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!

 


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:


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!


MIA

10/19/2010

Sorry I’ve been missing this week in the blog world. I’ve been sick. I’ll be back … soon! Meanwhile, here’s a picture of my sweet baby Lucy:


Jason’s Studio Before

10/14/2010

I shared some pictures on Monday of the not-quite-finished main part of Jason’s studio remodel. I was able to find a few before pictures but the rest must be on a different hard drive. When we moved in the room was carpeted. (I can’t find any of those pictures.) Then our cat peed on the carpet various times in various places and we ripped it out and threw it away. (I hate cats. And carpet. Sorry to anyone that I just offended.) Under the carpeting we found that the original flooring had been painted some some kind of white something. It was dirty so we painted it with Kilz. Then we painted it chocolate brown thinking maybe it would match the rest of the house. It didn’t look good. (Again, can’t find any pictures …) Then, we decided to do the whole room in black VCT tiles. Cheap, durable, dark … good for a room that people are dragging amps and guitars and drums in and out of. As this room has evolved into less of a practice room and more of a full-blown home studio a real remodel was desperately needed. Here are some pictures from the previous state:

We love this gigantic, unbelievably-heavy gold vinyl mid-century sofa bed. Besides weighing as much as a car, it’s really long and in the original floor plan of the room there was only 1 option of where it could fit. Right smack in the middle of the room facing the door to the living & dining room.

Jason’s brother’s drums lived in the corner of this room for about 3 years.

Jason’s desk was fitted into the space between these 2 closets covering an impractically high window seat. Not conducive to proper studio monitor acoustics.

This is without a doubt Lucy’s favorite room in the house. She always keeps her toys in here. When Jason is working at home she’ll curl up on the couch or under his feet. Sidenote to a sidenote: I HATE this leather shag rug. I thought it was a bad idea from the beginning. I remember when Jason picked it out at the store and I was distracted on the phone with my sister and couldn’t say “What are you thinking? How are we going to clean that thing?!”

Lucy also loves to look out the backdoor. It’s a window just her height. I always imagine she’s waiting for him to get home from a tour. (Actually, here she seems to be staring at that guitar, doesn’t she?)

The original floor plan was this:

The new floor plan is this:

It’s amazing how much bigger this space feels now that it’s cut in half. Even the main space feels bigger than the old space. Jason took out of the closets which allowed us to fit that giant couch perfectly into that nook. The space behind it is half the impractically high window seat and half a ledge that will eventually be shelves on top. The smaller room, “the loud room”, will be used for storage and tracking. It’s still needing insulation, sound absorption and drywall; shelves; lighting; rug; etc.

I’ll have some finished after pictures whenever the room is fully finished. Don’t hold your breath – it might be a few months. Check out Monday’s post if you didn’t see the pictures of the mostly-finished main space.


Jason’s Studio Remodel

10/11/2010

I gave you a glimpse of Jason building a wall a couple of weeks ago. Then last weekend a snapshot of bamboo flooring installation. And, of course, there was the big poster print we ordered of Great Grandpa Carl. We’ve had a little secret remodeling project going on. Jason (and I) turned his roughly 13’x22′ two closet home studio into a two room studio. The main space now has one closet (he took out the second one) and is his main work area, about 13’x11′. The other space is for tracking and storage and it’s not finished yet. It will probably be about 13’x10 when it’s done. Here are a few pictures I took of the almost finished main studio space:

I didn’t take many pictures of the floors because Jason hasn’t had a chance to do the quarter rounds yet but we’re really happy with how the solid bamboo floors turned out. They were on sale at HD for $1.99/sq ft! We left the black VCT tiles in the other room since it’s more of a work room. We haven’t figured out what to call each room yet but we’ve been calling the small room “the loud room.” I hope the main area can stay this neat and organized. I love to leave the door open so it extends our main living area and feels like a lounge.

By the way, I’m pretty sure this is the 4th kind of flooring we’ve had in this room since we moved in 3.5 years ago. Maybe later this week I’ll scrounge up some before pictures from the various states. The first flooring—carpeting—probably didn’t even last long enough for any photographs.


Popular Names

10/05/2010

Last week I found out that I’m getting a NIECE in February. I’m so excited! I hope to have a daughter of my own someday but the next-best-thing has got to be having a niece! Baby names have been a topic of discussion lately and I always like to whip out the Social Security Administration census list to check the popularity of a name. I guess it’s because I have an unusual name, but I have always been fascinated with names. I’ve had a running list of potential names for my future kids YEARS. Can anyone relate?

The reason I check the SSA list is because often people think they’re choosing an uncommon name and the name is in fact coming up in the trends. There is nothing wrong with having a common name, of course. But in case you are wanting your child NOT to have friends and classmates with the same name, here are some of the current trendy names to avoid:

Jayden, Isabella, Emma, Olivia, Sophia, Ava, Madison, Chloe, Mia, Aiden(+other spellings), Logan, Addison, Alexis, Ella, Grace, Lily, Alyssa, Elijah, Madelyn(+other spellings)

The most popular boy names are still pretty classic like Jacob, Michael, Alexander, Joshua, Daniel

Wikipedia also has a good list of popular names broken out by ethnicity and accounting for varied spellings.

My brother- and sister-in-law decided on a beautiful name for their daughter. It was #278 on the SSA list last year. And hey! I just noticed: my name made the list last year for the first time ever! #922.


Weekend Update

10/04/2010

This Weekend I …

• went to my favorite Mexican restaurant with my husband, his brother and our sister-in-law

• watched the ultrasound video of our little baby niece

• made lasagna at midnight with Jason

• took lasagna to our friends and got to see their precious, teeny 5 day old Matteo

• spent the afternoon in the Tennessee hills at the home of the musician Jason will be touring with through the fall

• helped Jason finish installing bamboo floors in his studio

• went to church and lost track of time

• had a lunch date with my sweet husband

• put on “Wild Pacific” and took a much-needed Sunday nap (felt GLORIOUS afterward!)

• pulled my favorite winter hat out of storage (it got cold yesterday!) and headed out to our neighborhood coffee shop with Jason (in our pus) for hot chocolate and some website design

It was a wonderful weekend!