Whoa!

I am ready to get off this ride. Seriously though, do you ever feel like you are on a carnival ride and you just want to get off and have the dizziness stop? That is life in the obsessed house right now.

Atlanta is going on two weeks of 90 degree+ temperatures. This doesn't sound so bad, but factor in 90% humidity and you feel like you are being smothered and are walking through soup. I want to bury myself in ice right now. I miss our old neighborhood pool. I miss my big garden tub in our old house. I miss winter right now.

J.D. and I looked at buying one of those easy set-up pools with a filter that all of the big box stores are selling right now. We actually bought one and then I changed my mind 30 minutes later and we brought it back. I kind of wish we hadn't because I could seriously go for a soak in one of those with an ice cold glass of lemonade.

I think our house is going to be a perpetual disaster zone with projects that are half done. I nearly broke my toe this morning tripping over a five gallon bucket of paint that was in the middle of my kitchen floor. Good morning to me! I know it doesn't help that last week I decided our den was too winter-y and fall-like and proceeded to hang new curtains, artwork and buy new accessories and pillows.

I know I need to include more pictures in my posts, but I have always found uploading pictures from my camera to my computer to be a giant pain in the rear. Does anyone have any tips for me? If there a way for my computer to absorb my pictures through osmosis? Telepathy? A snap of my fingers? Anyone?

Progress....

Somebody please call a psychiatric facility and make me a reservation.





Just kidding. Some days I feel like checking myself in though. Do you ever feel that way?





The kitchen (phase one of it) is about 75% complete and I have moved on to the laundry room. I think I fail in the diligence category. In all fairness, the laundry room is right off of the kitchen and it just makes sense to do it all at once.... RIGHT?



A little preview of my oh so attractive laundry room....

Don't you love my dark pine cabinets? Aren't they sexy?

I can tell you that the laundry room is now unrecognizable from these pictures. I am going to wait to post pictures of my progress because I have pictures of the 75% complete BOARD AND BATTEN!

Do you remember the before? Let's take a look, shall we?

And after!

Is that not one million trillion percent better? We still need to paint the white crown moulding and also do another coat of white, but I think it's better already. I really hope my grandmother isn't rolling in her grave because we painted all of her panelling, but I think it looks great! You can just ignore the pizza boxes on the counter. Also please ignore the clutter on the side of the refrigerator. Dirty elves or flying monkeys must have snuck in while I was at work today because I NEVER live like this.

And lastly, I was at the Salvation Army a few weeks ago and I snapped this picture of this er.... treasure with my phone because it was just too good not to share.

It's a owl clock/pirate ship/paddle boat/fake aquarium/alarm clock that lights up. Who thought of this and why didn't I buy it for next years White Elephant Christmas swap? Somebody tell me why!?!?

Craft-it Forward

I received the neatest thing in the mail yesterday. Dawn from Life at Eventually Cottage sent me the nicest package. Why would she do that, you might ask? She's crafting it forward!

Dawn made me three beautiful black wooden wall hangings and she included a little package of birdie notes.

If you like my beautiful wooden plaques, I think Dawn sells them!

Do you want to Craft-it Forward and receive a neat-o mosquito gift from me that is just the bee's knees?

1) Be one of the first THREE bloggers to comment on this post.

2) You then agree to share your snail mail address with ME (leave me your e-mail in the comment and I'll contact you) so I can send you a small gift handmade by ME

!3) When you receive your gift, you then blog about this game & link back to my blog in that post.

4) And most importantly, you ALSO AGREE to "craft it forward" (or just pay it forward if you'd rather) and send a small gift to the 3 people who comment on your blog post...

That's it!

We have winners!

Because I am so not web-saavy, I couldn't figure out how to get the random.org thingy on my blog, but on to the winners!


For "Devil in the Details: Tales of an Obsessive Girlhood", random.org selected #12, Hurricane Heather of Poop In My Pocket!

For the lovely Lucky Fiona collar, #6, Phillips Phamily Mama of Phillips Phamily Phive!

For the Cherry Blossom Candle, #8, Nicol of Classy and Sophisticated!

Ladies, email me your addresses to Lindyd1011(at)aim(dot)com !

Congratulations!

How many fruits and vegetables can I eat today?

Don't fall out of your chair or anything, but I am cooking dinner tonight. We have done pretty good this week, I cooked Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights, Wednesday night was pizza from Truett Cathy's (Chick-fil-a owner) pizza restaurant and tonight is Paul Prudhomme's Lentil Soup and Mardi Gras Salad.

I got the idea for Mardi Gras salad from Carmella at Southern Fried Dreams. Like I said before, I grew up in South Louisiana and I have never heard of this delicious salad. I'll be trying it out tonight and I am pretty sure it will be delicious! It has a total of 6 fruits and vegetables!

When J.D. and I were home in Louisiana last month we caught Paul Prudhomme's cooking show. That day he was making lentil soup, but his looked even better than mine! You can find the recipe here. It has a total of nine different fruits and vegetables!

Some of the vegetables, like the onion and bell peppers are in each recipe so I won't count those twice... but that is 13 different fruits and vegetables in a meal! Wow!

I'll let you guys know how it turns out!

You can still enter my giveaway!

Call a plumber... an electrician? I THINK NOT!

Well we haven't accomplish much in the way of board and batten this week. I think both of us are more than a little burnt out on painting. However we have not been resting our laurels while on painting hiatus. Oh, no!

Let me tell you that J.D. had a nickname in college. She was known as "Super D". Little did I know how appropriate that moniker was.

This girl can do just about anything. She isn't afraid of getting her hands dirty or her feet wet (I totally am). She would probably tell you that she will try any repair once simply because she is so cheap, but I think she has natural abilities.

See, she is totally not afraid to get in and get dirty! Case #1: my bathroom sink has never, ever, ever drained properly, even from the time we moved into this house. I always found this frustrating especially because the bathroom had been gutted and new sink and pipes under the sink has been installed. It has progressively gotten worse. A few months ago we tried removing the p-trap and seeing if there was a clog in it, but that baby was clean as a whistle. I have really been conserving water over the past 8 months because I have gotten used to running the sink at a trickle to wash my hands and brush my teeth in order to keep the sink from filling up with water.

On Monday J.D. bought a 25 foot power auger. Oh, yes! This puppy attaches to a drill and boy is it powerful!

After working for two hours and using all 25 feet of line, she removed a washcloth from the pipe! I wonder how long that had been down there? She asked if I wanted to photograph the evidence, but believe me... you wouldn't have wanted me to! My sink is draining beautifully now and I think we saved at least $200!

Case #2: ugly brass hall light. We have slowly been replacing light fixtures. About two weeks ago I saw a light fixture at Lowe's on clearance for $14.00. I think the regular price was $42.00. The only issue was that they were out of the ones in boxes. I learned two years ago not to buy the one they have hanging up. I did that once and it didn't have all of the hardware and it was a disaster. Well last week I went back to Lowe's and they had one in a box that had been returned! I snapped that baby up!

Ugly light!

Well, I think I can tell you why it was on clearance and why someone returned it. It took her two hours to put up! Normally she can change out a light fixture in 15-30 minutes from start to finish. The screws weren't long enough, I didn't remove all of the packing material and on and on and on. Let me tell you, J.D. is PERSISTENT and DILIGENT if she is anything.


That baby is up and lit!

These aren't really the best pictures, but I do think it reflects that it is much better than what was the there. I love that CFL's are great for the environment, but I hate the fluorescent glow they give off! Grrrr!

You can still enter my giveaway! Friends and family are eligible!

100th post G.I.V.E.A.W.A.Y!!!

Well folks, I can't believe it; I've had enough to say to write 100 posts. In honor of this, I have assembled a giveaway. Because I want to increase people's chances of winning something, I will be giving away three different things to three different people. Now on to the giveaway!

Have you ever been to Luckyfiona? I love this etsy shop. I can't tell you (out of shame) how many collars my puppies have from this shop. Shannon, the proprietress and Fiona's dogmom, makes each collar by hand and let me tell you, they are exquisite!

My personal favorite is "The Lotus". Mr. wore this collar for our photo shoot.

image courtesy of Lucky Fiona

The Ted would have to be my second favorite. It's my favorite collar on Zoey. In fact, she wore it for our photo shoot.

image courtesy of Lucky Fiona

Well, it is your lucky day! One of you will win a gift certificate to Lucky Fiona for a custom collar. Don't have a dog? Shannon also makes custom cat collars!

The next item you have to chose from is a Cherry Blossom candle from Amy's Country Candles. These candles are from my home state of Louisiana and they smell delicious. When I was home last month I purchased an extra one to give away on my blog... lucky you!

image via www.amyscountrycandles.com

My last and final item is one of my favorite books ever. This book probably isn't for everyone, but if you have ever been described as Obsessive Compulsive or know someone who is, you will definitely enjoy this book. I will be giving away one hardback book of "Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood" by Jennifer Traig. I love this book. I seriously laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes. It was that good.

photo from http://www.amazon.com/

Okay, here's how it is all going to work. You get two chances to win. To enter to win:

1. Leave a comment on this post.

2. Blog about my giveaway. Please leave a second comment letting me know that you did.

That's it! You don't have to follow me or anything like that. If you like me and you want to follow me, that would be great!

If you would like to win the book, please let me know in the comments. I will lump everyone who wants to win the book together in a separate category. My reason being is that this book is so super fabulous I only want it going to someone who will appreciate it. Is that crazy?

The deadline to enter is Friday, June 19, 2009 at 11:59pm EST. The winner will be drawn by 12:00 pm on Saturday, June 20, 2009.

I will draw the winner for the book first, and the draw a second name and this person can pick from either the collar or the candle. The third name drawn gets whatever #2 didn't pick. Does this make sense?

Good luck!

Board and Batten, part 1

Last night we hung the boards for our board and batten. I originally got the idea to do this somewhere in our house last fall when we visited our contractor's house. He had done it in one of the hallways in his house and I loved it. He said that it was really easy to do, so I filed the idea away in my head. The walls that I decided to do this on are wood. They are thin panels of real wood that were stained a really dark color to match the cabinets. I've never really cared for these walls because they added to the whole cave feeling that the kitchen gave off. Once I decided to board and batten the walls, I googled "how to board and batten" and came across Karla's blog. Karla and her husband used mdf for their "boards" and they made it look pretty easy overall.

I must have looked at her directions 50 times. The idea of buying sheets of mdf and cutting it into strips scared me. All we have is a hand saw, miter box and circular saw. I wasn't sure if we could cut straight and how it would look. I also felt like because the wall was wooden, I had one shot to get it right. I probably visited the hardware store ten different times and looked at wood.

I knew it was going to cost around $30 for each sheet of mdf. I knew that the two sheets of mdf would provide much more wood than we needed. Last Saturday, J.D. and I were at Lowe's and we stumbled upon pre-cut Poplar boards. It was $1.98 per 1"W 1/4"D and 4'L board. I think we bought 6 of those. We also spent $5.98 each for (3) 3"W, 1"D 6'L board. We ended up only using two of those.

Tuesday night J.D. primed the wall. The space started looking lighter!


J.D. cutting the 3" thick boards. That was work. Out miter box isn't mounted to anything, so it took one person to hold it down. That was tricky because we were also trying to avoid getting our fingers chopped off.



First section hung.



J.D. working behind the refrigerator. One board came out a little short, but it is going to be completely hidden behind the refrigerator. It also may seem silly to do this in an area that we will never see, but I wanted it to cover the entire wooden area.

J.D. hammering away. We used a level to get everything straight.

I can't wait to paint the bottom part bright white and the top part Maison Blanche!

Once it is painted and finished I will post better directions on how we did this. But really, for the best directions, go check out Karla's blog.

Paint, how do I love thee.......?

I love paint. I hate painting. After we tackled the knotty pine debacle in the den last February, I didn't want to see a paintbrush again for a good little while. My motivation came back around with the news that my Dad, stepmom and little brother are coming for a visit in July. The obsessed part of me feels like the house needs to be perfect by the time they arrive. The realist in me knows that there is NO WAY on God's beautiful green earth that is going to happen in the next five weeks, but I can do what I can.



Last weekend we began knotty pine kitchen overhaul part one. Here are some before pictures to remind you of the hideousness of my kitchen.



Hello, my name is dark and dreary and stuck in the 1960's. Don't I inspire gourmet meals out of you? What, you don't like me?

Look at the difference one coat of primer and THREE coats of Maison Blanche by Sherwin Williams will make! I no longer want to put on depressing music and have a pity party when I walk into my kitchen. SCORE!

For the record, that is a giant dog gate you see in the picture above. When you have three zealous dogs who weigh between 50 and 100 lbs each; the little baby gates don't cut the mustard, so to speak. Also notice the ugly hole to the right. That is an old heating fan from before the house had central air and heat. We ripped them out in all of the rooms with sheetrock and had the sheetrock repaired, but we couldn't do that with the panelling, so I am working around it.

We plan on painting the window frames white this week, so I will post photos of that once it happens.

Remember this dark ugly wooden wall?


Oh baby, do we have big plans for it. Can you say board and batten? I am so excited about that!

Favorite Paint Colors

update!My favorite paint color is actually SEA SALT by Sherwin Williams. I wrote this post off of the top of my head and guessed the paint color by memory. Evidently this is a very bad idea! 




Today I am participating in My Favorite Paint Color Party over at 320 Sycamore. You should probably know that I am the type of person who may or may not agonize over paint colors. My steps are probably crazier than most. I will buy the mini tester cans to try out a color, but not for the reason you might think. I buy them because I am not trying to decide between shades of blue, but because I am thinking about painting a room school bus yellow or charcoal gray and I want to see if I have lost my mind. They end up being a good investment because I have never actually painted an entire room charcoal gray or school bus yellow. Once I decide that I am going with blue, for instance, I look at the color strip and immediately select a color. No waffling here!


My absolute favorite shade of blue is Beachglass by Sherwin Williams. My bedroom is painted this color and I love it!







It works so well; it isn't baby blue or depressing blue, but perfect blue!