mini makeover VIII - cherry tree branches

This is actually a double makeover, first we cut the cherry tree in the front of the house as it was growing way out of control and getting too close to the overhead wires. When it was time to bag all the cut branches I had the idea to bring a few inside and put them in a vase. To make it a little bit more christmassy (is that a word?) I added some fabric mushrooms I bought at Ikea a couple of years back. I thought they were super cute in the store but then they got stuffed into a drawer and never saw the light of day again until now. Still think they are cute, now I just need them to face in the right direction, I want to see their dots in the front ;) Are your homes ready for the holidays or are you not decorating this year?

Have a great weekend and stay warm!

week forty nine

Yes, I am a bit late again...This week I decided to go into hibernation, I have been going to bed basically right after getting home and in the morning after taking a shower I have been crawling back into bed to take another nap. Is there such a thing as hibernating humans? Anyways I feel like staying in bed all day and sleep, sleep, sleep. Anyone feel the same?

Last week I received my Black Friday and Cyber Monday online purchases and of course they are shoes. One can never own too many shoes and I really needed the duck boots for the slushy New York winter, also ordered a pair of shearling insoles to keep my feet warm. On Saturday we had about 30 people over for our Christmas party, we had German Christmas cookies and Stollen, all store bought though, as I did not get the chance to bake some myself and of course there was Gluehwein. We, actually P, made it for the first time from scratch and our guest must have liked it, all in all people drank 10 liters of it! Sunday we went to the Project Market here in Jersey City, which featured local shops and restaurants. Of course I didn't leave empty handed and bought two Jersey City prints for the next gallery wall project and two small porcelain numbers, of course together they form the number 40.

Well now it is already Thursday, hope you will enjoy the rest of the week, the weekend is near!

quick diy advent calendar

P's birthday was a few days before Thanksgiving and this year I had no idea what to give him. Then  it hit me, why not take him out to dinner at Peter Luger, something that was on our list for years. I made a reservation and crafted a gift card but still needed a good idea how to wrap it in a cute way. Because I was able to get a reservation for December 1st I thought giving him the dinner as part of an advent calendar would be fun. With only a couple of day lefts to finish the advent calendar I went to The Container Store for some inspiration and quickly found the kraft paper coffee bags. Initially I wanted to write numbers on them but then I found these tree gift tags and an idea was born. The bags were so easy to make, I just used doubled sided tape to add the trees to the bags. All in all it took maybe half an hour to finish the calendar. As the bags are pretty sturdy I will be able to reuse them in the next years, they would also make cute gift wrapping for smaller items or cookies. Most of the bags are filled with chocolate, some contain messages on these dry erase bubble magnets and some contain wooden animals. I thought the animals would go very well with the woodsy theme of the calendar and look cute if they were added one by one to the "forest on the mantle. 

Do you have an advent calendar or made one for a special person in your life?

PS. In case you are wondering but this post has not been sponsored by The Container Store, I was on crutches and was only able to visit one store so I needed to choose wisely ;)

PPS. No need to worry P does not read the blog and I won't spoil it for him with this post...

week forty six through forty eight

So many things happened in the past three weeks. The backyard was finally finished (yay!), we painted the fence in front of our house black (not so fun), although first it got a coat of brown rust inhibiting primer, I tried out a new gadget (mat cutter. love it!), hung a gallery wall (finally), sprained my foot (I still have two big bruises), had to walk on crutches (exhausting), made an advent calendar for P's birthday (last minute), made a cake and decorated a tree. I am still a bit flabbergasted that Christmas is around the corner, like every year it sneaks up on me but this year we have already decorated the tree, bought most of our presents and are hopefully not feeling stressed out by the holidays. What about you? Are you guys prepared for the upcoming holidays?

house industries and uniqlo

As of lately I am always a step behind and I did not even realize one of the companies I have a crush on collaborated with Uniqlo and created a series of t-shirts with their numbers, lettering and patterns that arrived in the stores in August. Did I mention I was a step behind, after writing this it sounds more like two or three steps behind. Have I ever mentioned that I love fonts and symbols? Well I do and if I had found out about the collaboration with House Industries sooner I might have been able to pick up one of the tees with an ampersand on it, big fan of the yellow ampersand print and the striped arms. When I finally realized that the collaboration was out there the store was pretty much picked clean but I managed to grab the first tee in the collage below. There are still some designs left online in case you are in interested, they are on sale too. What are your company/store crushes you cannot get enough of?

week forty three through forty five

Hello! Do you still remember me? The past two months I was so busy at work that I put my life on hold and only wrote this blog once in a blue moon but hopefully now that my workload is back to normal I will be able to ease back into blogging. Besides work other exciting things happened, I volunteered at Open House New York again, our backyard remake is almost finished etc. There will be posts on everything that happened very soon. Oh and there are a couple of things I want to cross off my to-do list before the end of the year, which will give me lots of material for posts as well. One thing that needs to be crossed off my list is creating a gallery wall in our living room, the frames have been piling up for years, now it's time to change that...Hope you had a great weekend and have a great week!

happy halloween

Happy Halloween! I am not that big of a fan of Halloween decorating but in the fall I like having pumpkins on my front steps and this year I added some Halloween decor that I found at the Dollar Tree. Those stores are usually a treasure trove when it comes to buying cheap items to decorate for the holidays. The crow already lost some feathers, I think a neighborhood cat thought it was real and tried to wrestle with it. One morning our stoop was covered in black feathers and on top of that a bird pooped on the crow as well. At least I took the photos before this happened. Are you guys going all out with decorating for Halloween or are you not even acknowledge it? Whatever your plans are for today/tonight, have fun!

week forty two

Remember that last week I told you I wanted to catch up on sleep and be back with posts here this week, well of course I jinxed it, instead of the work getting a little slower we got a new deal in and the next two weeks will be pretty busy again. Lately I spend up to twelve hours a day at work and have not much time for anything else but I am not complaining because I really like my new job. On the other hand I feel guilty about not being able to blog and most of all reading yours. I miss you guys!

Last week we finally got our new driveway poured only to get it ripped up again this week. It was not looking too good and our contractor convinced us to have it redone. Progress in the backyard is pretty slow at the moment at least when it comes to the finishing touches. Today the footings for our new deck will be poured and after a couple days of curing we will get a new deck. On Saturday we started painting the chain link fence that sits to the right of our driveway. Not the best idea I had, the work is a bit time consuming, but it is looking so much better than the green and rusty mess we have right now. Oh, and the highlight of the week was that I finally received my Eames House Bird I bought myself as a belated birthday present. It's looking pretty good in front of our fireplace. 

Have a great week!

week forty one

Only eleven more weeks and we are starting a new year. I still cannot believe it and need to start cracking the whip on myself to finish one or two more of the projects that I had on the list for this year. Week forty one passed as quickly as the past weeks and because I finally need to catch up on sleep while I have the chance, I decided to take this week off from blogging again. I will be back with posts about my Open House New York impressions and the progress of the backyard. The site I volunteered at had amazing views (see below) and the rest was not too shabby either, actually it was a quite amazing apartment.

Hope to see you all back here next week!

before and after - tv corner

In my post yesterday I totally forgot to include a picture of our TV situation before we upgraded to the new dresser. Because it took so long to finish this dresser I will have to milk it for as many posts as I can ;) This and the fact that my week was pretty hectic and exhausting again, with no time to prepare a post for today, gave me the idea to just show you before and after shots of our TV corner.

Looking forward to catching up on sleep this weekend and volunteering at the Open House New York Weekend again. Hopefully I will be able to share my experience with you again within the upcoming weeks. Have an awesome weekend!

mini makeover Vll - dresser

Drum roll please! I finally finished the dresser I acquired on Craig's List, mind you that this whole process took over two years, this makeover was anything but mini in the end. When I first saw the dresser online my  idea was to quickly paint it another color but when it arrived I was intrigued what kind of finish might be lurking under all that paint. I whipped out my trusty stripper to strip a small corner of the dresser, lo and behold I discovered nice dark wood veneer. This motivated me to strip the whole dresser. Once I had most of the dresser stripped I started sanding the already stripped parts for what felt like an eternity, so I took a break from working on it. At that point I did not think that the break would be two years long but that is how long it took for me to get back around to this project. First thing on my to-do list after the break was scraping out paint residue from the grooves in the drawer fronts, I used wooden skewers for this because I did not want to damage the veneer, not the most fun job I can tell you. After that it took me another three weekends to finish sanding, my hand felt like it would be permanently stuck in the position of clinging to the electric sander. Once I deemed the dresser ready for some staining and oiling, the finish line was near. I stained the dresser on a Sunday and oiled it the following week while watching TV in the evening. Oh, I should not forget to mention the hard work that went into polishing the 12 brass pulls. All in all I am very pleased how the dresser turned out but the process of getting there was not fun at all. Now our TV finally has a nice piece of furniture to sit on, if only I could hide the cables, the DVD player and cable box. In my eyes they ruin the whole look but I did not want to get rid of the items for the photos, as they are there in real life and hard to hide. 

Have you ever dragged on a project as long as I did? I have to admit I have another piece of furniture that has been waiting for years to be finished, most parts are already sanded and only need to be painted. I swear this will be finished this year as well.

week fourty

Good morning everyone! Another week flew by, I feel like Thanksgiving and Christmas are around the corner...On Wednesday the brick foundation of our extension got repointed, one corner looked very scary and some bricks were loose, you could just take them out. It was like playing Jenga, you would pray that the house would not cave in at that corner. Now everything looks great again. On Saturday we had planned to pour our driveway but because of the weather the concrete will now be poured on Thursday, fingers crossed. Friday a friend from Germany arrived and we took her shopping on Saturday and on Sunday we strolled around the city. Finally discovered Sockerbit, why did I not know about this Swedish candy store before? Of course I went crazy with licorice and all things I put in my bag were delicious.

Hope you had a great weekend as well? What were you guys up to?

houndstooth

Some of you might remember that I posted a picture on Instagram of me trying on a houndstooth coat at Zara back in August. Well, you gave me the final push to make the decision to splurge on it and I ran back to the store a couple of days later. I love houndstooth and apparently others do too, for instance the people at Ligne Rose, who celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Togo seating collection with a special edition upholstered in a houndstooth print fabric by Alcantarra. Do I have to mention that I want want want it? But it is not going to happen, we have two nice sofas and we won't change a thing about them. BUt a girl can dream, right? 

Have a happy weekend! Any fun plans? I have a friend flying in from Germany today and tomorrow our driveway will be poured. I still cannot believe this is finally happening...

1. coat 2. sofa 3. duvet cover 4. pillow 5. area rug

backyard - fix me now

After about three years of dreaming, pinning ideas, bouncing ideas back and forth, not able to make a decision we are finally under way with our biggest project as of yet, the backyard. When we bought the house we were already certain that the concrete mess that is, nay was, our backyard needed to go eventually. Last year after submitting our yard for a makeover contest we got the final push to start with the project. Unfortunately we did not win the contest, we did not even manage to get to the last round.

 Last Saturday our yard was taken over by a crew of men and machines that removed all the concrete. I have to say even the dirt looks much better than the concrete. The whole process has been smooth so far but I will be so happy when it is all done, the whole anxiety of everything turning out the way I imagined it is giving me a constant headache. I'm probably the worst client because I want to be in control and involved in everything. Argh...Guess I need to compensate with more DIY project of my own in the next months.

Are you a little bit of a control freak like me? Do you have any plans for a big renovation or are you in the middle of one?

PS. Do you see our door leading into nothing? There used to be a deck and I have been tempted to open it so many times but so far none of us accidentally tried to step out.

week thirty five through week thirty nine

Good morning October! Bye bye September! The last month was a blur, right after Labor Day worked picked up to a crazy level and with my family in town for two weeks I had no time for the blog. But now I am back and it looks like the new month will be under the motto backyard renovation. Last Saturday, the day after my parents left, we had a crew of guys demoing the concrete in our driveway and the backyard. You can't image how much better it already looks, even though we are left with dirt for now. Today they are digging a trench for the drainage and tomorrow our foundation will be getting re-pointed. If all goes to plan the new driveway will be poured on Saturday. I will be writing some posts with backyard updates this month and hopefully be able to show you the finished project as well. If the weather is kind to us, we might even fire up the grill one last time to christen our new deck...

Have a great week! It's so good to be back, now I will have some catching up to do what you guys were up to in September...

ikea dollhouse furniture

On Wednesday I browsed the new section on the IKEA website and one of the first things I saw was this set of tiny dollhouse furniture. So cute! I want it even though I don't need it. All items that are part of this set are from IKEA's regular sized furniture collection.

Happy Friday and hope you get to enjoy the long weekend! I will have to start clearing out the guest bedroom as it has become more of a storage room lately, in order to store some of the stuff away I will have to reorganize the basement. Sounds like fun...not! Do you have plans for the long weekend?

1. lack side table 2. klippan sofa 3. expedit shelf 

4. stockholm rug 5. pillow 6. ikea ps lounge chair

mini makeover Vl - spray painted lamp base

I know you are waiting for the photos of the finished dresser, I did take a bunch last weekend but there were so many of them that I was not able to make a decision which ones to include in the post yet. Instead I am showing you a table lamp I bought at an estate sale a while back, which was pretty much picked clean because it was the last day of the sale. One of the few items left was the lamp base, it didn't look like much and I was able to get it for a couple of dollars. The metal parts were in rough condition but I really liked the white glass pieces and thought a bit of spray paint could take care of the rest. I still had black satin spray paint on hand and got right to work, not really taking good before pictures, just some I snapped with my phone so I could look at them for reference when putting the lamp base back together. Because I did not trust the old wiring I ordered new cloth covered cable on Etsy, the new lamp shade I found at Target. On the before pictures you can see that two pieces were made out of wood but they were not the same kind of wood, which lead me to the decision to paint the upper wooden part as well and I am glad I did because I like the one wooden piece in contrast to all the black and white. This was my first rewiring project, I am somewhat scared of all things that involve electricity but it was much easier than I thought, a piece of cake actually. Have you ever rewired something?

week thirty four

Good morning week thirty five, good bye week thirty four! Today I am still recovering from the rafting trip we took on Saturday. Even though it was just a lazy river, paddling in the sun all day left me exhausted in the evening. We started our trip near the picturesque town of Frenchtown, NJ, where we stopped afterwards for food, drinks and a little bit of chair shopping. When you see the photos of the river below you might think we were the only ones floating around but it was actually quite busy on the river. We have done similar trips at a different location twice before but this time they were already booked so we chose this one instead. What a fun day, I can highly recommend it if you live near a river to explore your area from the water. Our tour took us around 4 hours, with a little pit stop at the floating hot dog stand and some lounging on a deserted  island. Last night I rewired an old table lamp that I purchased at an estate sale a while back, a post about its transformation will follow soon. What were you up to this weekend? Any plans for the upcoming week? I am still working on getting the house ready for our visitors in September. And on Thursday I will see The Book of Mormon, I received it as a gift from P today and am looking forward to finally see the show.

NYoy - voice tunnel at summer streets

As you might have already read and seen in my week thirty three recap P and I with a lot of other New Yorkers and out-of-towners alike took over Park Avenue and Lafayette Street, which were closed to car traffic on three consecutive Saturdays in August from 7am to 1pm. A total of seven miles is being utilized for bikes and pedestrians during Summer Streets, from Brooklyn Bridge up to 72nd Street. Throughout the route there were rest stops, activities, arts and performances. We decided that we wanted to see the Voice Tunnel by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in the Park Avenue Tunnel, it was the first time it was open to pedestrians for this event. Because the Summer Streets website informed us that the lines for this event close at 11:30am we got there shortly after 10am and the line was huge but moved in a steady pace and about an hour later we entered the tunnel. Inside the tunnel was another line for people who wanted their voices echoing through the tunnel. The voices influenced the intensity of the 300 theatrical spotlights positioned in the tunnel, sometimes it was pretty dim and then as the voices grew louder the light got brighter. We skipped the line for the intercom, after waiting to get in we didn't feel like getting in line again and I also didn't want to hear my own voice echoing from the walls of the tunnel. It was a great experience nonetheless and of course I took way too many photos, none of the intercom you could speak into though, but Tina over at Life in Sketch did.

What are your plans for the weekend? I am looking forward to a three day weekend as I took Monday off. Tomorrow we will be going rafting with a group of friends and on Sunday I might work on one of my projects. Monday is my birthday, I do not have any plans yet and will just do what I feel like that day...Happy weekend!

estate sale finds - stool

My latest estate sale find is definitely in the category one man's trash is another man's treasure. That Sunday I went to two sales, both were picked clean and I was pretty bummed out that I couldn't snag a cheap big pot. Getting a pot for cleaning up the hardware of the old door I stripped was the only reason we went to the sales, luckily they were in close proximity to each other. Then I saw the stool and although the seat was broken I had a vision of making my own seat for it. I already bought some rope and am playing around with ideas. Once the stool is finished it will make an appearance in the mini makeover category. At the same sale they had an old workbench that would have made an amazing island in someones kitchen but it was too big for our car so it had to stay behind. Maybe I need to invest in a van or a trailer? ;) Still looking for a cheap pot though, might have to try Target or other places because I want to hang the door again before my parents arrive next month. Is anyone else working on a cool project? I know that Christine of The Plumed Nest is working on the desk she found on the curb. Can't wait to see what she did with it.