Garage Cleaning

This weekend our new refrigerator was delivered, which spawned a day of garage cleaning.  These two things may not seem in any way related, but in this case they are.  See our old refrigerator moved to its new home in the garage. BUT before it could move into its new home we needed to evict the current resident...lots and lots of stored kids stuff.

When we first moved into our house we parked our car in the garage.  And like many of you out there, once our son was born we started accumulating STUFF. Lots and lots of stuff!  I tried to minimize the stuff but being the only grandchild on both sides stuff happened weather we liked it our not.  On birthdays and holidays things like Hot Wheel jeeps and John Deer ride-on tractors would appear on our doorstep courtesy of our generous family members (with and without our blessing).  Our garage is the boneyard where unused or outgrown toys go to retire.

I'm not generally a keeper of stuff (I'm more of a tosser of stuff), the bigger the piles got the less motivated I was to organize and de-clutter.  This summer we made a list of projects we wanted to tackle.  Cleaning out the garage being near the top of the list.  But, neither my husband or I have been particularly excited about this task and I keep putting it off in hopes that my sister who is expecting a little girl this winter would somehow be willing and able to move the contents of my garage into hers.  She lives several states away so this was a pretty lofty and not very realistic hope.  Anyway, the refrigerator gave us the push we needed and somehow making room for the refrigerator turned into an all-day garage cleaning spree.

I went through all of the boxes of baby clothes, blankets, and toys that I'd been saving.  I put together four boxes.  The first was a box of blankets that were hand made for our son, the blanket, shirt and hat he wore in the hospital, his first pair of jeans, and his first Christmas outfit. The second is a box of clothes, toys, and blankets for my sister's baby.  The third is a box of clothes that are in good condition and will go to the consignment store.  The fourth is a pile of toys that I will Craigslist.  The rest of the clothes were bagged up and donated our local church or given to our neighbor.  The remaining toys (many of which are high quality and in great condition) we gave to our son's old daycare provider.

It was hard for me to make the decision to give away perfectly good toys.  I felt guilty giving them away and originally wanted to sell them and put the money in my son's savings account since they are in fact his toys.  However, I realized that the idea of selling them was hindering me from getting rid of stuff because I didn't want to bother with the hassle of selling them.  So  giving them to our son's old daycare provider made me feel good that the toys would be appreciated, would have a good home, and would give back to someone who had done so much for us.  It was a win/win.

We still have a ways to go before our garage is clutter free, but I was astonished at the amount of work we accomplished in a day.  The old refrigerator found a new home as did much of son's old stuff! And I feel free of all of excess stuff in our garage!

Dehydrator

I'm so excited!! I picked up a dehydrator last week for $5 off of Craigslist!! That's FIVE-dollars!  I've been wanting a dehydrator for a while now to dry herbs from our garden (read about our little garden's birth story here) and figs from our tree.  When our fig tree comes in to season it's typically over a four week  period and we get more figs than we know what to do with.  Even giving them away by the grocery bag full and picking bags full ourselves there are many that hit the ground before we can pick them.  Now we'll be able to enjoy these babies during the winter months when we're dreaming of the summer fig season.  Sadly, fig season is over but I have a ton of herbs to practice with.

Home grown thyme, Greek and Italian oregano, marjoram, and sage

Also, I should add that I'm a wary Craigslist buyer.  I don't like going to stranger's homes.  But this this gentleman was very nice.  We obviously shared the same passion for gardening and homemade food and he told me how to make yogurt in the dehydrator (which I must try someday).

Finally, when I got home I discovered that the manual was missing from the box so I did a quick Google search to find one online.  In the process I discovered that some of these models had been recalled because of a faulty part that created a fire hazard.  Luckily mine wasn't one of the ones recalled.  However, it made me realize that I should have done my homework ahead of time and asked for the specific brand and model and checked it out before purchasing it.

Let the herb drying commence!

Gray Cloud

I've finally take the plunge....or at least am planning to take the plunge.  After eight years of living with pale yellow living room walls that I never really liked we're going grey.  Yellow's just not my color and grey paint makes me happy (I'm a beachy kinda girl).  I'm not really sure why, but painting the living room has always seemed daunting to me.  I know it's only paint, but it seems soo permanent.  What if I don't like the color I choose?  Which has lead to many, many, many trips to the hardware and paint store for swatches and sample paint in search of the perfect grey.   My first trip to the store involved collecting every grey color sample known to man Benjamin Moore then putting them up on the wall, and slowly over the course of a month pulling down the ones I didn't like.  At the end of the month I had narrowed it down to three colors.  Then I went to home depot and had my three favorite colors plus one lighter and one darker shade matched in Behr paint.  There in lies rookie mistake #1: always buy the actual paint you will be using-even if it costs a dollar or two more per sample.  Rookie mistake #2: painting the sample paint on my yellow walls without priming them first.  Yup, I'm a rookie at this whole painting walls thing.  Here's what the colors looked like on the yellow wall.

Top row: BM Moonshine, BM Moonshine color matched in Behr,  BM Grey Owl color matched in Behr, BM Stonington color matched in Behr, BM Grey Owl
Middle Row: BM Bunny Gray, BM Sweet Innocence, BM Grey Cloud, BM Marilyn's Dress (all color matched in Behr)
Bottom (barely visible): BM Classic Grey

Most look blue right? Wrong...they are grey.  I had read that cool grays can read blue in some rooms depending on which direction the light is coming from (north facing light reads cool while south facing light reads warm).  While we have a northwest facing room, it didn't seem possible that such neutral grays could read so blue on the wall and the green grays could read so neutral grey.  Then it dawned on me (not sure why I didn't think of it in the beginning) that I shouldn't be painting over the yellow.  Also, I was a bit nervous using the color matched paint when I knew I'd be using the BM paint in the end so I compared the two.  Yeah, the color matched Behr version was much bluer, and almost a shade lighter than the actual BM color.  Glad my paranoid self decided to compare. Here are the colors on the primed wall.  They look more grey now right?  They're the same colors.

Top: BM Gray Cloud; BM Bunny Gray
Middle: BM Classic Gray, BM Gray Cloud (color matched in Behr), BM Bunny Gray (color matched in Behr)
Bottom: BM Gray Owl, BM Moonshine

And the winner is.....BM Gray Cloud.  The colors don't look too different from each other on the computer screen, but in person the bottom two colors (Grey Owl and Moonshine read a very brown/green).  The Classic Grey reads more beige.  I really liked the Grey Cloud color matched in Behr but it's very green in person and I was worried that it would be too much once the whole living room and hallway are painted.  The Gray Cloud and Bunny Gray are almost indistinguishable, but the Gray Cloud is just a tad lighter.  Our living room is pretty small and while I want something that will make the moulding pop, I don't want our room to feel like a cave.  I'm so excited to FINALLY paint (or more like be done with painting), but also scared that once it's up on the wall won't be that perfect shade of gray.  Only time will tell, but painting commences next week so we'll know soon enough.

The Garden Update

True Lemon Cucumber

In spring we planted our summer garden.  This is what it looked like back then.  This year we planted four types of tomatoes (roma, early girl, brandywine, and cherry) and had one volunteer tomato. We also planted a zucchini and a true lemon cucumber.  The kale is a leftover from our winter garden and I just let it keep doing it's thing.  At the end of summer I like to evaluate what we planted, what worked, what didn't work, and note recommendations for next year.  So let's go plant by plant. First, the true lemon cucumbers....we've gotten a handful so far and while they are good I think next year we'll stick with the traditional cucumber or japanese cucumbers.  Since our garden space is so small I try to stick with high yield varieties go get more bang for my buck so to speak.

I planted a LOT of tomatoes this  year.   Next year I'll stick with two.  I love Brandywine tomatoes but they just don't seem to do well in our mild, coastal climate.  Even with the hot summer we've had, we only got three of these.  Same with romas, which typically do really well. I think I packed too much into the garden and shaded out the romas.  The cherry tomatoes have been doing fantastic. We've been getting a small basket a day. And the volunteer tomato which is a cherry as well has been going gangbusters. So much so that it has gotten out of control.

Volunteer cherry tomato

 The kale is booming and has done great.  I'm just going to let it keep going.

 The zucchini never really took off this year. Typically they take over the garden. When we bought this plant my husband warned that it didn't look healthy.  I think he was right. Next time I'll heed his warning.

So next year, one cherry tomato, one other variety of tomato, one cucumber, one zucchini, and green beans.  That should be it.  I may do some other veggies in separate pots. We'll see what happens when next spring rolls around.

Cloud 9

I've been drooling over this duvet at West Elm for a while now.  Ours current duvet is one that we got six years ago for our wedding.  And while it is still in good condition it is just meh and in our green bedroom  it reads as dull and yellowish.  But this baby looks like a cloud you just want to float in.  So the other day we went school supply shopping at Target and low and behold I saw this baby.  Seriously, the pictures just don't do it justice.  I contemplated not getting it, but I've been drooling over it long enough that I knew I really wanted it AND it was significantly cheaper than the West Elm version. So in the cart it when and it now lives happily in our bedroom.

Still some work to be done in this room including evening out the pictures above the bed and replacing the artwork in the frames with some black and white photos, DIYing block print curtains and rehanging them higher and wider, and getting a new romantic chandelier to replace the boob light (not pictured), and maybe a small chair for the corner.

Big Boy Closet

I have so many fun updates and projects that we've been working on this summer, but first up is the little man's closet.  Our goal was to maximize the available space to allow for clothes and some toys and to make clothes accessible to the little guy.  He likes to be independent and do things for himself and we like to encourage that as much as possible.

I looked into a variety of options for the closet. They ranged from closet organization systems such as those available from Home Depot and Lowes to home made custom built ones.  The closet organization systems came in at around $400 and were a bit too pricey for our budget.  A complete custom one built by my husband was tempting but given his time availability and fact that we wanted it done before school starts, it didn't seem practical.  Then I came across this idea on iheartorganizing that uses a $60 Expedit self from Ikea.  This one won me over at hello.  The price was right and while we (meaning my husband) would need to do some carpentry work, it would only take a few hours (last famous words right).

Here is the closet before.  I always get so excited and impatient to start a project that I forget to take a real before picture, but just imagine lots of toys in a huge pile at the bottom of the closet.

I'm usually an over estimator of how long things will take and I estimated a day for this project. I would have been right except that I didn't account for painting.  Once we took the shelf out (it was nailed into the wall) we realized that we needed to paint. So off to Home Depot I went to get some satin paint in off-the-shelf white.  I painted the closet (with oversight from the little man) while Moe cut the rods and shelves to size.  Then we primed and painted those too.  The next day when everything was dry we assembled the pieces and added all the clothes and toys back into the closet.  Tada!

And here it is today. Coats and sweatshirts are on the top left, t-shirts and the bottom left, and pants and dress clothes on the right.  The shelves from top top to bottom have swim suits, toys, shorts, socks and underwear (in drawers), and shoes.  In the little drawer unit on the right there toys in the top two drawers and sweatpants and PJs in the bottom two.

If you notice there is some space between the shelf above the unit and the top clothes rods. Just goes to show that even with all the pre-planning we didn't quite get it right the first time. Eventually we'll move those rods up to just under the shelf to maximize the space and give more room between the top and bottom rods.  I also still need to get some curtains for the closet "door", but that will have to wait until a few other things are finished.

All in all I love the organization, the little guy loves that he can reach his clothes and get himself ready. And all for under $100.  Can't beat that.