Birth-deer Weekend

Morgan and I celebrated our respective 26th and 27th birthdays together on a weekend in February because she was born in January and I was born in March and because that was the only free weekend for months. 

We went to the Lowery Park Zoo in Tampa and then on to IKEA in Tampa. It was a great weekend. One of the best we've had. 

We arrived after work on Friday, just before Morgan and Grayson went to bed. When I walked in the door, he started laughing. It seemed like he was laughing at me, but it was such a cute laugh that I don't mind. He is such a happy baby. 

He wasn't so sure about the glasses thing.

We picked Sydney up in the morning and headed to Tampa. Grayson was properly accessorized for his first trip to the zoo.

It was 67 and sunny, with a little breeze, so it was pleasant but the jackets stayed on. We live in Florida.

We took a "safari" train ride around the zoo and Grayson fell asleep at the end. 

But not before being super charming.

His Aunt Sydney is his favorite.

We got snacks and so here's Carson feeding me a bite of his ICEE like a baby bird. He loves to hold a spoon way above my mouth like this if I ask for a taste. 

I took a picture of my sister in law Erin's favorite animal, the Manatee! 

We got Syd to snap this one as we were getting ready to leave.

Next stop: Baby's first trip to IKEA! 

Carson, Caleb and Sydney weren't thrilled about this stop, but Morgan and I played the birthday card and so we got to go. 

You may remember this, but Carson and I went to IKEA in Atlanta last year for my birthday and I'm thinking that this would make a mighty nice tradition.

Loading all our new things. Carson and I got a coffee table because we've been looking for one, and the white dishes I've planned on getting for months. 

We went to a local pizza place when we got back to Ocala and it was fantastic. Carson and Caleb shared a pizza that looked pretty good, but I think Morgan and I got the best things: she had Chicken Parmesan and I had a baked spaghetti with ricotta. Also meatballs but I gave them to Carson.

Post- dinner, Morgan and I went on what was supposed to be one lap around the neighborhood but turned into seven. I got 14,000 steps that day! After that, we opened our birthday gifts to each other and then the four of us (Grayson was in bed) went out and sat around the fire pit and talked. It was a great evening. 

We went to church the next morning and then Morgan made a tasty lentil soup for lunch. I selflessly played with Grayson while she cooked. He sits up now! And also waves, but no pictures of that. 

We ate outside because it was so nice. 

Carson and Caleb sang Happy Birthday and then we enjoyed our ice cream cake from Publix. Carson was being clever and got trick candles. 

Grayson may have gotten his first taste of whipped cream, and might have enjoyed it a little.

After all that celebrating, it was time to go! Morgan requested one last picture. We have lots of these goodbye pictures now. 

It was such a great weekend and it almost made me want to move to Central Florida so we can have more like it!

Week of Turquoise

We decided to let the past weekend be the weekend for redoing things! I worked until 2 but when I got off work, we really got going. Then the week continued with projects. Things I didn't finish over the weekend were done after work during the week. Here are pictures of our little projects! I realized later that there's a LOT of blue, which doesn't bother me a bit, but is the reason I titled the post like that.

Stain

We've used this chest as our coffee table since we got it when we first moved to Cleveland and it's always looked pretty beat up. I sort of liked that look, but I have to admit that it was pretty shabby and that honey-stained color that I'm not in love with. We decided to sand it down and restain. We've stained only one other thing before - our rocking chair - and that was a darker color and just a LOT of work for a project. We decided on a grayish stain and picked out Minwax's "Classic Gray". It's more of a blueish gray but looking around our apartment, blueish is the general color around here anyway, so it's just fine!

Before: 

Carson did all the work. Because the chest isn't THAT big, it was determined that since he had a greater opinion on how it should be done, he should be the one to do it. He hand-sanded some of the rougher areas and then used the orbital sander on the whole thing. 

And then it was time to stain! He used one coat of the stain and didn't rub any of it off - just painted it on and left it outside overnight. Once it was light in the morning, we decided we liked the one coat and he went over it with a polyurethane. 

The lighting in our apartment is SO BAD but here's the finished project. It hasn't been long of course but we like the color (I didn't at first - it's quite blueish and I wasn't sure) and we were able to use it pretty soon after putting the poly on it. 

Spray Painted Mirror

While Carson worked on the chest, I decided to get to work on some other projects I've been meaning to do. We got this mirror the same day we got the chest (and our table and the rocking chair - all at a thrift store, all picked out by Carson while I was at work or something) in Cleveland and since day one, I've wanted to repaint this thing. It's sort of a laminated wood thing and just dated and not my favorite. We taped magazine pages to the mirror (and I feel like you're due a disclaimer - my dad randomly finds random free magazines and subscribes me to them which is why there was an US Weekly to tape to anything - it's great for painting on!).

I used just about an entire can of white spray paint on this thing and I don't think I did a perfect job. If it bugs me enough, I'll go over it with some white paint-paint, but for now it's really nice to have a fresher-looking mirror!

Little Spray Paint Projects 

This frame was black with gold before and just way fancier than my typical style, but I got motivated by all the turquoise Erin has around her house while we were in Maryland, so I went after this with a can of spray paint. The color is called "Lagoon" by Rustoleum and it's slightly more teal than pictured here. 

Morgan gave me these little decorative balls over a year ago and I liked them a lot but there's already so much brown in our apartment so I wanted them to be a little different and misted them with some gold spray paint (Valspar - I don't know if it's important to remember what kinds I used or if I'll actually reference it later but just in case... I'm writing it down). I also sprayed a random golf ball I found and now I want to find more golf balls and spray them too because it looked really neat. All of these are in glass on my mantel. 

Some Hand Painting

My mom gave me this sign for Christmas in 2012 and I really like it. It adds to my accidental collection of things with our last name, and I think it's just fun. I've considered painting it quite a bit but couldn't decide on a color so when I most recently re-did our gallery wall, this was just not the right color. I mixed a navy and sage green from my craft paints to come up with the color for this and I'm liking it. 

Fabric Painting

I've wanted to make a pillow with an ampersand on it for a long time and I finally did it! I sewed a peacock colored linen pillow cover and then used textile medium with glitter paint to paint the front. I did a "love" one that I will probably give away and then my ampersand one. For the ampersand, I did what I usually do and I traced an image of an ampersand, magnified, from the computer screen onto to freezer paper, ironed it to my fabric, and painted in the lines. I have some gold buttons to sew onto the back and then I have to make loops to close the pillows, so I haven't actually finished this one, but it's coming along.