The Foyer Has a New Floor!

The new entry/foyer/closet is coming along!  We finished installing the new floor this weekend and it looks great.  Amazing what a difference it makes in this small space.  In the picture below you can see the trap door to the 'basement', or what the people around here refer to as hell.  Everyone has a similar 'basement'  in this town, they all flood, they are all dark, crumbling, dirty, etc.  No one actually uses them, but our water meter's are located there and once a month someone has to climb down there and read it.  So, getting back on track, it's the door to hell, but I think we did a nice job on it:)

 My plan all along had been to paint this floor a glossy black.  I love the elegance of a shiny black floor and didn't want to spend a lot of money on the more expensive hardwoods, so I bought the cheapest oak hardwood Menard's had.  I usually hate oak, I think it's cheap and ugly, but since I was painting it, it was perfect.  Unfortunately I may have to revise my opinion.  I think this floor looks beautiful and now I don't want to paint it.  I'm debating and looking at all my options, but I am now leaning towards a very dark or onyx stain.  I'll still have my dark, elegant floor, but the wood will still show through.  It may even turn out better than I had originally planned:)

You can see all the work that still needs to be done, but time and patience will get me the room I have envisioned.  Plus, it's winter in North Dakota, why get in a hurry?

The Cat Crapper Deluxe

Cat Crapper Deluxe How-To:)

Step 1:  Acquire cheap cabinet.  I found this microwave cabinet for $35 at a thrift store, it was in great shape and will help organize the bathroom, perfect!

Step 2:  Burn up some blades cutting a hole in the side of your new cabinet, insert cat flap, secure.  Cat flaps can be found at major pet supply chains.               

Step 3:  Install litter pan, toss in cat, quickly shut the doors and let them figure things out.

Step 4:  Stand back and admire the odor-free and nicely contained awesomeness that is the Cat Crapper Deluxe!

Just a few notes;)

The boys were a bit worried about Fat Eve fitting through the small sized cat flap, we debated long and hard on which size to buy, in the end I felt the $15 difference made the smaller flap the best choice and since most of her fat is in the rear, she could ooze through.  Turns out she fit just fine:)

Since the litter tray is a larger one(Fat Eve has issues hitting the smaller ones) there isn't a lot of room in the cabinet once the pan is inserted, so the cats tend to step from the pan right out the door, tracking litter, so I slid an old piece of carpet under the cabinet to catch it.  Works great and looks just fine.  Maybe one of these days I'll buy a nicer rug, or not.

Having the litter box double as a piece of furniture has many advantages.  We now have storage in a room that has hardly any, it's neat and clean, and best of all, we don't have to look at the wretched litter box!  Oh, and no stink!!

Winter Project #1

So as many of you know I have a virtual tribe living in a modest 100+ year old Victorian that was clearly built with economy and small families in mind. Or maybe they were just really close and the mom was a much better housekeeper than I am? Anyhow, we have a shoe problem, and a coat, snow pant, glove, mitten, hat, boot, ski, etc. problem. And this is the woefully inadequate closet I have had to work with. It's hard to get a picture since it's a small space in here, but you can see the coat closet pictured is not very deep.

I took this after taking out the closet rod and shelves and of course I couldn't wait to start ripping it all down, cause that's just how I roll;) To the left you can barely glimpse the living room and to the right of this closet is the stairs for the second floor. Directly opposite is the front door. Not exactly a foyer out of Architectural Digest. Behind this useless closet is another closet, a much bigger one that I plan to make much better use of.
Closet wall is down as well as the wall next to the stairs! And here you can get a gander at that secret door Aaron was all excited about;) There is a really nice space under and in back of the stairs that will make wonderful closet and shoe space. Oh, and notice the red and peach color scheme on the stairs.  I'd really love to meet whoever decorated this place years ago.  I'm simply fascinated.
Another angle, here you can see that I've already started finishing out the half wall and shoe cubbies under the stairs. You can also kind of see that there is a space behind the stairs. This is where I plan to hide the coats and the majority of the shoes/boots.
All the drywall is up! It's so much brighter in here already and it's hard to imagine that small closed-in space we had before. I didn't capture it here, but we also widened the door into the living room, getting us more light in there and making it easier to bring things in and out. Next I need to mud/tape the walls and I plan to start installing the new hardwood floors this weekend.

This is just the beginning, I plan to continue on up the stairs and re-do all those walls. Lucky me, I get to first tear down the bad dry-wall job a former owner did over the plaster walls, then of course the plaster. I wish it could be salvaged, but as we started pulling drywall down it became obvious all the plaster was going to have to all be stripped off:( Good thing there's nothing else to do right now;)

December BirchBox

I got my December BirchBox today! I have to say, I am much happier with this box. Other than the perfume, this box has a lot of things I will actually try. I feel the sample sizes are much nicer this time too, though not what I would call deluxe.Contents:

Benefit Cosmetics - The POREfessional This is a face primer that is supposed to camouflage pores. I needed a face primer, so I'm happy to give this one a try. It looks like I can get 2 or 3 applications from this little sample.

Harvey Prince - Ageless This is a perfume and I can't do perfumes, sorry.

Jouer - Moisturizing Lip Gloss in Birchbox Pink I love the shade of this gloss, it is much more my style:)

Orofluido - Beauty Elixir This is a nourishing hair treatment and with my colored hair I can always use something to help soften and shine. I look forward to trying it.

ShowStoppers - Designer Fashion Tape Pretty self explanatory. Tape to keep clothes in place. I do need this stuff on occasion when I wear a boat neck top and need to hide the bra straps:)

Recharge - EBoost Some sort of energy drink mix, not likely to use it since I'm primal and don't do chemical concoctions;)

All in all a decent box and I'm glad I didn't cancel, though I'm still waiting for those deluxe samples I keep hearing about. They did include a $20 coupon, which is nice, and I may use it, but it won't be until after Christmas if I do. Darn kids, always wanting Santa to bring them stuff for Christmas;)

If you get a BirchBox or other sample box, let me know what you get and if you want to sign up for this one, use my link here so I can get some points!

Thanks for stopping by!

I'm Not A Copy Cat, I'm Just Inspired;)

These glittery snowflake nails were inspired or copied off Copy That, Copy Cat. She does some fabulous holiday inspired nails and I was eager to try some more free-hand art. Hers look a lot more professional, but I love how mine turned out and they got immediate compliments. They are pretty hard to ignore, since they are so flashy in person.

I used China Glaze 'Dorothy Who' for the shimmery blue base, then sponged on some silvery nail art polish from Milani. The snowflakes are China Glaze's 'White on White', and it's all topped with Poshe.

I'm extremely proud of the job I did on my right hand since I am so not left handed. In fact, I think the nails painted using my left hand turned out better than the nails painted with my dominate hand. Go figure. I plan to leave this manicure on through the weekend, which is cool since glitter polish is a bitch to take back off and I'm in no hurry for that challenge.

Be sure to check out more of Copy That, Copy Cat, she does a lot of pretty and inspiring stuff.

Thanks for stopping by!

Broken Nails

I've been trying to grow my nails back out after several splits and breaks that forced me to cut them back several weeks ago. They were coming along nicely and I was quite pleased. Then the cold winter air descended:(

Monday night was the high school Christmas program. When I left the house to head out to the school at 6pm the outdoor temp was -1* F. I'm certain that it was even lower when the program finally let out around 8pm though I didn't pay attention. After buckling the kids in I went to pull my own door closed and snap. Surprise, surprise, a broken nail. It happens all the time this time of year, but it's still upsetting. Now I have to either deal with uneven nails or cut them all down again. Sigh.

I'm kicking myself for leaving them naked this week. Painted and finished nails are stronger than naked nails most of the time. I'm not sure if it would really make a difference when my hands are icy cold and things like this happen, but I do know they are stronger when finished under normal circumstances, not to mention they are much prettier.

Lesson learned.

Housekeeping & A New Look!

Welcome to the new layout! I've been in the Christmas spirit lately, decorating and admiring other neighborhood efforts. My family will tell you is really out of character for me so I guess I've had a change of heart this year. There is only so much I can do at this point though, so I've decided to decorate the blog too:)

I've been cleaning up pages here, deleting some posts, moving things around, etc. I like the separation of the primal stuff from my fashion and other interests. I've debated on keeping a separate primal blog for awhile, but most of my primal updates originate from Facebook and are short and consist of food pics, so organizing the info into a new column makes more sense for now.

As for all the social networking icons, I'm working on linking those that I use and trying to figure out how to remove those I don't. Sorry, I don't twitter and have no plans to. A new layout takes time to figure out;)

I'm working on re-vamping our bike blog, Pedal the Moment, and hope to start adding new posts there soon. We plan to begin a bike build soon and it promises to be a lot of fun.

I've deleted a couple blogs I had going and am putting more effort into this one and Pedal the Moment. I had started a nail blog, but after further thought that seemed silly, so I've moved the links back over here. I love building blogs and editing them, but don't always remember to keep the posts current.

I hope you enjoy the changes and thank you for stopping by!

Jenni