Projects!

I really have no idea how the time is going by this fast!  It's crazy to think that in just over a week I'll have been here for 5 months.  I honestly wasn't sure I'd last this long!  Well I did and I've had to try and find ways to keep myself busy; hence the title of this post!  I promise I will write a post soon that is more about what's been happening in our lives rather than just what we've been doing.  Tonight just isn't that night.

Work has definitely helped with keeping me busy but it's also created a bit of a stressor too.  It isn't quite what I thought I was getting into.  The foundation I'm at and the leadership that is running it just isn't a good fit for me.  I fortunately/unfortunately figured that out pretty quickly.  The conundrum now is what to do about it.  I'm still working on that answer.  At least I have somewhere to go for 40 hours a week now! :)

Matt and I have been keeping busy on the weekends.  Mostly with commitments for family or friend's happenings.  We're kind of at that age where we're going to be having quite a few weddings to go to in the next couple of years and that's already started a bit.  So all of the peripheral social things have been good fillers on the weekends.  But...we've still managed to make some time for projects.

This pictures shows the fruits of all of our gardening!  Well not all but we did at least get a successful, albeit early, tomato harvest.  Matt even made a fantastic tomato/vodka/cream sauce one night with them.  A lot of our other plants got eaten up by some of the most disgusting and largest bugs/grubs I've ever seen.  I won't make you look at them.

I think all of the remaining projects came from ideas on Pinterest.  That has to be one of the most addicting and yet useful websites of all time.  I love it.  But anywho, back to the projects :)  This one is just a basic art/decor project.  I took a plain white canvas, painted the entire thing a light seafoam-y green color and then with the help of my Mom who found doilies, spray painted over doilies on the canvas.  It didn't turn out perfect but overall I'm pretty happy with it.  Plus....it's a non-pink addition to our bathroom :)

This project was helped along greatly by my Grandma and Mom who found all of these frames for me. This was also a nice joint Matt & Katie project.  Gotta love those!  All we did was cleaned up the frames and painted them!  It was a great way to spend a Saturday night (or it could have been a Friday night....either way the message there is we're pretty lame 20 somethings!) and I'm looking forward to putting pictures in these and hanging them up in our back hallway.

These two are my favorite.  I love how the detail of the frames looks with the paint.

 All of the finished products:

This project has to be one of the more lame things I've ever done on a Saturday night.  A couple of weekends ago Matt had a bachelor party out of town so I was on my own for the weekend.  Clearly this ended in me doing a whole heck of a lot of cleaning (and listening to the Harry Potter movie marathon on ABC family).  I find cleaning when I'm alone to be one of the most therapeutic things I can do.  Well this particular night I decided to tackle our bathroom floor grout.  Here's what it looked like before (notice how the grout is kind of an indeterminable color):

Here's what it looked like during the process.  The white stuff is a mixture of baking soda and bleach.  I found the recipe on Pinterest but then kind of went off course a little and just kept adding baking soda and bleach until the consistency was decent.  The whole process took a little over two hours....and we don't have a very big bathroom!  I started by sweeping and wiping down the floors and then tackled the grout with a toothbrush.  Then I went back over all of the grout with the toothbrush plus the paste.  By the time I made it to the front of the bathroom it was time to go all the way to the back and start wiping/scrubbing off the paste.  Time consuming but I think worth it.

The floor after all that scrubbing and kneeling on tile floors:

 The grout looks amazing!  I can actually tell what color it is.  I thought the best testament to the difference it made was when Matt came home and as soon as he walked in the bathroom asked if I cleaned the grout.  I didn't even tell him I was going to do it....he noticed completely on his own.  Amazing!

This next project was pretty fun.  Again, I found the idea on Pinterest but modified it a bit.  This is a present we put together for some friends of ours who just bought their first home.  It's a bit of a fixer upper so I changed the idea accordingly.  The party was a "stock the bar" themed housewarming (fantastic idea, by the way).  So we bought them an assortment of alcohol.  Each bottle has a label with a different "first".  For instance, the big bottle on the back left is a wine called "Evolution; Luck or Inspiration"  this became "First DIY Project Completed."  The bottle in the back middle is peppermint schnapps with hot chocolate, this is "First Snowfall."  The back right is a bottle of wine called "The Slammer" clearly this one had to be "First Night Married." :)  The front left is called "Simply Red"  this became "First Fight Her."  The middle front is Jack Daniels-this is for "First DIY Injury."  Last but not least is a beer called "Arrogant Bastard" that one is labeled "First Fight Him."  All in all I think it turned out pretty well.  They seemed to think it was pretty dang cute.

So even with work we've been keeping busy.  I've been neglecting the garden a bit but it's still chugging along okay on it's own.  I'm planning on taking an evening next week and giving it some TLC.   I'm glad I've got space and resources to do some of these projects now.  It's amazing how moving away from all of my family and friends has really reinforced just how much I am my parents' daughter :)