When Opposites Attract: Home Improvement Edition

This is how it goes around our house:

Me (looking at upholstered headboards on pinterest): I want one of these sooo bad! Why can’t we ever get anything nice and why is our bedroom so ghetto and awful and life is just so hard!!!

Mike (glancing over my shoulder): I could make that.

The next day:

Mike: I built a headboard out of some spare wood that I had and got some free foam from a carpet guy. Let’s go pick out fabric so we can get this finished.

Me: Whoa aren’t we moving a little fast? Before we pick out fabric I need to sift through all the options and figure out exactly what I want and price match cause upholstery fabric is super expensive and I should probably get some swatches and maybe buy some fabric online and agonize over it and return it and then get some new fabric and go through the process all over again. It could take a while.

Mike: Let’s just go look.

Lo and behold we end up finding fabric for like 3 bucks a yard that day. So then it’s up to me to figure out how to upholster the box spring to match the headboard and I’m thinking that I’ll spend the next couple of weeks attempting it and failing, but then my rockstar of a little sister comes over and pretty much does the whole thing for me because she is the greatest ever and also shares my husband’s strange addiction to DIY projects. We finish by midnight that night using a slight variation of this tutorial (Smash came up with the brilliant idea of sewing the fabric onto a sheet instead of onto the top of the boxspring. Genius).

After a coat of grey paint left over from our living room and some new lamps, a room that I thought was bound to remain a total eyesore for years is actually looking decent in a matter of weeks and all for about 100 bucks (not quite perfect yet, but it’s getting there. Also, this photo makes it look like the headboard is the same color as the wall but in real life it’s darker):

The embarrassing “before” picture. We seriously put zero effort into this room and it ended up being a random mess of old wedding gifts and cheap furniture (Hey Annie, recognize the Al Rounds masterpiece? Oh, the memories):

This whole project was a great reminder of how Mike balances out all my complaining, overthinking, procrastination, and complacency by simply getting crap done. The man’s a keeper.

It’s also an experience I should probably remember when he wants to build yet another outhouse-looking shed in our backyard this summer.

Just a few things I've been loving lately

1) Judging by my addiction to TV shows on Netflix, it’s a good thing I’ve never been introduced to say, crack cocaine. Or even alcohol for that matter, cause I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be a “one glass of wine with dinner” kind of a gal. More like one of those binge drinkers that stay sober for a few weeks before indulging in a days-long bender.

Case in point: A few weeks ago I started watching Downton Abbey and finished the whole first season in about three days (there were only like 7 episodes, but still). Maybe it’s nerdy to admit to this kind of enthusiasm for a show that’s on PBS Masterpiece Theatre, but it is truly fabulous and is apparently winning all kinds of awards and stuff. The second season is currently airing on PBS so I thought that would bring me back to some kind of normal “one episode a week” routine but I stumbled upon a sketchy website that has the whole second season available to watch online (cause I guess it already aired in England or something?) so I’ve fallen right off the proverbial wagon.
2) I pretty much quit wearing makeup other than basic concealer and mascara after I graduated high school and stopped feeling compelled to buy all the stuff pushed on me by the drag queen-esqe employees at the MAC counter (including lip liner. Bless my heart.) But now that I’m knocked up my skin is freaking out so I needed something to make me look presentable without actually having to wear foundation or something equally intimidating.

My sister told me to try Bare Minerals and so far I can safely say that should they want to hire me to do testimonials for their infomercials I would totally be game. This stuff evens out my skin tone, is super light and wearable, etc. Plus swirling all the powder with the brushes and whatnot makes me feel like a fancy lady.

3) One thing that my pregnant self and my childhood self have in common is an undying love for chocolate Snack Pack pudding. I swear I could eat this stuff by the gallon lately. And I keep telling myself that if I have to eat chocolate pudding I really should just try making it from scratch, but that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon since this monstrosity found its way into my cart at Costco yesterday:
I’m trying to limit myself to one or two of these suckers a day but that’s proving to be quite the challenge since I frequently find myself thinking about how awesome it would be to just scoop the contents of like four of the little containers into a big bowl and just go to town. What can I say? When I dream, I dream big.