Craft Table

Aside from a few scratches, most of our furniture made it to Houston safely. However, there was one casualty... the glass top on my craft table.

My craft table is very dear to me, for obvious reasons (how could I do all my sewing and crafting without a good craft table?), but most importantly, because Zach built it. Just for me. With his own two hands, and a lot of love. I'm relieved it was just the glass that broke; although a bit pricey, it's easy to replace.

Which brings me to a long overdue post about how my craft table came to be.

I've actually been using the table for over a year now, but have never got around to sharing it. I guess I've been too busy crafting. Below is the sad little craft table I was using before, something I took from my mom's garage. Not much surface space and very wobbly.

Before

My mom bought me an old door at a consignment store, and I thought it would be great as a table top. So last year for my anniversary gift,  Zach turned it into a table...

He used turned porch posts for the legs, and did the rest of the wood work, including the scalloped apron, by hand. He even included a drawer, with dovetail joints, for easy access to all my sewing notions. (Drawer pull from Anthropologie).



Galveston Trip

Zach and I took a short trip to Galveston to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary. We spent a little time on the beach, did some window shopping on the Strand, and enjoyed a couples massage at Moody Gardens.

A lesson in Utility

One of the nicest things about our new house is the laundry room, which despite the hot water heater taking up space in the corner, is quite larger than what we're used to. For us, the best way to use the extra space was to install a utility sink. Between all the messy projects we do, and the shiny new sink we'll be putting in the kitchen, we knew it would be well worth it.

We spent a few weeks looking on Craigslist for a utility sink, but in the end found the best deal on Home Depot's website. Most of the plumbing supplies were bought at Habitat for Humanity ReStore for next to nothing, which helped us keep the cost of the project under $60.

The hardest part of the project was connecting the sink to the waste pipe used for the washing machine. Zach removed some of the drywall to get to the existing waste pipe, then re-plumbed it so he could attach a P-trap from the sink to the waste pipe.

Once the drywall was patched, re-textured, and primed, the sink was ready to go in. We used two hosepipe splitters, or Y-connectors, to attach the faucet to the water lines for the clothes washer.

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Since we're replacing the kitchen sink and faucet, we used the old kitchen faucet for the utility sink.

If you're wondering what those funny cylinder things are, they're water hammer arresters. You can find them at your local home improvement store.

Please ignore the half finished paint job. This room is a work in progress.

Grandma Lee

I said goodbye to my last grandparent this week, Grandma Lee. She was 92 years old. We will miss her.

Monster Sighting

There are blogs for just about everything, even monster enthusiasts! Hop on over to i only like monsters to see a post about my monster softies, as well as other cute frightening creations.

Master plan for the master bedroom

Our empty bedroom

We got rid of most of our bedroom furniture before we moved, which was a good thing, since we wouldn't have been able to fit another piece of furniture in the moving truck.  So we'll pretty much be starting from scratch on our new bedroom. We're considering  making an upholstered headboard and using some of the accessories and bedding we already have to finish off the space. Instead of regular bedside lamps, we're planning to get wall lamps. Upholstered headboard + wall lamps = hours of comfortable reading in bed. And since our closet is a bit smaller, we're thinking about using small dressers as nightstands, to give us more space to store our my clothes. We'd also like to include a small seating area, with a pedestal table and two upholstered chairs. We'll have a better idea of how much furniture we can comfortably fit in the space once we've got a queen sized bed in there. We may end up having to nix the seating area, or going with just one chair.

Plants

I picked up a few plants at the grocery store that were "reduced for quick sale." I was expecting half dead annuals, but surprisingly I found quite a few perennials, and they looked like they were still pretty healthy. I have a thing about annuals; I rarely buy them because I can't justify paying money for a plant that is just going to die by the end of the year. I prefer perennials because they come back year after year and are usually a little more hardy than annuals.

I bought three salvia plants for 99 cents each and a gaura for just 50 cents. I'd been planning to buy a few salvia plants anyways, since they are pretty low maintenance and don't require a lot of water. Technically, salvia is an annual in colder climates, but in Texas it can be a perennial. I actually bought salvia splendens, which isn't quite as hardy as the salvia greggi that we had at our old house. I took a chance on the gaura since I didn't know anything about it. It turns out that gaura is native to Texas, grows well in hot climates, and is tolerant of drought.

When they get a bit bigger they will hopefully look something like this. We'll see...

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