Well, how y'all doing?

Me?

Been an interesting weekend. 

Remember how scared I was to start staining my stairs?

Well, my worst fears came true.

This is a fail of epic proportions. 

Don't believe me?

Look:





Oh, Lord have mercy. 

I decided it would be a brilliant idea to do one side at a time.  So we would have a place to walk up and down until it dried.  Yup... see the lovely line down the center??

This is just a hot mess.  Why??

I'll tell you what I think.

The instructions said that no matter how long I let the stain dry, it would still feel tacky.  So, after a couple hours I lightly felt it.  Yup, tacky.  I figured I was good to start polying.  I think, I didn't let the stain set NEARLY as long as I should have.  And, this is a hard thing.  Stain smells, really bad.   The whole house stunk to high heaven.  I bet y'all could smell it wherever you were.

I think that's why the color is so blotchy and well... nasty. 

I started crying... hard. 

Drew came home to me bawling, and, bless his heart he tried to make me feel better about it.

NOTHING he could do or say was going to make this better.

I decided I would try to finish the other side and see if that helped.

Disaster, Frances! {name that movie}

Alright Meg, calm down and get some sleep. 

First, put down a coat of poly on the entire thing so it won't be tacky anymore.  At least, safe to walk on. 

Yeah, that's when Max decided it was time to wake up, and help me.


I had laid a coat all the way down and was working on the lower portion when I heard: "Pitter pat, pitter pat, pitter pat... MEOW!!!".  He had gotten all the way down onto the landing through the wet poly and stopped there.  I had to walk back up (in my socks) to get him, but at that point, he ran back upstairs.   I was crying again.  Then I became more concerned with the wet poly on his feet and him licking them to clean them off.  Max doesn't like people messing with his feet.  But, Merry grabbed a warm, soapy washcloth and cleaned him up.  I went back to polying through tears of frustration.

The next morning {Saturday} I woke up early, lazily lounged on the couch sipping ice coffee, snuggling with Brandy & Max {he was VERY sorry!!} and watching Ree Drummond - The Pioneer Woman on Food Network.




   We had decided a couple days prior to take a nice drive in the mountains to view/photograph the gorgeous Fall foliage {I will share those soon}.  I made up my mind that I wasn't going to stress over the stairs today.  I was going out, with my family, and having a wonderful day.  And we did have an amazing day. 

I admit, I did flip out a little during the trip.  I mentioned it to Drew a couple times, and know what he told me??  "Nothing is permanent Meg.  Anything can be fixed."

He is so zen.

The closer we got to home, the more my stomach hurt. 

We stopped at Lowe's and I got another roll of paper.  Bigger and thicker this time. I got one of those floor painting mop head type things.  And, honestly, the tute I read on doing these floors suggested this tool from the beginning.  But, I'm cheap.  And I think I know better. 

We pulled into the driveway... and the house hadn't spontaneously combusted. Excellent.  We went in, and the stair fairies had not come and performed miracles while we were out.  Damn.

We chilled out for a few hours, and just before bed, Max went into spend the night with Merry and I laid one more layer of poly to get rid of the tack for good.  I did like 2 stairs with the new mop head and yelled to Drew "Why didn't I get this to begin with?!?!".  You know what they say about hindsight.  It took me only about 10 minutes to apply that last coat.  That thing is worth every penny of the $9.99.

Cleaned up and went to bed.








This morning, everything was ok.  The stairs were ugly, but safe {Except Drew SWEARS they are slippery} and the world had not ended.

 It looked like a crime scene:

Happy weekend everyone!!



It's a perfect Fall day here.  We went for a drive and picnic up in the mountains.  It was a prefect, fun day.  Drew and I had so much fun practicing our photo skills.  I will share some, probably in the next couple days.  I have SO many I need to edit!

For awhile now, my feet have been really hurting me.  I just figured it was because I've been on them too much lately.  Well, it's Plantar Fasciitis.  It's extremely painful and the only cure is time, rest and supportive shoes.  All of these things are problems.  Rest??  Don't my feet know I have a STAIR issue I need resolved?!?!  And, supportive shoes.  To me, supportive shoes = granny shoes.  I'm guilty of wearing flip flops or being barefoot as much as possible. 

That's the way I roll.

Well, not anymore.

So, the past couple days I've been trying to rest my feet.  That means, I haven't been working on the stairs.  And it's been driving me nuts.

So, the other night, I got a wild hair to make one of those cute wooden boxes to fill with fun, pretty stuff to put as the centerpiece on the dining room table. 

Shanty 2 Chic did all the hard stuff for us.  I took all those measurements to Home Depot and had them do all the cuts for me.  When I got home, I just glued & nailed the whole thing together.  Then, I lightly painted it with leftover milk paint.  I did add the felt pads to the bottom so it wouldn't scratch my table if I ended up not having a runner on it. 

Seriously, this took less than an hour, including the painting. 

I filled it with candles, little pumpkins & gourds, fake pears, leaves & berries.  I absolutely love the blue and orange together.  My FAVORITE color combo of all time.  Placed the box on a paper under burlap runner. 


I have the knobs for the ends, just haven't added them yet.  I'm also thinking of stenciling it to look like an old crate.

I have the same color leaves draping around the dining room light.  I'm loving the combo.


Well, I'm off to edit pictures and work on my epic stair project. 





Enjoy your weekend loves!

XOXO

Hiya guys!

Wazzup?!?!

Still resting my sore back/neck.  But, I found some fun stuff tonight!

My adorable neighbor/friend was giving away selling some cute stuff!

I was able to snag a darling cloche and this stinkin cute wooden tricycle:


Pop some cute little pumpkins in the back and oh... so dang cute!


Thanks Nancy!  I LOVE it!  XOXO

I thought I would give you an update on the stairs.

The pics are bad night time pics.  My apologies.

All the paper is down and it's looking 100% better!!


Look at the risers... and the gaps... uhg. 


From this view it doesn't look scary at all!  hehe


What do you think??  Lookin pretty good huh?? 

Now, what do I do with this massive wall??  Argh.



I'm determined to get the stain and poly done this weekend.  Then I can move onto the risers and moulding.  The moulding is the best part.  :-)

Get 'er done...

XOXO

Hi you guys!

How we doin'?

Good and busy here!

Still working on finishing the stairs.

Got in a minor fender bender this morning so I'm taking a night off from the project to rest.

I'm dying to get it finished.  It's going to look AMA-ZING!

Alright, here are my favorites from last weeks party!


Kirstin from Craftiments shared these SUPER fantastic corn husk and fabric pumpkins.  I know, RIGHT?!?!



Claire at The Rustic Pig shared this adorable drawer that she turned into cute storage for some pillows.  I see a kitty/doggy bed too!

Some yummy for my tummy good stuff:


Kimberly at A Night Owl shared these Mocha Cappuccino Mocha Cupcakes.  I'm dying for this.  Go see her blog.  It's DARLING!!

Sorry for the short post tonight.  I'm pretty sore and really need to step away from the puter.

So, let's get onto this weeks party eh??

Happy Sunday friends!

Hope you all had a great weekend!!

Caeleigh spent the weekend, and even though she woke up with a cold on Saturday, we had a BLAST!!

We all went to McDonald's for dinner Friday night.  Only because she wanted the Happy Meal toy SO BADLY!  Some new movie that's coming out.

Saturday, she woke up sick, but she didn't want to go home.  She said she felt 'ok' even though she was really snotty and coughing.  We made red pancakes for breakfast, then she helped me rock out the stairs!  We tore paper and glued it down like mad girls!  With her help, I've only got a few more steps to finish!  Then we will be onto the staining, polying and moulding!  Still lots to do, but they are really turning out GREAT!!  I can't wait for them to be finished.  It's going to be an amazing transformation.

After the stairs, we cleaned up (holy glue mess Batman) and went to get the groceries.  Of course, we ended up spending a lot of time in the Halloween section.

We came home, put away all the stuff (Oh, I finally got a small chest freezer that we put in the garage.  Funny how these things can make us so happy!) we made homemade Mac N Cheese with chicken for dinner.  Caeleigh always asks for that when she stays over.  After dinner, she watched a movie we rented then we played our own version of Cosmic Bowling.  We got some glowsticks and necklaces and played bowling on the Wii.  SO MUCH FUN!!

This afternoon, we messed around with some of the Halloween stuff we picked up.  We decided to make COOKIES!!

**By popular demand, I've added links to the recipes I used**


She made us call her "The Great Fairy Leopardina" the whole day.  I made them call me "Rango".


We got some new cookie cutters.  Kitty, ghost & pumpkin.  But, she decided that hearts, stars and flowers are Halloween related as well.



Sugar cookie goodness!



The cookie recipe: Perfect Frosted Sugar Cookies.


Then, we made buttercream!  OH HELP ME!!

The buttercream recipe: Buttercream.



She went to town.  Do you know how hard it was for us to not just eat all the frosting out of the bowls??




And this boy supervised.

See the fly??  He just watched it the whole time.  Aren't cats supposed to be great fly hunters??


Goofball.

These cookies tasted as good as you think they did.  They were soft, just barely browned on the bottom.  And the buttercream... oh my.  I added a little almond & orange flavoring.  They are were so yummy!!





Another super fun weekend with Caeleigh.  I have to say, that keeping up with a 6 year old is exhausting! I love her so much and I'm DEAD tired!  Whew!  But man, that kid makes me:

I love this rug!  Awesome job Jen and thanks for hanging over here today!  XOXO