The Weekend's Accomplishments!

Guys. We got so much done this weekend. Of course, it still feels like we have miles to go until the finish line, but we still got so much done. Here's a peek at what we've been working on...

1. Doorknobs

The exterior door doorknobs were in sorry shape. They didn't latch right, they looked worn, they were brass {which is a huge pet peeve of mine, and also a common theme throughout the house...}, and just needed to go. We bought new knobs and deadbolts for the front and back doors, and husband spent a lot of time getting the deadbolts to actually line up with the door jamb! What a stud I married ;)

Front door before

Back door before

Front door after

Back door after

2. Painting

Okay, this one was actually accomplished earlier in the week but I wanted to toss it in with our other completed projects. The second bedroom was used for the previous owners' young daughter and was a very lovely lavender color. Lovely for a 2 year old girl, but not quite what we're going for for our guest bedroom. We gave it a facelift with a cool grey!

Before

After - the glare from the light makes the color kind of hard to pick out. Hopefully I can get a better shot once we paint the trim and doors, but for now this will have to do :)

3. Clearance table/lamp

When I went to Lowe's on my lunch break on Friday to pick up the knobs and pulls from this post, this little table/lamp combo caught my eye at the end of the aisle. {Okay, its clearance tag caught my eye! I'm a sucker for a bargain!} This little guy was only $15, clearanced down from $60! It was the display model and had a circular scratch on it. A Lowe's employee walked past and noticed me looking at it, trying to figure out if it was worth the buy if I couldn't get the scratch out. She showed me how the scratch was actually some sort of liquid that had been spilled on it and came off fairly easily when she scratched it with her fingernail. I was sold! I found a super cute lampshade that was also on clearance, but once I got it in the cart, I realized it was the wrong kind of shade for this lamp. Bummer! So I paid full price for the shade that I got instead, but it was only $21 - still cheaper for the shade and the table combined than the table itself was originally! My mom gave the tabletop a good onceover with her Old English and it looks better than new! 

My proud purchase

The scratch that wasn't a scratch

After my mom's elbow grease

With the non-clearanced lampshade!

4. Switches and outlets

After seeing how fabulous the white trim looks against the off-white paint, husband decided we needed white outlets and wall switches as well. A trip to Home Depot, 27 outlets and covers, 16 light switches and covers, and we were ready to go. Unfortunately, we found out that not every switch is alike. When you have one light controlled by more than one switch, it requires a different kind of switch than the lights controlled by only one. Looks like we'll be making another Home Depot trip! But I have to agree, the new white switches and plates look much cleaner than the old, standard beige ones.

Before

After

5. Refrigerator

My brother- and sister-in-law got all new appliances and generously sold us their old refrigerator for a bargain. It took a lot of trial and error but we finally have a refrigerator in our kitchen! 

6. Bedroom furniture

Our Labor Day sale purchase is finally here! We don't have any sheets or curtains or decor put up, but I love how the pieces fit so well in the room. It feels amazing to have adult furniture! No more Target dressers or Walmart bookshelves in this grown-up bedroom!

We received so much help from our parents this weekend and I am so thankful for it! We have more projects lined up for this week that we need to finish before all the rest of our things get moved on Saturday, but we haven't even started packing the apartment yet! Whoops...

My stud muffin husband worked so hard this weekend after a long and busy week. I am so thankful for his generous heart and amazing work ethic. I wouldn't be able to do half of what I do if it weren't for his example!

My mom gave up most of her Saturday to help me sand and paint. She has always been the one to step up when I need help or feel too weary to keep going, and I don't know what I would do without her selfless attitude and loving spirit!

Packing this week will be so bittersweet. I don't want to leave our apartment! It was our first home together and I love that it feels like our space. I'm excited for our new adventure as homeowners, but it will be hard to leave the apartment that I truly love!

Football Game #2

The weather for our second home game was absolutely beautiful - much much nicer than the frigid temps of the first game! It was also military appreciation night, and the game kicked off with military servicemen and women riding around the track on motorcycles! It was so loud and so cool :)

This game was between the top two teams in the league, but it wasn't even remotely a close game. The final score was 70-15, so for those of us who don't particularly understand or enjoy football, we got to kick back and take in the atmosphere and the beautiful sunset!

And the marching band did amazing, of course! They performed the first two songs together for the first time and they looked and sounded incredible. Everyone had so many good things to say!

The initial plan was for me to leave after halftime (again) so I could get some more painting done on the house, but my husband volunteered me to walk some middle schoolers back to the classroom and bring him his classroom keys once they had all been picked up. The lady in charge of the middle schoolers commented that that was "so nice" of me to help out, but this is exactly what band wifing is all about: stepping in wherever my husband needs me :)

Painting Trim 101

Wanna know how to paint trim without taking it off the wall? Here you go!

When I mentioned that we were planning to repaint all the trim in our house, the overwhelming piece of advice I received was "take the trim off to paint it!" But looking at the trim, it seemed difficult. Way. Too. Difficult. But the gnarly scratches on almost every inch of the trim couldn't stay, and I really had my heart set on white.

I told you... I think they had a baby tiger.

Not even the windowsills are safe. Nice water stains!

So we went to Menard's to get paint and supplies. First purchase was the green thing - it's a long piece with a metal straight edge. Second purchase was the floor protectors - long, thin pieces of plastic that fit between the trim and the carpet, both pushing the carpet out of the way and protecting it from the paint. Here's what it looks like in action:

The metal straight edge was amazing for painting the top of the trim, and it saved a ton of time because we didn't have to tape anything off! The plastic pieces work great for the bottom, but you have to leave them in place until you're entirely done or paint will get on the carpet when you move it. I cannot recommend these enough!!

Before and afters:

I love how the look brightens up the whole room!

Painting trim is definitely tedious, but it's not so bad if you turn on some iTunes and take your time! We have the master bedroom done, most of the banister, and half of the living room. I'm hoping we'll be all done in the next couple of days and it will make our home look a little more like ours!

Two Small Touches

One bad thing that people don't tell you about band wifing is the extremely small amount of time you actually get to spend with your band director husband. For instance, we are trying to get a lot of painting done this week, but that is proving to be difficult. Why? I work until 6:15 every day and husband has been busy until 8 pm or later every day this week. Parent meeting on Monday, conferences Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and football game on Friday. This means that the band wife is doing most of the painting herself. I like painting and I know that husband is busy, so I don't mind. It's an excuse to put my "favorites" playlist on shuffle and belt out Taylor Swift and Glee for a couple of hours until my partner in crime shows up :) I'm not quite ready to do the big paint reveal yet, so here are two teeny projects that make the house feel a little more homey!

First up: guest bedroom closet knobs.

The existing knobs weren't horrible, they just weren't my taste (at all) and they were awkwardly short, so opening the closet door took a little effort.

So I stopped at Lowe's and picked up some new, larger knobs! It's such a small thing that makes a huge difference.

{Ignore the hideous doors... I'm convinced the owners who originally had the house possessed either an extremely irate tiger or a dozen children who were so destructive, they killed the owners and buried them in the field behind our backyard... either way, the doors are on our "to paint" list. There will be more pictures of the somewhat unnerving damage soon!}

Project numero dos: 

Again with the guest bedroom. The fan is brass-plated (gag) but not high on our "to replace" list, so I decided I would at least fix the fan pull situation. As you can see, one pull is missing entirely and the other is some sort of gold bar with a brand name on it. Tres chic.

So on my Lowe's trip, I stopped down the fan pull aisle and found two new (matching) ones. It was actually painful to buy gold pulls instead of brushed nickel or bronze (my two preferences), but they will do fine until we replace the whole fan. 

{Husband is convinced the fan is going to fall through the ceiling at some point. It is making a sound that fans don't usually make, so it may be moving higher up our list!}

So there's the two quickest and least exciting things I've done so far. We have so many other projects in the works but I don't want to share until they're 100% done! :) stay tuned for many, many, many more house posts...

Netflix Indies

I literally was never into indie films until about a year ago, when I started watching them on Netflix. I'm hooked! Here are some of my favorites I've watched recently:

I Give It A Year

I didn't think I would like this one as much as I did. It has a really random cast - Rose Byrne, Minnie Driver, Anna Faris, and Simon Baker all in one movie. It's a classic indie "couple gets married really quickly, discovers marriage isn't all it's cracked up to be, and start to have wandering eyes" plot, but the cast is fantastic and the film is really funny. 

Like Crazy

To be honest, I didn't know much about the two lead actors, but was pleasantly surprised when Jennifer Lawrence appeared in a supporting role! {I am totally team J-Law, like every other 20-something girl in America!} This film is a little more heart-wrenching than I was anticipating but is 100% worth all the hype it has received. British girl meets American boy but trouble arises when her visa runs out, and thus so does their time together.

And While We Were Here

I didn't realize how much I missed Kate Bosworth on the big screen until I watched this one! She's just as adorable as she was in her Tad Hamilton and Blue Crush days. Honestly, the gorgeous scenery throughout this film is one of the reasons I loved it so much... take me away to a beautiful island with ocean as far as the eye can see! A married woman has an affair with a younger man while on said island and it's a really deep film that explores both sides of the aftermath of an affair.

I'm Reed Fish

I love Jay Baruchel and Alexis Bledel, so this was an automatic win for me. Reed Fish is a guy living in a typical small town, telling the story of the girl of his dreams. The ending was different and made me see the rest of the movie in a different light. Such a cute movie!

TiMER

One of the most unique premises I've ever seen, I fell in love with this movie instantly. They've invented a timer that each person can install on their wrist and it counts down until the moment you meet your soul mate. Blondie gets hers installed and has to decide if she wants to get involved with this cute, young grocery bagger, even though her timer isn't saying he's the one. It's an interesting commentary on head vs. heart.

I still have a bunch of films in my queue so I will probably be doing a followup post or two sometime soon! If you find yourself looking for something different to watch, try one of these films! 

The Disney Touch

So I already have a bunch of Disney things still at my parents' house, but I couldn't resist buying a few more! Here are some of my recent finds:

I found this cute little plate on Etsy and I think it will be perfect in our master bathroom to hold jewelry and rings!

How can I pass up a subway art print of all the attractions in Magic Kingdom?

A friend at work tipped me off to a clearance sale Sears was having and I picked up this adorable Mickey for our front doorstep! 

Ever since I saw this print on Etsy, I knew I had to have it for near our front door. The quote is taken from Walt's Disneyland opening day speech in 1955!

My mom and I spent a few hours on a Sunday browsing the antique malls and she found this precious little Mickey figurine - what's funny is that I had favorited its matching Minnie figurine weeks ago!

These two were fun finds at the flea market - the sorcerer Mickey had caught my eye a couple of months ago and I kept saying that if he was still there next time, I'd pick him up. This happened three trips in a row so I finally took him home with me. The little dalmatian is one of my favorites - I love the 101 dalmatians and it's hard to find their merchandise!

I stopped into Walgreens on my lunch break to pick up a couple of things and this scarecrow Minnie was being clearanced out, so I decided she needed to come home with me! She's a couple of feet tall and will look just darling with all of our current fall decor!

Husband has been a great sport about all the Disneyfication that our house is about to undergo and I can't wait to put it all together! I have missed all my things that have still lived at my parents' for the last three months! Not just my Disney things, but all of my DVDs are still there, as well as half my work uniforms and all but five pairs of shoes. It's getting boring with only two or three work-appropriate shoes to choose from! All of my books are at our apartment currently but we only have enough room for half of them - the other half are in boxes shoved against the wall. And the majority of our wedding gifts are still in boxes, stacked in my closet! Ahh, I cannot wait to have room to unpack things and actually live!

OUR Band Life House!

Yikes... It's been a bit since I've blogged! This has been a hectic week but we closed on our house! It doesn't seem real that we are actually homeowners... Are we old enough for this? Ha :) we are planning to repaint all of the trim before we move, and I'm sure more small projects will pop up in the meantime! We get our bedroom furniture in a week and the rest of our things will be moved in two weeks... At least, that's the plan. Most of my things are still at my parents' house and I'm not looking forward to moving all of that plus a full apartment's worth of stuff. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly!

First home football game!

Friday marked our first home football game and it was remarkably and unusually chilly for early September - last year's first home game, I almost had a heat stroke! (True story. Miserable.) This year, it was in the 50s, which everyone tells me is perfect football weather... unless you have the flu. Which I did. Or still do. I decided I would brave the first half of the football game and leave after the band's halftime performance. Only in the band world do you watch two hours of a sport you hate to watch someone perform for 90 seconds ;) 

Marching onto the field

Football team pre-game

Dreary weather but still a huge turn out!

What kind of band wife would I be if I didn't get a few panos?

Halftime

Post-performance huddle. They did fantastic!

Being only the first game, they performed just the first of the three sections and it sounded great. I can't wait to see the whole show put together!