We've Got Chemistry, Baby

Apart from being sexy, what do you do for a living?

Am I in heaven, because you are an angel!

I hope you know CPR, because you take my breath away!

Hmm... awkward pick up lines aside, the Little Red House has news, albeit belated.  AKA, I suck at updating lately.  The dog rescue thing, while amazing, is all encompassing.  It's literally draining.  It's so hard to see so many dogs out there that are purebred and need help, and be so helpless.  It takes a huge network of fosters, transporters, volunteers, and adopters to make this happen, and all I've got right now are a handful of foster homes that tend to rate on the dwindling side and myself.  In other words, I play director, coordinator, foster home sometimes, volunteer, and transporter.  And that's not even my day job!

But back to those awkward pick up lines.  I haven't even been to a bar lately... sadly I had to google those.  Come to think of it, no one has ever used a silly pick up line on me.  Ever.  Sad day, for sure, but I think I prefer my 'that guy from Eclipse' of a husband (as one of my old High School guy friends described him). 

Ok, ok, get to the point, and PICTURES!

As always, there has to be pictures.  Our house is obviously a weird kind of house, and no average run of the mill Pier 1 or Furniture Row items would fit.  So when I'm not out saving the pointer world (I have a cape, I'm legit), I scour Craigslist for odd pieces to fill said home.  Here's my latest acquisition.

I was lucky enough to be first in CL email line to get this fancy little item.  It's a Chemistry Table from the University of Arkansas via 1930s.  The drawers are full of signatures from old fraternity guys (1931, 1937, etc).  And yes, those are working outlets on top!  My Halloween wheel is turning just thinking about it!  It came with six school chairs also stamped U of A that obviously need some TLC.  Justin is going to be sanding those down and varnishing soon, but the jury is still out.  Here are my picks for chair options.

Something like this but less tufting and taller (specifically 41" tall back) and off white, not white.  The chairs in mind are microfiber.  I'd like to see six of these chairs on the sides, and these chairs on the ends:

So all in all, we'd have a table that seats 8.  The only problem is that these chairs are only 36" high I think.  I want a statement with the white chairs, since I feel the brown chairs are too short, but if I left the brown chairs, the wicker on the end wouldn't look so stumped.  What do you think?

Here's another angle of the table in the room with the original chairs.  The table needs to be lifted about two inches anyway to make it comfortable for sitting.

I'd like to have a long dresser on the wall to the right.  I'm considering painting something a bright fuji apple green to go with the blue, but I'll probably opt for a darker grey or white or brown.  Here was the one that got away.  I still cry over this piece.  I should have bought it!

These would go above:

And help me decide on a mirror:

I think the 2nd mirror is more formal and the kind of look I'd prefer.  I would flank it with those botanical bird prints matted and framed in a dark brown frame.

Dining Room Rehab

It's Christmas time at the Little Red House and the spirit (spirits? Haha!) are in full swing.  We made the long and arduous trek to Lowe's to purchase some snazzy little sap sopper - a tree, in layman's terms - and it has been decorated ever so haphazardly, as is my style.  Of course, there will be no pictures of my little tree.  My skills for decorating pale in comparison to all of you Southern Belles (you know who you are) that could make Christmas out of toilet paper and glue, if you had to.  So instead of embarrassing myself fully, I'll move away from the holiday cheer... keeping the spirits close by though... and onto the topic at hand.

DINING ROOM REHAB.

You were supposed to imagine a big booming voice saying that.  Did you?  Well, I'll wait while you try again.

Are you ready now?  Good, pressing on.

We all remember fondly the sexiness that was my dining room.  It was covered in the most 80's fantabulous vine inspired wallpaper known to man.  The curtains were white.  The chair rail had seen better days.  (Picture on previous post, in case you are not familiar with the loveliness).  In true fashion, Justin decided to take it upon himself to begin a massive revamp project, including all new trim, wainscoting, paint, and light fixtures, two weeks before Christmas.  Who am I to stop progress?

...Sigh...

So, let's start with the removal of the wallpaper, which actually began last December (anyone remember the hole?)  It makes for a nice blank canvas, I think.  Justin used a steamer, and the wallpaper - applied correctly in the first place, onto paint rather than directly onto sheet rock, like in the bedroom - came off relatively easily.

As is typically the case, our previous owners left interesting little marks from their lives here.  Anytime Justin redoes something, we find a little glimmer of the past and their personalities.  To me, the never-failing nerd, it's like an archeological dig.  Aka, coolest thing ever.  Here is a photo of the owner's handwriting and measurements when he put the wallpaper up in the first place.

Weird right?  I thought so.  Anyhoo, back to the updates.  So first went the wallpaper.  Next came the trim, every last piece of it.  It felt like the Grinch was stealing all the holiday cheer from my happy little red house when he stripped the trim :(. 

After this heinous crime had been committed, he then tried to cover up the injustice with primer.  Let me tell you, primer can do a lot of things, but this?  Well... it actually worked really well.  Now he had a crisp canvas to work with.  As if that weren't enough, he had to add insult to injury and cut up more trees and nail them into the unsuspecting walls!  If no one had been there, would we have heard them scream?

Okay, okay, I'm getting lame.  More pictures?  Must feed the blog gods more pictures!

Here's what the wainscoting and trim will look like.  It's all going to be painted white, but we've picked samples for the blue we'll use on the walls.  What color do you like best: 1, 2, 3, or 4?

Um, yeah, nobody look at the kitchen... it's a total wreck.  Hey!  I said NO LOOKING!  Avert thine eyes.

That's the work Justin has accomplished so far, and he has made some lofty promises to have the room finished by Christmas.  If I held my breath, I might be as blue as the wall!  Haha, in all seriousness it's going up rather quickly, thanks to my handy hubby.  He likes to play with tools.  (mehhehehehe)

SNEAK PEAK OF THINGS TO COME:

The dining room is only step 1 in a long process.  Step 2 will include making the living room inhabitable once again.  That, however, may take much more time, as Justin is hitting the drawing board to think up some snazzy built-ins.  Here is the sneak peak, though.  These are our latest PB purchases, a showcase coffee table and console table.  Apparently this style has been discontinued (stain, rather), so these were the last two they had in store.  We actually got a 40% discount on the console because it was missing two screws - two screws that at Lowes cost $6 total.  That's about $136 worth of savings.  We were pleased, needless to say!

Belated Update

Woops.

So here I sit, having what seems like one of the best nights of my life:  cheap wine, sleeping dogs, spinach and artichoke dip, Eclipse, and a purpose.  Life is only great when one has a purpose.  While I already had several purposes, one has suddenly come to the forefront in an effort to monopolize my life - and I love it!

I feel like I should walk around with a shirt that says "Save the Bobo's" (save the tata's).  For those of you who don't know Beau, he's a GSP, and we call all GSP's Bobo's.  We say, "Oh, look at that pretty Bobo" or "Wow, that Bobo is much bigger than ours".  Well, now I run my own Bobo rescue.  Purpose fulfilled?

So, that is my reason for the belated update (end bird walking).

Halloween Pictures:  you want them, you deserve them.  We had a blast, and if you missed it, we missed you - but were probably not aware of your absence... the punch is also a memory eraser, as the giraffe and the parakeet found out.

My festive tablescape:  Add one part Joanna's Fabrics, multiple parts food, and ten parts arachnid, you have it.


And now it's not letting me add more photos... This makes me angry.  Anyhoo, fun was to be had.  And now, my darling husband has taken it upon himself to strip this room of all of its wallpaper and remove all the trim.  He bought books and tools and fun things, and now he is redoing the wainscoting and trim.  I'm afraid, but I hope things will turn out for the best.  The neatest thing was uncovering all the previous owner's markings on the wall.  I took lots of pictures to show the family.

Pictures? No. Wine? Perhaps.

Okay, so who am I kidding?  There will always be wine. 

There are three things that will always "be" at the Parker house:

1.  Dog hair.  As long as I live, and and long as the Shop Vac that is currently serving as my vaccuum cleaner holds up, we will battle the dog hair.  But for all the pain and struggle it causes us, we wouldn't give up its source for the whole world.

2.  A sense of happy chaos.  What?  Chaos?  At the Parker house?  Never... hah.  I'm not one of those women.  You know... the kind that has the perfect wreath for every holiday.  The one that has a place for everything and everything in its place.  I'm too laid back - also known as pathologically lazy - for my own good.  The clean house you see when you visit only stays that way for 24 hours, if I'm lucky.  Any other time?  Well, let's just say it's safer to not come unannounced.

3.  And Wine.  There will always be wine.  It's a food group around here.

That being said, there will be no pictures of house updates in this post. 

*Shock!  Awe!  Aghast!*

I know, I know.  Who actually reads blogs?  It's all about the pictures, the quick drive-by creeping we all live for.  I'm sorry to disappoint.  But really, this post was not meant to entertain anyone.  The inspiration for this post came from my wonderful and ever-diligent husband.

Each and every day he impresses me more.  I look outside every morning, and I see the amazing sight that is our deck, and I think to myself, "He made that... all by himself."  He's currently outside - yes, the sun has set on Fayetteville - but he is still outside, slaving away, putting up railings, adding posts, doing who knows whatever his genius engineer-minded brain can configure.  And I stand - correction, sit comfortably under a blankie in the living room, Man VS Food and dogs playing as my background noise - in total and utter awe of the wonder that is my husband.

This post, in all of its fun and non-picture-posting entertainment factors, should really be titled this:

"My Husband:  Ninth Wonder of the World"

And I love him for it. 

*End sappy crap.

Okay, okay.  I know you're all dying for actual pictures.  Get ovah it.  There will be pictures soon.  We are beginning the preparations to turn the Little Red House into a very Haunted Manor.  For those of you who are able to attend the party, you will see first hand the bundle of absolute awesome.  For everybody else, I'll have lots of pictures of the decorating process, plus some step by steps for some of the fancier DIY projects we'll be creating. 

To give you a taste of the wickedness that will be this haunted manor, I'll impart upon you a little tale.  I went to the Spirit Store last night.  FYI, the best way to be taken seriously at a Halloween store?  Grab a buggy/cart/basket.  The ears prick up and the help arrives in droves as soon as the first item hits said basket.  I walked in, grabbed a basket, and began shovelling spiders into it.  Within one second, I had four, count 'em four, employees, including the manager, rush up to help me in my 'search' for everything arachnid.  They were actually really helpful.  But yes, be prepared.  There will be a spider room at the haunted manor. 

There will also be the classics:
Bobbin' for Apples Punch
Swamp Sangria - for those that the punch is too much for
A gaggle of ghoulish delights (that means food, and I don't mean just candy corn)
Beer pong on the behemoth of a deck
Dancing
And plenty of spooks and frights to go around.

Beds will be provided for all those who get lost, never to return home.....

Okay, so you can stay, but you better get the heck out by noon.

And to end this strangely erratic post, I leave you with one thought:

You know you have problems when you get more excited about a fog machine than, well, anything fathomable.  It's just wrong, but I'm so excited about my "Mist Maker" from the Spirit Store.  $19.99 well spent. 

Trash to Treasure

Well, it's a dreary and cloudy 4th of July.  Justin is hard at work on the deck, and my HGTV shows are intermittently interrupted by the sounds of sawing and hammering.  Not a problem whatsoever.  It's music to my ears, really.  The fireworks, on the other hand... at least no one is shooting them off right at this moment.

So since the deck is the only bit of anything that's been going on lately as far as home projects go, I figured it's about time for a few pictures.

Pictures!  Hooray!  Wow, we want them now!

Okay, okay, I know everyone is just dying to see some of the home purchases we've made lately.  But patience is a virtue, indeed.  My parents have been cleaning out their house of unwanted furniture, etc, so we've gotten the brunt of their castoffs.  All very exciting business to us, really.  We also went down to Warren for the PTF (yes, it's important enough for an acronym) - laymans = Pink Tomato Festival.  We actually did more antiquing than festivaling, neither of which included air conditioning, sadly.  We made a few purchases there and brought back a wicker chair from home.  When we got back we actually found a neat desk chair via Craigslist, so that got added to the mix very quickly.  Okay, I know.  Stop freaking out already.  Here are pictures, sheesh....

Our antiquing loot:

We got these two Coca Cola boxes at two different stores downtown for the great total of $25.  Quite a steal when you consider purchasing them from Pottery Barn for $40 apiece, and then you aren't guaranteed Coca Cola.  You could end up with - gasp - a Pepsi crate!  The bottom one is older, and the words are actually branded into the wood.

The wicker chair from home:                           

Is now Sherbert Green:

The question now is, which pillow to purchase for it?  Help me decide:

I'm favoring either the yellow/white stripe or yellow patterned one on the bottom right, but I also have my eye on the green/red/white combo on the bottom row.

And last but not least, the antique desk chair from Craigslist (a steal at $80):

Surprise Home Renovation!

It's never good to see random water sitting anywhere in a home.  Here's the timeline of our interesting evening:

Come home from Home Depot.  (Ironic, I know)
Go to the kitchen to clean up.
Find water on the countertop; not the first time, but more plentiful than usual.
Call in darling husband to inspect.
Open above cabinet.
Notice one droplet of water.
Follow drop to ceiling.
Hamster starts running on wheel in mind.
Realize that the ceiling is actually the unused bedroom upstairs.
Ponder what up there could cause such dripping.
Hear darling husband cuss from upstairs.
Follow the curses up the stairs.
See DH standing over huge bubble in the closet floor.

So yeah, the upstairs AC sits in the bedroom's closet.  A condensation pipe has apparently been dripping for at least a month onto the same spot in the closet floor.  The carpet was moldy (just great), so Justin started pulling the carpet up.

Wet particle board.  Yuck.

Wet moldy particle board.  Even better.

So we proceeded to rip up every ounce of particle board in the closet, wet or dry, and tear out the carpet.  To our amazement, there were beautiful lemon colored hardwoods underneath all of the particle board.  At least some good news came out of this almost incredibly horrible situation.  There are hardwood floors underneath the blue carpet, and that is very exciting indeed.  However, no matter how awesome that may be, surprise home renovations are never happy things. 

Pictures of the destruction:

Therapy of My Own

I'm a therapist.  I work with little children all day long, doing all sorts of different speech and language related therapies.  I play games, I chase, I hug, I restrain - when need be, I make weird faces and weird noises, and I fight constantly to stay on top of the psychological game that is working with children.

Therapy is tough.

And sometimes, therapists need a little therapy of their own.  Today's therapeutic exercise involved a rake, gloves, and lots of bug spray.  The pathways leading up to both front door and side door of our little red house are made of small pebbles.  The original owners, in their ingenuity and all-powerful intelligence, must have had a good reason for using this kind of material.  I, on the other hand, have yet to be graced with that knowledge.  The amount of weeds that come up through the pebbles at an almost constant rate.... no wonder they had three children.  Talk about cheap weed pulling labor.  I don't even want to look out of the window because I know I'll be able to see them growing.

The flowers keeping me company while I worked:

While I cursed and spat and raked and hauled in the front yard, Justin slaved away over the deck in the back.  He took about a week off for rain, and another week off just for fun, so now he's back with a vengeance.  He had finished one half of the deck before his little 'siesta', just enough, apparently, for the go ahead to purchase deck furniture.

Oh, Home Depot.  The deck furniture issue should have been a good enough reason to check myself into actual therapy...  We had it ordered to be transferred from another store.  They gave us a date to pick it up, one week later.  We went, and it wasn't there.  Another date, another try, still no gold.  Another date, another try, and by now the little lady at the customer service desk knew who we were, and I could see her cringe whenever we walked in.  After about 5 more dates given for pick up times by Home Depot and no furniture in sight, we were a little furious, to say the least. 

We were also apparently famous at HD.  While we stood there waiting for the customer service gal to wrack her computer for any information about the whereabouts of our missing furniture, one worker actually walked up and said, "Hey, are those the folks that have been waiting on their furniture for a month?" to her.  Yeah...

Needless to say, the people at the other store finally got off of their rears and sent the furniture, and we were soooooooo happy to pick it up.  I'm sure the customer service gal said a little prayer of thanksgiving at having us off of her back.

Fast forward to this week, and I walk over to the outdoor furniture section, and what do I see?

Our same set, on sale for $350 less.  I almost choked.  I walked, stone faced, back to the stain section, and told Justin.  He was nearly sick.  We both walked over to the customer service desk and had a polite conversation with the nice people there.

I've never actually made money when shopping, but I can honestly say we made $350 on that trip out.  One can only hope that lightning would strike twice, in this situation.  And all the hullaballoo was for this:

Hot, isn't it?  I thought so too.  We also have two matching chaise lounges with a little beverage table to put between them.  Justin wanted to highlight the sexiness of the deck by spraying water all over it before taking pictures.  Apparently our deck got to have a personal wet t-shirt contest.  Oooh, and a special thing that the former owners' children would appreciate:  we saved the 50 year old dogwood that was directly in line of the deck flooring.  My husband is one special man when it comes to power tools.