Take THAT, Pottery Barn

I love Pottery Barn. 99% of the items sold at Pottery Barn could all be on my Oprah-esque favorite things list. However, I would never actually purchase 99% of the items sold at Pottery Barn because they are ridiculously expensive. Examples? This, these, this, and this. I could go on, really.

But my favorite thing I think I've ever seen at Pottery Barn was this light. And it's only a measly four-HUNDRED-dollars! (gulp) Or, that's how I tried to rationalize the cost to myself and my husband, but it was a no-go for this hobo. So sad too, because I knew it would look gorgeous in our dining room.

But then! I found THIS on PINTEREST (proof that something like this could be DIY'd):

link from Kara Paisley Designs
And a few great tutorials (here and here) on how to make your own pendant or chandelier lights with mason jars! I was sold. And I eventually convinced Aaron to be in on it too (it really was QUITE the project).

Here's what we ended up with. We are so happy. And tired (did I mention yet that it was a lot of work?) I've got all the details below for those whose hearts also ache for that much-too-expensive PB light.

Here's the cost breakdown:

$   6.97 - pint-sized mason jars (all the quart-sized ones were given to me!)
$   4.34 - mason jar lids with bands
$ 22.20 - lamp wire
$ 34.44 - sockets
$   3.98 - wire nuts
$ 11.88 - lightbulbs
$   8.48 - spray paint
$ 12.00 - wood for base
$   4.50 - clamps for wires
_______

$ 108.79 TOTAL (WIN!!)

We are thrilled with the results. And thrilled to actually have LIGHT in our dining room. Now, we really have no excuse for eating dinner in the living room.

Anywho, for those who are interested in the "how-to", read on!

A DIY Victory

Three years ago, I bought these pictures for $5 each at an auction:

I don't even have to ask, I know some of you are giving semi-creepy, white Jesus & Mary a nervous, eye-brow-raised look. My husband gave me that same look when I showed him what I bought, "What in the world are you going to do with THOSE?!" To which I replied, "I have no idea! But I like them!"

I hung onto these and moved them from apartment to apartment to house for the past 3 years, and then I finally had an idea! I found this idea on Pinterest (WHAT-you're-not-on-Pinterest?!):

originally from Felt & Wire Shop.

New Home, New Fears

Last summer, when we first got Ellie (and she was the cutest. puppy. ever.), we quickly found out that she was afraid of going down stairs. She would go up them just fine, but if you wanted her to get down the stairs, you had to carry her. Since you HAD to go down the stairs in our old apartment to get outside, this meant a lot of Aaron & Heather carrying the puppy down the stairs so she could go potty. This was fine while she was a little thing, but by about 5 months we got more aggressive about getting her to go down the steps. By herself.

It didn't take long until she was running up and down, up and down, up and down the steps, using her newly-discovered skills.

And then her world got turned upside-down a little bit when we moved into this house. Among the hundreds of different things she's had to adjust to, the stairs in our new house (since they are over 100 years old!) are very different than the ones she was used to. The steps are very steep and the treads are pretty short. And to throw another curveball in there, they make a left turn at the very bottom, so it's not just a straight-shot anymore.

Eventually, she got over this too. But there were several instances where she found herself upstairs, unsure about how to get down them, and very panicked.

And then I realized this house doesn't just present new fears for the dog - for us too! After a few big storms recently brought trees down in our yard, I find myself terrified during thunderstorms now. In fact, there's a whole list of things that I never thought about before that now have me laying awake at night: carbon monoxide, lead paint, smoke detectors (& fire extinguishers), our home's stone foundation, etc etc! Some of these are mostly irrational (hey, we had a home inspection and they think the foundation is fine!) and some are just quick fixes (just go buy a fire extinguisher already!)

But I can't help but worry. This is my life now.

Luck

Two Fridays ago, Aaron & I got a letter in the mail from our bank that said they had been notified that our home insurance had been canceled (and we had so many days to replace the coverage, etc). Neither of us had intentionally canceled the coverage, so this was news to us. Great, add that to the constantly-growing list of things to do. But the insurance company's office does not open again til Monday morning, guess we'll have to wait.

Fast forward to 7am Monday morning of last week.

As many of you probably experienced, there was a big storm that tore through Wisconsin & Illinois early last week. Trees were uprooted, power lines were down, counties declared emergencies, etc. Close to 1 million people lost power in the Chicago area alone.

Aaron and I were still sleeping when we heard it. CRACK! Followed by CRASH! Both of us leaped out of bed and started running around, "Where did that come from? What was it? Did it hit the house?"

A very large, very heavy branch of a tree in our front yard had fallen toward the house. Ahem, our currently-UNINSURED house. Somehow though, it did not actually fall ON the house. The very tip of the last branch is actually just-touching the siding of the house.

How lucky could we be that this storm wreaks havoc on the greater Milwaukee/Chicago area, our home insurance is temporarily up in the air (Murphy's Law, anyone?), and the worst that happens is one segment of our fence has to be put back together?

Very lucky.

Home | Appliances

We have lived in our house for 1 month! Can you believe it? Sometimes I look around and think, "What the heck have we been doing for a month?! We still have so much to do!" But then I remember that we didn't have running water one month ago. And we didn't have painted rooms. And all the rooms were empty. And we didn't have a garden (more on that later). We did all that within the last month. Even though we were gone several weekends! So, I'm going to pat myself on the back now. (And thank both sets of our parents for all their help!)

Another thing we didn't have? Appliances. Boom. Check it out:

Ta-da!

We are still needing a dishwasher. And a clothes washer. And a clothes dryer. One step at a time!

Home | Flora

We have so many beautiful flowers right now that are blooming. These were all already here when we moved in. I did not actually do the work to grow these, I am just basking in the glory that is my new yard!

Roses

Bleeding Heart

Peony

Bluebell

The Return of the Prince

A good friend of mine once told me that she thought of my cat, Carl, as a prince. She said there was something about the way he walks and acts that reminds her of a prince. At first, I thought she was out of her mind (sorry, you know who you are, haha!), but then I started to realize that she was kinda right. He is a beautiful cat, yet definitely upholds an air of prince-like-snobbery about him. He is oh-so-sassy and demanding. And spoiled. He IS a prince. My prince.

For those of you that don't know, Carl has been living somewhere else for the past 7 months. Shortly after we moved into our apartment, we got a note on our door saying that he was being a nuisance to some of our neighbors and that we are not allowed to let our cat outside of our apartment. Though this was an perfectly fair request, we just couldn't comply. Carl is totally unhappy when he has to be indoors for more than 8 hrs, let alone 8 months until we got a house. So after trying to keep him inside for a few weeks and realizing that it just wasn't going to work, we made other arrangements. Aaron's parents, Matt & Joy, graciously offered to take him in temporarily until we found a place of our own.

It was hard to let him go (for half a year!), but I was very thankful that we had someone to take care of him for us. And, his temporary home was quite a vacation for him - he had several acres in the country to roam/hunt on, which he loves.

When they came up this weekend to help us work on the house, they also brought Carl with them. He is home. And somewhat cranky - we have to keep him inside for at least a week before we can let him out again since cats get disoriented when they move locations. I am happy. Ellie is oblivious that there is a cat somewhere in the house. She will figure it out soon.

Here are a few pictures from a homecoming photoshoot with my somewhat-camera-shy-yet-sassy cat:

Carl always blinks when I have the flash on

"Stop. Taking. Pictures."

Home | Bye Bye Bathroom

On our first real weekend working at the house, we had two goals:

1) Paint as many rooms as possible before we start moving in furniture.
2) Get the water turned on.

Our house has not been lived in for 2.5 years, meaning the water has not been turned on for 2.5 years, and the house has been through TWO winters with cold, empty pipes. The house was winterized by the bank at some point, but we weren't able to turn on the water for our inspection so this was our biggest uncertainty left.

The weekend rolled around and it was time to test it out. My parents were here helping for the weekend, which was such a blessing. Had my Dad not been here when all hell the pipes broke, Aaron and I wouldn't have known what to do - we would have either had to hire a plumber (and probably would have funded his child's college education) OR we probably would have just given up/laid on the floor and cried.

When we first went to turn on the water, we were stupidly optimistic: "It looks like the previous owners really took care of this place, and the bank did have it winterized so we should be OK". I'm realizing that saying or even thinking something like that is just asking for trouble. We had a few people scattered throughout the house to listen and watch for rushing water. Almost immediately after the valve was first turned on, several of us were shouting "STOP! TURN IT OFF" from our various lookout spots.

The most horrifying moment was when I stood in the doorway of our guest bedroom on the first floor and watched copious amounts of water rushing through fresh cracks in the ceiling. (OK, this might be a tad dramatic for how much water was actually coming through, but ANY amount of water coming through the ceiling is quite alarming!) I kind of wish I had a picture of this, but again, it was horrifying. My first thought was definitely not "I should be documenting this".

We would later find out that there were SIX burst pipes scattered amongst the plumbing in the upstairs bathroom. As the day progressed, we (Dad & Aaron) found & fixed said broken pipes by tearing out sections of the bathroom. And the optimism faded. Every time a pipe was fixed, we would anxiously turn the water on again. And every time, our hopefulness was crushed by a newly-discovered leak that was just a little further down the pipe.

The offending pipes

Demolition, no more tub

There is a bathtub in our bedroom!
So that's the story of our unplanned bathroom demolition. It took a full day of pipe-fixin', water-testin', and installin' things (can you tell that I didn't do any of the work?), but we eventually had working, not-leaking pipes. And a brand-spankin' new water heater + kitchen sink installed. And one less bathroom. But it's alright because we had planned to re-do that bathroom at some point since it was pretty outdated and lacked a shower. Now, we are just bumping up the timeline on that renovation by a few years! The good news is that we will get to make our bathroom exactly how we want it :) yay for the silver-lining.

BTW - Our theory is that all of this happened because the plumbers who winterized the pipes way back when didn't put enough anti-freeze in the pipes to last TWO winters. In their defense, it's probably not that common for a foreclosure to sit on the market for quite that long.

Home | Paint

Wow, has it really been 2 weeks since I last posted anything?! WE'VE BEEN BUSY! Sorry, will be better now that we have internet in the new house (where we spend all of our free time lately) and things are starting to get settled :)

Last weekend, my Mom and I tackled the new house like painting fiends. We got through 4 rooms over 4 days!

It took me SO long to actually pick out colors, but here's what we ended up going with. We did end up going with Behr paint for all the rooms, and at Home Depot they just matched the paint to the Martha Living colors! So great! I didn't know that until after I had spent a good 30 min trying to find the Behr colors closest to the ones I already decided on. Doh!

So here are the before & after pictures of a few of the rooms. First, our bright and spacious dining room got the "Lemongrass" color:

The living room got "Ice Folly'd":

The office got "Fledgling", in stripes! Any The Lettered Cottage readers recognize my inspiration for this room? :)

I don't have a before picture of the master bedroom (shame on me!), but here is the after of the walls in "Silver Screen":

This house is starting to feel like ours now. I would say it seems like it's about 25% our home.

We've been working again all this weekend and this time Aaron's parents came up to help us. We've been making a lot of progress, and I will share more pictures soon. I know some people (ahem, Sarah) are anxious to see how it's all coming along! :)

Birthday Fit for a Dog

Today, we officially became dog owners (graduated from puppy owners)! Isn't she sweet?

Ellie turned 1 and we made a bit of a fuss - not a lot, just did a few special things. First, we took her over to our new house for the first time and let her run around in the fenced yard while we cleaned the gutters. She really loved it.

It was such a beautiful day.

We came back later in the evening and gave her a few birthday presents: a new purple bandana and a rawhide bone bigger than her head.

"Heyy, it's my birfday!"

"Is this all for me?"

Yes, it's a bit silly to celebrate a dog's birthday, but until we have some baby birthdays to celebrate, we'll keep doing it! hehe :)