Furniture Remodel - Part 1

So it's been QUITE a while since i've posted... my apologies.  I'm going to try a post in the style of my mother and her blog The Cottage in the sense that it's about a furniture re-do.  or something like that.  Point blank - my vanity is getting a face lift! One that i've been dying to do for almost a year, but have somehow just not had the time.

Here's the vanity:

She's a beaut, idn't she?!

She was my mom's for 20 some years before i received her.  My mom found her in an antique shop on Clinton St. in Binghamton, New York, shortly after i was born.  She bought it after my dad added on to our home in New York to give them a nice big new master bedroom so she had room for it.  She paid around $50 for it.

Last May when I moved home from school my mom informed me that she planned on selling/getting rid of her vanity, unless I wanted it.  I thought it over not claiming it right away because I used to have a vanity that I have since gotten rid of because I didn't like it.  So i didn't want to claim this one only to not like it again... but i thought about it and realized it was the specific vanity i had that i did not like, not the idea of a vanity as a whole.  And i love this vanity of my mom's, so i decided to take her up on her offer.  Right after taking it i asked if it was okay if i painted it... (the dark wood wasn't really my style).  She said she didn't care so i began dreaming... and kept dreaming for about a year until this weekend.  I finally had 3 days off in a row with NO PLANS (or work!)! And the weather was nice and my room was clean enough to handle taking on the contents of my vanity drawers for a few days.

So alas, Saturday afternoon, I emptied the drawers of my vanity and my mom helped me move it out to the garage.  From there my dad helped me remove all of the hardware and the mirror.

drawer pulls and mirror hardware

mirror-less vanity ready to be made-over

My dad then also provided me with some brief sanding lessons and i sanded the vanity, the mirror frames, and the drawer fronts - which was extremely time consuming (probably more so for me that it would have been for anyone else because i'm a bit obsessive compulsive).

Then my dad helped me use some wood filler to fill in the tiny nail holes on the drawers as well as the indented circles from the drawer pulls (because i bought new ones several months ago)

drawers with wood filler :)

Then came Sunday afternoon - (after observing Mike run the Med City Half Marathon!) my wonderful mother helped me to prime the whole thing.  And let me tell you something about primer - it is STICKY. i felt as though i was painting with elmer's glue! and that vanity has more freakin nooks and crannies than i ever realized (which make it VERY difficult to prime! - especially for an inexperienced primer/painter like me!) I had to head into work at 5 so my very kind mother finished priming the half of the vanity that we had left (thanks again mom!)

Today (Monday) my mom and i worked together to get 2 coats of paint onto the vanity which went very well! (no pictures of this step!) And tomorrow we'll do the final steps and hopefully tomorrow night or wednesday i'll get a post up here with the final reveal! (No promises though, it may not happen til this weekend, or a week from now!)

That's all for now folks! thanks for reading my super long post!

Progress... not Completion

So I didn't finish my project. :( bummer! BUT! I did make quite a bit of progress! and by the pictures below, you wouldn't know it, but really, i did! And I'm going to continue working in small spurts throughout the weekend then hit it hard again this next weekend to hopefully finish it up!

I have a few more "Before" pictures as well as some "In Progress" pictures to share!

My left closet "Before"

My right closet "Before"

ugh! scary!

Vanity "Before"

Vanity Drawer 1 "Before"

Vanity Drawer 2 "Before"

Vanity Drawer 3 "Before"

Wash Table Drawer 1 "Before"

Wash Table Drawer 2 "Before"

Wash Table Drawer 3 "before"

Behind the Door/Dresser "Before"

Kinda scary how many "Junk Drawers" I've accumulated over the summer! All unintentionally of course! Please be gentle, remember, i'm being very vulnerable by sharing all of my messy, disorganized, cluttered life with you!!

The Process:

Step 1 for me always when cleaning my room: Wash the linens! love sleeping in a freshly washed bed! :D

Part of the Process: Sorting! My mom gave me these "tupperware" bins which I used to sort things into the following categories: Miscellaneous, Memory Stuff (pictures, cards, etc), Games, Shoe Accessories, Electronics, Books, Office Supplies, Magazines, Stuff that's not mine, and To be Donated! (plus others that were added later!)

Believe it or not, this mess is progress being made! I have, or now had, many many many boxes and tubs scattered throughout our house: in the storage room, garage and under my bed, that were full of SHTUFF! This is part way through some of those boxes and bins!

There is still lots of work to do, but much was accomplished over the weekend and I feel good about it! Hopefully by the end of next weekend I'll be able to give you some more updates!

That's all for me tonight! I've got my first day with the students at school tomorrow! My lunch is all packed up (now hopefully I won't forget it tomorrow!) And my outfit is picked out! Hopefully everything will go great!

Wish me luck! :)

p.s. What did YOU do with your Labor Day weekend?! :)

Weekend (hopefully!) Project

The goal this weekend is to tackle my bedroom.  Not just clean it, which it so obviously needs, but to deep clean, organize and purge it of LOTS OF SHTUFF! I have way too much stuff that has accumulated over the years, most of it unnecessary to keep for anything.  So this weekend I'm hoping to get rid of lots of stuff, organize the remaining stuff that is hopefully only the stuff I really need, and maybe even tackle a few of the decor projects I've been wanting to do for a while!  So me posting this here is to help keep myself accountable so I can hopefully show you so after pictures instead of just leaving you hanging on the before pictures for weeks on end! So here goes nothing! It's about 12:40 on Saturday afternoon and I hope to have it all done by Monday evening! YIKES! better get to work!!

The pictures below are taken from each corner of my room in it's current state.  I did nothing to fix it or make it look better before snapping the photos, so be gentle! I'm being very vulnerable here! :)

from the door corner

from the vanity corner

from the bed corner

from the towel hook corner

and from standing on my bed :)

Did I also mention that I have a few things left to do/organize in order to be prepared for my first day with the kiddos on tuesday?! AH! (which means tuesday is the first day with the students at the school for my student teaching!)

wish me luck!

p.s. Just a note that today would have been my grandparents (dad's mom and dad) 59th wedding anniversary!  My gramma passed away in June 2004 just before their 52nd and my grampa just passed away in January of this year.  So this is their first one together celebrating in the best place they could since their 51st! Happy Anniversary Gramma and Grampa! I miss you both very much! 

No Promises

Hello Friends!

Been a while, huh? I am simply going to blog, with no promises of continued blogging, because I think every time I make those promises, I break them :)

Facts/Details from my life as of Late:

1. I'm a senior in college

2. I'm 22 years old

3. I am loving living with my best friend, Katie in our "new" apartment

4. I'm obsessed with Lady Antebellum

5. My apartment is INFESTED with asian beetles, and they're disgusting! (sitting in my living room right now i can count 20 and there are easily 20 more hanging out just inside our front door)

6. I'm working on making an "evolution of hair" collage with pictures of my changing hair styles from the past 4-6 years, when finished, I'll post it here

7. I got a job working at a childcare center here at school, and I love it

8. I ride the shuttle to campus almost every tues/thur morning, and Jerry (the driver) is awesome

9. I would like to take more pictures

10. I am working on being more artsy/crafty

11. Working with kids this summer and at school now has really helped me become more patient than I already was

12. I am still somewhat in shock that I am starting to have friends who are getting engaged/married... I don't feel old enough for that!

13. In case you're wondering, I've had more bloody noses in the past 2 years than in my entire life... mostly because until last year, I'd never had one

14. I am growing my hair out... again. (and hopefully succeeding this time!)

15. I have a new found accessory obsession... watches.

16. I still think we're in the second week of school, even though we're in week 7

17. Two weekends ago, I attended a gopher game at the new TCF Bank Stadium - my 2nd gopher game and my first at the new stadium... it was really cool!

I'm off to take a nap now before my night class. I am hoping to do SOMEWHAT better with blogging, but like I said at the beginning of the post, NO PROMISES! :)

snip snap snout, my tale's told out!

New Title - I NEED YOUR HELP! :)

So i'm not digging my new blog title... i like it - i think it's clever (b/c i'm clever... haha j/k) but i don't think i'm THAT much of a drama queen... some of you might agree, some might not... but either way... I think i want a new name... maybe the new one will have the current one "confessions of a 20-something drama queen" as the sub-title.... maybe not.

so basically what i need from you - the very few readers i have - are suggestions! :)

now if you give a suggestion and i don't end up using it, PLEEAAAAASE don't be offended... i'm an EXTREMELY undecisive person so these things are hard for me! i want something clever and that captures me and since pretty much all of my readers know me pretty well, that's why i'm asking them... or you. whatever.

also - i might not even end up using anyone's suggestions... i might come up with one on my own! but either way, here is my plea for help - please post a comment with your suggestion(s) and maybe my next blog will be a voting session on my favorites!! thanks so much for your help!!

Flashback Pt. 1: June 2009

Pardon my 2 week hiatus... but remember, i never promised a post everyday or every week... so there.

But alas, here I am again, and as promised, i'm going to walk you through what you've missed since i know you're all just DYING to know! :P

So we're going to start with June 2009... since that's where i left off!!

My last "update" before my 6 month leave of absence i left you with a picture of a boy and i... his name was Mike and the picture was from our first date... This post was also posted on June 16, 2009... so you might think... "we already know about june"

... but you don't... b/c little do you know, and little did i know at the time... 3 days later, i'd have myself a boyfriend! :)

On June 19th of the year two thousand and nine, Mike and I discussed our relationship and decided we wanted to date exclusively, based on this decision, Mike wanted to talk to my parents, and make sure that he had their blessing to date their daughter (me). So we talked to my parents and they gave us their blessing, a bit of advice about dating, and then prayed for us, it made me very happy :)

This was a very strange beginning to a relationship though... my sister did not know this boy, and it sorta freaked me out! In the past my sister knew every single boy that i ever had a crush on, and here i was with my first boyfriend and she'd never met him! So we decided to fix that... through skype! :)

Mike meeting Cara on Skype :)

Mike & Cara again, chatting away while I got ready :)

Now i know this is an extremely unconventional way for one's sister to meet one's boyfriend... but Cara wasn't going to be home until late July and i couldn't date a boy for 2 whole months without my sister meeting him, so i had to do what i had to do! :) (btw... I met my sister's boyfriend, Tim, this very same way :) )

As for anything else in June... nothing quite as significant as this that I can remember! So there you have it... a short little peak into my first month of last summer!!!

Stay tuned for Flashback Pt. 2: July 2009

Coming soon to this very blog! ;)

Birthdays Birthdays Birthdays!

This week we had two big birthdays in my house here in Winona.  Monday was my roommate, Kelsey's 21st birthday and Tuesday was my roommate, Shadia's 21st birthday!  Monday night we went to Ground Round for drinks and dessert after eating a yummy rotisserie chicken, potato wedges, and caesar salad at our house.

Kelsey carving our chicken for dinner

When we got home from dinner my roommate Katie and I gave Kelsey and Shadia their presents... we got them each a birthday martini class and a post-secret book.  If you haven't heard of Post-Secret you can check it out here.  It's pretty cool.

Kelsey & Shadia with their presents

Tuesday night we went to Schyde's (a local bar here in Winona) for "Wing Night" (20 cent wings) and some more drinks.

Kelsey, Me, Katie, and Shadia before Schydes

Kelsey and Shadia at Schydes with their first legal drink at a bar!

Me & Katie at the bar

Both celebrations were very fun! We're all done with birthdays now in our house for the 2009/2010 school year! :)

Stim Therapy

Beginning this past October my left knee started to cause me some discomfort... after sitting "indian style" or if i were to tuck my left foot under me while i said (basically if my knee was bent to an angle less than 90 degrees with a little pressure on it... it would be extremely uncomfortable to straighten it.
I ignored it at first, figuring it was just temporary and that it would get better on its own.
It didn't.
Mid-November the discomfort turned to pain... not horrible pain, but definitely pain i didn't want to have.
From there my knee also started to get a little swollen... and when i say a little... i mean a little. it was hardly noticeable... but i noticed. I became VERY in-tuned to my knee and how it felt and what it looked like and such.
Beginning of December this pain also happened when i would straighten my leg after being curled up in a ball while sleeping... ie no pressure on my knee, just bent. With this knowledge i made a chiropractor appointment, and a doctors appointment.

My chiropractor appointment was on Monday January 4th. At this appointment i was told that i have the following:
-a low right shoulder
-a low left hip
-the start of a bunion on my left foot
-bad knots in my shoulders ("student knots")
-shin splints
-and ALLLL sorts of tightness in my lower legs
who knew!? My chiropractor then suggested i do "stim therapy" and that it was "really simple and only takes a few minutes, we just put a few needles in your knee and hook them up to a 9-volt battery to send a pulse into your muscles to contract them several times in a matter of minutes" etc. i'm not sure exactly what she said considering i started to panic what's she mentioned needles.
I get VERY panicky when it comes to needles... i hyper-ventilate sometimes, almost always cry (yes, at 21 i STILL cry when getting a shot) while crying or prior to crying tend to get the nervous giggles and just get very very freaked out.
I asked her if she meant we were going to do this today, she told me yes. My palms started getting clammy, i started my nervous giggles, and did my best to take deep breaths.

She then took me to another room and had me lay on a comfy cot with 2 pillows under my head and 1 under my feet. My boyfriend, Mike, was also with me at this appointment and was seated in a chair facing the cot.
As she was prepping the "materials" she was continuing to give me more details about what she was going to do as the tears came on. She said that they were acupuncture needles and that they were hair thin and didn't hurt a bit (once she stabbed me i disagreed). She then placed 3 needles in each leg around my knee as i blocked my eyes with my hand (i also get very nauseous if i see needles going into my skin, or anyone else's skin for that matter)

These needles DEFINITELY caused less pain than getting a shot would, but if i had to choose to ever get acupuncture, i don't think i would. Part of the reason it was more painful for me, especially on my left leg, is because that leg is stiff. While she was putting the needles in, Mike decided to make matters worse by asking the chiropractor why she was "putting such LARGE needles in my leg?!" which although i knew it wasn't true, still made me very panicky and made me continue to cry.
This chiropractor though was very much my friend and told him that she was going to stab him with one to see how he liked it. So after she had my 6 needles in my leg and had them hooked up to wires which attached to the "battery" she walked over to him and asked where he wanted his.
Mike was quite surprised and asked if she was serious. She was. She ended up sticking it in his right shoulder/neck area and that shut him up a little bit :)

After it was over she told me i would need about 3 more sessions of this... for the 2nd session she used sticky pads since i had such a hard time with the needles last time... but today for my 3rd session she used needles again, because as much as i hated to admit it, they had a MUCH better result with the pain reduction. This time she only did 4 needles and all in my left knee. and we got pictures! (oh! and i didn't cry today! :) )

Me laying on my cot after the needles had been inserted today with my nifty silver blanket :)

the 4 needled in my left knee! eek!

my support :)

sorry that was so long folks! but that's it! you're done! wooo! thanks for reading! :D

Back with a Vengeance!

So I just finished watching "Julie & Julia" and it has inspired me to keep up with my blog! :) Now this does NOT mean I'm promising a blog every night (i'm not my mother... yet.) it doesn't even mean I'm promising a blog every week... i'm promising that i'm going to make a valiant effort to blog more often... i'm just not sure how often "more often" is yet!


In my next few blog posts i'm going to catch you up on all you've missed over the past 7ish months of my life! I'm not going to do it all in one blog, b/c that would be just TOOOO much! so i'll break it up... the rough plans in my head right now are telling me I'll break it up by month... but we'll see :)


ANYWHO as far as the here and now.... I'm back at school (Winona State University for those of you who don't know!) and tomorrow starts what is known in the college world as: "Syllabus Week"... the week that you spend all your class time getting the syllabus and going over rules and schedules and expectations and BLAH. it's also known as torture to many college students.. but better than lecture and homework i suppose... although who knows, maybe i'll get a lecture and homework tomorrow!
A brief glimpse at my schedule? Mondays = 1 class... 12:30-2:20 woo hoo!
and after class it's home for "stim therapy" on my knee and dinner with my boy and my rents :) woo!




and pssssttt.... HAPPY 21ST BIRThDAY KELSEY!!!!!


over and out :)

a photo update

b/c i don't feel like writing a bunch! plus pictures are more fun! so here is a photographic update from spring break until now! :)

me and aria at my first gopher basketball game over spring break!

brit and i at the boys intramural game during my SB

me, heidi, and katie (my roomie) when we visited heidi at Iowa!

me, brigs, and cara with our matching non sweatshirts at preaster!

me and seester hangin in the gym at dickson valley for preaster!

shane, kate, ryan, jaden and i at shane's house over easter weekend!

me and daddy :)

me cookin dinner for the fam!

kenz, seester, bailey, me, brudder, and molly when they passed through to get their pup, lily!

me and brudder :)

beginning of summer days... jump-roping! (susie in the background chalking the driveway... ryan and mike twirling!)

mike taking a turn jumping!

kate and i before her sister's rehearsal dinner!

kate & i after her sister's wedding!

my adoptive sister of the night! me and rachel! :)

megs, kate, brit and i before chester's for kate's bday!

(not pictured: lauren, she was working and didn't make it in time for pics :( also ryan, colin and bj joined us for din din!)

jumping!

mike, me, sus, and brit during an INTENSE game of nertz!

me & mike before pescara! :)

well there ya have it folks! my life in photos! i hope you enjoyed!!

(and remember, if you'd like to see a photo larger all you gotta do is click on it! :) )