New Arrival

There’s something I’d like to share with you all.

Grey and white chevron quilt from Sew Midwestern

There’s a new baby quilt available over at Sew Midwestern!  Super exciting right???

I love messing with people about babies.  Everyone keeps expecting me to be pregnant.  Last week I really wanted a kid.  This week, not so much.  Anyone want to co-parent with Nate and I? One week we have the kid, the next week you have it.  Genius, right?  I’m sure the kid wouldn’t be maladjusted at all.  (Don’t send me hate mail. I’m totally joking.  Or am I?)

All joking aside, the above quilt is lovely.  I kind of wanted to keep it for Ike. I will totally have about four when the time comes for me to give up sleep.  I mean, cuddle a bundle of joy.

Kim and I worked on this lovely quilt together.  These quilts are a labor of love. The quilt  features carefully-chosen 100% cotton fabric.  It is machine pieced and straight-line quilted. (Not easy tasks.)  It is then pre-washed for a soft, broken-in feel. Many woman hours went into creating this handmade keepsake.

Grey and white chevron quilt from Sew Midwestern

Grey and white chevron quilt from Sew Midwestern

We hope you all love it as much as we do!

See more quilt options at Sew Midwestern!

Have a fabulous weekend!  My family is in town which means junk shopping galore!  Woo hoo!

Who loves chevron quilts?  Anyone interested in co-parenting? (I kid. I kid.)

Bathroom Progress

Do you remember when I told you about us partnering with The Tile Shop to spruce up our master bathroom?  Yeah, I barely remember since we last discussed the tile at  end of May.  Time sure does fly, doesn’t it?

Zero Summer weekend plans quickly turned into weekends full of fun and celebration.  We figured the tile would wait.  And it did.  Good tile.

Here’s a refresher on what we were starting with.  Not bad but there was some room for improvement.

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We decided to tackle one of the vanities this past weekend.  I’m not sure why it takes us 100 times longer to do a DIY project than it used.  Must be old age.  Young Nate and Michelle would have that entire bathroom tiled and crown molding hung.  (Okay, maybe not but that’s how I would like to remember our youth. Go with it.)

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Nate removed the old mirror with a pry bar. The tape was on the mirror to help prevent the mirror from shattering.  We safely removed the mirror with no breakage.  We carried it to the garage and then I accidently set it down too hard and it cracked.  Go team Michelle.

Our next step was to determine if we wanted to place the tile horizontally or vertically. 

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Nate was big on the vertical.  I was impartial. My brain had trouble visualizing the vertical.  I decided to trust Nate.  He has pretty decent taste.  I mean, he’s married to me.  We understand that the vertical is a personal preference.  We have all intentions of this being our forever (or at least a very, very long time) home so we went for it.

We first applied the Pro Mastic to the wall. I was most concerned about this step beings we used The Tile Mat in our kitchen.  I'll write a post comparing the two in the future.  The mastic was easy to work with.  My only complaint was the smell.  But I also had that complaint about Nate that day as well and I keep him around.

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We didn’t do so well with math on the first row.  There was just a sliver of a tile on the end.  I didn’t photograph it because we were pretty stressed out at that point.  We were able to remove all of the tile safely and fix our error.  It was pretty smooth sailing after that.  Until we realized that the right side of the wall is not straight.  There were some foundation issues during our build.  Our builder did an overall great job of correcting the foundation errors.  We are just finding more of the errors as we do further projects to the house. I guess we are getting that old home “character” that we were wanting. 

Side note.  I do not recommend doing a new arm workout before installing tile on a wall.  You will want to crawl up in a ball and cry.  Not that I would know.

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28,000 hours later, we had a lovely tiled wall.  Okay, it wasn’t quite 28,000 hours.  We’re just impatient.  It was probably more like 3-4.  Nate and I have decided to start a tile installation business.  We’ll charge by the hour.  We’re going to billionaires.

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We still need to grout.  And complete the entire other vanity. Look for that update in October.

Are you a fan of vertical tile?  Is it hard for you to complete DIY projects with a smelly spouse?  Is old age slowing your DIY projects?

Ike picked the winners of the Frosty Paws Travel packs.  Was your pup a lucky winner? Find out here!

Exploring the Caves

Well, hello.  How are you all?

I hope all of our American readers had a fantastic 4th.  I hope all of our non-American readers had an awesome first week of July.

We had a great 4th.  I love Independence day.  It’s a holiday that it isn’t accompanied by a lot of obligations and “rules”.  You just celebrate as you please.  Nate and I decided that we would use the 4th of July for a fun day.  No housework. No yard work.  No grown-up stuff.  No “fun” activities that we do on a regular basis.  (AKA watch a movie at home, walk in town, DIY crap.  Party animals.)

We started celebrating on Wednesday night by enjoying caramel corn and fireworks by the Mississippi.  The Mississippi has flooded at least 100 times over the past two months so we didn’t have a great viewing angle. And it smelled raunchy. Eh. Still pretty.  (If you want to see all of our fireworks photos, check out our Flickr!)

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On the 4th, we decided to hike at a park we hadn’t been to.  We decided on the Maquoketa Caves State Park. It’s about 30 minutes from our house.

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We decided to take the fur ball too.  I made him take his tie off for the occasion.   He told me celebrating was his job and he takes it seriously.

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We arrived at the park.  We were assuming Ike wouldn’t be allowed in the caves but the Park Ranger said he could go anywhere he wanted to go.  He might, however, come out a brown dog instead of a white one.  Ike told us “YOLO” and we headed into the park.

The trails were great. 

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The place was beautiful.  And Ike LOVED hiking.  He smiled the entire time.  Everyone (seriously, everyone) laughed when we walked by with him.  He was hopping over downed trees.  Climbing rocks.  Loving life even more that usual.

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In the park some kid was like “Hey, Mom.  Is this free?”  The mom said yes.  The kid was all like “Are you sure?  Because it’s fun.”  Youths.  But the kid was right.  Free and fun.

You have to crawl to get into most of the caves. My claustrophic self wasn’t really into that.  We did enjoy a few caves you could walk through.

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We felt like we were on vacation at the park.  Probably because we hike on a lot of our vacations and we, obviously, don’t do it enough at home.  We’ve decided to check out one new place each month during the Summer and Fall.  Let’s hope being adults doesn’t hold us back!  I’m pretty sure this guy won’t let that happen.

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Have you ventured somewhere new in your area recently?  Did you enjoy the 4th?  Does your dog smile when he hikes?