Kitchen Coat Area

11/03/2010

Since we lost the hall coat closet to my new home office, I decided to do a mini makeover of our angled kitchen wall. I once had big plans to turn this into a wall of pegboard on the bottom and cork tiles on the top. Apparently a lot of people liked that idea because it’s one of my most popular post. Maybe we’ll still do that someday but for now, I repurposed a small coat rack from IKEA, painted it the same teal as my home office nook and hung it below my Are You Happy? flow chart. Quick easy solution.


Home Office Part 4: Decorating & Customizing

11/02/2010

Since my last update on the coat-closet-turned-home-office I have (all by myself!):

• painted 3 walls teal … with a brush, using watery old paint. It took 3 coats.

• hung my second monitor on the wall. Jason? Please help me re-hang it straight and centered.

• mounted under cabinet lights below the shelf to shine on my desk. Currently the right one is shining on my monitor because it’s not centered. Jason…?!

• hung my silver @, my bulletin board and clip board for quick inspiration and fun designs

• relocated my printer to the bookshelf in the living room where it’s connect to our airport extreme so we can access it wirelessly. The brown fabric box below the printer holds all the printer paper and accessories. Apparently I have a mess of cords that I need to do something about.


Smoky Mountain Getaway

11/01/2010

Jason was in playing in Pigeon Forge, TN for several days last week and the week before. Since it’s not too far from Nashville his boss was gracious enough to allow all of the wives and families to come out and join the guys for the weekend. I got there Friday night and had a nice dinner date with my husband. Saturday and Sunday we spent the day at Dollywood where the guys played three back to back shows to a packed theater. Saturday I hung out backstage with the band wives and kids. That was neat but not as cool as sitting in the front row for all three shows on Sunday. (The day I left my camera back at the hotel.) The concerts were so fun. And it was wonderful to watch Jason get to do what he loves to do. I’m so proud of him! Plus, it was super cool to sit so close to the stage where I could keep catching his eye and making him smile.

Sunday night our party of 20 had a fabulous dinner at the Peddler. I ate until it hurt. It was good! Even though Jason and I don’t have any kiddos the adults were still outnumbered 9 to 11! On Monday Jason had the day off so we drove up into the Smoky Mountains. Wow! If you ever want to visit the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, I highly recommend October! The trees were AHHHHHmazing! Words don’t do it any justice so on with the pictures…

I think this is about the time we started singing, “This land is your land, this land is my land…”

Uh oh, Where’s Jason? is back…

Ah! What a lovely weekend!

 


Phone Photo Friday

10/29/2010

After 10 weeks in the open-all-year Christmas store, the angel couldn’t take it anymore and hung herself with her price tag.

(Sorry, Jason and I just couldn’t resist…)


Great Smoky Mountains – Preview

10/28/2010

I’ll write a whole post about the wonderful time I had in Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg/Smoky Mountains last weekend with Jason and the other guys he’s touring with and their families. But…you’ll have to wait until next week. Sorry! Here’s a preview:


Home Office Part 3: The Coat Closet

10/26/2010

A home office in a closet can be a great solution when you don’t have a room to spare. We have limited closet space but we do have a 46″ by 24″ coat closet in our hallway across from the door to our bedroom. Before discussing my revelation with Jason I immediately started sketching out where everything would fit and where I could put everything that was currently in the hall closet: coats, hats, gloves, scarfs, extra blankets and pillows, vacuum, tools, cans of paint, lightbulbs and other odds and ends. Once I had a plan, I took my idea to corporate for approval. (Joking, but it does help to have a well thought out plan before presenting my crazy ideas to Jason.)

He was fine with my plan! Over the course of a few Saturdays when Jason was out on tour I managed to move everything out of the hall coat closet. Coats are in the closet of the spare room (for now anyway), extra blankets and pillows are in tubs in the attic, and the rest of that stuff is in our new but not-yet-finished laundry room. So on to that empty hall closet …

With Jason again gone on tour I decided to tackle this job on my own to 1) keep myself busy, 2) keep up the weekend warrior pace I’m used to when he’s home, 3) impress him with my renovation skills, and 4) get it done. When we had Jason’s giant birch desktop cut at the hardware store last month I had the guy trim one of the offcuts to 46″ so it would be the right length for my desktop. I used scraps of wood from Jason’s old desk to make little wood ledges on the side walls of the closet to hold up an additional shelf (the top one was already there) and the desk top.

For now my printer is on a crate to the left of my computer with paper underneath. I’m going to come up with another solution since my desk surface is limited.


Good-Looking (and Yummy) Ice Cream Cake

10/25/2010

Jason’s birthday was back on September 16th and I decided to give him a mini surprise by making homemade ice cream cake and taking it to our small group to celebrate. (Small group = Jason, me and three other families from our church that get together once every 2 weeks to hang out, encourage each other, pray for each other, etc.) I’ve made homemade ice cream cake a few times before but it always turned out kind of … ugly. I mean, you can’t go wrong with the taste but it has never looked anything like the $15-25 store-bought kind.

This year I was googling recipes that use ice cream sandwiches because they make the ice cream step a lot easier. I found this Oreo & Fudge Ice Cream Cake recipe from Kraft that uses just five ingredients: ice cream sandwiches, oreos, cool whip, fudge, and jello pudding mix. It was pretty simple and it turned out really pretty!

Once the cool whip on the outside started to thaw it started to get pretty messy but the slices turned out pretty good looking. Most importantly, everyone thought it was D-to-the-licious and the birthday boy was very appreciative.


Phone Photo Friday

10/22/2010

Have you ever tried Grilled Hobo Fruit Packs of Awesomeness from Today’s Letters? What the what what? First of all, if you’ve never checked out the blog Today’s Letters – go there now. Sweetest blog I’ve ever seen. Everyday Emily writes love letters: two to her husband and a few other to important people and silly loves in her life. Emily and Tim have the most playful and sweet relationships I’ve every witnessed through blogland. Oh, and she responded to my tweet about subbing gingerman cookies for ginger snaps in Fruit Packs of Awesomeness so we’re totally twitter friends now. 🙂 If you want to know what the heck I’m talking about go to the link and MAKE some. You won’t regret it!


Home Office Part 2: Closet Offices & Inspiration

10/21/2010

I saw an ad for Unplggd’s Roundup of Home Offices In a Closet one day and had an epiphany. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I know people put home offices in closets. That could be the perfect solution! (Between the time of the epiphany and the time of this post, one of my sweet blog buddies, Julia, actually suggested I try a closet as a home office solution. Great minds think alike! Heehee.) Here are some inspiration photos I found:

(All images from Unplggd’s Roundup of Home Offices In a Closet and here and The Black Hole Home Office)

The only hitch: our 55 year old house doesn’t have a whole lot of closet space. The two original bedrooms (master and my office) have closets with sliding doors—not large, not walk-in, and packed with stuff. The third bedroom (Jason’s studio) has a squarish walk-in closet full of musiciany things and is frequently used as an isolation room for his amp.

But wait, we have one more closet … the coat closet in the hallway!

*****

See Home Office Part 1: Small Homes Require/Inspire Creativity if you missed it.


Phone Photo Friday

10/15/2010

Chihuly Nights exhibit at Cheekwood