holla

my best friend monica was in town, and we were having a girls day in minneapolis...which led us to the Soap Factory (home of the scariest halloween haunted house around) for Craft'za: a one-day art market for handmade goods.

if you know me, you know i say "holla!" all the time. so when i saw this amazing hand-cut, gold holla sign, i just HAD to buy it!

ice cubes and counter tops

today was a big day for my condo! new kitchen counters, water access to my fridge ice machine, and lots of insulation around my outside door, windows and air conditioner. as you can see in the first picture, it looks as if dad almost moved in! my entire dining room was filled with tools and such.

do you remember my original counter tops? they were light wood and kind of ugly (top photo). a while back -- think spring/summer -- dad found these dark "granite" counters at menards for a really good deal. they've been sitting in his garage ever since.

the other week dad stopped over to prepare the counter top. he measured my original wooden one and drew out a template onto a giant roll of paper of the exact dimensions and the sink cutout area.

meanwhile, on the other side of the kitchen...i now have ice cubes (crushed and cubed) and water! i have waited so long for this day :)

this proved to be quite the task however. the water tube had to snake from the back of the fridge, up through the ceiling and into the pantry closet, from the top-right of my closet to the bottom-left (see photo), out the pantry closet next to the oven, and behind my counter tops into the water access under the sink. luckily the tube is clear so it's nearly invisible.

next, dad covered up my air conditioner window unit, plastic'd up all my windows, and added insulation around my exterior door to try to keep the draft out...although my snowflakes would prefer the wind so they can twirl.

all through the house

today was a beautifully gorgeous november day here in minneapolis. i biked home from work (in a tank top!) with my headphones on, just enjoying the unusually warm sunshine and colorful leaves still covering the ground. when i got home, i saw dad was taking advantage of the nice weather too...with his electric saw and building materials scattered about my steps and entry way.

today's projects took place all throughout the house. dad was over around 11am and worked until dinner time in the living room, bathroom and kitchen.

living room: dvd cabinet. the first project dad worked on today was adding the trim around my living room inset cabinet that i plan on using for dvd's. now we just need to add shelving and putty up the screws around the trim and i can finally get rid of my cd towers!

plus, now you all know my guilty pleasures of owning (and repetitively watching) all seasons of The OC and The Office :)

the bathroom: closet. see that board that my cabinet is sitting on? well that's my new raised floor of the cabinet. that way, if my bathroom ever floods, my closet supplies will be safe.

our plan is to create storage in the bottom half of the closet, with a single cabinet door. and then the top half of the closet will be open shelving.

the kitchen: fridge water dispenser. this project has been a long time coming, and we got about halfway today. see, the problem is that there's no water access along the wall my fridge is sitting against. so dad used the can light fixture (see photo above) as his access point. he drilled a hole through the beam nearest the fridge and another into my pantry closet, and then fished the tube through them both.

the tube connects to the fridge (you can see the clear tube sticking out near the red arrow), goes through the ceiling, into the pantry closet (more tube near the left arrow), and eventually will emerge along the floor near my stove, and snake through the back of the kitchen cabinets to connect up to the water valve under the sink. and voila, i will have water and ice fresh from my fridge!

stay on your side of the line

it might not have been cheap on our monthly association dues, but it had to be done...but wow does it look a million times better!

trying to find a parking spot on the street for the two days it took to get our parking lot resealed and repainted was awesome as always, but i'm hoping the outcome will make my life easier...with lines so bright, maybe my neighbor will actually park in his spot for once? only time will tell...

step to the edge

to be honest, i think this is the first ever post that i don't know the exact date of. i know it was sometime in september...or maybe august...who knows!

anyways, one day while i was out and about, dad came over and put the trim up on my step under the bar (which acts as a divider between my two levels). thank goodness! mom had been wanting him to do that for months. maybe even a year or more.

but now it's up. we didn't have many color options, so we decided on the metal finish -- which actually matches the stainless steel legs on my bar. and now the unfinished wood flooring is finally covered and protected from getting chipped.

the purple curtains

I finally replaced my bedroom curtains to something less than the BLAH color they were. (Thank Goodness!) I originally bought them one day long ago at Ikea...I was on my way out and happened across the "As Is" section and figured, why not!? They were super cheap and super opaque: exactly what I craved for my bedroom so I could sleep in as long as possible on Saturday mornings.

But the color was just so boring. Especially since I have yet to do anything with my room. Right now it just has a coat of primer on the walls, a cement floor, and that's it! Not what you would expect from a web designer girl who loves color.

Anyways, I'll get to that later. So I was at Ikea again and passed this purple curtain set. I have been very into purple lately (no idea why) but nonetheless, I grabbed them.

And here they are! I like them best with my snowflake lights on, it gives them a soft glow :)