bottle cap coffee table

another great find at savers. this little coffee table has a great black base that should go with my living room decor. i wasn't impressed with the light wooden top (not in the picture), but that's ok since i plan to completely make it over anyways.

here's my vision: a bottle cap coffee table (see my progress here). and there's tons of inspiration on the web. for example:

i've begun collecting bottle caps, but it might take a while to get enough variety. so if anyone drinks a beverage with a fun bottle cap, send it my way!

and on the down side, if i mess it up, im only out a $7.99. man do i love savers.

dilly dally painting

it had to be done. but i didn't want to do it. i finally forced myself to lay out the tarp, get out the paint and brushes, and get it done. no more cat-odored cabinets! hooray!

aussie fest reunion

some pix from aussie fest reunion, held at my place. the festivities began with a Japan slideshow, narrated by mom. we took a break, played some games, ate some grub, and crowded into the living room for the second show of the day: the Australia slideshow, narrated by matthew.

some of the gang: rachael, ryan, kristina, matthew and adam.

the group of us 'kids' who survived the second slideshow. whew, what a long day, but it was a fun one!

the beginnings of the island bar

today dad and matthew started my island bar that will straddle the living room and dining room step. the reason i wanted this was so that the island would be two-leveled depending on which side you sit on. the dining room side will be standing bar height, while the living room side of the island will sit at standard counter height. i ended up going to ikea and buying a table top and extendable legs.

so tonight they got started. first they had to draw out a template because the table will actually need a corner piece cut out of it so it will hug the beam.

on another note: don't ever buy contact paper from the dollar store. it was the worst $1 i have ever spent.

THAT took you three hours?

since the parents are on vaca, me and matthew decided we could put up my bedroom fan (that chad scored me an awesome deal on from the HD). anyways, it looked pretty simple. but like everything that me and matthew attempt to do, it takes an insane amount longer than it should.

case in point: three hours later and this is as far as we got.

and we had to re-do most of it since the electrical wasn't hooked up right. bummer.

a few things

i scored a few things this weekend...here's two of them (both from target).

painting with mickey mouse gloves

matthew was nice enough to pick up a few bundles of trim for me, so tonight i decided to paint it. im planning on using the same trim for the entire place, and painting it all white for consistency.

so we set up the saw horses in the garage, and got started. we even used this cute mini-roller that worked perfectly. it was all going SO smoothly. too smoothly in fact. we had a system of moving the freshly painted pieces to the back and sliding the unfinished ones up. before we knew it, we had finished the entire bundle.

i brought all our supplies downstairs to the big sink to clean them up and that's where i noticed something slightly odd. when i took apart the mini roller, my hands immediately became covered in slimy paint...and it wasn't coming off as i washed the roller pad. i rubbed my hands in the water, and instead of rinsing them, the water turned them into what looked like mickey mouse gloved hands!

ooops! we must have used the oil-based primer instead of regular wall paint!

here's what happened: the paint can had already been opened, and was covered in paint so we couldnt read the label that said "oil-based primer." from now on we will double check what's in the can!