Bathroom DIY and a cowboy

FIRST OF ALL.... J FIXED MY COMPUTER AGAIN!! I seriously hit the jackpot with this kid. He told me I should start saving for a new one though, he's not sure how much longer and can limp this one along. But yay! Computer! Blog post!

Here we go...

Our bathroom needed a pick me up. I mean, look.

The only thing we had done to dress it up was put in the cowboy we got when we were in Auburn, CA. He still didn't have a proper home, and he's my favorite.

I did some searching around on Pinterest and found this wonderful tutorial. I'm not going to go into all the details here, you can head over to the original post for step-by-step instructions, but here's how it went at our place. 

We had an extra board lying around from when we redid our coffee table (alas, it was done before this here blog, so we have no pictures of it) and some stain I had bought to jazz up some plain Ikea mirrors. The board a 24" piece of 2x7.

I bought a package of wide mouth medium mason jars and decided how many I wanted to fit on the board.

Math is hard, even when done on pretty paper.

We tested the hose clamp on one jar so we could know exactly where they would land vertically.

This is the stage when I had to call in J. I wasn't strong enough to drill through the hose clamps. The tutorial made it sound like a breeze. I probably had the wrong drill bit.

After that was done, I drilled pilot holes in the board.

Listen, I know that picture is terrible. It turns out I do not have drill-while-taking-a-picture skills. It's FINE. I'm good at other things. One the holes where drilled, I screw in the hose clamps.

There is no excuse for how terrible that picture is. My apologies. Once all the clamps were attached, I popped in my jars and tightened them up.

Nice, right?! Here's how they look installed and filled...

While we were on a roll, I had J put up our buddy.

I'm super pleased with the way they came out. It only took us one trip to the store and maybe an hour and a half after the wood was ready (sanding and staining where literally the most labor intensive part of this). It's amazing how much of a difference it makes not having all of that in jars on the counter. It feels so much cleaner! Go forth and DIY.

This is a sad story.

I posted that I was going to blog more, and dammit, I WAS going to blog more. I uploaded a crap ton of pictures, edited a bunch of them, put them into folders to help myself out and was all ready to post away and... my computer died. Cue taps. My beloved Mac failed me. I brought it to the Genius Bar with low expectations. I even asked the guy helping me if he couldn't fix it, would he think it it would be weird if I cried. He laughed but I was SERIOUS. After spending an hour there I was told my hard drive was donezo. I am very proud, I didn't shed a tear. I wrote J sad, dramatic text messages. I kept trying to turn it on even though I knew nothing was going to happen. It was a low point in my computer owning life. J came home from travelling for business, pulled a hard drive out of a different Mac (we have far too many computers in our house) and low and behold, IT WORKED. He was even able to crack into my old, broken one and pulled all of my pictures, documents (including one of my best friend's wedding invitations I am working on) off it and put it on the new one. Just when I thought I couldn't love him anymore.

But.

This is a sad story, remember?

Last night I was working on the wedding invite, got up to eat dinner and came back to a black screen. No big deal, my settings are such that my computer goes to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity. Only it wouldn't turn back on. It's doing the exact same thing as before. J is convinced it's something in the computer hardware itself, not the hard drive. I cried quietly in the corner for a bit (not really, but almost) and asked if he could fix it. I got a maybe, which I'm hanging onto for dear life.

So I'm back to where I was last week, with no pictures and no computer. I'm writing this from my work computer, which I'm not a big fan of doing. Hopefully he can get something to limp along until I can save up the billions of dollars I need to get a new one.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go talk to some food about this.

Missing of the Woods

I'm sure that there are loads of you out there wondering where I went. At least a million. Maybe more. I have been Busy, which is a terrible reason because we're all Busy, we live in a Busy world, and why did you start a blog if you can't even find the time to post? I'm going to be better, I promise. I have a bunch of stuff to share: horse pulling and wine tasting and dinner parties and pumpkin carving. Recipes and DIY and pretty pictures. I even took a Photoshop class so they won't look so terrible anymore! If you're still around and have been dying for posts- I love all 5 of you and I'll be back soon!

-a

A few of my favorite things...

Cute tennis clothes from Athleta and...

New (BRIGHT) tennis shoes from Nike...

Hershey's Kisses to help me though long conference calls...

Pumpkin Porter (ohmygodyum)...






















This coat...

Early morning walks with my guy and dogs.

Things I learned this weekend...

If you're going to be on a school bus, the safest seat is directly behind the driver.

Saturday J and went to the first of many local fairs. This is the smallest of the year, but my mom runs the photography exhibition so we always go to support her. This year we had the added bonus of her students entering a bus in the School Bus Demolition Derby.

That's right. School Bus. Demolition. Derby.

It was terrifying.

You know that horrible feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you hear a terrible car crash? Multiply that by 50 and that's what this was like for me. People were going NUTS. Like, falling over themselves excited. There was even a scuffle over some seats. The police had to get involved. I've never seen anything like it.

This was our bus. Sadly it didn't win. 

It was chaos. The ground was full of debris. They had to stop three times because of fires. Absolute madness.

Dr Death here came in second, which was kind of amazing considering he didn't have a back end and by the end of the derby couldn't even back up because of it.

The driver had to climb out of the roof. J had to point out to me over and over that the drivers were all wearing neck braces and helmets and that they weren't allowed to hit each other head on. I'm very sensitive. Leave me alone. At the end everyone was safe and the winning school got a $1,000.00 donation.

From there we went and looked at the livestock.

Look at them. There's something about cows that I love. They're so calm and sweet and velvety...

I tried very hard to convince J that we needed a calf...

I was overruled. It's fine. I told him he couldn't get a goat and name him Billy Billy, so we're even.

I also love the alpaca's. They're so much fun. Did you know that alpaca's have no top teeth? I didn't either. They use the bottom teeth for digging. That's why they always look like they have a massive underbite. I think it adds to their charm.

We went to the horse pulling, which is my favorite part of ANY fair, but my pictures from that are not spectacular. Next fair, promise. We also watched a pig scramble which left me tramautized. They hold the pigs by the hind legs! Poor things! I'm sure it's the best way to hold pigs and it doesn't hurt, but I'M SENSITIVE, OKAY?!  We don't ride rides, but the lights where so pretty as we were walking to the car to head home.

Fall in New England is my favorite. Till next time...

Weekend Escape

We live a hectic life, J and I. Beyond the fact that both of us commute over an hour to work (in opposite directions), we have a great group of friends, lots of various interests and hobbies that have events we love to attend, and are both lucky enough to be close to our families. This can lead to Social Burnout. Symptoms include sniping at each other over nothing, the feeling that you are never pleasing anybody, and general exhaustion. We had that. It's hard to be a grown up and as popular as we are.

We needed a recharge. We are both fortunate to have family houses on lakes (in New England we call these 'camps'). Last weekend we went to my family's camp. I gave my parents and brother lectures about how we would like to be left alone, that drop-ins where NOT ALLOWED (rude? probably. desperate times and all that) and we headed up Friday night.

It was glorious. It was exactly what we needed. After an aborted attempt at sleeping in (any one want two dogs?), we got up and had a leisurely breakfast and coffee, played cards and talked about everything and nothing. It's weird when you have to catch up with some one that you live with. Since it was rainy and gloomy we headed out and ran a couple errands. By the time we were done the sun was shining. J set up a makeshift brewing line and I dragged an extension cord outside so I could catch up on creating a friend's wedding invitations. We tied up the dogs and worked in companionable silence for hours. I have to admit it took until about noon for me to finally let go and relax completely.

The temperature was perfectly New England fall- warm in the sun but chilled in the shade. I took a break and walked the dogs to the water to play. Guffy was not having it, but Tucker played with me and the waves for a bit. When he was spent, we went back and I curled up with my latest book (The Paris Wife- loooooving it). Dinner was slow cooked ribs, grilled corn, and potato salad. I started to document the making of potato salad to share with you all, but I got distracted halfway through and stopped taking pictures. Sorry! After dinner we played cards again and were in bed by 9:30. Glorious.

Sunday was much the same, but halfway through the day we went to a very special two year old's birthday party.

It was a sleepy ride home.

Now we are back to reality, but I'm still hanging on to that calm relaxed feeling that comes from a weekend escape.

Horses

A while back Sarah invited me to the Jumpers Classic in Hampton Falls, NH. We got all dressed up in our finest and headed out. We were lucky enough to be seated in the Governor's Tent which had delicious food and drink, all of which I neglected to take pictures of. Terrible blogger, I am. Sarah has some if you head over to her blog. My excuse is that I love horses and was completely focused on them.

Watch your head!!

Of course I took pictures of my own shoes. Aren't they lovely? JCrew- seasons old. 

This little guy followed his owner around while the riders checked out the course layout. 

This series of jumps was the toughest. Only one rider made it over without a fault the whole time we were there! The whole event was so impressive. The timing involved and the wordless communication between rider and horse. I loved every second of it.

It was a gorgeous day for my first horse show. I managed to get quite sunburnt. Thanks again to Sarah for inviting me!!