Gimme a Giveaway: Chris Loves Julia

Published on by Our Humble Abode101 Comments

This giveaway has ended.  See who won here.

It’s an exciting Friday for us.  Last night was our first night sleeping at the new house.  Most of our big furniture has been moved and we’re in the process of moving over our smaller stuff. Exciting for us, and this giveaway is exciting for you. It comes from Chris Loves Julia, a fantastic blog and Etsy shop. My gal Julia is one talented lady, creating beautiful chalkboard drawings as well as modern and abstract paintings.

My favorite chalk board drawing is this Kermit the Frog quote:

If you need art for your kitchen, how about this Cow Butcher Chart:

Or That’s Amore for any room in your house.

The Goods: Any chalkboard drawing from the Chris Loves Julia Etsy shop!

To Enter: We ask that you please subscribe to Our Humble A{Bowe}d.  If you don’t want to receive e-mail notifications, that’s fine.  Let us know if you follow us through Google Reader or another form and it will also count.  To subscribe, click the “Sign Me Up!” button under “Be the first to know.”  Once you’ve subscribed, leave a comment, which can (but doesn’t have to) include our Just for Fun question.

Just for Fun: Tell us if you’ve ever won an award, and maybe what it was for.

For additional entries:

1.  Add Chris Loves Julia to your Etsy favs, come back and leave a comment telling us what your favorite item is.

2.  Like Chris Loves Julia on Facebook, come back and leave another comment.

Contest Closes: Thursday, May 3rd at 11:59 pm, central time.

Number of Winners: One!

Ships: Anywhere in the United States

Other Info: We will select the winner using random.org and announce on Friday, May 4th.  Good luck!!

And, Julia was kind enough to offer a 10% discount on chalk board drawings using the code HUMBLE10.  So get some shopping in and save a little cash.

P.S.  This blog post is coming to you, live from our new house.  Literally, I just got my computer moved over and set up.

Tub Thumping

Published on by Our Humble Abode15 Comments

Before we can officially move into the new house, I’ve required a working bath tub.

See, we pulled out the claw foot tub and we’ve replaced it with a five foot jetted tub and shower combo.

Which also required removing the small half wall and building a new floor to ceiling wall.

The plumbing runs through the new wall, and a Hardie Backer surround, tub to ceiling.  Ben taped and filled the seams and we’re waiting for it to dry.

We also gained a little bit of space for the toilet.  A claw foot tub plus a wide half wall in an eight foot square room is a tight fit.  Now a five foot tub with a standard wall gives the cramped toilet space a few more valuable inches.

In other bathroom news, we picked up our shower tile and a remnant for our vanity counter today.  Hopefully Ben can start (and finish) the shower surround tomorrow.  But here’s the counter:

The counter is a 45 inch by 25 inch piece of white quartz.  I love that it is light and will allow me to paint the vanity any color I want.  Ben got it for 60 bucks, which is about $400 cheaper than the quote we got from the other granite supplier in town.  Score!

Even better, this granite place has piles of damaged materials.  Ben saw a few pieces of Carrera marble in the heap, so he asked about it.  The company is trying to get rid of these and the employee said Ben could take anything he wanted, free.

Those babies are sitting in the garage, waiting for Ben to cut them down to fit our end tables.  He sure knows the way to my heart.

In other new house news, I hung a few pictures.  Mostly because I don’t want to look at the epileptic seizure inducing wall paper.  And because I have about 10 boxes of art at my disposal.

We were able to sell the old bathroom vanity on Craigslist, and now we’re trying to pawn this enormous wooden pergola on someone.  No clue of its original purpose, but it’s in our yard and we want it out of there.

We met another neighbor yesterday; Rocky, the rock chuck.

That’s the latest progress.  Bring on the bath tub so we can move our beds over!  Tell me, what kind of counters do you have in your bathroom?  Have you scored any free things lately?

Dragonfly is the New Peacock?

Published on by Our Humble Abode13 Comments

It’s starting.  The era of bold, saturated color.  I fell for Benjamin Moore’s Dragonfly as soon as I saw it.  In an effort to step out of my comfort zone and go with my instincts, I decided to buy a gallon of Dragonfly, color matched in Glidden paint.  Where is this going?  I decided to test the water, um, paint in the master closet.  Boring cream walls and shelving are a perfect starting point.

I started by painting the shelf supports with Wal Mart’s bright white exterior paint.  Why?  Three reasons.  1.  It’s bright white, no need for color matching.  2.  We already had it on hand from a few mailbox touch ups.  3.  I hope exterior holds up to wear and tear better.  Back to the fun paint.  After slapping a coat of white up, I started with Dragonfly.

And I’m even more in love with it on the walls.  It’s bold, but not too bright.  Saturated, but not overwhelmingly dark.  It’s blue, it’s green, and it’s lovely.  Now I have to find time between packing and cleaning to finish what I started.  I feel confident using this on the walls of the master bedroom, too.  Happy camper, right here.

What do you think?  Is Dragonfly the new peacock?  I think we should start a trend.  Ha.

No Shortage of Yardage

Published on by Our Humble Abode21 Comments

Weather here in Montana was b.e.a.utiful this weekend.  On Saturday, we made had a bathroom shopping spree at Home Depot, spurred by a 10% off coupon and a great need for a tub.

That was Saturday morning.  Saturday afternoon we went up to the new house.  Ben wan’t in the mood to work on the bathroom, so he and Handy Sammy capitalized on the sunny day, working on cleaning up the yard.  Year(s) of neglect made the landscaping a hot mess.

Cleaning up loads of weeds and several dead plants.  And oodles of pine needles.

I know they hauled at least two pick up truck fulls of pine needles and such from the side yard, right here off the deck.

This little area was also a house plant graveyard.  Anything that died got tossed out here, sometimes in the planters, sometimes not.  A helpless duck planter (shown above) was an innocent victim of plant and planter tossing.

While we were over there, I asked Ben to cut down a scraggly tree and old stump.

He easily cut down the little Russian Olive tree.  The stump was rotten, so a several strong kicks and it fell apart.

After that, we called it a day and headed to the other house for dinner and a shower.  On Sunday, Ben started bathroom work while Handy Sammy got friendly with our weed whacker.  He asked what he could do, so we asked him to cut down the weed covered hillside.

Left-Yard-Last-Year

Now we can see the yard.  And all the things we’ll have to do to get it looking nice.

Right-Yard-Last-Year

We’re certainly no where near a nicely landscaped yard, but it’s one small step in the right direction.  Also, we met several of our new neighbors this weekend.  I think they were all very happy to see we’re cleaning it up, lessening the eye sore the previous owner left behind.

Make Light of the Situation

Published on by Our Humble Abode16 Comments

On Saturday, we made had a bathroom shopping spree at Home Depot, spurred by a coupon and a great need for a tub.

Four carts total including: three Kohler Highline toilets, one American Standard jetted five-foot tub, 12 sheets of concrete board, a stack of two by fours, a sink and tub faucet (Kohler Mistos) and a Rheem tankless water heater.  Our coupon took $200 off (that was the max) and we got another $300 off because Ben found the same water heater online for about $150 less than Home Depot’s price.  Remember, Home Depot has a ‘meet and beat’ policy.  So they matched the online price and beat it by 10%.  We love that policy.

I mentioned here that I was trying to talk Ben into my lighting plan.  Well, he has agreed to it.  What is that plan?  I want to use pendants in place of sconces in the bathroom.  Yes, I said pendants.  So we looked at HD’s options, seeing two things I like.  This Home Decorators bubble pendant for $70 each.

And this cylindrical glass pendant for $80 each.

While I liked the style, I’d like to stay under 100 bucks for both pendants.  Then I looked at Lowes, where I found a few more options.  I really wanted to use these pendants in the kitchen, and quite like them for a bathroom.  At $41 each, we’re under budget, but Ben has a requirement of using standard sized bulbs so we’re not on a wild light bulb hunt when we need replacements.  Too bad these are tiny little bulbs.

I do like this ORB cylinder pendant for $48.  Similar to the one above, but I like that the bulb is concealed.  We prefer to use CFL bulbs to cut down on consumption, but they’re not pretty.

The style is great, but we’ve got chrome faucets and other chrome accents.  Too bad this only comes in ORB.  I’m still considering it though.

I also like this polished nickel pendant for $48.  It’s chrome, a mix of traditional/industrial style, and takes a standard bulb.  However, I’m concerned this won’t give adequate lighting.

Right now, the only light in the bathroom is from two small sconces.  We bought a Sky Tube to add natural light, but we probably won’t have an overhead light in the ceiling.  So, what to do?

Do you have similar lights?  Are they bright enough?  Which style do you prefer?  Are you on board with pendants in place of sconces?  I’m excited for it.