hippest easter eggs. ever.

We decided to wax creative this year with our easter egg decorating and busted out a Martha Stewart-inspired project. It was simple, fast, and it gave us a good excuse to go to the goodwill. {we love the goodwill.} All ties used were second-hand steals. Jon and I were super impressed that it actually worked. The secret is starting with uncooked eggs, and the magic is in the 1/4 cup vinegar added to the water when you boil the eggs. That's it!

You can use Martha's tutorial here, or just follow ours below.

{cut silk ties—they have to be silk—and plain white sheets into squares, wrap in silk first, then white sheet, then twist and bind with twist-tie. and thank you, jon, for being such a great hand model :) }





all ready to go...


boil for 20 mins


let cool, then the big reveal

looks like it's a tradition: President's Day = home improvement day

After Jon and I spent our whole President's Day holiday trying to give our little basement apartment some added character, I realized that's exactly what we did last year. The biggest difference being this year we did things that can come with us when we leave (which also means everything we did at our last place--paint, light fixtures, bathroom fixtures--were all landlord-reimbursed, and all handiwork this year came out of pocket).

Inspired on a trip last June by the way frames were hung at Thomas Jefferson's historic home Monticello, we spent the next 8 months mulling over the idea and finally made it happen. We LOVE the way it turned out, and it was much easier than the painting-the-kitchen-red project we tackled last year. It's a great way to display photos and give a big wall a nice gallery feel.
















This was so easy to do.

• we got the pole for $2.16 at Home Depot. It was plain silver something, and we searched good and hard to find the best deal. Watch out, there are at least 3 sections of raw pole materials, so don't settle on the first you find! I think we ended up getting this near the light fixtures, as opposed to the plumbing poles, curtain rod poles, or closet poles.
• our pole was 1/2" in diameter, 10 feet long. We had some guy cut about a foot off while we were there to save us the trouble at home, but anyone could take a hack-saw to it and get the job done.
• we bought brackets to match our pole diameter. These were also plain silver, and super cheap. We got a small bag of the kind that has a screw whole on each side of the bracket, and then another small bag of brackets with screw holes on only one side.
• we found screws to match the size of our bracket holes. They have sizers there in the screw section. Make sure they're long enough to give proper support for all the weight of the frames. I think we got 1.5" screws.
• black spray paint was essential for the Monticello look we were going for, we spray painted everything black when we got home
• we found some black ribbon at a craft store and just bought a whole spool so we wouldn't run out. I'm sure it would have been smarter to measure how much we wanted in advance, but we didn't want to take the time.

• before hanging the pole, we looped ribbon for each frame over the pole and tied it to the hook on the back of the frame (we did 8 frames). We lined up all the frames on the floor to make sure they would hang where we wanted them to
• with ribbons and frames attached, we put the pole on the wall, marked it for brackets, and screwed everything in. (this is obviously a 2-man job)

Here's the finished product that we LOVE:



























We also got a little crafty with an art print we'd bought on clearance over a year ago at a local art store that was closing. We wanted to spice it up a bit, so we got a blank canvas and some mod podge and after a few coats it almost looks like an original! And by almost I mean not really at all like an original, but you can tell that we tried. A little.

I saw on some mod podge tip site something about putting mod podge on both the surface you're putting the object on as well as the back of the object, and at least for me, that tip should not be applied to mod-podging paper, especially big huge ones that will start to warp and wrinkle before you ever finish coating it in time to put it on the canvas. I was almost in tears when I saw that my first attempt had nearly destroyed the whole project, but the good news is that the paper seems to tighten back up as it dries, thus mostly getting rid of the wrinkles.

Once I got over the wrinkles, I like it a lot. But I would probably use foam board next time instead of canvas, just because it's so much cheaper.

'Lest it be said that the Smiths aren't festive....

Since we live in a basement apartment, that doesn't leave much room for bright-lit festivities on the outside, so just so you know that we're cozy and un-scroogey on the inside, here's some of our humble Christmas get-up, including our very own first real tree, its ornament-less yet shameless manner of sporting popcorn and cranberry garlands, (homemade mostly by Jon, he did an awesome job), Christmas goodies, presents and tiny stocking for our little one, and our bitty little nativity scene from Argentina, reminding us of the real reason for the season. It really all comes and goes too quickly––I think our tree might hang out with us for a couple more weeks just to hold onto the season for a little longer. And to avoid the work of taking everything down when it seems like we just got it up. Plus the lights on the tree work as an amazing distraction for Van for hours. :)

Visitors--Round III (Sep. 2008)

As I mentioned recently, it's been nearly a year since we've seen any of our family, but then just a few weeks after we got to see Jon's parents, my dad came out to DC for a business conference, and we were SO excited to have him here! Unfortunately for him, we put him to work the second he stepped off the plane, and we didn't give him many chances to rest between then and when he got back on a plane 5 days later. To my credit, he did tell me before he came to keep in mind that he'd be willing to help with whatever we needed in our new place, so I was really just fulfilling his wishes (right?). :)

We picked my dad up from the airport and went straight from there to Home Depot to get enough carpet to cover the nasty lemon-yellow/lime-green tile that was previously our living room floor (let me mention that the realtor didn't even call it a living room, she called it a "rec room." Suffice it to say it needed some help to feel a little more like home). The landlord refused to carpet it, so we were determined to 'lay' our own carpet, meaning, put down padding and make the carpet fit wall-to-wall without actually tacking it down. Kind of like a big floating rug that's stuck in place, but better. Lucky for us, my dad's pro at every handy-man thing there is, so we bought the carpet, had the Home Depot guys saran-wrap it to our roof, and then dad and Jon had it laid in the room in an hour. They improvised near the fireplace and laid some nice leftover tile that we found in our storage room (laid, meaning really, just laying it on the floor. No grout, glue, nothing. Gotta please the landlord! and you can't even tell it's just floating there, see pic below).

It was awesome, and I can't tell you the difference it made. I didn't even recognize the room when I went back there. Before the carpet, Jon said once that we'd never spend anytime in that room, and after the carpet, we kept going back there just because something finally felt like a normal house. Thanks SOOO much dad!! You're the best! To see the before and afters, see the post on our move, or click here.

In with the new, out with the old (Sep. 1, 2008)

I'm finally getting around to documenting our life for the past 2 months! The biggest reason we've been so slow (on top of getting ready for the baby and having tons to do at work) is our move from one part of Arlington to another. It was only a 5-mile change of scenery, but it's taken us a while to get everything up and running. We still don't have everything on our walls (we're not used to having so many walls to do something with!!), and not everything's even unpacked yet, but it's definitely feeling more like home, and we're loving the change. (Thanks again to everyone who helped us with the move...it was amazing that we could do it all in one trip and one hour since there were so many people helping, we owe you guys big! Let us know if you need anything!!)

Here are some highlights of the new place:

• probably about 3-4 times the square footage we had at our last place (the last one was probably only 350 sq ft or so...you can only imagine), which means we finally have space for visitors!
  
• 2 bedrooms instead of 1 (room for Baby Smith on the way!!)
• we can stand up completely in our new shower--no bending, limbo-ing, or other such creative skills needed to get our heads wet under the shower head, and no hitting our heads on the ceiling
• a dishwasher that runs all by itself and isn't called Jon or Melissa
• washer and dryer in-house, greatest thing ever
• a living room! With a couch and everything! It's nice to have somewhere to sit if that's all we want to do for a change. Jon said "I might even just watch some TV every now and then now." Not that he has, but if he wanted to now, he now has a nice place to do so.
• this place was almost fully furnished by the generosity of others after we arrived here. Thank you SO MUCH to all of you who gave away things you no longer needed at the perfect time for us to fill our empty rooms. We'd have nothing in here if it weren't for all of you!
  
• new carpet in the living room and the baby room (laid by Jon, my dad, and myself, but new nonetheless, see later post for details on our carpet laying skills)
• great neighborhood with tons of parks, super close bike trails, not to mention the hospital, dr., and future pediatrician just a couple blocks away for all our new baby needs :)
• our church is only 6 blocks away
• it cut Jon's commute almost in half
• our neighbors are totally friendly
• there's a high school nearby for all our football-game-going dreams to come true at

Saying goodbye to our first apartment:






















And here's the new one! (we're in the basement)

















And here's for the photo update of the new place I promised ages ago. Some are before and after shots (mostly to show the difference the carpeting made in the living room, we LOVE it) and the rest are just to show the general layout of everything (except the 2 bedrooms).