Moving is the pits (part 2)

Today was a major move day. We have to be out of the apartment by tomorrow, so I worked overtime today trying to empty our previous home.

Halfway through the day, I ran out of boxes. 

I thought I'd show you a couple pictures of my day. Unfortunately, I forgot my phone for part of the day--but I managed to catch some special moments:

Good thin I found my backpacking back pack.
I fit 3 muffin tins, 2 pyrex, 2 corningware, and about 15 water bottles.
Why do I have 3 muffin tins?

We moved our first piece of furniture into the living room.
Mainly because Ben needed a place to sit and watch Wimbledon. 

Put our first load of dishes into the dishwasher and up into the cabinets.
It's getting real, people!

My favorite reward.
Don't judge me. 

On the bandwagon.

OK, I did it.

I was really hesitant.

I don't really know what I am doing.

But, I joined Twitter. @onethingoneday

I'm still trying to understand exactly how it works, so any insight would be TERRIFIC.

My top five Twitter Questions:

1. Who should I follow? Right now, I pretty much only follow Real Housewives, and they are really annoying Twitter-ers--I'm three seconds away from deleting the bunch.

2. How do I find out my FB friends that are on Twitter? Do I guess?

3. How do I get a million followers? Just kidding. This isn't a real question. I don't want that responsibility. I can't be interesting for more than 5 minutes at a time, per day.

4. How-in-the-eich-eee-double-hockey-sticks am I supposed to understand the iPhone app? It is so freaking confusing.

5.  Why did I join Twitter? I've been on it for two days, so not a lot of investment yet, but when do I get my return?

So, follow me on Twitter. If anything, it will be extremely entertaining watching me learn how to use it as I post totally socially inept tweets 12-16 times per day. Cheers!

Bulldozin'

I'm going to start of today on a bit of a personal note. Yesterday's post was a bit pessimistic. Yes, I am hopelessly overwhelmed right now at the thought of THAT apartment and moving/cleaning everything by Saturday. Yes, I wish I could throw everything in a dumpster.

But, can I also tell you how AWESOME it is that my biggest worry in my life is moving into our new HOME? We are hopelessly in love with our new place. The projects are huge, and our 'to-do' list is long, but we are so incredibly blessed to be in a position that we own a HOME! We have also had the incredible help of family and friends to paint, move furniture and overall provide support. Thank you all. Seriously.

Ok, today's project:

As I've mentioned about a million times before, I love designing invitations. Love it.

So, when a great friend of ours said she needed invitations for a Baby Shower, I jumped at the chance.

Here's the design:

Sorry about the big blurs. I just feel weird about putting people's info on the internets.

Fun, right? I can't wait to put these together! I'll share pictures of the final product later this week.

Tutorial Tuesday: How [not] to pack.

Over the past seven years, I have moved eight times. Yes, 8.

You would think by this time, I would be starting my own moving/packing business because I'm so well versed in the arts of boxing, transporting and unpacking. Well....

Here's how I like to pack, then I'll show you extremely embarrassing pictures of how our move went [and is going...] Scroll down to the end for the really embarrassing stuff.

Step One: Clean everything.

Picture via marthastewart.com.
I never smile like this when I'm cleaning. 

You will really thank yourself later. Grab your favorite arsenal of supplies (I like white vinegar, windex, pledge, and a whole lot of microfiber cleaning cloths) and get to work. Wipe down everything, wash all your clothes and get it ready to box up.

Step Two: Organize by room.

I'm a planner, so I like to pack boxes by the potential room they will be in when they arrive at the new place. All decorations go in one pile, clothes in another, books in another, you get the drift. Put everything into piles that make sense for what you are doing.

Step Three: Start packing boxes.

My favorite source for boxes is the liquor store. The best boxes are the Godiva Chocolate boxes. They're heavy, laminated, and everyone thinks you are a total boozer.

But, if you are lucky enough to have a family member, husband, supplier that works for Starbucks--they have AWESOME boxes. Don't grab the cup boxes--they are way too big and you'll tend to overload them. Grab the 'bullet' boxes--5lb coffee bean boxes. They are thick, perfect size for stacking, and bring you luck from the caffeine gods.

Don't load any individual box too heavy. IE: Don't put all your books into one box. Combine books with clothes/towels or whatever makes sense via your organization piles.

Pack the boxes so nothing has any room to move. Movement is the worst enemy of the Tiffany's crystal bowl you got from your great aunt. Don't let anything move.

Step Four: Label the boxes, label them well.

I tend to put a list of everything that is in that box. Most of the time, I spell every word wrong.

I also date them because I remember the room I pack by the date I packed it...I'm weird. I know.

Step Five: Get everything in a box before you move anything into a truck/car/house.

Trust me. You will be so much happier if you get everything boxed up first.

Step Six: Furniture time.

Make sure all your furniture is dusted/ready to move. Take all the drawers out of dressers, take the shelves out of the book shelf. Wrap them in blankets and put them in to a u-haul. Trust me. Loading furniture into a pick-up is the pits.

Step Seven: Play u-haul Tetris

picture via blogger games.

The best way to stack a u-haul is like Tetris. Don't leave any empty trapped space. load horizontally first, then stack vertically. Put boxes inside of bookshelves, stack chairs on top of your couch...

The worst thing you could do is leave space for things to bang against each other and all your fine china you got from your wedding gets broken. This would suck.

Step Eight: Drink a beer.

Congratulations! You have packed the perfect u-haul! Time to celebrate! Only drink one beer though, you have to drive the u-haul later.

Step Nine: Start unpacking - yay?

You're at your new house, now what? Do you have a big main room? Awesome. A garage? EVEN BETTER! Unload everything into that one room. Seriously. I'm not kidding. Everything must go into one big area.

As you unload, organize your boxes/furniture into the same piles you had before--room by room.

Step Ten: Distribute. Celebrate.

Methodically, move into each room - one at a time. I would start with a bedroom, you need a place to crash that night. Move the furniture in first, then the boxes. Unpack each box (one at a time) directly into its final resting place. Starting out with a well-organized house will be the gift that keeps on giving.

Now, celebrate. Finish that 12 pack of Coors Light Aluminum Bottles (with 10 of your closest friends) and congratulate yourself on a job well done.


Now, here's how my move went:

Day 1: Panic. OMG.

I just got back from Vegas, and we [semi-foolishly] planned a big party for the same day. THe house had no toilet paper, soap, anything. I put my trust in two 25 year old boys to get this done. They got everything but toilet paper--I was semi-impressed!

Day 2: Chaos.

So overwhelmed over the fact that we just wrote a check that would take 30 years to pay off - I decide to start packing the most random stuff. No cleaning nor organization. Just throwing random art supplies and towels into the same box [what?! who am I?!] Ugh.

Day 3: Amazement.

Ben is not a professional mover like I am. He has only moved once in the past seven years. He still manages to pack up an entire room, plus the storage area and the bookshelf without any direction from me. I'm still in complete panic mode.

Day 4-6: Painting madness.

My trusty helper/mentee, Luke. 

Painter extraordinaire, Benny.
Man, this picture does not do this color justice.
It looks AMAZING.

I panic thinking that we need to paint the house before we get everything moved in. I buy a 5 gallon bucket of primer, and Ben gets to work. Kitchen and one bedroom gets done first, then I bring in reinforcements and we finish priming the entire house in an afternoon.

After the priming is done, we go into pure color madness. We paint the ceiling and all walls in an afternoon. I am in total amazement.

Day 7: Bring in the muscle.

Ben and I figure we only have one day to move all our furniture over. So, even though we have about 7 out of 10000 boxes packed, we empty all the furniture onto the apartment and bring in some muscle. We had the very gracious help of a couple friends and all our furniture got moved into the garage yesterday.

Today:

This is the apartment today. This is the totally embarrassing part. Ugh. Look at this! I'm trying to pull myself together, but part of me wants to chuck everything into a dumpster and call it good. Ugh.

This is the chaos that you see when you walk in to my apartment.
For those of you that are frequent visitors of this place--you know this is my worst nightmare.

This is a pile of dirty laundry. I packed that.

This is a pile of clothes that got in my way.
I put them in a giant box. Unfolded. 

This is a pile of stuff I don't know what to do 

So, that's that. My super embarrassing photos of my moving process.

I can't wait to show you awesome looking pictures next week..but...uhh...

I'm Back!

Thank you all for your patience for the past week. I took a much needed break from the blog while I got my life/house in order. We're not done yet--but we're in good enough shape that I can emerge from the paint-cardboard abyss that is moving in to a new home.

I'll share our progress later this week--it's pretty amazing.

But first, I'll treat you to a special project!

Designing invitations is my favorite. Seriously. They're also probably the easiest thing to design because they follow a pretty strict formula, but you have a lot of flexibility in the aesthetics.

I also love designing super girly things, so this project was awesome.

A good friend, Brittany, is planning a kitchen shower for her sister. She was looking for something feminine with a vintage flair. I was obsessed with zig-zags when I started this project, so this is what she got:

I blocked out the addresses/phone numbers, but you can kind of get the idea.

Flip side.
Isn't that a cool exclamation point? Font: memoriam

Since this was a kitchen shower, Brittany also wanted to send her soon-to-be-bride/sister off with delicious recipes, thus, a matching recipe card:

I wish more people called things a 'dish' instead of a recipe.
It's generally an all-around-better word. And it sounds retro.

The flip side.
There's that exclamation point. You're pretty.

Fun, right?

I'm glad to be back! Thanks for your patience with me while we finish up moving and ramp up house projects.

Check back tomorrow for an awesome Tutorial Tuesday on home renovations. It'll be a doozy!

Programming Note: I'm sorry

Due to the insane stresses of moving/renovating the house I'm taking a little break from the blog for a little while to save my sanity. I might post pictures of the move/renovation so check back!

I promise I'm still doing a project every day--just not blogging about it...

Gotta get down on Monday.

Today marks Day 1 of our crazy-home-renovation-and-really-quick-move-fest. Ben put in some major time priming the walls:

...and he's still smiling!

It's pretty amazing what a coat of paint will do. The house is already looking a million times better. Pretty sure the favorite activity of the previous tenants was throwing coffee at the wall. 

All I'm saying: there are some pretty weird stains all over the walls. 

Part of this painting-extravaganza is picking the perfect color of paint:

Sweet Ariel? Alright.

They got Sweet Ariel from this?

We picked this color because it's very close to white, but has a bluish-gray tint to it. Hard to tell from the picture, but it's pretty.  

Next stop on this quick-reno was the laundry area. The tile I chose finally came in the mail.

Just wait until this is finished. It will be the prettiest laundry area you have ever seen.

A couple weeks ago, I found this light:

Disco ball gorgeous.

I thought this light was awesome, but I secretly wished that the chrome-y parts were more brass-y.

Today, I walked in the bathroom and saw this:

Uh, thank you lighting gods! After a little bit of cleaning and elbow grease, this will be the most perfect light to replace this nonsense:

It's just scary looking at it...

Things are going pretty quickly so far, and not too tiring. This week we're trying to finish priming and painting the whole place (including the ceiling...), getting the laundry room tiled, and moving in a bulk of the apartment. Oh, and on Tuesday we're picking out the new flooring. Optimistic? Probably. 

Rounding it out.

Wow. What a whirlwind.

Since I was a little out of the loop the last couple days, I'm going to give you a quick round up of what has happened since Thursday.

On Wednesday, we finally went in to sign papers for our first house (yee!!) and on Friday morning, we officially became homeowners! Yay!

So, on Thursday and Friday I gave you a tour of our home!

The boys did some major yard work this weekend, totally tamed the juniper jungle a bit.

Thursday was also our first day in Vegas for my best bud/sister-in-law's bachelorette party. We had a cabana during the day...It was amazing.

Friday was another day in Vegas. But not just any other day--it was pin-up day! Emily loves all things pin-up (hence the cup design.) Instead of wearing matching outfits or t-shirts, I thought it would be fun for everyone to get in their rockabilly outfits and hit the town.

We started the day with a gondola ride at the Venetian:

Then, we got ready to go out and get our pin-up on!

Red lipstick all over the place. 

Ate dinner at Voodoo, they had an amazing roof-top bar with incredible views of The Strip.

All things come to an end, and we flew back to Portland on Saturday afternoon.

No rest for the wicked though, we threw a 'Trash the House' party to christen the new space before the contractors have at it. 

We played several games of Flip Cup Charades (a game I made up a couple years ago--and yes, it is as awesome as it sounds) beer/water pong, and lots of fun just hanging out and talking. 

Ben also announced to the group that he got an AMAZING promotion at work! Before long, Ben will have his very own Starbucks cafe--so proud of him!

But, after all this excitement, I was absolutely exhausted this morning trying to prepare for a Father's Day feast for my dad. We wanted to make it extra special for him because of all the hard work he put in to our new back yard on Saturday morning. 

So, I had all these great plans of the BBQ--but in tradition with Mother's Day, I poisoned myself with some potato chips cooked in peanut oil. Awesome. 

Took a giant swig of benedryl right away, and passed out for the rest of the afternoon. So, unfortunately, I wasn't much of a help preparing our feast.

My mom and Ben tag teamed and made these amazing ribs on the Traeger. They did a special recipe called 3-2-1. Takes 6 hours to make the ribs, but they were absolutely perfect.

Thankfully, before my self-induced anaphylaxis, I was able to start up an amazing batch of baked beans. This recipe was seriously awesome:

1 onion

1/2 lb ground beef

1/2 lb bacon

1/3 c sugar

1/3 c brown sugar

couple shakes of chili powder

couple shakes of black pepper

1/2 c ketchup

1/2 c bbq sauce

1 can each of kidney beans, great northern beans, and pork and beans

Just cook all the meat/onion together until cooked. Add everything but the beans and cook until it bubbles a bit. Then add the beans and drop it into a 300 degree oven for about 3 hours. Then it looks like this:

I usually don't like baked beans, but I can eat these ferrrdayzz.

This is going to be another exciting week. We're starting our painting tomorrow (yay!) flooring contractor is giving us a bid on Wednesday, and the appliances FINALLY get in on Saturday.

So a little programming note--the next week will be totally house-centric as we get ready to move out of our bitty apartment into our amazing home. Check back to see our progress!

Today, I'll leave you with my favorite picture of my dad and I. 

Words can't describe how special this moment was. 

Leaving Las Vegas

Sitting at the Las Vegas airport right now--trying to figure out the crippled iPhone version of blogger (ugh.)

Vegas was amazing. But right now I'm ready for a nap and some OREGON WATER! We are so spoiled with amazing water in the PNW.

We had an amazing 'pin-up' themed bachelorette party for my very special best bud/sister-in-law Emily. I'm horrible at remembering to take pictures, but here's my favorite from the weekend ( it was 'pin-up' night for us, After fourteen YouTube tutorials--I finally finished my hair...)

Now that, is a kitchen.

Day two in Vegas, day two of 'before' pictures of our house.

Enjoy!

Oh, the bathrooms. They are so silly.
Project 5: Gut the bathrooms

They're definitely usable, but just need some...help. 

Now, my favorite part (and the reason we bought the house) the AMAZING KTICHEN/LIVING ROOM COMBO.
Look at how awesome that is! Look at all those counters! Look at the built-in china cabinet!
Look at that hood.

Yeah, that hood.
Imagine it with an awesome coat of paint, some stainless steel counter tops...mmmm.
Yeah, awesome. 

In effort to be the coolest people on the planet, we are also putting in a beer-tapping system in this island.
See where that grill is?

Yeah, it's about perfect size for a kegerator. And has the electrical hook up all ready.
We just need to...umm...clean it.

The cabinets also have some awesome detail to them.
We're planning on refinishing (new hardware and a nice coat of white paint) all the cabinets.
This will turn into open shelving. EEE!!

Also, I am positive that this house was the bees knees in 1975 when it was built.
It has crazy amounts of built in appliances, like this blender motor
(there is about 50000 attachments to this, probs all the rage.)

And if you turn around, this is the living room. Right off the kitchen.
This is full of awesome. 

And now, as promised, our death trap.

This little deck almost cost us closing on the house. Why? Because it's that deadly.

Now this may look unsuspecting, but there is no support beam under this portion of the deck.

Here's Ben being really brave.
Actually, if we're keeping score, I'm the brave one.
I was standing on the area of the deck without the support beam to take this picture...

 Now, we know that this deck is totally unsafe, and could collapse if a racoon jumped on it, but we're not quite ready to demolish and rebuild yet. This is the area of our house we want to shine, and we're taking our time to design the perfect space for us.

So for now, this will serve as your warning, if you come to our house--don't jump on the deck.

The door has closed, and a new/old one has opened.

Today, if everything goes to plan [ha!], we should have closed on our house. [I'm writing this a little in advance, so hopefully we closed.]

Today, I also left for Las Vegas.

I assure you, I am doing plenty of creative things today, but they need to stay in Vegas [it's a law.]

Instead of sharing a project for the next two days, I'm going to share pictures of our new/old house!

For many of you, this house may look familiar--at least it should look familiar. We started seriously thinking about buying a house in December 2011. After a lot of research, we narrowed in on two locations in Portland that we would like to live (based on where we work and where we play.)

Then, call it divine intervention or a happy coincidence, our church decided to sell one of its properties. This property just happened to be in the location we were looking at, had the perfect bedroom-to-bathroom ratio, and had a fantastic floor plan.

So, Ben and I had the, "well...why not?" conversation--and we submitted an offer to the church to buy the house.

Awesome things about this deal? We didn't have to get a realtor involved. Incredibly frustrating thing about this deal? Neither of us had ever sold/bought a house. So...we all learned a lot and we're finally at the point that the deal is closed and we are ready to move in.

Today and tomorrow, I'll share some 'before' pictures of the house. Some of it is in really awesome shape, most of it is stuck in 1975. But in the next year, Ben and I will share our journey to make this house 'ours.'

Here's the outside. Nice, right?
Project 1: Remove juniper jungle. 

Now you might say, hey nice staged picture! You opened the door a bit to be welcoming.
And I would say, nope. It's just broken and stuck open.
Project 2: Replace screen door. 

And this, a secret passage way into the hugest most biggest garage you have ever seen.

Alright! now we're inside.
Look at that carpet, yum.
Project 3: Replace all the flooring.

Now here we have our little problem child.
This is no place fit for Kelly Ripa's appliances--the laundry 'area' needs a face lift.
Project 4: Gut it. 

Those cabinets are nice, but they are leaving us in lieu of some open shelving.
Also leaving us--that nasty mop.

Another gratuitous shot of the laundry area.
Pay attention, because this very well might be the first finished product. 

Nice, right? OK--it's a lot nicer than the picture descriptions--I'm mainly showing you the areas we are fixing first. It's a really awesome house, it just needs some updating and a lot of paint/flooring.

Tomorrow, I'll show you our death trap.