair between Mr. Bug and the our new voice activated GPS and one sighting of a clumsy cowboy (complete with horse) while gobbling ice cream outside the A&W in  Atoka, Oklahoma, we made it to Texas.

Bright and early the next morning we arrived at the house, armed with a neurotic hound and Starbucks.

Home sweet home. The big arched window in the front is my new home office. Holla!

Eventually the movers showed up. I immediately understood why Mr. Bug had been so adamant regarding parking in front of the house. And the two houses on either side.

The move in went smoothly, albeit with multiple texts to friends and coworkers in which we attempted to determine the proper etiquette for tipping movers (we bought them lunch, got them bottles of water and gave them a couple of twenties apiece…)

In an effort to relieve stress, I made sure to set up the outside patio area as soon as I could wrestle the the wicker out of the semi. Mr. Bug and Lucy are testing out the new digs.

Mr. Bug and hound had a hard time finding a place to settle inside the house. I wasn’t a huge fan of this arrangement…

I don’t blame them. The house is a giant mess. I honestly do NOT understand how our belongings managed to triple in size to effectively fill up our new house!

Over the weekend we had people in and out of the house in a steady stream. We had a few new appliances delivered, a couple of guys in to give us estimates on replacing the basset hound unfriendly taupe carpet with houndlicious hardwoods, and a few of the neighbor kids made up for their disappointment in our not bringing any new kids to the block by hanging in the backyard with the lazy hound dog. She can charm anyone.

After a crazy weekend of meeting people and assembling desk furniture I was ready for day 1 of working from home. Here’s my new desk. I’m waiting to get my webcam for my work computer – once that arrives, my personal laptop will not be ‘coming’ to work with me.

OK folks. I saved the best for last. Our new house has a pool in the backyard and the previous owners left us a clever, giant rubber duck that’s meant to hold chlorine tablets in it, float around and made everything, you know, chlorinated? ANYWAY, Lucy the Hound HATES THE DUCK. It drives her nuts. Yesterday she had a nice little showdown with it, complete with play bows, backwards scampering, ferocious barking and ridiculous ear flapping. Here she is eyeing up the enemy.

Whew. So that’s what I’ve been up to over the last few days. I gotta tell  you, this is the first move in ages where I didn’t take off enough time to completely unpack before returning to work and it’s KILLING ME! Ah well.

For all y’all who’ve sent emails, etc, thanks for the thoughts and sorry I’ve not responded – ESPECIALLY those of you down this way! Keep ‘em coming! I’ll be unpacked soon and ready for some Texas playdates!!

Since last Thursday we’ve spent a grand total of $508 dollars on 4 cushy chairs, one farm table, 4 dining chairs, a console table and tonight’s grand prize of a giant dresser-slash-sideboard. Behold.

I could hardly HARDLY believe when this lovely popped up on my iPhone last night. I was so excited I could barely manage my email. Is it weird that my initial ‘inquiry’ to the seller was just a long string of “i want it! can i come now? is it too late? me! me! me!”?

Thanks to my recently download CraigsPro+ and its handy alerts I was #1 in line and Mr. Bug and I picked up the…. dresser?… tonight after work. It’s giant – over six feet long  - completely solid wood with no rickety anything and in dire need of a refinishing or paint job. There’s three lovely drawers behind those doors on the right side.

You can see how dinged up it is in this photo. I’m thinking this will be perfect in Mr. Bug’s new ‘game room.’ He specifically requested a place to put snacks for poker playing pokermaniacs. I also think this would make a nice dresser for actual clothing. Mostly because I think all those little drawers would make a lovely spot for the stashing of my growing collection of cheap bracelets.

Did I mention this was only $30? I’ve been interested in checking out the Annie Sloan chalk paint all the home design bloggers seem to be in love with – here’s a perfect example of a before and after/redo from one of my favorite design blogs – My Sweet Savannah. Mmmmmmm…. white paint.

I also snapped this photo of some of the chairs we got over the weekend.

Goodness, our garage is PACKED to the gills!

I really, really love the pink chair! Isn’t it adorable? I got a matched set for $110 – a bit on the steep side, but I loved the shape, the legs and that they’re comfy but relatively small. The green wing chair is another half of a matched set. I really don’t care for that minty color, but I was super STOKED because the green fabric is actually a SLIPCOVER – the owner had them custom made, so it’ll be SUPER easy to make up a set of slipcovers in a color that I love – white linen comes to mind. The wing chairs were only $50 for the pair. A nice college girl was selling ‘em for her moms who didn’t know how to use craigslist so I scored a great price. College girl obviously HATED the chairs and priced them accordingly!

So that’s my life lately – we’re trying to stock up well-priced furniture now that we know will come in handy once we get to Texas. Every single piece that we’ve purchased requires refinishing, reupholstering or slipcovering with the exception of a Pottery Barn console table we got for the foyer. Our thought is that by buying THIS furniture used, not only do we get fun projects, but we get better-quality stuff than we’d like to pay for new AND we can preserve the bulk of our furniture budget for the things that we really DO want new – beds and sofas come to mind.

So… any advice on the making of slipcovers? I’ve done it before, but used a draping method that really doesn’t bear repeating….

I’ve crawled out of the woodwork to peek around, say hi, and give you an update. Plus, I didn’t want any of you to worry and report me missing to the American Sewing Guild’s governing body. Those nice ladies have enough to do without dealing with yet another false missing person report.

So! Where were we? I can’t remember my last update to all ya’ll, and I’m too lazy to read my own blog, so I’ll start from the beginning. Sometime in late January, we found out my husband’s job was being relocated to the Dallas area. Since then, we’ve been to Texas twice. I’ve looked at about a million seemingly identical brick houses – on the 2nd trip, I went down early and saw more houses than Mr. Bug. He got to come down on the weekend and see finalists. Lucky.

We’ve managed to find a house in Texas. Lord willin’ and the crik don’t rise, it’ll be ours officially at the end of April. At the same time, we managed to sell our little, much-loved south Minneapolis nest to a nice young couple. Lord willin’ and the more northern crik don’t rise, our nest will officially pass into their hot little hands at the end of April. Actually, our closing dates are the same day. We are the masters of timing.

Here’s our new house. If you’ve ever seen the houses in Texas, it might look familiar…

As many of you know, moving stinks. There are SO many details to deal with and selling one house while buying another makes it even more crazy time! I’m having a hard time remembering what we’re doing in which state!

And for any of you who are wondering about MY job, which I only started last August, never fear. My awesome boss has awesomely decided to let me work remotely from Texas. Did I mention his awesomeness? While there’s a lot more details there to work out, it’s a super-relief to have a job lined up. Plus, I really like what I do, so I’m glad to not have to leave the company. Plus, I think I’ll REALLY like working from home. Get ready for some obsessive what-to-wear-when-you-work-at-home posts in the future!

Speaking of obsessive, let’s talk sewing rooms, shall we? I know a couple of you commented and/or emailed me about the loss of my recently put together basement sewing lair. Boo. I love my basement sewing nook! Luckily, when Mr. Bug and I put that together, we kept everything basic, white and movable in case we decided to finish the basement at some point. I wanted to furniture to be super flexible. And here’s something I learned while looking at houses in Texas: why have one living room when you can have three? That’s right. Three. Our new house has three living rooms. On the first floor. Technically, there’s the family room/great room, the ‘game room/den’ and the formal living room. Since Mr. Bug and I have NO interest in getting a pool table, the game room’s not really our thing. And formal living rooms annoy me with their ostentatious lack of use. At least, they annoy me for our lifestyle. I really wanted a house where we’d use ALL the rooms.

So in our version of the house, we’re keeping the family room and using the connected game room as the sewing room. The formal living room is connected to the game room, and that’s going to be Mr. Bug’s playroom. You know, dark shelves, poker table, model trains and various other boy-related furnishings.

Here’s a picture from the real estate listing of my future sewing room. The listing agent get’s a C- (in my book) on her photo taking abilities….

Yes. That’s a fireplace. There’s two in the house. Honestly, that whole ‘everything’s bigger in Texas’ maxim apparently holds some truth. The family room is through the door in the lower right of the photo. Here’s the view looking the other direction. Mr. Bug’s poker room and the front door are through the french doors – and you can see the door to the family room much better!

Obviously, we wont’ be going with the guitar and futon vibe. And I’m hoping we can swap out those startingly light carpets for hardwoods asap – honestly, don’t these people know about basset hounds with their muddy tummies? Lucy’ll have those carpets awful in NO time!

Having nothing better to do (I’ve already modeled out my new home office) I built the sewing room in my Better Homes and Gardens interior design software last night. Here’s what I’m thinking for the sewing room version of this room – first, the view towards the fireplace…

Cozy, right? This sewing room will have to be a bit more cutesy than functional – it’s right on the first floor, after all. And I like having my sewing room as a place to hang out and chat. And may as well take advantage of the fireplace, right? For all those hot Texas nights… The TV is two-birds, one-stone thing. If we put one there, it is totally viewable from Mr. Bug’s poker room as well. Apparently, it’s important that men playing poker watch other TV-men playing poker. While they’re playing poker. Here’s the view going the other direction…

And two more renderings that I think are a little better, but I don’t have any real-life photos from these angles…

I found the following links that were super helpful and inspirational… this sewing room is an adorable, totally a functioning sewing room, but something that I’d be happy to have on my first floor and open to everything. I LOVED this project, especially the hack to make the Ikea Expedit shelving look more traditional. And I thought this idea of leaving out a few shelves to make hanging space in the Expedites was super clever.

So there’s the update! The next two weeks are super busy, but on the 17th the movers come to take away all my things….

And I’m truly embarrassed to report that I’ve had a lovely almost-finished dress nearly done since mid-January before all this moving nonsense began. I’m eagerly looking forward to hopping back into the thick of things and getting the darn thing FINISHED. Of course, since our house is officially on the market, I will have to be the most neat and clean sewist on the planet.

Until then, I thought I’d post a few before and after pictures of the little changes we made in our living room to get ready for the sale….

The basset hound is NOT part of the house offering! Not much was wrong in here. The sofa pillows and blankets were a bit warm and folksy, while the bright white slip covers showed every single smudge from the basset hound and her weepy eyeballs! Our pictures were cool, but they are of the hound…

I made new pillows in neutral colors, swapped out the hound art from the funky instrument prints from an antique shop, decluttered the tables a bit and stored away the quilts in favor of a fisherman-style cable knit afghan… Lucy obligingly switched sofas, and it’s very hard to see, but we upgraded our Ikea slipcovers from the basic (inexpensive) bright white twill to a light beige linen-look slipcover that hides the lucy-goo quite nicely!

Here’s another view – the window seat cushions were a natural black and white toile that I swapped out for a more modern, appealing print.

You can barely see the windowseat cushions in this photo – there are better ones below. You can also see the other blanket that we added to the room – it’s one of those fake fur ones that seem to be super-duper popular right now. It’s dark brown and surprisingly dog-fur friendly! I thought Lucy’s fur would render it disgusting within minutes, but her fur seems to float right off…

Another view – you can barely see it, but Mr. Bug and I received a super-awesome caricature of us as a wedding gift. One of his college friends is an artist of this type. Lucy’s even in it! I love it, but knew it was a little too goofy for the walls during open houses.

Here’s the updated view. A little pillow in the corner (anyone recognize the fabric? I have a skirt made from the same stuff!) We swapped out the caricature for a silly Lucy photo and added a hound ball to the sofa in the foreground…

The before is a bit blah….

After looks cheery and cozy. It’s amazing what all that lighting does, isn’t it?

Close ups of the sofa with the old cushions and artwork…

You can see the silly Lucy artwork and the old blankets and pillows!

Here’s the new view. Very symmetrical, isn’t it?

So I HAVE done a bit of sewing getting the living room ready…. the biggest project was new box cushions for the window seat. I reused the 3″ upholstery foam from the original cushions, used my cutting mat to determine the correct size of covers and sewed together with a simple lapped zipper.

Here’s a closeup. I was really happy to find this fabric – it hides Lucy-goo (she spends an inordinate amount of time sleeping on this bench!) and it has a pretty wide appeal. It’s not my personal favorite (I loved the toile!) but it looks nice with the wall paint, the new cushions and the dark brown shelving. The pillow are a mix of purchased and made-by-me – the three pillow below are from right to left a purchased Ikea pillow, a pillow I found at Hancock for $4.00 and a pillow that I sewed. It was REALLY hard to find patterns that all worked together in this spot!

Here’s a few more handmade pillows – the beige and the yellow.

The BIGGEST change in the room is the least easy to photograph!! It’s all that white trim. Grrrrr… it needed so much repainting!!

Alright ponies, what’s been up in your neck of the woods? Other than working on the house, I’ve just been working at, you know, WORK and obsessing over our new house in Texas, which is yet to be located. I’m heading back down on the 20th of March to do more house hunting. Mr. Bug will join me a few days later and by the end of March we are going to have a contract for a new house or someone is getting a fork in the eye. I’m just sayin’….

So! Last weekend Mr. Bug and I made the 3 hour flight to Texas to check out the scene and start the house search. Thanks so much to all you who’ve chirped up with your comments, suggestions and other helpful hints! Here are the highlights from our trip…

For any of you who follow my instagram, some of this will be old news! First off, these restroom signs in DFW totally crack me up!

Hmmmm… here’s Mr. Bug and I EXTREMELY overexcited with the giant french fry – everything being bigger in Texas and all that. And on an unrelated note, the iPhone camera view that makes pictures like this easy to take is so ODD! My face is backward!

Saturday night we had dinner with Elissa from Dress With Courage and her helpful husband! They were lovely and gracious and gave us some great tips on our new Texas adventure! Also, I had country friend ribeye with WHITE GRAVY! Freaky!

Sunday gave us a chance to practice some gold old fashioned Minnesota snow-related snootiness. It snowed. Like, there was snow coming out of the sky, but not really staying on the ground. This is a nice shot of the 10 o’clock news. There were reporters all over the place, doing on-location check-ins on the 8 flakes of snow.

Monday we met our realtor and checked out houses. Let me tell you all – there was a swingin’ bachelor pad straight out of the Brady Bunch that was calling my name! Luckily, it wasn’t calling TOO loudly. But if Mr. Bug and I were looking for a quirky retirement house I don’t think they would have been able to pry me out of this place. Obviously, we would have had to buy the furniture along with the house!

So charming!

And check out this CRAZY tree! It’s growing right in the middle of the road! There were reflecters nailed to it and it was very nicely paved in!! The guys I work with – landscape architects – were totally like THAT TREE IS GOING TO DIE!! The thing is, that tree is obviously old, and the houses all looked to be at least 40 years old as well…. Apparently this tree can stand the asphalt!

We DID actually find a house and put in an offer – alas, there was another interested party and they were more willing to pay the asking price than we were. The house was in a charming neighborhood, but it was circa 1993 – VERY Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And pink. With blonde wood WHITEWASHED cabinets in the kitchen and a very overwhelming foyer. So Mr. Bug and I are back to reconsidering other options (aka: I’m pressuring him to go for the house I fell in love with!)

In the meantime, our house is going on the market next Monday and we are busy, busy, busy bees. I snapped some before and after photos of the work we did in the living room. There is some sewing involved!! In ALL of the work that we’re doing to prepare the house, most of the changes won’t show well in pictures because it consists of me crawling around on my SUPER HARD FLOORS, touching up the white paint on our trim. My next house will be 100% wallpapered. I will never paint again. We’ll save those photos for tomorrow.

In the meantime, check out these awesome prints! I actually found them in an antique shop and got them for Mr. Bug as his wedding present – he played the trombone in high school, I played the flute. We never framed them, but realized that they fit in regular old Ikea frames!! We framed ‘em up and swapped them with the oversized pictures of Lucy in our living room. The staging experts SAY to take down family photos after all. Although I’m not sure if giant pictures of basset hounds count as family photos or just crazypants artwork…

And with that, I’m off. As a special president’s day treat to myself I will be… painting trim. Tell me what YOU guys are sewing! I haven’t even SEEN my sewing machine in 3 weeks!