had enough.

so after sharing this embarrassing disaster with you, i'd finally had enough. we've lived in this house for about three months yet our basement looked like it had accumulated five years worth of junk down there, with zero organization to it. not. ok.

i mentioned before that the lady that lived here had a hobby of designing and sewing square dancing costumes {at least that's what we were told} so we assume that her husband sweetly constructed these three crazy wooden shelving units to hold all of her supplies. and although they may have worked fine for her sewing supplies, complete with zillions of tiny dowel rods to hold spools of thread, in actuality they were not sturdy, taking up too much space and really, really janky looking. one was actually suspended from the ceiling, kind of like a swing made of shelves.

well, it was time for them to go. and i have to thank you, man who made these shelves, for not using any nails or screws because that meant we could just knock the whole thing apart with a hammer and it went very quickly. although we actually saved the swinging shelf that was against the back wall, but we detached it from the ceiling and set it on the ground, like a normal shelving unit should be.

and now, i reveal to you our new, streamlined, sewing shelf free work area.

holy moley, much better, right?? no more janky free standing shelf on the left, no more janky shelf blocking you from getting to the water heater and the swinging shelf on the back wall now sits securely on the floor. and we plan to add another shelf higher up on that back wall for more storage.

you can also see where we took advantage of that little nook which sits under our side porch by using it for storage. and although it's still kind of a grungy little area, it's great for storing the extra wood we have to use for random projects.

i also have a little twin sized headboard in there that we found in the basement. i've been holding on to it waiting for some kind of crafty inspiration to come so i can repurpose it for something. any ideas?

and if you're wondering where all that other junk from before went, well, we got rid of a lot of it, but most of it just got stored in an appropriate, space-saving place. window screens are between the shelf and the wall, out of the way. the two doors are being repaired so they can be installed back where they belong. the couch is being sold on craigslist and those kitchen table chairs, well, to be honest i just moved those out of the way for the picture. just keeping it real. but i need to decide if i'm going to keep those and paint them or if they need to be given away...

but apparently everyone is taking notice of the new look. i found this little guy checking out the cleaner space. he's impressed. or she. whichever.

now, if only i could get austin to organize all his work tools on these shelves...

also, paint. these walls desperately need some better paint...

manly things.

building things. and power tools. and manly things. or whatever. so check out this new work bench that austin and steve {with a little help from me} constructed for the garage. 

jealous? maybe not. but still. i'm quite pleased with it, especially since the only thing we had to buy for it were the two by fours for the legs because that plywood top was left in the basement by the previous owners of the house and the red base underneath that is actually our old front door!

{the inside was plain wood, but the outside was the maroon color}.

once we get some things cleaned out down in the basement, we'll put the work bench along the left wall over here with some tool storage above and below the bench. 

and since austin now has a work bench, he was able to put it to use when our friend clark came in town this past weekend to visit!

austin and i have been wanting to make a corn hole game for a while, so austin and clark used some of the leftover lumber from the workbench to make these:

obviously they aren't finished. but still, progress. considering we've been talking about making some since... forever.

and although i'm not sure that veggie gardens are considered to be "manly things," i'm going to give you an update on them anyway. so we planted our garden the last week in march, so things have been growing for about a month and a half now. and look how big things have gotten!

and can you tell it hasn't rained in forever? the grass is all brown and crunchy. awesome. so we've been having to water our gardens regularly to keep everything from dying, but at least we get to use our rain barrel on occasion. funny thing about rain barrels, though, it has to rain for them to fill up. right.

anyone want some tomatoes? because holy moley we're going to have a lot.

so yeah. a post about manly things and vegetable gardens. this is my life, people. very exciting.

exclusive. {also, i'm a hoarder}.

so we've been living in our new house for over three months now and i've been oversharing keeping you all updated on the work we're doing around here. however, one thing i haven't included on my little blog here yet is our basement. and for good reason: it's a disaster. it's an unfinished basement with a two car garage. our washer and dryer are down there as well. along with all the ridiculous amount of stuff i have in storage... but here today i want to give you all an exclusive first look at our basement area. and share with you the plans i have for it. 'cause i've got big plans.

well, here she is. in all her disastrous glory. first, the tool/paint/furniture/lawnmower storage side.

yikes. austin and his dad just built a new workbench that's going to go against the wall to the left with maybe some pegboard tool storage above it. i want to get rid of that shelving against the back wall that was supposedly used by the lady who used to live here to hold a ton of sewing supplies. we've been told square dancing costumes were her thing {?}. one of those doors leaning against the wall needs to be re-installed on our office and the other is not needed.

just to the left there you'll find our torture chamber/tornado hideout/hula hoop storage room. talk about multi-purpose.

really though, this little room is where i have had to hide {multiple times!} from the severe weather rolling through our area. it's a tiny little room, probably about 4 foot by 7 foot, and i'm hoping it's the safest place to hide out. and it's the perfect size for me, austin and all the animals in their crates. and when we safely make it through the storms i can hula hoop to celebrate!

here's the garage bay elaine sleeps in {austin drove her to work today}.

but check out all the storage we have on these shelves. they were already here when we bought the house, but austin added some two-by-fours to sure them up a bit so everything didn't come crashing down and scare the bejeezus out of me in the middle of the night or anything.

i have to admit, though, that there is basically zero organization to these shelves. i desperately want to take my label maker to the whole thing and put things in their own little place, but i know 100% that austin would refuse to stick to my organization... sigh.

and here's the other garage bay where austin sometimes parks, but we usually use as our workspace. obviously the washer and dryer are here, too.

and now, are you ready for the worst part? you should be nervous.

there's a lot going on over here. duct work {that somehow reminds me of the movie e.t.} so large i could crawl through it. extra furniture. carpet rolls. laundry hanging from the ceiling. an abnormal amount of rubbermaid totes filled with clothes, shoes, house decorations and anything else you can think of. it's really out of control. i look like a hoarder {it does run in the family}, but at least i can say that every box is labeled with its contents and the boxes are organized accordingly. so maybe there's hope.

let's move on. and i'll distract you from our disaster of a basement with our pretty patio area. down here we've got sliding doors that lead out to the patio. at least that's what we've determined this concrete slab is to be.

and since i haven't shared our patio area since we got the furniture {remember when i painted it?} set up on it, so here ya go.

looks so inviting right? everyone should come over and play!

and since we've been fighting poison ivy around here, especially in this little area between the patio and the house, we decided to just kill all the weeds and ivy there and mulch in the area.

the plan is to add lots of green plants {like hostas from mom} with a bench to make the space pretty and functional. i'm also planning to to paint the concrete. and although that sounds janky, i mean with the kind of paint covering specially made to restore concrete and you can get it in lots of different colors.

since we're on the topic of plans, let's talk about what i hope to do in the basement. so obviously we are going to need a new ac unit and all new {much, much smaller} duct work. i also am desperate to paint the whole basement because although the green, gold and white does pay homage to my elementary, middle and high school colors {go highlanders!} they do not work all that well as wall colors. they really didn't even work all that well as school colors either {see: any embarrassing cheerleading picture of me, ever}.

but basically imagine this entire area {from that pole on the left across to the patio doors and back to the wall} closed off and finished to make a den/media room situation.

we'll have a little wet bar right by the door for entertaining on the patio and hopefully even a little laundry nook so my washer and dryer aren't just hanging out in the garage all exposed. the stairs will be included in the finished part, but austin will still have his workbench area to the left of the stairs for tools/storage/whatever.

and yes. i sometimes just stand in one spot and imagine how pretty of a place this basement could be with just a little t.l.c. ok, so maybe it will take a lot of t.l.c. and a lot of money. but still. a girl can dream, right?

so there. and exclusive look into the most embarrassing part of our house. please don't judge. and i swear i'm not a hoarder. but please do come hang out with us on our patio. i'll make some cookies or something.

when nature calls.

don't worry. this post is simply about updating the blog on the hall bathroom progress...

so our hall bath is one step closer to being finished. when we moved in, it was looking like this.

you saw where we installed a new faucet {despite some plumbing obstacles}. then we got some pretty coordinating accessories from target. like these towels, a shower curtain and bath mats.

and i made cheery artwork.

and most recently, i painted the wooden vanity that was originally this light wood color

and now it's a nice navy blue.

wanna know the best part? the paint was free. zero money. cost me nothing. thanks to ace hardware's free paint saturday they had a few weeks ago to promote the new clark+kensington paint we picked up a free quart of their paint+primer in one {in a shade of royal navy that was a swatch from lowe's}. and although it actually took me over a month to finish painting the vanity, that was due to my laziness not paint trouble. i have to say the paint is really thick {maybe because it's paint and primer in one?} but it still took a few coats to get even coverage, but i tried to do really thin coats to keep it smooth. all in all i think it looks great and i'm glad to have it done.

i still need to find new chrome wardrobe pulls to replace the worn out brass ones. but i haven't been able to find the right size ones. but i did read something about using oven cleaner to strip brass but it looks like a lot of work... maybe i'll just keep searching for the proper size ones for a while.

so what's left to be done in this bathroom? check out our home page to see all of our to-do lists to see!

summ-ahhh.

oh yeah. it's officially summer time. your calendar may not say so, but we ended the school semester making it officially summer for me. and i'm quite excited to have a few months of no studying/stress.

we finished exams earlier in the week and on friday the first year students treated the second year students to a congratulations lunch.

{updated to include this picture i stole from facebook.} these are some of the girls from class at the lunch for the second year students, shelley, rebekah, and leslie. and me, of course.

afterwards a bunch of my classmates came over to our house to hang out/celebrate our being done with school. i got to set up some fun little party decorations.

so we had a few drinks. sat and complained about school reflected on the past year. burned our final grades. you know, standard end of the school year things.

thanks to everyone who came by, whether it was for an hour or those of us who were in it for the long haul. i had so much fun! and we're finally second year students! woop woop!

also if anyone wants to give me a job for the summer it would be very much appreciated. i need shopping money a.s.a.p.