9/24

On our To Do 2.0 I put up a bunch of stuff that we actually got completed yesterday & I wanted to share our progress. It must be said that Greg Morgan is OFFICIALLY the handiest ever. In fact, he pointed this out to me yesterday while hanging the dining room curtains..."I'm 1 handy husband" (yes...husband).

So here's what we did yesterday...First I went to the race for the cure & to brunch for some Zeta work. When I got home we scooted off in our ZipCar (If you live in a big city & don't have this yet, open a new browser window right now & sign up) to Home Depot. We intended to get our faux wood blinds re-cut to fit in our new windows, but naturally they've got a new brand of faux wood blinds at Home Depot now & the cutting machine doesn't cut "old school blinds" (that we bought 6 months ago) anymore. So our faux wood blinds are in storage waiting for a future home to be just the right size. We'll see. ANYWAY, we also needed staples for the staple gun so I could recover the dining chairs, and some sturdy wall hanging materials. I also got the first round of materials to recover the armoire in the living room...Since it's got a glossy, 1980's faux finish on it, it needs to be primed with a certain primer that makes paint more adhesive. I also picked up a couple paint color cards to compare with our dining room table. Our next stop was Target where we needed to pick up two extra long curtain rods ($20 each, thank you Target).

Sadie "helping" with
the chair project

When we got home we got RIGHT to work on the dining room chairs. We got this table & chairs from Craigslist right before we moved here, and we love it. The woman who owned it before also got it second hand & she'd already recovered the chairs once, but they needed a fresh cover. We registered for a LOT of Navy Blue, so I'd decided I wanted to change it up a little in the dining room & do some grey & turquoise. When I was hunting for fabric for the chairs I was looking for a small grey print & stumbled across hounds tooth in grey on Amazon. Me gusta!  The rest was easy...take the seat off of the chair (thank you handy Greg), then wrap the seats with the new fabric & secure the fabric to the seat with the staple gun & reattach the seat. That's it! So easy!

Even my dining room looks
good in the Turquoise & Grey

Then Greg moved on to hanging up the curtains. We already had the two curtain panels from our first apartment in Roger's Park, which just happened to be turquoise. All we needed was the curtain rod! Even though the panels aren't wide enough to actually close completely, we really put them up as a finishing touch & not so much for practical purposes. We're very pleased! All in all the dining room is coming along...with our grey rug from Ikea, our sweet new seat covers, our re-purposed curtains & a few new touches (like the candle sticks) it's beginning to look like a real, grown up dining room! We've still got some work to do...refinishing the armoire, finishing our collection of seating & making a sweet no-sew table runner, but all that stuff will be just as fun!

Lilah loves our
new rug too!

Right after we finished dressing the windows in the dining room Greg got hard to work at hanging the curtains in the living room. These curtains were from our Lakeview apartment, and just happen to fit in the new place. Again, we needed 1 XL curtain rod to hang them up, but re-purposed the rest of the materials. Even though I'd rather the curtains were much longer, these are a great finishing touch & were "free" since we already owned them. And the curtain rod from the little window was up in our last place too.

While Greg was doing the window dressing in the living room, I was busy working on an "art project" in the kitchen. I'd seen a post on Young House Love on "Monograms" as bedroom art, so I thought I'd give it a go and add a little personal touch. Basically I printed the letter G & the letter M in different fonts & framed them in white 4 x 6 frames. Then I framed some cards & notes that each of us had written to the other (and in a couple cases received from a friend in congratulations after our engagement) & put those around our respective initials. There are a couple of "blank" spots but I'm sure something will come along that fits perfectly there. Greg & I are both notorious for having full "keepsake" folders, boxes & bins, but we finally found a way to display our favorite love notes & cards to each other in a way that is personal & pleasing to the eye. Seeee....

I need to finish transferring all of my digital photos from the last 3 years so that I can go through & pick out the ones we want printed for our photo wall & I'll probably need to find a way to get mats that fit the photos I'm ordering (suggestions/recommendations are welcome). 

That's all for now! Back to homework (which is what I should have been doing instead of blogging...but I need a little mental wellness every now & then). 

Happy Sunday,

Meggo