Category: House & Home

Home & Craft Projects

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Today Joe installed some particle board under our cabinets to go over the old contact paper that wasn’t even the same color. It’s a pretty close match and looks so much better now. Not bad for only $16! Thank you, Menards. Strangely, neither Lowes nor Home Depot carry such boards.

Before:

After:

While he was working on cutting the boards, I decided to tackle two craft projects, one of which I will reveal next month when I put out the Easter decor. The other one is a shamrock banner for St. Patrick’s Day using $2 of Dollar Tree products – 1 pack of glitter foam shamrocks and some Jute Twine. I happen to already own a glue gun and some glue sticks that my mom gave me years ago that was collecting dust in the closet. It was my first time using a glue gun, and my first DIY home decor craft, so all things considered I think the end result is pretty good even though the spacing between the shamrocks isn’t uniform (I just eye-balled it) and the one shamrock is a bit more angled than the others.

We don’t really have a lot of decor for St. Patrick’s Day and I’ve been gravitating to more neutral colors and a more minimalist look, so it’s perfect. I’m pretty proud of how it came out.

Valentine’s Day & Puppy Playdate

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We decided not to do anything for Valentine’s Day this year because, eh, who cares? We don’t need anymore trinkets or candy. So imagine my surprise when on his way home from the airport on Thursday Joe came in with tulips and an Oreo ice cream cake. I just knew my cousin had something to do with the cake because I was talking about it with her just a few hours before on messenger. We’ve been enjoying that cake almost every night since. I have to say, though, that it seems like they add a bunch of cool whip to it to help it freeze harder. Maybe the regular Oreo ice cream is the way to go in the future. But I’m happy I finally got my first ice cream cake. I’ve been wanting one for a long time.

Friday (02/15) evening we went to Home Depot in search of a piece of particle board that would better match the cabinets. We got one from Menards but it wasn’t the right shade. Well, turns out neither Home Depot, nor Lowes, whom we had visited a week prior, carries such things. So it’s back to Menards in hopes they’ve stocked in a better matching color.

We also brought our paperwork from when we purchased carpeting from them 15 years ago in hopes we could order a small square to patch the holes Wookie chewed in the carpet. No such luck since they no longer have that particular item in their inventory. I could just kick myself for us throwing out the whole big roll of extra carpet we had sitting in the garage. Who knew we’d get a dog and need it someday? Ugh! My next step is contacting the manufacturer to find out if they can tell us whatever equivalent they have in the same color. Trying to pick out the correct color by memory is not working. Note to future self – keep at least a small sample of the extra carpeting next time to make such things easier. If all else fails I guess we’ll have to keep the plastic in that spot or go with hardwood flooring at some point, neither of which I’m happy about. I actually like carpet in the living room, but with how often Wookie throws up on it, it’s only a matter of time that it will need to be replaced. I clean it thoroughly every time but still.

Saturday (02/16) we took Wookie to K’s house for a puppy playdate and she peed on her throw carpet. WTF dog? At least she didn’t puke in the car since we took mine! She’s very confident roaming her house now, at least when we’re there. We left for about twenty minutes to get some food and she sat in front of the door waiting for us to return. We plan to leave her with K for the weekend in the spring to take a road trip and I hope she adjusts ok so we can build up to leaving her there for a week when we go to Disney. I don’t know how parents leave their kids with strangers all the time. I guess it gets easier? I know K would never do anything to hurt her but I still get nervous thinking of leaving her with someone else for an extended period.

Sunday (02/17) we were pretty lazy because it was snowing and Joe had to leave for the airport in the late afternoon anyway for a work trip to Seattle. His flight was getting delayed later and later so he changed to an earlier flight which was also delayed, but at least he made it to his destination! His original flight ended up being cancelled entirely.

I had actually won tickets to see The Price Is Right live @ the Chicago Theater for that night and ended up having the tickets transferred into my friend’s name so she could go instead. When I originally entered the contest in October I didn’t know I wouldn’t be able to attend. Figures. At least it wasn’t something more exciting. I mean, I would have gone for free but I’m not broken hearted about missing it.

Monday (02/18) Wookie had a grooming appointment and later that afternoon I went to Dollar Tree in search of a few specific storage bins that weren’t in stock. Between that and how crowded it was thanks to it being President’s Day, it was a disappointing trip.

Decluttering Ninja & The Ammonia Incident

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I’m completely obsessed with decluttering this year. I reorganized the bottom potion of the hall closet again and am getting rid of some decorative candle-related items that I haven’t used in years. I’m talking over a decade!!! Why I kept hanging onto it, I have no idea, but the more often I declutter, the better I get at letting things go. Along with other stuff, I now have three decent-sized boxes of donations plus a handful of items I want to try and sell. In the past month I’ve also decluttered under the master bathroom sink, all of our paperwork on a snow/ice day where the office was closed last month (and now have two bags of paper to shred), my nightstand, the pantry, the kitchen cabinets, the “junk” drawer, and under the kitchen sink.

That last one is where I ran into an issue. Wednesday evening I was rounding up all the chemical-based cleaners I no longer use (and had forgotten I even had) when I found a bottle of Ammonia. I decided I was going to bring it to work the next day to see if they wanted it, but apparently it had a small hole in the bottom. It kept getting wet, so I left it in the kitchen sink overnight. Thursday morning, I opened the bottle so I could place some saran-wrap inbetween the bottle and cap to seal it better, when, unbeknownst to me, the bottle starting leaking much quicker. I had placed the bottle on a paper towel and a minute later it was soaked. Me, being an idiot, sniffed it, and it burned so bad! At that point I decided to pour it down the sink, slowly, to keep the fumes to a minimum. Despite that, the house completely stunk and I was worried it would bother Wookie, so I ran around opening windows to air the place out. I ended up being a few minutes late to work because I didn’t want to leave until I was certain the fumes were gone. I ended up bringing a bottle of Windex, 409, and a few other things to work and there’s actually space under the sink now. I will NEVER buy ammonia again. That stuff is evil!

Oh, and apparently we had an unknown hard-on for hydrogen peroxide – I found two bottles under the master bathroom sink and two bottles under the kitchen sink, and there’s a bottle in the cabinet above the dryer. The funny thing is we barely use it so WTF is going on? I poured out the three really old (expired) bottles and kept two. I think that’s plenty. Plus it’s dirt cheap.

It’s funny how I’m more concerned about chemicals now that we have a dog. Apparently our own health wasn’t important? I am now on the hunt for pet-friendly floor cleaner I can either buy or make myself. I have been using vinegar and water which seems to work ok, but I don’t think it cleans the floor as well as say, Mr. Clean, but I read that is really toxic so I need a better solution (literally).

Puppies & Video Games

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Saturday my friend K and her dog came to visit. Wookie was very excited to see them and was even kind of playing with T more than she has in the past, chasing him a bit throughout the house. She had a total fit when K had to take him outside to use the bathroom – barking and crying thinking they had left. We hung out all day chatting and playing the Wii and original Nintendo. We ordered pizza from Joseph’s for lunch and had it delivered since it was snowing. They threw in a free liter of Pepsi which was nice since we don’t keep soda in the house anymore but Joe and I were both craving it. We also snacked on brownies I made. K took off around 9 pm and we ended up staying up far too late. I think it was after 1 am before I was able to sleep which sucked because I barely slept the night before thanks to someone in my family doing something to aggravate me. On the plus side I spent two hours reorganizing the hall closet late Friday night since I was too aggravated to even attempt sleeping.

Sunday we didn’t do much at all. I didn’t even shower or change my outfit! Today I was much more productive cleaning and organizing the house. Throughout the weekend, in addition to the hall closet, I reorganized both spare bedroom closets and my jewelry. Before K came over I put together a box of donations that I encouraged her to go through and she took an old bag of mine that I’ve been hanging onto for years but never use. I’m slowly getting better at getting rid of things like that but it’s hard because sometimes I won’t use something for years and come across it and start using it again regularly. But overall I want to make sure that whenever we decide to move we don’t have a ton of stuff we don’t use to pack up.

Now I have two boxes slated to be donated and a bunch of things I want to post for sale on Offer Up. Joe has been selling stuff on there too. It still blows our minds how much stuff we continue to find to purge. It seems never-ending!

Driveway Saga Resolution

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I don’t think I ever wrote an update about the driveway. Apparently the inspector kept failing the apron preparation which was preventing the concrete company from completing the job. I went back and forth in email and on the phone with them, the village, and our property manager since no one was keeping residents in the loop regarding the delay. It was incredibly frustrating because everyone was blaming everyone else; meanwhile nothing was getting done and residents were stuck in the middle without a driveway or the ability to use their garage.

The work was finally approved, supposedly by a different inspector, and the concrete was poured on July 18th. The work began on June 11th so that’s 38 days later and 40 days before we could use our driveways because they kept the driveway blocked from being driven on for a few days after the fact to allow it to cure (and we actually waited a couple of days longer to ensure it was fully dried). That’s 6 weeks we all had to park on the street for something that should have taken no longer than 3 weeks according to their schedule.

What really gets me is had they ripped up the apron at the same time as the driveways it would have all been complete within a week! I still don’t understand why they chose to rip them up at different times particularly because they didn’t do that on any of the subsequent work they’ve done in the subdivision. I guess we were just “lucky”. Ugh, I’m just glad that’s behind us now.