Designing My Life

I suppose you wonder where I went after I got married. Well we didn't run off to some far away land or drop off the face of the planet. I have been doing some soul searching and really have been settling in to married life.  It's been nice being all snuggly after work with the hubby and the Turkster. It has really been a time for personal connection, family and reflection.

For the past five years, I have really been stuck professionally. After I lost my graphic design job in 2007, I bounced around with temp jobs, did the waitress/bartending thing and now have been at Goodwill of Southeast Wisconsin for the past three and half years. I really do like my current job. Do not get me wrong there. It is really opened my eyes to this whole DIY and repurposing items phenomenon that many of us have really caught on because of Pinterest. It has also gave me a rewarding job that working for a non-profit and learning so much about retail. I still work here but I want to let you know, any projects I have shown where I have used a Goodwill purchased product. I have always given you the price of the item in the total of the project. I will say, I get an employee discount. Yes, it helps overall in the cost for me. But what I do want you to know, I always give the price of the project if you did not have the discounts so they are always very inexpensive for anyone to do. Goodwill also doesn't pay me for any kickbacks or anything. I only make money because I work hard for them. No adds, no extra promos. They are just a wonderful organization. AHH, feeling better for airing my dirty laundry. Well not really, but that is my disclaimer.

So back to my point, I can admit, I have been down on my awesome self for the past few years and Max has really been a wonderful and supportive boyfriend, fiance and now husband. I had to find a way to get my mojo back. After a lot of thought of wanted out of life and what I originally wanted in a career. In college, I always wanted to be a web designer and own a design company. That is why I majored in Graphic Design. Unfortunately, after graduation, I could only get jobs in print and slowly, but surely, the resume gets farther and farther away from my dream and my skills fell away by the wayside.

I made the decision to make a change. I was sick of sitting letting my life pass me by the wayside. It was time for a change. The world of web design had changed since I left school in 2005 with the addition of mobile applications and devices. I needed to change as well.

You may have seen this Instagram photo. That was my precursor.

Without even consulting my hubby, again he really is amazing, I signed up for a year long technical diploma program of Web and Mobile Application Design from Milwaukee Area Technical College. It was on like Donkey Kong.

I'm taking as many classes as I can online or as night classes so I can still work full-time. This time next year, I hope to have a new career and feel amazing about myself again. I already feel invigorated and motivated again. I want to BE something again. Be prepared to changes to the blog as I brush up on old and learn new skills.

I also want to do more with this blog. I want you the reader to be more involved and be showcased more.

Look out world. Maureen Dolezal Anderson is back!

2012 New Year's House Resolutions

With three out of our four Christmas celebrations out of the way, we start to reflect on 2011 and look forward to 2012 with even more excitement. Max is more excited since he's sure the world won't end next December. I'm still a tad bit skeptical but thanks to NASA I feel a little better about it. Might buy some supplies just in case people get crazy for a day or two. Anyways, a little reflection.

At this time last year, Max and I were just randomly thinking should we resign our old lease or start entertaining the idea of buying a home. I had no idea we were in for such a crazy adventure this year. We hooked up with the buyer's agent in March and by May owned our home!

Then all things we accomplished in a year. Wowza!
Here is a vast, but definitely not complete list, of some our projects:

- Bought a new refrigerator and had many issues including cabinetry and store mishaps
- Got a roommate, then he moved out
- Replanted Hosta
- Planted a "garden"
- Took seven trips to Sears to get a working lawnmower
- Redid most of our master bedroom in a weekend
- Refinished the bedroom's hardwood floor
- Painted and trimmed both bedrooms
- Completely tore down and rebuilt both bathrooms...ugh just thinking about it
- Took out a wall in the living room
- Painted part of the living room (formally spoken of as the dining room until we decided on the eat-in kitchen space)
- Started composting, still working on getting Max fully on board with it
- Got crafty
- Got to experience all of Mr. Fix-It-Mark's full throttle forward work ethic
- Replaced all the hallway doors with fancy white ones
- Found some great furniture deals at Goodwill, Salvation Army and estate sales

Quite a list for just randomly thinking, "maybe we should buy a house" a year previous!

At our "family" Christmas dinner with just Max and myself, we brainstormed everything we wanted to get done this year. This might be a little ambitious but worth trying.

1. Re-do our lawn and landscaping. 
Sounds simple enough, right? Well there is a lot we need to do with this beast.

- Regrade our front lawn. Although we like the humor of our Halloween gravestones this year, year round, it looks like a hot mess.
- Remove thorny corner bush and plant something a little more attractive.
- Add more plants/bushes throughout front yard. Maybe look into Stein's professional landscape design.
- Replants new flower beds. All of our current ones are over grown and not cute at all.
- Research better urban gardening techniques to prevent lettuce "trees".
- Install invisible dog fence for Turk.

2. Make a patio.
We love to grill, but right now we are limited to huddling around a tiny grill in our driveway. Not ideal.

- Research most cost-effective building materials (brick, stained concrete, pavers, ect.).
- Purchase new grill.
- Create privacy panels so our neighbors aren't raining in on our party, unless we invite them of course.

3. Finish painting all upstairs walls.
Pretty self-explanatory but we still have the hallway, kitchen and half of the living room to do yet.

4. Refinish all our hardwood floors.
This includes our second bedroom, hallway and living room.

5. Redo a piece of furniture every 1.5 months.
This is sort of a personal goal since I don't foresee Max refinishing furniture, but I keep hauling in great pieces but not touching them. So I want to finally start making them look like they actually belong here.

6. Start putting artwork and photos on the walls.
Again, self-explanatory but this place is really bare and we need to start looking like we live here.

So what do you think? Achievable? What are your house resolutions for 2012? Big plans?

I leave you with a fun YouTube video I found of Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt - What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Side Note: I immediately went and watched (500) Days of Summer again after seeing this video. Comic source here.

Pluto

No, I didn't fall of the face of the planet. Like Pluto, I'm still there, just hanging out in the back of the blogging world.

Max and I had a fun weekend at a Badger game with some college friends of mine and now my camera is MIA... We have been keeping up with the projects though. I will try to post photos with his camera tonight! Bathroom is basically done except for towels and such. The main work is finished! Can't wait to show you all with the stories of what followed.

Until then, here is a reminiscing photo of Turk two years ago. "Baby Turk" as I like to call him. Come on, who can resist cute puppy photos? OK, maybe cat lovers. Anyways! He's three months old here and it was the day after I got him. He's about 12 lbs. and very tiny. This is basically a cat's bed.

Also, like us on Facebook if you haven't already. Even if posts are updated, home improvement ideas are always getting posted!

Dining Room Wall Color Reveal

So you got a sneak peak of the dining room wall in the Halloween decor with my little pumpkin "friends". Now the Glidden Cobalt Blue gets its full debut dining room style. OK so this doesn't look currently like a dining room. We I have been diligently searching the local thrift stores and Craigslist for a nice farm-style table with so far no luck. Mom even found an option of choose your own legs and add them to any top online...still an option. Until then, the room houses our patio furniture for our non-existent patio. Fair trade right? The orange I even want as an accent color in the living room even gets carried through so it works, for now.

Turk is looking very handsome for all of you, you are welcome.

This sweet bud vase is a great centerpiece I scored on clearance at Wal-Mart for $8. A few sticks from a tree outside and BOOM.

These photos were all taken from the living room looking into the dining room.

Here is a reverse view looking into the living room from the dining room. Also a boudior view of the TV.

Here you can see how the two rooms flow together with the living room accent wall and the dining room. Pretty sweet, huh?

 Fin. (the end.)

How have you used color to spice up your place? What bold color choices have you made? Too scare to go all out? Accent wall more your style? Let us know!

Pinspiration Wreath

The weather this week really started to feel like fall. With that I was feeling crafty. Knowing crafts haven't always been my strong suit, I used a little bit of Pinspiration from an earlier football post to get this crafting party started.

I was inspired by this wreath from Etsy shop Itz Fitz!:

Source: etsy.com via Maureen on Pinterest

Now I have never made a wreath before so I figured if I screwed this up I would only be out a few dollars.

I only needed a few supplies; a wreath base, felt and yarn.

I started by interlacing a few strands of yarn through the wreath base and tying the ends together to form a hanger. I double it up for strength

I then tied one of ends of the yarn ball inside of wreath base securing my start. Then I began to wrap the wreath keeping the ends tight and close but not too tight where there would be a ton of tension. This went on  for hours.

The whole time I was wrapping, Turk took an hour and a half nap on my flip flop. Hey, seems like a good pillow right?

This was the wreath after two and a half hours.

It took three and a half total to get it fully wrapped. My patience was wearing a little thin at this point.

Finally, I moved on to decorating. The design called for felt flowers so I used online tutorials from here and here for a rose and a peony. Super easy considering I've never made anything like that before and now can apply the technique to many other things other than wreaths.

The next step in my Packer wreath was the logo. I Google imaged the logo and printed off the basic styling. Using three steps, I traced each part of the logo on to the appropriate felt color. After each step cutting that color away from the logo.

I then was left with this. To make the logo sturdier, I cut a piece of recycled cardboard and glued it to the back.

All the pieces were then just attached with a hot glue gun. Simple, minus the time consuming yarn wrapping process.

Here are the results:

Looks very nice with my snazzy wreath hanger I found on clearance at Pier 1 for $2.88. The wreath is a little thinner than the photo. Going further and learning from the process I would use a wider base wreath if I was wrapping it with yarn again or forgoing the process all together and just gluing the flowers directly on.

Here it looks with my end of summer dying flowers. I blurred out our house numbers just because I know you all want to stalk us. *winky face

Project cost:

Wreath base: $1 (Dollar Tree)
Yarn: $2.89 (JoAnn Fabrics)
Felt: $1.36, used four at $0.34 a piece (JoAnn Fabrics)

Total Cost:  $5.25


What have you been inspired to do this summer? What team/season do you have to make wreaths for?

Note: I watched the entire second season of The League on Hulu while doing this project. It took awhile...

How To Get A Dog To Take Pills

Alas, Turk is sick. About a week ago, he started going to the bathroom in the house quite a bit. He had stopped going inside way over a year ago with the exception we left him home alone way too long. This made me suspicious something was wrong with him. Max played it off as he was just being a naughty puppy. Then a couple of days ago I noticed he was scratching at his ear and moving his head funny. That was a tip off that something was definitely wrong. So possible urinary tract infection and ear infection?

I'll be the first to say, I haven't been a very good dog mom and it had been about a year and a half since he had his last shots. Around the time he was supposed to get them we started the house search and it was put on the back burner of things to do. I knew I wanted to find a veterinarian closer to our house and someone would treat him more like a patient than just a slab of meat like his old one in downtown Milwaukee, St. Paul Veterinary Clinic. We found one about a mile from our house the Advanced Veterinary Care Clinic. It was a smaller practice so I was hoping we would get more specialized care.

Come to find out, Turk had an ear infection and would need to have a professional ear flush before we could start antibiotics. Since he doesn't like vets very much, first they had to muzzle him just for the exam and then for the flush he had to be sedated. He had to be left there all day to ensure everything went well. We made sure to get him up to date on all his shots and heart worm medications as well. Basically, like an oil change for the dog. ha.

After his rough day, this was our little buddy...

Pretty adorable using his dad's foot as a headrest. This is also a typical 30 minutes at home after work. Max + Turk + beer + video game

So now little Turk has to take an ear ointment twice a day and two antibiotic pills twice a day for 10 days. On the plus side, if he did have a urinary tract infection, his ear infection medication will clear it up as well.

To go along with the post title, how do you get a dog to take pills?! Lots of people will just shove them down the dogs throat or try to put them in their food. The throat thing isn't pleasant for the dog or you. Many times the dog will eat around the pill if it is in their food.

A way I have learned to get a dog to eat pills that hasn't failed me yet.

Peanut butter.

Super easy steps:

1. Take a normal dog biscuit and smear a little peanut butter on it. Try to have a jar just for the dog because you don't want dog biscuit particles in your own PB & J's later.

2. Smash pill far enough down so that it covers the top of the pill and gives it the peanut butter taste.

3. Let dog devour.

I also want to include more videos on this blog. Although I don't have a fancy HD Flip video camera yet, Christmas present anyone, here is little demonstration.

Now get well Turk!

So I've Been Lazy

I want to say that I've got so much more done on the house, but I'd totally be lying. I started this painting project over a month ago and am currently waiting for part to finish drying to put the final touches on it. While I wait, I wanted to give you a preview of what I have been neglecting.

So remember my free paint from Glidden here? Well it arrived probably 4 days after I had filled out the form online (which is awesome on their part) and I clearly underestimated the size of a pint of paint. A pint is perfect for painting furniture, abstract art or an accent wall! I still want to paint the dining room a rich blue color and knock out the (shabby) drywalled partition between the living room and dining room (seen below). But the question, how was I going to tie the two rooms together.

The accent wall was the perfect solution! So taking my freebie paint I decided to tackle an accent wall in the living room with the plans to color match the dining room later.

Here is the accent wall being painted "Cobalt Blue" which is a shade darker than the annoying fish half-bath from before (now fish less).

Just for fun, this is the other side of the room. Guitar Hero anyone? I know what you are thinking, "What is this, 2007?"

Before I could paint of course, I had to fill in hole marks from the previous owners. I have never Spackled in my life before so I was happy to use Dry Dex since it was more like "Spackle for Dummies". Pretty basic stuff, goes on pink when wet and dries white. The hardest part was scrapping the excess off evenly.

My lovely assistant was no help and decided to take a nap. I suppose he does need 18 hours of sleep a day...

A little sanding and I was on my way to the priming and paint...

So long story short, this project then sat for almost a month with all the out of town adventures we had. Apparently I felt the watching of many Netflix TV shows was much more important after work as well.

On a sad note, our roomie Scott is moving out after life handed him a different path. He will be missed!

Yankee Doodle Dandy

First, I would like to apologize for being a bad blogger. I have been quite lazy about writing the last two (gasp) weeks.

We have had some of the issues fixed from the previous post. We got the lawnmower back again. It worked for about 2 seconds and broke a THIRD time. This time the wheel fell off. Figures right? At this point, I just find this hilarious. Max asked the sales people at what point do we just get a replacement and the Sears repair place said after four repairs... Hopefully, lucky number four happens soon and I can get a new mower. Max also got the toilet tightened so no more leaking pee water.

Summer is in full swing which is making our house projects slow down substantially. Balancing work, family and friends while squeezing things in has been much harder than I expected. I started a paint project three weekends ago and still haven't been able to finish it. Bad Moe, bad! Our living room has just been sitting with the drop cloth waiting for me to get off my butt and give you all the reveal. I'll get you the update as soon as its done. Hopefully later tonight....

Another thing to slow us down on projects is all the trips to the cabin this month. This July has five weekends and three of them are at the cabin; 4th of July, Girls' Weekend and our annual friends weekend. One of them is my grandmother's 90th birthday party, so in other words, we are swamped!

The first weekend at the cabin so far was the Fourth of July. Highlights included campfire karaoke, s'mores, outdoor ping pong, babies swimming, pontoon boat rides, tanning and new friends.

Max's neice, Claire, has gotten very good at giving high-fives or "choca los cincos" as our new friend, Santi, said.

I made a Fourth of July favorite for many, the Flag Cake. Easiest festive recipe ever... Yellow box cake (follow normal directions). Decorate with a layer of Kool-Whip on top and add blueberries and strawberries... Done. If you are the type of person who must have a recipe to go off of then here you go.

Outdoor ping pong in action. Awesomeness.

Isaiah is learning the joys of patriotism.

Unfortunately, Turk is not quite as happy with his patriotism.

Max and I at the local fireworks display with the roommate and his girlfriend (and Turk). We forgot that Turk isn't quite used to the loud sounds and freaked out just a bit. Sorry bud.

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

How did you spend your Fourth of July? Try a new barbecue recipe? Canoe down an old favorite river? Had your kids first sparkler experience?

I Really Am My Father's Daughter

In honor of Father's Day, I wanted to show how I have incorporated what my dad has taught me over the years as a Midwestern farmer's daughter. My dad Michael, was a farmer for most of his life. He was born into farming in Indiana and moved to Wisconsin when he was 12 and then took over the family farm when he was in his twenties.  

Dad and his girls 1987 (I'm the older girl on the left)

 I know gardening and full out farming are two different things, but knowing one definitely helps the other. First thing, to do a proper weeding, you need to kill the roots. So when I clipped all the weeds down here, I tried to get the roots with them. Many of the weeds were too deeply rooted for me to pull so I waited until they didn't have a way to get water down to the roots to try again.

This time, many of them came up more easily. I still think some of them had roots all the way to China, but they came up eventually. That pile next to me is just roots. Insane right! Longest one I found was around 16". By the way, that might be one of the most unflattering pictures of me ever so enjoy.

Our irises finally bloomed as well. They were a light purple with yellow tips or bearded iris cultivar called a 'Mary Todd'.

After the soil was all de-weeded and ready, to go I went back to Stein's to get veggies. As you remember from here and here, I tried to do a completely organic garden but ended up cooking my seedlings which was an epic fail on my part. My mom suggested just to try again next year and start with started plants. Since we have been so busy with everything else and I didn't get around to buying plants on time. Sometimes good things come to those who wait. I saw in the weekly flyer that all vegetables were 50% off. So when I headed in I was thinking my local store was going to be really picked over already. Not even close. I got really great mature plants, some who were already about to be ready to start bearing produce!

Turk helped with comedic relief while I worked. He ended up whining like a pansy it was too hot for him, which apparently was 70 degrees and he had shade and water...

Since the garden is also going to be right next to the patio (when we make it that is), I wanted to arrange it in a way that would still look pleasant while being functional. So late in the season I was leery to plant seeds at all but thanks from some encouragement from my mom, I decided to plant them anyways. "What's the worst that could happen, you get corn?" Thanks mom. The back row along the house is sweet corn. The next row in are broccoli plants. In the center of the garden is a strawberry plant. I have alternating white and red onions in front of that. To line the sidewalk, I planted seeds of spinach and added red and green leaf lettuce. Not too shabby for urban gardening huh? I would like to thank Better Homes and Gardens for giving me the idea to make it look nice. They have different garden plans for anything for any type of area.

On the alternate side of the back walk, I ended up adding the caged tomato, pepper and pea plants. I added a few more herb varieties next to the already sprouting chives and added a mint Mojito plant for our roomie Scott and cabin friends and relatives.

As you can see, the hot pepper plant is almost ready to start producing and the bell pepper and tomato plants are already flowering which mean they will be starting to creating fruit. So excited! Maybe I'll need to learn to start canning at the end of summer to have veggies all winter... I did see all the stuff I would need at our local Menards.

Last thing on "the list" complete!

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there!