Where Do You Blog? Party

I'm excited to link up to Kate's "Where Do You Blog?" party today over on her blog, Centsational Girl. It's been pretty fun to look through pictures and see where other bloggers spend hours doing their blog thing. There are some beautiful office spaces out there! 

But my favorite parts of this link party have been the honest answers- the bloggers who are not writing at their beautiful office spaces or in their fancy libraries, but those who are blogging away at their kitchen counters, on their back porches, or even tucked away behind their covers!

So, while I'd like to say that I blog here in my wonderful office space...

[I mean, hellooo, check out my view from the office!]

... I'll be honest and let you know that most of the time I blog in my pajamas on my couch! After a long day at work (where I sit at a desk, in a suit allllll day) I love to sit back on my huge couch with my hubby and my dogs in the room with me.

Hi, I am a dork :) But it's the truth!! So spill the beans... where do you blog or surf the Internet?

Featured Project: Kitchen Renovation

Now how is this for a honey-do list? My sister-in-law, Kelly, told her husband that she wanted a bigger kitchen. And lucky her, he didn't just nod his head and mumble something along the lines of "sure, honey!" He headed to Home Depot, grabbed the stuff he needed, knocked down a few walls, and built Kelly her big kitchen! Okay, so maybe it wasn't that simple... here are a few words from my brother-in-law, Nate, to tell us the real low-down on their kitchen renovation.

Our kitchen was a small rectangle crammed between our dining room and the garage. It was a very small space with limited storage and felt dark and cramped due to a dingy stained pine floor and stained pine cabinets.

We decided to push our entry door from the garage out into the garage about 3 feet to open the space and make the kitchen into an “L” shape and use the new space to build a pantry. The biggest hiccup in the plan was the fact that the wall we moved was load bearing. I didn’t want to have a header protruding into the kitchen since I felt that would reduce the impact of opening the room. I decided to solve this problem by putting a post on either site of the new opening, installing a double lam beam above the ceiling by cutting out the ceiling joists, the reattaching them with joist hangers to the new beam. After this was done, I removed the wall from underneath the new beam and the ceiling did not fall!

We also added a side panel at the refrigerator to allow us to pull the upper cabinet over the fridge out to the front of it for better access and giving that elevation better definition.

After the pantry was built, the cabinets were modified, the ceiling was re-supported, and the flooring was installed, we painted the cabinets and doors and installed the new pulls to complete the renovation, giving the kitchen a more open and modern look and feel.

Are you ready for this? Here are the amazing after pictures.

Didn't they do a great job?! Nate reported that the entire project cost about $2,300. Annnnnnd he told me (okay, that's a white lie- I'm simply hoping and praying!!) that he wants to come work on our upcoming bathroom renovations! :) We're lucky to have such talented family!

Catalog Living

Whew! It's just been one of those weeks... time for a laugh! Since I'm a glutton for punishment, I subscribe to all kinds of home decor catalogs- Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, Restoration Hardware, Ballard Design... you name it. And while I love looking through these glossy pages (you can usually find me furiously ripping pages of these catalogs out for my "inspiration wish book"), have you ever actually paid attention to the detail in many of these photos?

Well the guys over at Catalog Living do. They take pictures from home decor catalogs and add their hilarious quip on the randomness of each photo.

Take this one for example.

Hon, where’s my string of old-timey buoys? Oh wait, I found them.
Hey, lobsters and limes for dinner AGAIN???

Seriously, who has old-timey buoys laying around?!! I love it! Here's a few more of my favorites.

Hi Nancy, it’s Elaine. I’m going to be a little late for lunch. I can’t find my hat or my back-up hat.

While Gary and Elaine were in the kitchen getting popcorn,
the brave yellow sweater attempted its escape.

 Gary has no idea what exactly Elaine does in the shower every day, but he certainly knows better than to touch her wooden shower spoon or shower branch.

Gary’s eyesight has gotten so bad he can’t even read an atlas with binoculars anymore.

And one of my absolute favorites.

Just make yourself at home! If the sheets on the bed aren’t gray enough there are grayer ones in the drawer. And we just got the latest issue of Wallpaper magazine!

If none of you have big weekend plans, let me know and I'll let you borrower my copy of Wallpaper magazine to read!! Ha ha ha... Happy Friday!!

Mark Your Calendar!

Here's a little story about a DIY calendar. As you read this post, you may think, "Oh, that's a great idea! Michelle was so clever to come up with something like this for her kids." Newsflash: there aren't any kiddos (yet!) in the Ten June crew. Just my slightly minor obsession with staying organized and calendaring my life away. Like, I was that kid who actually liked my chore chart growing up. But anyways, this calendar is a completely kid-friendly project that I did for our kid-less house (well... the pups have a schedule too!).

For our office calendar, I wanted something fun and functional. Pottery Barn has some absolutely amazing calendar ideas, like so:

Pottery Barn Daily System

But, of course, Pottery Barn's version was waaaay outside my budget. So I took a couple of hints from their catalog and got started with a bulletin board that David has apparently had since his fraternity house days. I had previously stained the outside of the wood frame with dark walnut Minwax.

So far, so great, but it looked a little bare. (By the way, how cute are those letters that our nieces sent us!! We love them!) So I painted the cork board part white and added some ribbon to mark the calendar's days. You can actually see in the picture below where I glued down orange ribbon and pulled it up to replace with green. Lets just say we had a "DIY Calendar Project Take Two" when I realized (after spending about an hour measuring out and gluing down orange ribbon) that I didn't really like the orange color in our office. What can I say, we're Dawg fans, so orange doesn't really work in our house!

You can see I also left a little bit of space on the side to post other things like postcards or reminder notes.

Then I just cut up some scrapbook paper and laminated each square so that you could write (with a dry erase marker) on each day of the month. I attached some good ol' Velcro to the back of each square so I could move the days around according to which  month it is.

Here are the days Velcroed up on the calendar, ready for the month of August.

Okay, now do you see where this project is looking a little kid-friendly?! It's definitely cutesy (wait... doesn't everyone put fake cartoon crabs on their wall calendars to symbolize summer?!) but it makes me smile.

Here's an close up shot.

Yes, that Board of Commissioners hearing I've got on the calendar for tomorrow does mean that I'll be working until at least 10 PM... so basically, instead of "BOC Hearing" it should read "David, don't forget to call the pizza guy!"

And here it is, in the office:

I think it fits right in and we're certainly finding it handy to keep our lives on track. Have you made anything lately that keeps you organized?

PS. <<UPDATE!>> Just because I thought it was pretty cute, here is the September version of our new calendar. Happy fall!

Happily linking up to:

Southern Blue Ceilings: A Porch Update

If any of you are like me, mosquitoes are your worst enemy. I love being outdoors, but those annoying bugs make it a little difficult to enjoy a book/the sun/a cold drink when I'm being eaten alive! So, one of my favorite favorite parts of our new (old) house is the screened-in porch in the back yard. Honestly, it may be one of my favorite rooms in the entire house! Unfortunately, it hasn't gotten the attention it deserves and it's got a long way to go before it becomes the perfect outdoor getaway. But we're okay with slowly making some minor tweaks here and there. Hey, they always say the tortoise wins the race....

If you haven't checked out our House Tour, here are some of the "before" pictures of our coveted porch:

That's right... not so coveted by the previous owner. In fact, I think they considered it a storage shed. As soon as we moved in, we pressure washed the porch clean and added a new coat of paint to the wall against the house (if you can even believe it, the former owners painted this outdoor wall with indoor paint, so it was incredibly moldy and gross). David even redid the screening with fresh, new screen and a new door since the other screening was filled with holes and some panels were even missing.

Ahhh, no more holes! We do still need to paint the trim on the new door though.... I also pulled in some of my Charleston lowcountry roots and painted the ceiling of the porch a fun light haint blue color. Here's a little historical lesson on "Haint Blue" for those of you who are thinking "what the heck is she talking about?!"

And here is the up-close shot.

 A few weeks ago Cost Plus World Market (in my opinion one of the best home decor stores around- I can't go in there and walk out empty handed!) put all of their outdoor furniture on sale. All summer long, I've been eyeing a couple of sets, so when they marked down their summer gear, I was ecstatic. I headed over to my local store, armed with a 15% off coupon I received via email, and walked away with a beautiful new wood patio set.

Drumroll please....

Isn't it gorgeous?! And yes, those are the throw pillows from our bed. Like I said, we've still got a long way to go with decor out there. :)

David and I were super excited about this find. And the best part? The four piece set was originally priced for $399 and we walked away with it for $120. Go us. And it doesn't hurt that the little decor we do have out there was inexpensive... the green bottles are recycled San Pelligrino bottles and the lanterns were under $2 each at Ikea. Gotta love cheap!

So what am I doing this weekend? I'm pretty sure it will involve a good book, a mint julep, and this porch!

Linked to: Saving Money, Living Life