Archive for September 2010

that purple shirt really brings out the purple in your eye

did i mention that mike has joined a rugby team?

on saturday he had his first rugby related injury. it was the 3rd game of the season. he's been coming home from practice all summer with random bruises, and sore muscles, but saturday was the first time that i really questioned why he even wants to play rugby. i am unclear on the details (i was busy trying to understand what was even happening in the game), but i think the short version is that he tried to tackle someone with his head. next thing i know, mike's on the sidelines with a nasty looking split in his head along his eyebrow line. there was lots of blood.

after much debate, we ended up going to urgent care. we had friends visiting from out of town and i felt bad ruining their visit with an urgent care trip. i'm glad that we went though, he ended up getting 9 stitches and by the end of the night his eye was so swollen that i really don't see how the butterfly bandaids we had used to stop the bleeding would have held together.

i have a picture, but i'm just going to go ahead and assume you all would rather have a picture free blog post :-)

he's doing much better now, and the swelling has gone down enough that he can see again, but his eye is a lovely shade of purple. luckily, he was already planning on missing the game this weekend because he is running a half marathon on sunday morning. yes, he's crazy.


and he did wear a purple shirt to work yesterday. it matched his eye.

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buffet - done

so i bought the buffet back in may. and then i had several posts about possible paint colors. i think the latest post on the buffet was asking your opinion about hardware. i am happy to say that the buffet is finally done!

i had decided after much debate that i wanted to try to keep the natural wood finish on the buffet. but the top was in really bad shape - lots of paint, scratches, and the finish was already coming off.
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so i spent a lot of time sanding down the top until the finish was removed and most of the stains were gone.
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based on a recommendation from one of you, i decided to go ahead and try to use a tung oil finish on the wood - and it worked wonderfully! i think i ended up putting 4 coats on, with a light sanding with fine steel wool between each coat. the top is not perfect, there are still some deep scratches, but i am ok with that. it is an old piece of furniture that has obviously been through a lot. i actually prefer it with some character.
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i do want to point out a few other things in this photo.
1. i ended up picking my first choice for the new knobs. many of you commented on that post and actually prefered some of the other options (thank you for the comments!!), but in the end i went with the one that was the most simple. i also liked the chrome finish.
2. we had to cut out the bottom center portion of the buffet because it was sitting on top of the air conditioning vent. we tried to leave it alone but it was blocking too much cool air. we still need to finish the cut edges, but it's not super noticable.
3. did you notice the cocktail shaker?? my uncle sent that to me cause he thought i'd like it! he was right, i love it :-)
4. we also got a new lamp. and by new lamp, i mean i bought a not so good looking super sale lamp from homegoods:
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and painted it. sorry for the out of focus picture. the lamp base was baby blue, and has some black marks on it. i thought the shape was fun, so i painted it high gloss white. and then i bought a plain white lampshade instead of the brown shade.

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i really like having another piece of furniture in the dining room. the lamp also gives off great light, i've been turning it on at night even though we usually are sitting in the living room. it somehow makes both rooms seem much more warm and inviting.

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do i need another one?

you all may remember a few weeks ago when i posted about how my parents had found/bought 2 white bertoia chairs for me:
the chairs are still in ohio but may be coming out this weekend if i can figure out how to fit 2 into a honda civic. anyway, last week my coworker (the one who owns several chrome bertoia chairs that i had been trying to buy for the last 2 years with no luck) finally offered to sell me his chairs. he actually has 3. i do not need 3 more chairs. i was planning on putting the 2 white chairs from my parents in our dining room, mixing them with my gray eames chairs.**


question is - should i go ahead and buy 1 of his chrome chairs for the den? he would give me a good deal on the price... i ended up putting my old dining table (small table that expands, from ikea) in the den so that i would have a larger work surface. right now i have a random old desk chair at the table. but i could replace the desk chair with a chrome bertoia.... and it could look really nice with my shelves...
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maybe another question should be - how many chairs can i own before people start to wonder about me??

**why yes, 2 people do need 8 chairs at their dining room table. in my defense, trevi always seems to get his own chair. plus we have people over for dinner... sometimes.

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mirror and yard sale

i realized i never posted a photo of the mirror that my mom and i found on sale at homegoods:
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it's different, but that's why i like it. i was surprised to see something so unique at homegoods. it's hanging in our entryway, the shape looks really nice with our vintage light fixture.
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... and i realized that i did not take a photo with the light fixture and the mirror. i really need to put the zoom lens back on the camera. but here's an old photo of our light fixture:
and in case you are wondering, this is what our entryway table actually looks like:
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and this is "clean"... those baskets are for shoes and extra bags, and also to hide the fact that we are missing a section of baseboard in that area. and of course we still have our plywood patched floor. someday we will get new floors.... meanwhile i will just try to distract guests with mirrors and lights and shiney things. we just bought that little lamp from ikea, i like to have something that we can leave on at night so that our house is not completely dark. i had a really hard time finding a small lamp that wasn't super ugly. this one is not perfect, but it does the job.


we participated in the neighborhood yard sale on saturday. the garage sale was part of our basement cleanout plan, it was nice to sell many of our unused items and clear out some space in the basement. i was even able to sell some of the light fixtures, cabinet hardware, and misc. items that we've removed from the house while doing the renovations, including this half plastic/half stained glass fruit light fixture:

mike and i had a deal - if i could make enough money at the garage sale to cover the cost of 2 hinge light sconces, i could order them for our bedroom. we did pretty well at the sale so now there are 2 sconces on their way to me! i'm excited!

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4/7ths architect

i found out on saturday that i passed my 4th architectural registration exam - site planning! now i am officially more than half way done.

unfortunately, i don't think i'm going to be able to make my original deadline of being done by the end of the year. realistically i need at least 3 weeks to study for each exam, and i do not want to take one in december because i am always really busy between tgiving and christmas. plus i've already been taking a little break from studying for the last few weeks...

i need to keep the motivation up though, i'm ready to be registered and done!

although, if i took one 3 weeks from now, and then one 3 weeks after that, and then the last one 3 weeks after that, i could potentially be done before thanksgiving. but only if i pass them all on the first try. and had no life.

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compromise

marriage is all about compromise.

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i wanted an ohio state flag, mike wanted a michigan flag. this is what we ended up with.

happy saturday everyone, enjoy the weekend!

(go bucks!!!)

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happenings

- many of the projects mentioned in the last post are underway, but i don't have any pictures to show you yet. i could take a picture of what our gross basement looks like with everything piled in the corner so we can work on the other half, but no one really wants to see that. we spent a lot of our labor day weekend working on the basement.


- football started last week and i am so so excited!

- can't remember if i told you all this or not, but mike has decided to join a rugby team. he practiced all summer and they have their first game on sunday. i'm looking forward to seeing him play, but i hope that there will be someone else on the sidelines that can help me figure out what is going on. i'm also hoping that this new hobby does not cause him any injuries, he already comes home from practice with some giant bruises.

- i took my 4th architectural registration exam a few weeks ago and am waiting on the results. i'm quickly losing my motivation to keep taking exams and studying...

- mike's new job is going really well and he seems to be enjoying it so far.

- the weather has been fantastic here lately and we've been grilling out a lot. i'm hoping that this weather stays around for a little while.

anyone have big plans for the weekend? i think we're are going to try to finish up a few house projects (so i have some pictures to share!). our neighbors have also invited us over for a cookout, i'm looking forward to that. we are friendly with our neighbors and always will chat when we see them outside, but this will be the first planned thing that we do with them. i think that there are several families/houses coming, hopefully we will meet some new people!

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