Rays or No Rays?

 If it were up to me, this wouldn't have been a project. I LOVE sunshine and heat, and man does our attic get nice and toasty! But, the cover gives us the option of blocking the sun when we're not in the space so that it does not overheat. Ryan made tracks out of wood, screwed them onto the ceiling and cut down a recycled fiberboard to fit the space. 

Really Great Men

Happy Father's Day to my Dad,

Grandpa (G) and Father-In-Law!

The best of the best!

Idea from TipJunky.

Renovations: My Desk Area

It started with new drywall and paint and turned out to be my own creative workspace, my most favorite part of the attic! 

We painted an old file cabinet that, what else, Ryan got for FREE from work :) By this point we had found the fabric for the chair, so the color choice was easy. We both agreed that two-tone drawers would look better than just one color, and added the white as a backdrop. 

This chair belonged to my grandparents and was purchased on their honeymoon! Love love love the shape and size, and the memories of this in their house. It seemed so much bigger when I was a kid...

My very talented mother recovered the chair and Ryan put castors on the bottom to make it more practical. This is definitely the most sentimental piece of the space.

We couldn't decide what to do with the portion of wall above the windows. Paint? Wallpaper? While we were stuck in designer's block, we received this box in the mail (housing a pair of super cute boots!). It sat in our dining room for a couple of weeks because we figured we could probably use it for something. Being that is was free, we played around with it and eventually decided to use it as the backdrop on the wall. 

I then made these pomander balls to hang in front of the green cardboard.  

An old utensils holder was the perfect rotating station for everything I need within arms' reach. 

And this is how my desk usually looks when I'm in the middle of a project! 

Roses for the Hostess

Ryan and I got invited over to friends' house for dinner. When I said we were free and asked the hostess what I could bring, she never responded! She didn't want to trouble me with bringing a dish, but I didn't want to show up empty handed. So I snipped some roses from the backyard, packaged them in pretty paper and tied it all up with a bow. 

Renovations: Pops of Color

Our attic is a floor of its own. It was a wonderful thing during the renovation period, and also during the design process. We could take risks that totally clashed with the lower, traditional levels of the house.  Thinking that way definitely influenced our color palette. We wanted a color that popped. A color we probably wouldn't use against gumwood trim. We both love green, so choosing a neon hue of our favorite color was an easy choice. 

Ryan sketched his ideas out, and then it was off to work! 

We painted the pipe to match. Why not?

Renovations: Closet Door

The way the previous owners drywalled the attic allowed for a storage space in a corner that would otherwise be unusable because of the sloped roof. This was a blessing for us, because like I mentioned in the Reality Must Haves post, space in a 1920s home is not very plentiful.  There was only one problem- that area, which is more than unsightly, had no door.

We left it as is for a while. No one goes in our attic, so no one sees our junk. 

It wasn't until Ryan found part of an old shipping crate in the rafters of our garage that our junk could be sealed off. 

Check out this piece of wood! And to think someone asked if we were going to paint it.... 

No way!

Don't mind the dusty floor... the picture was taken mid-renovations. 

So Ryan cut down the crate panel to fit the awkward storage opening. It was perfect. Except that it didn't have a handle. 

So what else would Ryan do but find something (free) around the house to use as an unconventional handle? 

Remember the bar that was in the pictures of the attic from when we first toured the house? Attached to that bar was this bottle opener, which is now our closet door handle. 

With this, it has become a pattern for us to use things we have found in the attic or in other parts of the house or outside environment to incorporate as practical and free solutions to design and usage dilemmas. I love it! 

Refresco Challenge

Ryan came home from work one day with a gift for me:

He wasn't joking. He drank its contents at a work-provided lunch and brought it home for me. He thought I would like it. An empty Canada Dry bottle...

To anyone else, this would be a horrible gift. And to anyone else, my reaction would be weird. But I was thrilled, stimulated and challenged.

Ryan and I are avid recyclers, like many other people, but what really excites us is when we can use an object that is past its original intention in a way that replaces our need to buy something. Eeek!

 So that is how I viewed my new gift. My empty bottle. Challenge accepted.

I started to think about my green glass bottle. I wanted it to be pretty, but it had to be practical. I don't waste space with junk. My natural first thoughts were stick a pretty flower in it or pencils, but I tossed those out right away. How many pencils could really fit through the neck?

Then it hit me!

I really do keep lots of things that others would ordinarily throw away. But so many times they come in handy! One of them is ribbon. If a good piece of ribbon comes on something consumible, I keep it. Whether it's a pack of napkins, a pair of socks or a wedding invitation, the ribbon stays.

With that said, I have tons of different colors, styles, widths and lengths of ribbon waiting to be efficiently organized. My beautiful, recycled bottles have met their purpose.

Renovations: Accent Wall

As you can see from the "work in progress" pictures, the renovations to the accent wall were pretty intense. Ryan put so much time and labor into this project. He first took all of that old barn wood, planed it down, sanded it, cut it down and then hung it back up on the walls! It's so cool to me that he could take the outdated, dark, rough wood and turn it into something so beautiful. 

He wrapped the wood around the inside of the windows and included a cork strip across the width of the wall for appearance and practicality. 

Renovations: Work in Progress

Some of the pictures during the renovation: 

Bye-bye barn wood!! 

     

Repeat Worthy

On many occasions I am glad that certain words start with r since I am pressured, under self-imposed guidelines, to begin each post with an r. Recipe, recycle, remember... for example. 

Well today's title is actually the only reason I'm writing this post. I do actually want to jot down the ingredients and proportions I used to make this smoothie because it's a repeater!

Hungry, but unsure of what to make for dinner, I thought I'd start with a smoothie appetizer to hold me over, or to maybe jumpstart my brain to come up with a dinner idea. 

Since I don't take myself too seriously with a blender and smoothie ingredients, I rarely measure, or mind, how much of a particular ingredient I am adding. If it's healthy and I can drink it with a straw, it usually doesn't go to waste.  So the measurements for this are vague, because I've never liked a self-concocted smoothie so much that it was worth writing down.

1. Juice from one naval orange
2. One 4 oz container of unsweetened apple sauce
3. 2 1/2 handfuls of spinach
4. A few wrist-flicks of unsweetened coconut flakes
5. About 7-10 walnuts
6. 2 ice cubes

Well, at least writing the measurements down wasn't the only thing I failed to do beforehand. 

Recipe Experimentation

And so it's Monday. My day for trying out new recipes. I've been reading a lot on paleo/gluten free recipes and the health benefits, so I figured I'd see what the hype is all about. There is no shortage of tempting recipes to choose from. I picked these two: 

The muffins are from this recipe, but instead of maple syrup, I used honey and agave nectar (maple flavor). I also used flaxseed meal instead of almond meal. The chocolate chip morsels are not paleo, but threw them in half of the muffins to entice the hubs. 

Gluten-free pasta is the only swap I made in this recipe! Very creamy and tasteful, with fresh basil from the garden. 

Roses and Real-life Examples

What a few days of heat and sunshine can do. I love checking the plants around the yard before and after work to see what is popping out. 

Our current unit in kindergarten is environmental awareness. I love showing my students pictures of our garden, plants and the food I can make from it. This week I get to teach them about composting, so I snapped a few pictures of fresh compost direct from our kitchen to the backyard. 

They get so excited to know that these pictures are from my real life, and it's so cute answering their many questions. Plus,  I love showing them that I actually "practice what I preach."