Fussy Bun

Fixing the bed fixed my back.

Finally, I can move again.

I've had some big bad lower back pain for a few months now, and it got bad enough this week that everything hurt - sitting, standing, lying down, etc. I was chasing the puppy under the bed and realized that my adjustable bed had unadjusted itself. 5 minutes worth of sliding its' plasticky things around, and finally got a good night of sleep - and my back really doesn't hurt now.

Yay. Maybe now I can get back to crafting and working instead of hurting.

Recycled Bunny Mantle

I wanted a mantle. Our fireplace was all naked.

First, I looked into buying a ready-made mantle. There were some really beautiful ones out there (Like this one). But, we'd spent a bunch of money on home improvements, and I wasn't really feeling like spending a ton of money on buying a mantle.

So I started looking at less expensive options at the Home Depot and the like. Didn't really find anything that was that interesting - a lot of the options were too ornate or just not my style.

Then, it hit me: Craigslist.

I found this nice mantle for $50. It was far away, but I convinced my very nice husband to go fetch it for me.

When we got home, I realized that we had a big problem. I can't measure, or can't pay attention to measurements, because it was at least a full foot too short for our fireplace. Sigh.

I put it aside for a while, and thought about what to do about it. Considered adding blocks to the bottom, but I didn't love that idea. It involved an awful lot of building. And at this point in our home improvements, we were feeling pretty lazy.

Then I finally got tired of having the mantle in a corner of the living room, and decided to reconfigure it. Instead of being a shelf with 2 legs, I thought it could be made entirely into a shelf mantle. We took the legs, cut them down by a couple of inches, and put them side-by-side under the shelf. We mounted that to the wall above the marble surround. Then I got some little 2" MDF and trimmed the mantle out - I had to cover up the big ugly cuts through the center.

Then, I had to think about ornamentation. There's usually a flowery bit or something in the middle of the cutouts of the mantle. But, for me, bunny heads were the answer. Now I have a mantle that makes me happy every time I look at it!

The Kitchen Odyssey

This is a picture of our kitchen when we bought the house (back in 2003). I really like to cook. And the white, white, whiteness of this kitchen really bothered me. But, the house was the right price, and we certainly didn't have the money to remodel after buying the house. So, how to make it better?

Why, with color, of course.

At this point, I wasn't even brave enough to paint my own cabinets - so I looked for a painter who needed a logo and bartered for the service. Well, the cabinet painting, plus painting the living room and the master bedroom. We had new tile floors put in as well, but that's not in this picture.

The added bonus of this arrangement was that when people came over, they'd stand in the kitchen, saying "where's a water glass?" And I could just say "well, it's in the first orange cabinet from the left". Easy.

This kitchen design lasted until 2007. Until I got itchy. And decided that the whole thing needed to be redone. I blame HGTV.

We then embarked on many months' worth of working on the kitchen. Here's what we did:
- Demolished the countertops
- Had granite installed
- Replaced the sink
- Installed undercabinet lighting (well, my honey did, at least)
- Repainted the cabinets and walls
- Installed a glass tile backsplash
- Installed a new cap on the short wall

Most of this stuff, except for installing the granite, we wound up doing ourselves.

Here's the result. I think it turned out pretty well. There are some details that could be better, especially in the glass backsplash, but it's not bad for a first try.