Oops!

I am the absolute worst at blogging these days, although I have been documenting all of our fun on instagram. The goal is to post once a day this week, so hopefully that'll catch us up. Here are some sneak previews of what's to come:

Some Pig

One of our other finds at Home Goods last night was this adorable flying pig on clearance. He had seen better days, as he was being sold as-is due to a giant crack across his hiney (insert jokes here). But he was adorable and $6, and no one would even see it when he was sitting on our shelf. So we officially adopted Wilbur and brought him home.

After some spackle and a little paint, Wilbur is looking better than ever. I'm so glad we picked him up last night, as he brings a little whimsy into the house :)

Adventures in Spray Painting

When we moved in, the house was surrounded with brass fixtures to the point where it looked like King Midas was the previous owner. It looked outdated, but we quickly found out that replacing all of them would cost us a tiny fortune. Cade replaced the front doorknob as soon as we got the keys, but the rest continued to shine brightly.

As a fan of the Young House Love blog, I've developed a growing interest in updating via spray paint. And since Cade saved the original front door knob, we decided we could use it as a test dummy. I picked up some Oil Rubbed Bronze Rustoleum (to match the front door) and set to work.

Not only was it easy, it also turned out perfectly. We're going to wait 24 hours to make sure it holds before tackling the rest. In the mean time, I also managed to update an old brushed nickle lamp from college. It came in a 4-pack and the whole matchy-matchy thing was a little too much for me. So I gave the lamp a little ORB treatment as well, and ouila! It's a whole new lamp.

The trick to spray painting is light coats- hang back about a foot and run each coat evenly across the surface before adding another. And make sure you get an all-angle spray. It'll make your life much easier. Also, check out the awesome shade Cade found at Home Goods last night! It's perfect for where we're headed with the house.

Quick Tip: Faceplate Face Off

When we were painting my apartment last month, we ran into an issue with the faceplates for light switches and outlets. Even though they should be universal, that didn't seem to be the case when it came time to put them back on, and most ended up looking slightly askew. We're getting ready to paint our kitchen, and I didn't want to run into the same problem, so I came up with an easy solution: number them!

Write a number on the back of your plate (so it won't show when you put it back up) and put a corresponding number on the inside of the switch (that way it will stay hidden, no matter how fancy your switch gets). It's quick, easy, and will relieve the headache of moving plates from outlet to outlet as you try to find a match.

Shut the front door!

After much anticipation, we finally heard back from the HOA about our proposal to paint the door a new color, and guess what? We were approved! What a small but great victory :)

The approval meant we got to visit our good friends at Home Depot for a little paint purchasing last night. We hadn't seen them in a few days, so it was nice to be reunited, but what a trip that was... The woman running the paint counter was almost as pleasant as she was helpful (which was barely- she tried to sell us interior paint, and then spilled the pigment all over the outside of the can, making the wrong color, which she then tried to sell us. She also was very critical of our color and the fact that we bought a house with an HOA... Not pleasant. At least we knew what we were doing to get what we actually needed!). It took a lot for me to not paint the front door last night- it was cool out, it could dry over night, and, oh yeah... I wouldn't be able to see a blessed thing. Plus we had two Expedits (read: bookcases) from Ikea to put together, so I decided to wait until morning.

Then there was a heat wave.
And our door is in direct sunlight.
I.E.: mission impossible.

But we told the HOA we'd do the project immediately, so I went with it. I figured the heat would help cure the paint faster, which would mean less time with the front door wide open. After three coats, the black is finally hidden, but the heat is causing major brush lines, so I'll give it a final coat tonight after it cools off outside. I'm loving the color though- we went with Behr's Nocturne Blue, which is a subtle pop of color on our formerly monochromatic dream house. And it'll go great with our interior color scheme we're working on, but that will come another day ;) For now, here's a peek at the door after 3 coats! The picture doesn't really show you the true color- for some reason my iPhone thinks our door should be bright blue instead of our dark teal, but either color is MUCH better than the scuffed up black door we originally had!

A-door-able.

One of the things our HOA has asked us to do is paint the front door. Currently it's black, but we're thinking we might want to branch out a little. After spending too much time in the paint section at Home Depot, we narrowed it down to 14 (Cade narrowed it down to 4, and I narrowed it down to 14 as we walked away from the aisle :). At dinner last night, we brought it down to the final six, and we have to make a decision by tonight so we can submit it to the committee for their meeting tomorrow.

Here are our contenders-

Dried Thyme... Pretty, subtle and traditional

Gray Matters... this one kind of gets lost on the house. Whomp.

Grand Canal- a bolder color than the rest of the neighborhood

Rainstorm- A happy medium between adding color and fitting in

Kingdom Gold- or as Cade says, "The yellow that won't get approved"

Concord Grape- again, another happy medium

I think it's safe to say that Kingdom Gold and Gray Matters's days are over. Grand Canal is probably also on the chopping block. The other three are all great options though, and they each give off very different vibes. Which one is your favorite?

Make your own paint changes without spending a dime with Sherwin Williams' Paint Visualizer. 

Birthday Fun in RVA

Cade's birthday was Sunday, so we took a secret trip to Richmond to visit the Science Museum of Virginia (he didn't know about it until we pulled up outside- that made for an interesting road trip since he was driving!). It was a great day, and we learned a lot- especially about the human body as we spent over an hour in the Body Worlds exhibit. The exhibit shows preserved human bodies, and you can see how the muscles work, how disease affects the body, and how the body functions in general. It was pretty cool and a little nauseating if you thought about it too much (the displays with faces kind of did me in...). We followed it up with dinner at Strawberry Street Café, which was delicious- Cade had Drunken Rib Eye (steak soaked in Guinness) and I had Broiled Crab Cakes, yum!- and a walk around Richmond. I'm so grateful for Cade and so blessed that he's in my life- Happy Birthday Cade!