Not Much Laboring Over Labor Day Weekend

Did you all have a great Labor Day weekend? We definitely did! It was a nice change of pace from our normally travel/project/activity filled weekends, although we managed to get in a few things between relaxing.

Saturday morning I did some more spray painting for a project I'm working on in our bedroom.

Then I set up our giant kiddie pool, since I'd been waiting all summer to use it, but we just hadn't had the time. We've had this thing for several years, and I scored it at the end of summer for $20. Not bad for a 12 foot by 4 foot pool!

My husband made fun of me though, and wouldn't come in the pool. He thinks it's dumb, but I didn't care. I had a relaxing afternoon anyway without him, reading out in the pool, while he stayed inside and watched football.

Sunday morning I went to a Flea Market at the State Fairgrounds with my friend Katie, and scored something awesome, which probably deserves a post of it's own. Apparently the Flea Market shuts down for the entire month of October for the State Fair, so I might have to make another trip at the end of the month; we heard several vendors talking about all the sales they're having, and will be having because of the time off.

Sunday afternoon we went to a BBQ at my brother in law's house, since we didn't get to spend last weekend with them as we'd originally planned. Then, Monday I had to work for a few hours (dang work crunch time is still trying to kill me!), and we'd planned to go on a hike in the afternoon, but didn't end up going because of rain showers.

So instead I finished reading the final book in The Hunger Games trilogy. Which I really, really enjoyed. Obviously, since I started the first book on Saturday, and finished all three by Monday night! They were very well written, and have some interesting parallels with some of today's societal issues, while being very engaging and entertaining at the same time. At the end of the first book, I was wondering how the author was going to stretch the story out into two more books, but it just got better and better. Definitely recommend these books if you haven't read them already, although it seems like just about everyone has read them by now.

What did you do over labor day weekend? Did you get in any "laboring" or did you spend it relaxing? And have you read the Hunger Games yet?

Come On Over, 'Cause We're Now Ready To Entertain!

Yesterday I'd mentioned briefly that we entertained on Saturday night. Well, that's because our basement family room/pool table room is finally done! Or, as done as it's going to be while we live in this house another 9 months, and can't paint the walls or upgrade our old furniture. Or until I decide to add something, or change something. Ok, who am I kidding, no room will ever completely done as far as I'm concerned, but at least it's now presentable!

Just a few short weeks ago it looked like this:

And as of Saturday afternoon, it now looks like this!

A pretty big improvement, right? Definitely a lot cleaner too!

And see those roman shades over the windows? I DIY'd them last week, and a tutorial is coming tomorrow, once I have a chance to edit down the eleventy-billion photos I took while making them.

But in the meantime, how about a little tour of the rest of the pool table room?

The pool table from a slightly different angle. We moved all our track lighting to illuminate the pool table, and see that plant in the corner? It's sitting on an end table, for people to conveniently put their drinks on when playing pool. That's also why there is a bar stool on the other side of the pool table.

The full length painted brick wall adds some subtle but nice texture, although I still think we could have rocked unpainted brick down here for a more urban chic bar feel. I still haven't figure out anything better to put on the mantel, so for now I'm sticking with the large mirror and small plants. We also don't have a place for our dart board, although I'm thinking it might end up in the hall just outside this room.

You can also see part of the sitting area in this picture. I'm really looking forward to when it gets cooler out and we can turn one of the chairs around for a cozy fireside place to relax.

The seating area from another angle. It only seats 4 as-is, but the ugly flowered thing along the brick wall is actually an ottoman that we can pull out, and we have 4 folding chairs right around the corner if needed. Not that anyone would come over to sit, they'd be playing pool the whole time!

Also, does the red color of the couch cover look familiar? If you guessed it matches the roman shades I just made, you'd be correct! Or rather, the shades match the couch cover, since I made the shades with scrap fabric left over from making the couch cover a few years ago. The rest of our furniture in the sitting area is, well, ugly. But it's what we have, so for now it will have to do!

In this next picture you can see my little workout area to the left. I've got my stair climber, hand weights, DVD player for my P90 and Jillian Michaels videos, and of course a fan for when I get too hot!

And since my last post on the progress in this room, where I showed off my DIY digital watercolor pet art, we've hung the last of the pictures in this room. A photo one of our good friends took on a wine tasting trip to Sonoma together, and gifted us as a 11" x 14" print for our wedding. And to tie in with the wine-themed photo, two pictures I took, from drinking wine on the beach on our honeymoon, and champagne glasses on our 2,000 mile road trip in 2008, down the coast of California and over to the Grand Canyon and Vegas.

And finally, here is the pool table with the cover off of it. When it's not in use though, we like to keep the cover on, so the felt doesn't get messed up by cats, or just cat hair or dust. I already spilled purple sparkles on it last year while storing our wedding card box and supplies on the table, and once dirt, hair or sparkles are in the felt, it's really hard to get them out!

So that's our pool table room, ready and waiting to entertain! Who wants to come over and beat me at a game of pool? I'm still not any good after owning this table for 4+ years, so I'm sure you'll win!

*****

After writing this post, I thought I'd come back and make a note about actually setting up our pool table, in case anyone is interested. I doubt it, but thought I'd include it just in case.

It took us about 4 hours to level the table, then level and screw down the heavy slate, seal the seams between the slate, attach the felt and put on the bumpers and pockets. Quite labor-intensive, although I will admit my husband did most of the work, because it's mainly a one person job. I just handed him paper towels and took a couple of progress photos, which I've included below.

We My husband also watched some YouTube videos on how to set up a pool table, and found the ones by Home Billiards to be the most useful. If you ever do find yourself wanting to try this for yourself, just be sure to do your research, because we did find some conflicting techniques online. But spending the time to figure it out correctly is definitely worth saving the $300 to have someone come out and set it up for you!

Pool Table Room Progress and DIY Digital Watercolor Art (With Cats)

Don't forget to enter my giveaway for a magically-easy-to-use electric wine opener!  The giveaway ends at 11:59PM PST, Wednesday, June 15th. Good luck!

*****

With my 'meh' feelings lately about our living room, we've instead been concentrating on our family room downstairs, aka the pool table room, aka a fun place to entertain inside with air conditioning.

We had a ton of boxes still in here from when the movers unloaded them, so we took some time to organize them and move most of them to our workroom/storage room/laundry room. We finally started moving our old, ugly and stained full of character chairs, coffee table and end tables from our college apartment into place, and it actually started feeling like a room. But since we had to wait for my BIL to come over to help move the slate for the pool table (the three slabs weigh about 175 pounds each, so we definitely needed help with them!), we started hanging some of the wall decor we'd had at our last house.

(My husband hanging a picture behind where the pool table will live. Yes, we used more Command hooks to hang these, but we haven't had any problems except with the one frame in our living room. We also moved all of the track lighting on the ceiling so it will be concentrated above the pool table)

He also hung these abstract canvas wraps, which I really love since they're a great representation of the color scheme in the pool table: crimson with mocha, beige, grey, and black. Our pool table felt is even the perfect shade of Washington State crimson, since it was a brand new table we bought from a distributor about 4 years ago, and we got to customize it by picking the felt color, wood finish color and leg style.

But since our new pool table room is a bit bigger than at our old house, I needed some new art for the far walls on the other side of the room, to flank the sliding door to our back patio.

(This is actually progress! There were was no furniture, just piles of boxes everywhere a few hours before.)

I already had some black frames with matting that would hold three 5 x 7 photos vertically, so I decided to create my own art to hang. And I'd been waiting for an excuse to feature some photos of the rest of our family (aka, our cats), so this was the perfect opportunity.

I started by searching Google images for images from screen savers and computer backgrounds that stood out to me, and fit the color scheme represented in the canvas wrap art we'd just hung. Once I'd found six backgrounds that I liked, I imported them into Illustrator, two at a time so I could print them as 5" x 7" images on 8.5" x 11" photo paper.

I then took the cat photos from this post, and cut out the backgrounds in Photoshop (making sure to feather the cat photo by a couple pixels before cutting it out, so it will blend well once placed). I saved the cat photos as PNGs, then opened them in Illustrator and pasted them on top of the backgrounds I'd found on Google.



Now wait, just cats on abstract backgrounds wasn't what I was going for--I wanted watercolor art!

And so I selected both the cat image and the background image, and after playing around with the watercolor effect a bit, I got grainy, painted looking kitties that now blended into their background.

Here are the printed versions, it's a little easier to see the watercolor effect on the paper.

After printing the 5" x 7" photos, I cut them out and mounted them to the matting I already had. And I discovered something kinda interesting, apparently my photo paper is a bit transparent when held up to light, as you can see in the below photos. Glowing kittehs! I wonder if I could do something else with lighting and this semi-transparent photo paper, hmmm....

And the hung digital cat watercolor photos.

(I just noticed when looking at this photo that the frames don't seem to fill the space on the wall as well as they do in real life. I think it's because the shades of the floor lamps are all washed out, so you can't see how big they are.)

Once we got some color on the walls at that end of the room, some quicky decorations up on the fireplace mantel, and my BIL came by to help with the pool table slate, the room is slowly starting to come together.

(I do sort of wish the full brick wall that the fireplace is on had been left unpainted for a fun, urban feel, but oh well!)

We still need to get rid of some junk, hang some curtains (and make/buy said curtains), and hang a print we got for our wedding (once I put it in it's new frame), and finish putting together the pool table, but hopefully that won't be to much more work. And it will be worth it, because then we can start entertaining, or at least have my BIL and his wife over for a few games of pool.  I can't wait to have an entertaining space again, especially since it's getting so hot out on our deck and back patio!

Do you have an "entertaining space" in your home?