something to make up for being trapped on a roof with rabid wasps!

The karma police felt totally bad for trapping me on the roof today. They must have. For they made it up to me this evening. While Steven and I were out with our boys on our nightly "family walk," we went by a house that was being geared up for a garage sale. The owner's hadn't lived there in ages and were trying to get all the stuff that had collected inside it ready for a sale tomorrow.

Cha-ching!

With our eagle eyes, we spotted an old dresser that was severely in need of some loving, and this dresser/desk thing. Now, the dresser/desk thing I will post on later. It is a future project that will go into my studio. It is a dresser with one of those cubbies on top with little cubby holes and the slant front that flips down to be a little desk area. It used to be a built-in, so it is nothing super special but is a treasure to me. Steven was eyeing the old dresser. The owner told us he'd sell us the pieces for $5 each. We told him we'd be right back with our truck and gave him a $20.
OK... now all about the dresser. It is missing the bottom doors. The middle drawer is so wonky it can't close. But the dresser itself is beautiful and sound. It has two curved drawers at top. Beautiful feet. And the flaws just make it that much more special.

Steven is fixing the bottom to be used as a storage area for my vases and what not. While we could fix that middle wonky drawer, I told Steven I'd be just as happy with a narrow shelf for my linens. The top drawers will get little frosted knobs and velvet liners.

This, I have decided, it the bestest base ever for my pie safe, which actually probably had a very similar base at one point. So after a little elbow grease and a lot of painting, I will have a massive pie safe hutch thing for my dining room. $20 pie safe + $5 dresser = Super Happy Me!

(Pie safe post here: http://cottageofstone.blogspot.com/2009/03/before-and-after-antique-pie-safe.html)

Look at that patina. It is a shame to paint it. But I will. Mwuahaha. That is just a bit too shabby for anyone, I think.

Fabulous feet! They will be so great in white paint. I think the detail will stand out even more.

I love old furniture. You just don't get details like this anymore.

Curved front drawers are yummy!

Lest you think I am some old fuddy duddy with a house full of antiques and cat figurines... really, I am not. But I have a huge appreciation for old, quality made furniture. I don't buy things that are valuable. I have 4 kids that would destroy them. And I have 4 kids so I can't afford them. I buy things that are well-made and speak to me. I have much more fun scouting out these things than just going into a store and buying everything "as is."

rut-roh!

you know what is a bad bad feeling?

imagine you are painting your dormers. you crawl out a bathroom window to access the roof there, and are painting away, when "SLAM!" you hear the window shut.

i think i spent at least half an hour after that trying to avoid being stung by an ill-tempered wasp while trapped on the roof.

but, hey, the dormer is painted and i even did the pale blue trim!

not-so-dreary dormers

The dormers on our stone house have always been, in my opinion, really dreary. They are covered in what I believe to be asbestos shingles... I am not a fan of these shingles, I think they look a little cheap. I dream of someday replacing them with the lovely wood shingles the entire house once had. Until then, we are just going to paint them and perk up the house a bit.

As you can see above, the dormers are currently a dull gray. Also note that the gutter has practically flipped itself upside down. Hence, why Jayhawk Guttering will be coming out soon. (Come on, guys. Where are you??)

So Steven began scraping loose paint, tearing down the rotten wood, all that... Steven will be replacing the wood so that our new gutters will have something to be attached to. The new wood will be primed and painted our lovely blue.

Note: I have lost the paint swatch that gives the name of the blue paint. I am certain I had them color-match a Ralph Lauren color into Behr paint, since RL doesn't make exterior flat paint. I will dig and dig for that swatch. It totally sucks not having the name of the color. I don't know why that matters so much, but it does. Hence, why they give paints such cute names. I must admit, the name of a color can sway me a bit. Does it influence you?

Anyway... the window trim will be blue, with the muntins being the Behr "Beluga" black (same as the windows I posted on earlier.

The dormers will be painted the color I chose just today... It is called "Skimming Stone" by Farrow & Ball. Mind you, I don't pay Farrow & Ball prices... so I had it matched and mixed at a store to remain nameless in order to protect that wonderful employee that mixed it for me. The color actually is really pretty - it was just overcast when I zoomed way in with my camera phone to take these pictures.

The Farrow & Ball site has this to say about "Skimming Stone:"

A highly versatile off-white, without the common undertone of green or yellow. ‘Skimming' refers to its original use as a 19th century skim colour or whitewash, today equally useful as an all round white.

OK... I don't know about all that. F&B give a little description of each of their colors that manages to come off as a bit pretentious. But I love the swatch book they sent me. I am in love with their palette. Right up these with my Ralph Lauren and Laura Ashley faves.

front step pot makeover

There are 3 pots on the steps leading up to my front porch. I brought them along from another house, where the color was just ducky... but on this house? notsomuch. They completely blended in with the stone of the house. This year, before I put any plants in, I decided to do something about it.

We are putting in copper gutters, we have copper landscape lights, etc. I decided doing the pots in copper would give a nice little splash of repetition up the front steps. I got out a rattle can of copper paint and had at it...

After they dried, I went ahead and did my first official plantings for this year... Here is a nice detail shot my new copper-ized planters:

And as I mentioned in my earlier post today, spikes in the back, sweet potato vine to the left, vinca vine to the right, and pink ranunculus in the front:

And while I was at it, I did the planter that sits on the landing mid-way through the porch steps. This one with purple ranunculus, vinca vine and a few white allysum:

first potting of the season! woot!

Not only am I trying to cram mid-terms in this week, I have also been doing some job-hunting (drats on the economy) and working on some items for my Etsy shop, milksugar.

I was excited to finish a sweet little pot today, inspired by a design I did last year for my son, Dane. Plus, while I was shopping today, the nursery had rananculus in. (Which is soooo rare for my zone.) I picked up a bunch of annuals to start working on my pots that lead up my front steps.

mmmm... don't you love Spring? I find it so therapeutic for some reason, just to dig in the dirt and feel at one with nature in a way.

This year's front pots will have sweet potato vine, ranunculus, vinca vine and spikes. A little departure from last year with were heliotrope, sweet potato vine, flowering kale, and spikes.

Oh, heliotrope... I can't wait until that appears in the nursery. Nothing is more fragrant and lovely than heliotrope. I must find a place for it in one of my containers.

Anyway... off to work on my pots. I will post an "after" picture tonight!

a little bit about me, steven and our boys...

I find it sort of amazing that we feel like we "know" people jsut by reading their blogs. People we have never met to, or spoke to in person, and they sort of feel like friends, don't they? I have a few blog favorites (they are listed in the right-hand column here), and I really look forward to their posts. I love the little pictures of their families and pets as much as their house projects sometimes!

It occured to me that I hadn't really shared much about myself and my family... other than little snippets and the occasion picture they just happen to appear in. So here it goes...

My name is Sarah Beth. Friends call me Puck. I play hockey, and the guys called me Puckbunny as a joke, and it just got shortened to Puck over the years. Besides hockey, I like working on and racing cars. I also love music and have been playing in bands since I was a teen. That is how I met Steven actually. He played guitar in a band that I played bass in for awhile. Now, we have our own band called customgrind (yes, all lowercase and one word). I sing and play bass, and Steven plays guitar. Oh, he does sing a bit, too! :)

In case you wondered what I look like (don't we always??), here is a picture of me playing a show. I was a couple months pregnant here with our son, Bowie:

Here is a picture of me racing my Mustang at Heartland Park Topeka:

Here is a picture of Steven and son, Bowie "BoBo" when he was a newborn:

Here is an old picture of all four boys. It is old, since the baby just turned 2. Dane (top), Emery (right), Bowie (bottom), Satchel (left):

We have 3 dogs. All I could find is a BAD picture of them I snapped on the backporch, that is now our recycling area but will someday be my office. Bunny (front), Nash (middle), Cross Check (back). They are all sweeties and I can't tell you how many times the boys have ridden around on those dogs like a horse. We have 2 cats, but the cats only really like Bunny. The other dogs are pretty indifferent to the cats, but Bunny likes to play with them, so I guess that is the reason for the favoritism.

That's it. I would love to hear about you and your families... Just comment here, or put up a link to your blog!

all work and no play...

I have to take a bit of a blogging hiatus for a couple days... This week is mid-term week for my MBA program... YIKES! I finished my financial accounting exam today, but I have one more to go.

Be back as soon as I can!

Good JuJu Day!

Tomorrow is Good JuJu Day! I am so excited... See, Good JuJu is this sale they do the first weekend of every month. They hold it in the Bottoms of Kansas City (they old school industrial district). You hear me mentioning in my posts, "Oh, I got this antique rocker for $14 at Good JuJu." I have bought soooo many things there. Plus, this is our monthly date day. When you have 4 kids, you don't really get to have much time alone. So, Good JuJu Friday is our date day. So fun.

Any guesses on what I will find?

hint: I am on the look-out for fun garden-type things.

P.S.
A link to their website for those in the area:
http://www.goodjujukc.com/

handmade Easter egg decorations with my boys

We had a fun family craft night in our kitchen last night. We baked cookies and decorated eggs. Do you remember making them as a kid? I think I blew the guts out of 4 eggs in the time it took them to do 1. If only that were a real skill to incorporate into my resume...

Anyway... for those who haven't done this before, it is super easy and a fun thing to do with the kiddos. Just poke a small hole into the top and bottom of a raw egg. (I used a straight pin, and just kept poking new holes to make the opening a bit bigger. Once you have your holes, blow the contents of the egg into a cup. Once you have all the stuff out, rinse your egg a bit under the tap. Else you are likely to smell some rotten eggs! Dry your egg off and you are set to decorate. We used acrylic paints, but I have seen people glue on jewels, sprinkle glitter, etc. We were going for the speckled egg effect. The children did their own speckles - some with greater success than others... but I will try to save them from getting crunched since it would be neat to add to our tree each year.

Oh, our tree... I don't have a fancy schmancy egg tree like the Pottery Barn catalog. I just hacked a limb off the dead plum tree. (Steven is going to chop it up this week if it would just stop raining.) I put the limb into a mason jar that I had frosted awhile back. I thought it looked darling. I will definitely try to do an Easter tablesetting for our Easter lunch. ;)

sweet little things to hang on a door knob...

I made a trip to Michael's this morning to pick up some art supplies and managed to come home with a few little happy things!

This sweet little speckled egg ornament was 40%. The pink, lavender and blue go so well with my freshly painted door, and...

it matches my pretty speckled egg wreath I got at JoAnn! Hopefully not too matchy, though.

This garland was also 40% off. I suppose one could unroll it and use it as intended, but I think it is pretty still coiled up like a little wreath. This is hanging on the door to my master bathroom.

This little jingle bell I have had for the past few Christmas seasons. I liked it's little tinkle so well, that I painted it pink awhile back and left it out for good. I decided black and white would make it pop a bit more against the dark wood. (It is nice to have a little alert for when my boys go in and out!)