Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Blue, Take Two



So we painted the living room this weekend. Twice. Actually, four coats of paint, two separate ocassions. Although we loved the warmth of our orange and yellow living room and how cozy it made the room seem (especially on cold winter nights), that room has always been really dim. Plus, we've lived with those colors for 3 years now and thought we'd like a change. I've been grooving on blue lately and suggested that it would look nice with our dark wood furniture and amber lamps, and we quickly decided to try it. Unfortunately, picking the right shade of blue proved much harder than deciding to make the actual change.

Initially, we picked out a color that was on the very gray end of the blue spectrum. Kevin really liked it, but I wanted something a little brigher. So we bought a much brighter shade, hypothesizing that since the living room was always so dark in the evening when we spent the most time in it (it faces east), the paint color would seem much darker on the walls compared to how it looked under the flourescent lights of Home Depot. We were wrong.

Saturday we got up bright and early, took Gilmore to doggie daycare to keep him out of our way, and painted one coat of primer and two coats of Ocean View blue paint. We loved the color. For a sweater. Or a vase. Or a purse. It was just too cyan for four big living room walls. And we discovered that part of the reason the room was so dark before was that the orange and yellow paint absorbed a lot of light. The nearly cyan color reflected so much light that it was a little disconcerting even at 11:00 on Saturday night. Plus, it didn't quite pull out the blue in the fireplace as we had hoped, but rather clashed with it a bit. We agreed to live with it for a week without making any changes, though, and loaded everything back into the room.

Sunday, we decided to run errands all day and thought we might as well stop by Home Depot to look at other shades of blue paint. It was the first and last errand of the day. By 2:00 we were at home with another gallon of paint, one that fell somewhere in between the bright blue that we applied on Saturday and the gray that Kevin liked initially. Luckily, we only had to apply one coat since the colors were relatively similar, and their wasn't much trim work. While it was drying, we took a long walk with Gil to get some soft serve ice cream, re-loaded the room, grilled out and settled into version 2.0 of our newly painted living room. This time, we got it right (we hope you agree; see for yourself here). It doesn't seem like a big difference in the photos, but it just wasn't quite what we wanted the first time around (just ask Katie, who saw it mid-process).

Next up, we're re-painting the three white walls in the dining room tan, changing the office to gray (no suprise that we never liked the blue in there either), and giving the foyer and hallway a fresh coat of off-white. Hopefully, we'll only be painting those rooms once!

Garden of Whitman

Yard work has been keeping us very busy the last few weeks! It's been so nice to have warm, sunny days so early in the season to do some landscaping before the mosquitos are out in full force (they love me, no matter what I do to repel them). We've been able to tackle some long-overdue projects like replanting the area under the huge pine tree out front, edging the front the flower beds and putting in a brick border, spreading mulch (17 bags!), and relocating some plants that weren't doing so well or were outgrowing their areas. Of course, all the rain has been keeping Kevin busy mowing the lawn. He actually seems to like doing it, although that tune may change when the heat and humidity sneak up on us. The humongous oak tree it the back yard (the bane of my seasonal allergies) is constantly shedding something that we have to clean up. Mostly it's leaves, but lately it's been little fuzzy, caterpiller-looking things that clog up the drains and cause the basement to flood, plus loads of green pollen. Having such a big, heavily landscaped yard is hard work, but we enjoy it. It's amazing to see the rapid transformation from winter to spring in just a few short weeks! Here are a few photos of the fruits of our labor. (You may have to sign up for flickr to view them, but this is how we're hoping to start sharing all of our pictures with you guys. If you click on the individual photos, rather than viewing them as a slideshow, you can read captions.) More to come about our inside projects soon!

Monday, April 24, 2006

New post coming soon...

We promise! Many of you have been asking us to update you on what we have been doing.
Obviously A LOT because we haven't even had time to tell you about it.
I have to mow the lawn, give Gilmore a bath, and paint our cornhole set tonight so maybe Sarah will work on updating you on what we've been up to the past few weekends. More to come. . .

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

A Jam Packed Fun Weekend!


This past weekend Sarah and I had a lot going on, but all the fun stuff. Friday morning, we left for Columbus for an evening with David Sedaris, a writer and commentator for NPR. On the way up, we stopped at the Jeffersonville Outlet Mall for some shopping. Sarah and I each got a new pair of sandals for the summer, I got some new dress shirts, and Sarah got a new purse. When we got to Columbus, we checked into the hotel and relaxed for a little bit before going out to dinner. We went to a restaurant called Haiku for sushi (what else) before the show. Neither of us had heard David Sedaris live before, but we have read most of his books and listened to several of his CD's (great entertainment for road trips). While his style of humor and satire aren't for everyone, we really enjoyed him.
The next day we hit the mall for some shopping. Sarah really wanted to go to H&M and I was on the hunt for a new pair of jeans. I found exactly what I was looking for at Macy's and we headed home. On the way back, Sarah decided that she wanted to buy a pair of shoes she had seen at the outlet mall, so we stopped at Jeffersonville again. One pair of shoes turned into THREE new pair and we were back on the road.
When we got home we picked up Gilmore from A Doggie's Day Spa, where he had spent the night. He was very happy to see us but very exhausted, which was good because we had plans to go out that night as well. Our good friends Liz and Jason were coming to stay with us because we were all going the Ellery CD release party for their new album Lying Awake. Ellery is the husband and wife duo of Justin and Tasha Golden, friends of ours from Cincinnati Bible College. We had a great time at the show (which was AMAZING) and stopped by Waffle House for a late night breakfast.
Sunday morning Liz had to leave early and Jason had to take off after lunch. Needless to say Sarah and I were pretty tired, so we spent the rest of the day on the couch watching the first eight (yes, eight) episodes of Lost. Now we are hooked and can't wait for Blockbuster Online to send us the rest of the season.
All in all we had a really great weekend. We packed a lot in, which is a little unusual for us, but it was a good change! Over the next few weekends we are planning to get some around-the-house projects going. Hopefully we can get them all done "before the HOW Conference."

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Nearly Sprung

I love springing forward every year. I'm so much more inspired by the extra hour of daylight. Sunday we did tons of yard work, as evidenced by the 20 giant lawn and leaf bags full of debris that we left for the garbage collector—and my aching hamstrings. Kevin got to break out his new mower since TruGreen Chemlawn is working miracles on our front yard. And I found a hole full of fuzzy, squirming little baby bunnies in the front flower bed. (Now I'm obsessed with their safety since I had cleared away practically all of the dead growth that their mother was probably using to keep them warm and safe before I discovered them.) The Canada Geese have returned to the glorified drainage ditch at work and do daily fly-bys outside my window. And once we cleared all of the leaves out of the flower beds I realized just how many flowers were already shooting up and even blooming. Here's to rainy nights and warm sunny days!