5th Wedding Anniversary: Honeymoon Edition

Posted on May 23, 2013 by John

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Five years ago today, Lisa and I tied the knot in front of our family and friends. Yup. Been five years. Crazy. We’re both pretty shocked at how quickly the time has gone. So far so good. Last year we posted about the ceremony and the reception. This time I thought I’d share some photos and stories from the Honeymoon.

The Monday after our wedding, Lisa and I flew out of Philly to Toronto on the way to Paris. With a good 6 or 7 hour layover, we took some time to walk around Toronto and grab some lunch. Nice town (their hockey team is just so-so ).

Lisa suggested we check out that CN tower. This is as close as we got. Not a fan of heights. I blame a bad experience at the Space Needle in Seattle (that’s for another post).

After landing in Paris, we stayed four nights in the Left Bank in an American style hotel since the rooms are bigger. It was wonderful. Paris is… Paris. It’s such a unique experience. The food, the architecture.. amazing. I’ve never eaten as well anywhere in the world. The coffee and croissants are perfection. You haven’t lived until you’ve had a cafe au lait and a croissant in Paris. Even the truck stop food in France is unbelievable. It’s a joy to be there with nothing to do. We would bum around, grab a beer, have something to eat.. just sort of wander.

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses though. For Americans, the experience can be a bit maddening at times. We’re used to prompt service in restaurants with waiters that beam polite and grateful smiles at us as we order a half dozen items on the menu. In France, the people are warm and polite, but if you’re eating in a restaurant, expect to be left alone for long periods after your meal arrives. It’s just the culture there. The French don’t hustle in and out of meal time. That’s an American thing. So, if you have a tourist agenda with lots of sights to check out and you include dinner or lunch at a restaurant, expect it to be longer than you’d think. They can get a little frustrated with long customized orders too, although that may depend on the waiter, I don’t mean to generalize. Word of advice: go with the flow. Oh, and skip the steak tartare

The sights:

We loved the Eiffel Tower. How can you not? As I mentioned, I hate heights. Lisa was all about going to the top even if I stayed on the lower levels. After she got to the first level though, she nearly had a heart attack too. The steps from the ground to that lower level are all open views. You can see the ground the entire walk up. The views even from that first level are pretty spectacular.

It’s breathtaking at night.

Notre Dame offers some primo history and great views of the city as well.

Also had a mini-heights freak out here too. lol.

Paris has the Louvre, where you can find some hugely famous sculptures and artwork.

Like the Mona Lisa…

There’s also Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace.

Huge museum. You can easily spend a few days in there.

We also made plenty of time to goof off… we have more than a few ‘awkward tourist face’ photos.

I also took up smoking because… I was in Paris, obviously and that’s just what you do.

After our first few days in Paris, we drove down to Lourdes to see the Blessed Mother Shrine, which is associated with Saint Bernadette. It was about an 8-9 hour drive from Paris. Lisa and I are practicing Catholics and I’ve also been to Fatima in Portugal, so that was a treat. The town is a bit packed with the second highest number of hotels per capita outside of Paris. We arrived into town very late at night and departed shortly after visiting the shrine. We thought the hotel was sorta gross so it soured our view of the town a bit.

From Lourdes we made the 7 hour drive East to Cannes and stayed two nights there. Beautiful little seaside town on the French Riviera. It was cold and breezy considering it was early June. I think the weather might actually have been more ‘beachy’ in New Jersey that time of year. Nice place. Nothing to write a blog post about for me. I enjoyed the Algarve in Portugal a little more.

After Cannes, we drove back up to Paris for another 3 nights and then flew home. We had our last coffee and croissant in Charles de Gaulle airport.

We’ve been hoping to go back to Paris since we left, but it’s a bit pricey and it’s not a destination where you’d want to do a quick weekend, especially if it’s your first time there. Quick story: One day on the Champs Elysees, after we saw the Sex and the City movie, we grabbed two beers. They were 10 Euro each, which after converting it to dollars was roughly $30. So, we payed $30 for two Heinekens. Oy. But then again, that’s the Champs Elysees. You can find the same beer much cheaper elsewhere.

I’d prefer to go back for a good two week stay, but then again, I’d love to go back to Portugal and Ireland. Still need to see the UK, Spain, Germany, Italy… so we’ll see. One day. Oh, and I’d love to win the lottery too.. just sayin.

So, Lisa and I are going to enjoy our anniversary by hanging out and cooking. Maybe I’ll catch a smoke… you know, to relive the memories.

Our Spring and Summer Plans

Posted on May 20, 2013 by John

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We’re back. Just had one of those weekends where we did next to nothing. No home improvement projects to blog about. No chores. Nothing. Watched a ton of Doctor Who. It was everything I hoped it would be. My batteries are officially recharged.

I’m trying to keep up the frequency of our posts, but I’ve been taking some extra time during the week to work on our new blog theme. I haven’t touched it since Christmas and just decided to start from scratch again. So far so good. I think you’ll like it. Keeping it simple. In any case, trying to keep three posts a week and make time for a theme build just isn’t happening. Working in web design or graphic design in general is not an area of strength for me so it’s mostly slow going.

In other news, it’s been a while since we’ve had some direction around here. We just got done a major carpentry project and dabbled in some concrete work. I think it’s time for a new to-do list so you know what we’re planning.

With the end of my spring grad class and the weather getting warmer, it’s officially outdoor season here. While there are still a good amount of indoor projects on our to-do list, the vast majority of our work plans are aimed at exterior projects.

Here is a list of the projects we’re planning on tackling this spring (what’s left of it) and summer. Most of these ideas are going to be relatively low cost. We were hoping to get started on a deck build, but have decided to punt that at least into the fall.

1. Clean and organize the garage. Our garage is the bane of Lisa’s existence. It’s dirty, unkempt and filled with bugs year round. This is now priority numero uno. In order to bring the garage up to something more tolerable, we have a series of tasks slated for this space.

Apply another coat of epoxy on the floor
Add shelves and additional storage
Do something about our God-forsaken window treatments
Add stroller storage
Paint the interior door black
Dress up the stairs

2. Flower bed fix ups. Time to bring these once proud flower beds up to snuff. Our front beds are in decent shape, but our side beds are overgrown and are in need of re-edging and some additional work.

(via Greengardenista)

3. Flower bed by mailbox. Remember this pin? We’ve been pining after this look for months. It’s time to make it happen. Hoping we can make a big improvement to a small space.

4. Add more exterior lights. One of our first posts when we started blogging was the landscape lighting we added. I’d like to make the exterior of the house pop a bit more and take care of some dimly lit areas. A couple more spot lights should do the trick. Oh and I need to take some quality SLR shots of the house lit up at night.

5. Drip irrigation. Also one of our earlier series of posts. I bought enough supplies to take care of the entire perimeter of the house, but still need to add the system to one of our side flower beds. You’ll get a refresher on drip irrigation installation. Piece of cake.

6. Add motion sensors to our exterior spot lights. Quick. Easy. Need to do it.

7. Shed flower bed. After we built our shed, I gave it a rectangular flower bed that wrapped around its three sides. Looks okay, but is impossible to cut easily with a riding mower. I’m going to reshape the beds to make this sort of maintenance easier by incorporating curves.

These last two are inside-the-house projects, but so what.

8. Family room trim. Our family room is big and plain (old photo). We’ve been kicking around some ideas on how to add some character and interest without breaking the bank. Keep an eye on our Pinterest activity in the near future for hints of what we’ll be doing. I’d ideally love to be done with this project before I start my last grad course at the end of August.

9. TV Console. Thought I’d be knee deep in plywood by now, but think this one may wait for a rainy day. See this post for more info on this project.

Ambitious list? Sure is. I work better with longer lists. Gives me something to shoot for.

What’s on your spring/summer to-do list?

Hang Mod Podge Letters the Easy Way

Posted on May 14, 2013 by John

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With my spring grad class finally over, I get a lot more free time back. It’s awesome. As much as I love learning, I also love… not learning. Lisa has a long laundry list of things for me to do around here, which mostly consists of finishing projects I either already started or promised to start. yay. Today we’re going to show you one of those quick projects we already managed to finish. Here’s how to hang mod podge letters the easy way.

We started out with white letters that hung above our first daughter’s crib in the nursery. When we moved her into her new toddler bedroom, we wanted to move the letters with her, but decided to dress them up a bit. Lisa traced them onto some scrap book paper from Michael’s. We used a different pattern for each letter. I think it’s the same paper as the birthday pennants she made some time ago.

With the patterns traced and cut out, she applied a liberal amount of mod podge to the face of the wooden letter and the back of the pattern paper. Then they get pressed together until dry.

Now for leveling and mounting them… When we had these letters over the crib in the nursery, we used screws and the holes in the back of the letters. It wasn’t hard to install, but it was a giant pain to get them all level, since the screws holes in the letters were all in different spots. Plus, these letters didn’t come with a template or anything. Not fun.

This time around, we skipped the screws and just used double sided command strips. How about leveling them? That part was easy too. We took the sticker off the command strip and just rested them on a level. Once we got the spacing right, we firmly pushed the letters onto the wall. They’re not going anywhere.

So much easier this time. Those command strips are pretty sweet and this isn’t even a sponsored post or anything.

Have you found easier ways to do things the second time around?

DIY Concrete Planter

Posted on May 12, 2013 by John

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Happy Mother’s Day! Hope you had a great holiday. We pretty much hung out with our families all weekend. Good stuff. Good stuff. Ate too much.

Today I wanted to bring you a quick how-to on making concrete planters. Last week we shared the results of our attempt to make a monogrammed planter. While we didn’t get exactly what we were shooting for with the monogram, the actual planter (sans monogram) looks pretty good. We’re going to work on that monogram later, so stay tuned. We’re going to get it right.

As for the planter, the directions I followed came from Popular Mechanics. I used the exact dimensions they provided in their plans. Their procedure, however, called for some different materials, which I opted to change for convenience.

Materials:

Popular Mechanics used a regular plywood board for the concrete forms that you seal or cover with aluminum foil. It may have been MDF (I dunno, I actually didn’t read the article, I just looked at the pictures, lol). So I used melamine. When I made concrete countertops, that was done using melamine for the forms. It’s what the concrete counter people recommend. If you’re not familiar with melamine boards, they are just particle boards that are laminated with a hard, smooth, typically white layer of… something. The white surface is impervious to water. Melamine is usually used for either cabinets or shelving. You can typically find it in the shelving isle at your local home improvement store. It’s not expensive. I used the 3/4″ thick stuff.

Concrete:

I used the 5000 psi mixture from Quikrete. You can use a regular 80 lb bag of concrete too though. Plan on one 80 lb bag of concrete per planter of the size in the article. The planter ends up being around 80 lbs when you’re done. Concrete is cheap, btw, around $5 per 80 lb bag.

Colorant:

Quikrete makes a colorant you can add to the concrete mixture to change the color. If you don’t color it, it will end up being the same color as a sidewalk. Nothing wrong with that, if that’s what you’re shooting for. We used a half bottle of the black colorant for our planter and it’s not that black. You add the colorant to the water before you add it to the concrete.

Tools you’ll need:

1. Drill and screws
2. Silicone caulk
3. Circular saw or table saw

To start, you cut all the melamine pieces for the form. The form pieces are listed in the article. I added the V letter to the board that’s the front of the planter. I calked it to the melamine and then caulked around the perimeter of the letter.

You basically make two planter boxes for the form, an inner and an outer. The outer is where the letter goes, if you’re adding one. As I assembled it, I applied a bead of silicone caulk to all the exposed edges of the melamine to keep the particle board from soaking it in and expanding. I also applied silicone caulk to any joint where to melamine boards met to keep any liquid concrete from running through the seams. All the boxes were joined with either nails or drywall screws.

The inner box gets mounted to a larger board.

With the smaller box mounted to the bottom board, I place the outer box over the assembly.

Before adding the concrete, I coated three small wooden dowels in vaseline. They will serve as forms for the drip holes in the bottom of the planter. You don’t need to nail them or anything. Actually, they get smushed down into the concrete after you’ve poured it and can be taken out before the concrete fully sets.

In case you were wondering, you pour this planter upside down. You need to work the concrete into the form with a stick or some other type of hand tool. A stick works fine though. Obviously, if you’re adding some sort of severe letter, you need to do a better job than I did with the concrete around the letter.

With the concrete in the form. I used a random orbital sander pressed against the form to shake the air bubbles out of the concrete.

I let the concrete cure overnight and then just started popping the sides off the form with a crow bar and a hammer. The article makes it seem like you can just pull the inner form out from the outer form. Yeah, good luck with that.

After banging all the form pieces off, you’re left with the planter.

So, lessons learned:

The melamine boards were difficult to remove and seemed pretty firmly stuck in there. The article used a different material than melamine and talked about aluminum foil. The hardest part was removing the inner form.
The black dye only gave us a dark grey planter. If you wanted it darker than that, use more than half the bottle per bag of concrete
I should’ve coated the letter with either cooking spray or vaseline.
Don’t come into the house covered with concrete and sawdust and ask your wife for vaseline for the wooden dowels. She’ll think you’re being weird.

How much did this cost? About $35. That’s not bad though. I’m pretty sure store-bought concrete planters are expensive. Plus, if you’re able to customize the size or add some personalization, you’ll be saving booko bucks.

So what do you think… is this something you’d attempt?

Pinterest Challenge: Monogrammed Concrete Planter

Posted on May 8, 2013 by John

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It’s Pinterest Challenge Day everybody! It’s like “show and tell” for bloggers… times ten. Since the weather has been getting warmer, the yard has been on our minds more often lately. What better way to kick off our outdoor season than with garden style Pinterest Challenge project. We attempted a somewhat ambitious project and decided to make a monogrammed concrete planter.

Here’s one of the pins that inspired this project..

(via Lowes)

We already had SOME experience with concrete when we made those concrete counters way back in 2007. This planter was a little different than the counters though. It was considerably easier, but the approach was the roughly same. I found a basic procedure on Popular Mechanics website that I followed dimensionally, but I used some different material.

Here’s what the form looked like with the concrete poured. We’re going to do a full-blown “how-to” post or at least a lessons learned post on this (probably next week), but today we’re just doing an overview.

After the concrete cured, I popped the planter out of the form and here’s what we have.

It looks pretty good dry and it looks sick when it’s wet.

But hang on… wasn’t this supposed to be monogrammed?

We DID monogram it. On one side.

But, that part didn’t come out as hot. We used a metal “V” from Restoration Hardware, which is the initial of our last name. The idea is we’ll have two of these on our front porch with a small green plant of some type. Very personal. Very unique.

So the concrete didn’t fully settle into the form around the “V”, obviously. The worst part is, I was hoping to be able to pop out the V and use it on the next one. Thought it would look pretty cool as a relief. We also wanted to make one to see how it worked and make a matching one later. Now I can’t get the letter out! LOL!

Did I mention that’s the only V I had and Restoration Hardware doesn’t sell anymore! Whoops.

Oh well. Still looks cool though. Weighs about 80 lbs.

So, when I make the next one… I’m going to take some extra concrete and fill in that space near the V so this one won’t look weird.

In the meantime, we’re going to turn the one planter around and stick with the solid side So it’s not a total loss. Fun project.

Oh and we decided to wait to on the plant until we’ve got both built and ready to go.

Here’s a link to our last Pinterest Challenge Project, the Reclaimed Wood Frame with a map.

So, here’s the rundown on the Pinterest Challenge. It’s hosted by four bloggers.. this season it’s…

Katie from Bower Power
Sherry from Young House Love
Emily from Sparkle Meets Pop
Renee from Red Bird Blue

So pop on over to their blogs and check out all the projects! We’ll be back on Monday!

Our Home from Scratch

More than Before and After

5th Wedding Anniversary: Honeymoon Edition

Our Spring and Summer Plans

Hang Mod Podge Letters the Easy Way

DIY Concrete Planter

Pinterest Challenge: Monogrammed Concrete Planter