{Nature Photos} 3 Bucks!

Man, I love our yard!

While sitting at my desk yesterday, I spotted a beautiful juvenile buck out my office window. As he walked around the side of the house, I grabbed my camera and had the perfect vantage point out our bonus room windows, above our garage.

Look at the cute little horns!

 But he wasn't alone, and a moment later two other young bucks appeared next to him.

I've never seen this many male deer together before. The family that has been coming by a couple of times a week usually only has two bucks. I wonder if these are the same ones, or a whole different group. Either way, I appreciate them trimming our weeds, at least until we get around to landscaping our backyard!

O.A.R. at the Raleigh Amphitheater

Recently my husband and I got to experience a concert at one of the area's neatest venues, the Raleigh Amphitheater. Right in downtown, this venue had great parking, is close to a ton of restaurants and bars, and is overlooked by this pretty tree art installation that reflects the sky and moves with the wind.

We were there to see O.A.R., one of my favorite bands, and we got there early to be in the front row. I'd read on Yelp reviews that the seated sections don't have a very steep slope, so it's hard to see the stage when seated, so we opted for the general admission pit tickets. If we were going to be standing the whole time to see, might as well be closer to the stage!

Seriously, How Perfect Is This Dress For Me?

Today at lunch, as I was shopping Modcloth's end of summer sale, I stumbled upon this.

Just a regular old cream colored sundress, right? Until you look more closely at the pattern. Deer!

Deer To Your Heart Dress

Naturally with my love of deer, I had to snap it up, especially since it was under $30. I also scored a couple of pairs of shoes, each under $15. Sadly, after I'd added it to my cart, a really cute purse sold out--I guess I'm not the only one who was tempted today after receiving their email about the sale!

I can't wait to wear this dress, even if we really only have about a month and a half left of sundress weather here. But it would also be cute with brown knee high boots and a cardigan this fall. Ahhh, I hate wishing away summer, especially when "second summer" (aka, once it cools down enough to enjoy the outdoors again) has just started...but I do love my fall boots!

Have you scored any good deals in end of summer sales?

 

Craft Room Project: Under-Shelf Ribbon Spool Holder

Or alternate title: Hooray, I have something to share that doesn't have to do with our bathroom renovation! :)

We're in a bit of a holding pattern this week with the bathroom, because Lowes was out of stock of the best brand of thinset, so we're waiting until it's restocked, because ordering it online and having it shipped from somewhere else would have been crazy expensive. Makes me glad we have two other full bathrooms, so we can take as long as we need with this renovation. Also makes me glad that I actually got to work on something else, another little way to organize my craft room/home office space!

I Guess Not Everything I Buy Online Is Going To Work Out

I buy a lot of things online. And usually have pretty good luck! Almost all of my clothes are things I've bought online, and we even had good luck with buying our new bathroom vanity and marble counter and bath fixtures online.

But sadly, these Kate Spade towels that I'd been drooling over for the past month did not end up being the same color as pictured online. :(

It's hard to tell in the photo, but the towels are much more of a neon lime green than I was expecting! Not the softer sage-ish avocado green as pictured on the Bed Bath and Beyond website.

I even went to one Bed Bath and Beyond location, and called a second one, to look at the towels in person before ordering them, but they were out of stock. It was worth a shot though, because I knew I was going to be pretty particular about the color of the towels, since I was hoping to base our wall color selection off of them.

Sigh. Needless to say, these towels are getting returned. Oh well, guess it's back to the drawing board, in search of the perfect shade of green hand towels. But dang it, I really wish these had worked out, and kept my successful online ordering spree going.

Have you ever ordered something online, and found a big discrepancy between the actual item and it's online picture?

So I'm Trying This Primal/Paleo Eating Thing For A Few Weeks...

...but man is it expensive to eat healthy!

Downstairs Bath Renovation: Plumbing, Screwing and Annoying Tub Gaps

Time for the weekly update on the painfully slow progress we've been making on our downstairs bath!

I already shared the design plans, budget and timeline (although I've finally let go of the timeline and kind of don't care as long as we finish by Halloween, ha!), the fun of demolition, regrouping after we found damaged subfloors, and putting in joist bridges and two layers of plywood to create a new subfloor (aka, oh-thank-god we no longer have to look at our crawlspace from the bathroom!). All caught up? Ok then!

So this past weekend we had some goals. Plumbing and electrical. I don't even know why I bother to share (or set!) goals anymore. We never get through all that we want to, and everything takes longer than it should. And then even longer. Oh, and then one of us jinxes something by saying "that shouldn't take too long." And it takes longer still. And then we get tired at 4:30 on Sunday afternoon and say "screw it, we're done for today" and go have a drink out on the deck.

We haven't lost motivation on this project yet, but our momentum has definitely slowed down. But it's ok, that means less pressure, and we don't have to kill ourselves working overtime in the process!

But anyway, back to the actual progress we made this past weekend. Plumbing is done, whoo-hoo!

And like everything, it was a lot more work than we were anticipating--we basically redid everything! Here's why, with a look at the old shower plumbing.

OOTD: Volunteering

So much to post, so little time!

But until I can get my act together with finishing several half-written-but-still-need-photos-and-citations posts, here's a quick one. I'm finally leaving the house, to go somewhere other than the hardware or grocery stores! What can I say, it's been too hot to go anywhere fun, and with the sometimes multiple trips per day to Lowes on the weekends, no time or point to dress up.

But tonight I'm going to my first volunteer meeting with the OCRCC. My sister in law is on the board of directors, and asked me to help out with planning the decor for their annual charity auction this winter. I'm excited to do something to give back to the community, especially since women's issues are important to me. Plus, decorating for events/weddings/dinners/etc is something I find really enjoyable!

And finally getting out of the house also means I have an excuse to wear this cute ikat Anthropologie dress that has been sitting in my closet for two months, unworn. I ordered it back in May, for my Chicago trip, but it ended up being back ordered for 3 weeks, so I haven't had a chance to wear it yet. But I'm loving how breezy and light weight the material is, perfect for summer, even with the sleeves.

Shirt Dress: Anthropologie (Ikat Frequencies), Brown Belt: Target (the dress came with a matching belt, but I prefer something with more contrast), Brown Mary Janes: Nine West, Necklace: Target, Super Pale Legs: courtesy of the too-hot-to-go-outside NC weather

Have you done any volunteering lately? It's been far too long since I've done much other than donating money to causes (I've only volunteered once this year for the Weddingbee Weekend of Action, before that, last spring in the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans was the last time I volunteered my time) and I need to get out and do more.

 

Vintage Ceramic Deer

First, I just wanted to thank you all for your condolences after the loss of one of my pets earlier this week. It really meant a lot. Losing a pet is never easy, no matter what the species.

I've been trying to keep my mind off of things, by going to a concert on Wednesday night, and taking yesterday off from bathroom renovations to do something completely different, planning another vacation itinerary. I know, I know, we still haven't booked any of the fully planned and budgeted out Grand Bahama Island, Florida Keys or Belize vacations I already shared! But having one more option can't hurt, now that we're actually a lot closer to an appropriate booking time frame for next spring.

Another thing that has distracted me this sad week is the arrival of two little vintage ceramic deer. I'd ordered them ages ago, and forgot, but they finally arrived. I think they look perfect, nestled in the planter behind our fire pit terrace wall.

I think the sleepy one is my favorite. She goes well with Bernard. But the awake one has such a cute expression on his face, like he's cooking up some mischief--just like the three baby deer who frequent our backyard.

I know, I've said it before, I'm not really a ceramic animal type of person. But when I saw these little guys, I just knew they would be a perfect compliment to the stone carved deer on our deck. I can't wait for another month to pass, when it will finally cool off enough to actually use our fire pit again, and I can enjoy looking at these new additions to our deer-decor family. At least this time around, we won't have a few back-breaking weekends of hard work before we can have a fire!

Are you a fan of ceramic animals? Do you like any and all ceramic animals, or are there just one or two types of animals that you make an exception for? And happy Friday, hope you all have a lovely weekend!

RIP Chloe

RIP Chloe. You were such a good pet for the past 9 1/2 years.

 

Downstairs Bath Rennovation: We Have Floors!

Ok, ok, don't get too excited, it's actually just subfloors. And 5/8ths inch plywood over that.

But still!

No big gaping holes into our crawl space.

No more need for sealing off the doors to the bathroom and laundry room during the week, and having to go out the back door and around the house to get to the garage.

And I tell ya, I smells SO much better in there when you open the door. No musty, damp smells coming from the crawlspace, just the pleasant scent of freshly cut wood.

Home Office/Craft Room Organizing

Our bathroom renovation has been kind of all-consuming these past couple of weeks, but I did get one evening off from bathroom stuff, while we waited for the asbestos test results on our vinyl flooring to come back.

So I took full advantage of the break to work on something with a little quicker payoff, my first steps at getting my home office/craft space organized!

This is what it had been looking like since we moved in, cluttered, with opened boxes of craft supplies on the floor that I've been rummaging through, making things messier and messier.

Sewing machine hogging my cutting mat space, and yes, I was even using a table lamp to precariously hold my x-acto knife. All I'd really done with this space so far was to paint the walls and trim, set up my desks, and just kind of live out of moving boxes.

(Sorry for the darkness of the above two photos, they were taken during a brief mid-day power outage we had--gotta take advantage of down time from work any way I can with as busy as I've been lately!)

Downstairs Bath Renovation: The Post-Demolition Regrouping

Gah! How is it already Wednesday?

Do you ever have one of those weeks where you always feel like it's the wrong day? I've been thinking it's Thursday every day this week. Which sometimes is a good thing, but not when you've got a ton of stuff to do--it just stresses me out. But luckily today is only Wednesday, and I finally have a chance to sit down and give you guys an update on our bathroom project.

But spoiler alert, it's not a very exciting update.

Last week, I'd left off with our main demolition, but mentioned that at the end of the weekend we'd found some damaged sub floor that needed replacing. Specifically right next to the bathtub, which is usually the most common place to find sub floor damage in a bathroom.

(In case you're curious, the weight on top of cardboard that is wrapped in plastic wrap, on top of a fresh wax ring is our very professional way of sealing off our toilet hole!)

Well we did some research on mold and sub floors, and everything we found either freaked us out ("your bathtub is going to fall through your floor!") or made us think it wasn't a huge deal ("just get rid of the rotten parts, bleach it, and everything will be ok"). So we decided we needed to open up the floor some more, since we knew we'd have to replace some of it anyway, and specifically so we could check out the floor joists up close.

The joists in the bathroom had some surface mold on them, but were still solid, whew!