the goose loves tuesday's ten (#9)

Friends!

Can you believe it's Tuesday already?! These weeks have been flying by. I also apologize for giving you nothing each week but a pretty awesome weekly Tuesday post. I'm going to work on forcing myself into other "themed" weekly posts (on different days) so that you get more stuff to read. Because you definitely just sit here waiting for another post all week - what else would you do?

Sunny weekends have turned into a recent trend around here, and I'm 100% A-O-K with that. Except that still only getting two days of sun for every 5+ days of rain is still not enough. Or it's still enough for us Vitamin-D-deprived Portlanders to go crazy at the sight of sun. It's really a problem, though - we see the sun and we force ourselves outside. Or we feel guilty for being inside. Or I we get very overwhelmed about wanting to do everything within one weekend to enjoy the sun, and only having 48 hours (or less, really, because I do sleep) to do it all. Sunshine can be quite the burden! I'm working on letting go and just doing what I can.

 1. On Saturday, I took Bentley to the dogpark to

a) work towards Goal #17 and

b) meet 50 other beagles.

Okay well we didn't actually meet 50, but probably close to 20! The Portland Beagle Meet-Up Group met at our regular dogpark at noon on Saturday, so we figured it'd be a good time to meet a bunch of other crazy cute Bentley-types. We showed up closer to 1pm though, so we probably missed the full crowd. We saw a ton of beagles, but Bentley is still the cutest. And doesn't have the worst bark. Look at that happy puppy face. He loves sunshine too. See all that dirt on his tongue?

He also found a cow weimaraner to graze with. We love those dogs - maybe we'll get a weimaraner brother or sister for Bentley one day....  

Oh and that spot smelled really good, so he had to roll his whole body in it. Several times. For several minutes each. 

 2. We took advantage of the sun and hung our laundry outside. We fit a whole load (minus socks and undies) on this little clotheshorse and our main line. 

We were just finishing hanging the last shirt on the line, which is tied between the fence (as shown) and our back door lamp-thing, when the lamp popped out of the side of the house. Everything stayed intact within itself, but is only connected to the house by a dangling wire now. Oops. (I'm pretty sure the landlords don't read my blog... for good reason...). So we screwed a 5" screw into the house, and now the line hangs on that. For now. 

(P.S. Mom - I taught Billy some awesome clothes-hanging techniques that I learned from being your slave helping you hang clothes for all those years... like how to be economical with your line space and your clothespins. He suggested I write a manual. I think I'll leave that to you, though.) 

3. I love my boys. But they take some weird pictures. And only sometimes do I suggest the poses. 

This one is called "Best Friends - 8th Grade Photo-Shoot Style" (back to back). 

 4. On a Friday night, the last thing Billy and I want to do is cook. But going out isn't always friendly on our strict-paying-down-the-loans-like-crazy budget. So this past Friday we found a happy middle ground. We walked to New Seasons, picked out crab bites, fresh pasta, lemon-artichoke sauce, and beer, and walked out for under $20. (Would have been cheaper if Billy wasn't a fancy-beer-snob).

  The only way we could have done dinner this cheap at a restaurant is without alcohol (or with PBR), and even then it would have been tight. And these things took about 10 minutes to whip up, so easy on the cooking and cleaning. Eating leftover bean soup probably would have been cheaper, but this rocked. 

The final product: 

5. On Saturday morning, I did feel like cooking. I whipped up the blueberry streusel muffins from the super awesome cookbook Peas and Thank You.

 Yes, it certainly does say meatless on there. And there certainly are a bunch of vegetarian and vegan recipes. And we are neither. But all of the recipes are delicious (I'm actually guessing here, I haven't made my way through it all) and it's by a (local!) blogger named Sarah. Check the blog out.

 

Mmmmm. These barely made it to Sunday morning. 

 6. Billy and I went to the dentist on Monday morning. Yeah, as if Mondays weren't bad enough, we decided to torture ourselves with the dentist as well. More like the dentist doing the torturing... I mean look at all of those evil pain-inducing tools. Unfortunately we didn't come out cavity free. Billy had 2, and I had, well, more than 2. The good news? I still have wisdom teeth! Nope, that's actually not good news either. The dentist will make plenty of money off us this year.

7. Back to the sunny weekend. Bentley had fun playing with his reflection and sitting on the been-up-for-nine-months-and-they-still-aren't-hemmed curtains.

8. Here's a good teaser for you! We think that it's finally done snowing in Portland, so we're slowly sashaying into gardening season. How can we call ourselves true Portlanders if we don't grow our own Italian parsley and jalapenos and stuff? So we pulled out the lumber we bought a few weeks ago and started construction. And yes, somebody needs a pedicure. Real bad. 

 9. After spending all remaining sunlight hours building, we whipped up some chicken salad for dinner out of the Cooks Illustrated magazine. Classic and simple, but super tasty. And leftovers. Yay! 

 10. But of all my ten ramblings, this one is the best!

Happy Birthday Jackie!!

Hope 25 is the best year yet, and here's to 75+ more!!

Til next week, or until Friday's Four. Or Saturday's Seven. Or some other clever weekly post title I come up with to get me to blog more...

the goose loves diy ottomans - part two

Welcome to Part 2 of the DIY Ottoman Project. Just tuning in? Start here if you want to read the background (how we got the table, our inspiration, and spray paintin'!!).

Part 2 of the project was fairly simple, and took us about an hour. Three basic steps:

1) Foam
2) Batting
3) Fabric

Oh and like a million hundred staples.

So Step 1) Foam. Joann's and similar craft stores sell foam. But it's super pricey, unless you buy the skinny stuff. Which is not so great for a cushy ottoman. So I put off this project for awhile, waiting for the foam to go on sale while I collect the right coupon and therefore only spend $20 on the foam size I needed.


Luckily, my sweet husband was trolling Fred Meyer a few weeks ago and came home and said, "Lucy, didn't you need foam for some dumb house project? How much was it at Joanns?" To which I replied I'd be lucky to spend only $20. Then he announced he found a big sheet of 2.5" thick stuff at Freddie's for only $18. Score!


Yeah, save only $2, you say? Well every dollar counts. Plus, the $18 foam sheet gave me twice as much as I needed, and twice as much as I would have gotten at Joanns. So it was as if the foam was only like $8. Go husbands. So I cut laid the painted table on the foam and sawed off the extra foam with our bread knife. No joke.

Perfect sized foam.

Then I wrapped my batting (Step 2) under the foam and up around to the sides, and started stapling. But then I realized that the foam+fabric would be bunchy up against the table ridges, and would hide the nice spraypaint job I did. So I took the edges off, temporarily. It was really easy.

Back to batting. I had enough to double it, then wrap it lengthwise along the whole ottoman, and staple up the long sides. I didn't have enough for the short ends, but no big deal. I used my sharp shooter staple gun, for about $20 at Home Depot. It works great.

And the final (and fun!) step - fabric! I had this fabric already, which was a home dec weight by Premier Prints called Amsterdam. I started by centering the design on the top of the foam, then pulling it up around the back, and stapling at 12-, 3-, 6-, and 9-o'clock angles.

After flipping it over to make sure my design was still where I wanted in front, I finished stapling all around.

Bentley's testing it out mid-way through.

I'm not going to lie - the corners were a bit tricky. But I just wrapped them like a present, and did my best to get them very tight. They aren't perfect, but they work okay!

Finished stapling! I used a lot of staples.

Then we (yeah, Billy was my trusty DIY-er buddy) put the framing and legs back on! We actually reattached the sides with sturdier screws than the originals.

Nice legs, Billy.

I like this side, Mom. Nice work.

And ooooooh! Finished!!! Of course, Bentley had to test it out first. He approves.

He's taken about three naps on it since then. And sorry about the random lighting. The photo above is fairly accurate, color wise. I could should have waited for the morning and daylight, but I have no patience.

Like my chevron curtains?

What nice metallic-y legs.

And testing out the softness. Our feet certainly approve.

Just wait til we get a good TV show on and the fire roaring... cozy!

Not bad edges!

From farther away...

And even farther!

So there you have it. Done ottoman! And another item checked off the list.

P.S. Want the budget breakdown?

Table:  $28
Foam:  $8 (originally $18, but I only used about 45% of the foam)
Spraypaint: $7 (about one full can - I splurged for the better stuff, but plenty around for $3-4
Batting: $3.50 (for about 2 yards, with 40% off coupon)
Fabric: Free (already had, but you'd need about 1.5 yards)
Putty: Free (already had, but you might not need)
Staple Gun & Staples: Free (already had, but about $25 for a good gun and lots of staples)
Total:  $46.50

Not bad, huh. Probably would have spent over $50 on an average one from somewhere. Yay for saving!

the goose loves diy ottomans - part one

Okay, we're on a roll. The dates are out of whack, but ignore that.

I finished this project about a week ago, but it probably started close to the beginning of October. Also, there are a ton of photos so I split it up into two posts. Here's the first of two.

So although I've pinned this, I originally found it at Young House Love, a home renovation and DIY blog of a family that lives off of blogging about redoing their house. Dreamy, right?! I think we're all a bit jealous. Anyway, in their archives, I found this guest post where Kara from Kara Paslay Designs gave a tutorial on making your own ottoman-bench-footstool-thing. I was intrigued! Since we got our new couch, we were in need of something footstool-coffee table-ottoman-like, and we didn't want to get something large and expensive. So why not make our own?

Kara's Tutorial on YHL

Kara was able to use some awesome leftover wood from her home re-do, but unfortunately I haven't ripped out any walls with out-of-date-framing (actually I haven't ripped out any walls lately), so I thought I might just start with an existing coffee table instead. So Billy and I spent a Saturday garage-sale-hunting and thrift-store-shopping, and finally came up with this:

We found it at Crow, a small thrift shop in St. Johns. At first, we wandered around the small place without finding anything. But the nice shop owner asked us if she could help, and I described my idea.

(The dog came free.)

So she scurried into the back and pulled this out!

It was just the shape I was looking for. Long and skinny, perfect for in front of the sectional. The top was some kind of laquer and the sides and legs were a little beat up - some scuffs and they looked like they had been partially primed and then abandoned. But the pieces were real wood and we were planning on re-doing it anyway. So we took it home for a sweet $25!

The legs come off in a jiffy.

My boys posing on the table. Bentley looks hilariously creepy.

Model dog?

I had trouble getting him out. He liked it.

So the first step was sanding it down to prep it for a couple nice coats of spraypaint.

I also pulled out some random staples on one end. Maybe somebody already had my idea?

Plasco Inc. is the manufacturer. Didn't find them in Google, who knows all, so they must not exist anymore.

This was the most severe damage, but not really that bad. I filled it with putty, smoothed it out, and let it dry before painting.

Billy helped me sand it down. Well he actually re-sanded everything after I had first sanded it all. I guess I missed some spots? We started with some 100-grit paper, and finished off with some finer 250-grit. Not sure if we needed both, but it worked well.

Bentley=Super Helpful (Not)

Above were my two choices of spraypaint - gloss espresso brown and hammered brown. The Rust-Oleum stuff works great -the nozzles were really easy to use. I decided to go with the hammered brown -a  little lighter and more metallic-y.

I laid my table out on some cardboard in the backyard to be painted.

I stood the legs on their tops, so that I could spray on all four sides.

I also stuck Q-tips in the screw holes, so they didn't get all gunked up with paint.

And voila - my way-attractive fume-proof getup. And surprise! It was sunny in Portland! So I donned the sunglasses. This awesome photo is my reflection in the sliding glass door. Nice, right?

Spraypaint, Coat #1

Spraypaint, Coat #2

Spraypaint, Coat #3

Spraypaint, Coat #4

After reading many posts by Sherry the Spraypaint Queen, from the above-mentioned blog Young House Love, I learned that proper technique includes constantly moving your arm while spraying 8-12" away from the surface. And lightly does it!

I probably ended up doing about 6-8 very thin coats on all surfaces.

Once I let the pieces dry (for 48 hours, outside and in the garage), I brought them inside but noticed that the ridges in the legs didn't perfectly get sprayed. Dang.

No biggie, really. I just sprayed a little paint in a paper cup, pulled out a craft foam brush, and dabbed it onto the ridges.

Ahh, much better.

Then I let that dry, of course.

What's next? The good part! Upholstery!!

But that will have to wait until the next post...