We've Moved!

We've moved, literally AND virtually!

Check out our adventures at

  thisonesonthehouse.com!

Birchbox {July 2012}

How sad is it that the Glamour Birchbox made me feel more like an Upper East Sider than the Gossip Girl Birchbox had done?

Truthfully, most of my Gossip Girl Birchbox (from May, before I started documenting them here) ended up in the garbage. At $10/box, it was like throwing cash into a trash bin.

And when I was photographing this Birchbox for the blog, Mum asked me something unexpected: "What is this makeup sample box thing?"

It made me realize that I hadn't bothered telling my own mother that the Birchboxes are actually a wedding gift from my dear Mr. Cheddar. And all of my lamenting of our money woes probably seems weird next to my Birchbox posts and collection of nail polish. But yes; besides splurging on wall paint and fresh veggies, Hubs' only other way of spoiling me was with occasional bottles of nail polish and this, a year-long Birchbox subscription, which he is able to pay monthly.

And honestly, after that May Birchbox, I was starting to wonder if this whole thing was even worth it.

Happily, June's Birchbox was much better, and this one from Glamour is better still. I'm choosing to chalk up May's hiccup to the overall deterioration of Gossip Girl itself. Surely Birchbox can't be responsible for that sinking ship!

Anything with this many cheerful colors in one box is okay in my book!

I tried this lipstick already, it's a pink that's very close to my natural lip color, but shimmery and lightweight. It lasted quite a while, too!

I got excited about this shimmery lotion. I've never bought anything like this, because Florida humidity + my olive skin = natural (sweaty) glow, but I tried this on too and it was awesome! I was worried about the orange color but it really does blend better once it's on the skin. I was wearing it in this photo, which got a lot of unexpected compliments on Twitter yesterday! Maybe I should wear this stuff more often...

Ahh. The girly-girl in me swooned over an Oscar de la Renta scent in my Birchbox... and it was a lovely scent. But I don't wear anything stronger than a faint floral scent (the rose water from the last Birchbox was perfect for me, but my go-to is cherry blossom without going full-on 'smells like a funeral home') because I get easily tired of smelling anything stronger. Truthfully, I wish I could eliminate fragrances from my Birchbox altogether, in exchange for more nail polish or something. But my sister loved this scent so it's definitely not going to be wasted!

True to form, I geeked out over, arguably, the least exciting part of the box: the mud mask. But I've never treated myself to a mud mask! I KNOW! What's wrong with me? So now I have a perfect sample (it's pretty substantial, might get two uses out of this one!) to see if mud masks are my thing. 

And lastly, earbuds, which my sister promptly tried to pilfer (she's forever ruining headphones). It comes with a link to a Spotify playlist for those Glamorous gals who like listening to music while they're applying mud masks and dabbing on their Oscar de la Renta perfume. I'm definitely going to use them, and they're a fun, colorful summer accessory.

I'm curious how the boxes will change as the weather starts cooling off. These two summer ones have been tons of fun!

We Found Love in a Swedish Furniture Place

Who has two thumbs and has never been inside an Ikea?

THIS GAL.

Until yesterday! Yep, late on Tuesday night, my mum and I made the decision to do a quick 2-hour sojourn to Orlando in search of the Great Swedish Meatball and Furniture Emporium. 

And I was totally that dork with a camera, walking around and snapping pictures like a tourist. Whatever. It's Orlando. Everyone's a tourist there.

Unfortunately my body hated me on that trip. I started out the day with burning eyes from my contacts, which eventually led to a killer headache, and on top of all that, I was more tired than usual. I didn't get as many pictures as I wanted, and by the end of the four-hour shopping excursion, I was dragging worse than my trooper of a nine-year-old brother.

So I didn't get as many pictures as I normally would have, but I got enough!

My brother was in rare form. My mum and I were prepared to have an unhappy little camper on our hands for most of the day, but to our surprise, he was more enamored with Ikea than we ever could've expected! He had some pretty colorful commentary throughout the day.

One of the first things that drew an unexpected "Ooooh!" from him was this papery light fixture. I've seen it all over the DIY/reno blogs from Ikea enthusiasts, but I was always dubious when people would say "It's not as girly/flowery in person as it appears in pictures." Um, those are definitely paper flowers. But it turns out, they were totally right. Those ARE flowers but in person, they make such a fluttery spiky design that the girliness isn't predominant. This picture, of course, totally contradicts what I'm saying.

I was trying to capture the non-girly essence. This isn't something I'd put in my house, but I gotta say, I totally get the appeal.

For one shining moment, he thought Ikea sold afforable laptops. Alas, they are "eProps," which was so entertaining to him that he forgot to be disappointed.

"If you just bought one thing in this store, you'd be living in the lap of luxury."

I kid you not, he actually said that.

He sat down, contemplated the table setting, then said, "By the looks of things, we're having soup tonight!"

I forget the context of this one, but he was peering into the sink in this kitchen and exclaimed, "I LOVE clogging drains!"

Upon discovering (and loving the concept of) storage ottomans, he said, "We could use them to store orange juice and cookies!" 

Then he became convinced that every piece of furniture in this lap-of-luxury store had a hidden storage compartment. Including this weird woven chair.

I went bananas over this area rug with a tree ring pattern. The resemblance was not lost on Shane, who was determined to count the rings and determine the age of the rug.

(It was 18 years old.)

Believe it or not, Shane wasn't the only one geeking out over all Ikea had to offer.

Mum loved the idea of being able to slide these panels over the television to hide it when not in use.

And she loved every version of Ikea's attempt to make pleasing corner cabinets. She loved the upper turntables and the bi-fold cabinet doors on the lower one.

The three of us agreed that this kitchen was our favorite. We don't have deep drawers in ours, so it was an entirely new concept to Shane. 

And I loved this gas range and oven as well.

While I don't like the starkness of white marble on white cabinetry, this entire island had storage out the wazoo! The shelves on the sides are also a nice decorative touch (though anything on display there would be in clear danger of Lucy's tail).

I also jotted down a lot of the items I thought would work in our new house, but didn't have the presence of mind to snap actual pictures of them. Blogger fail. 

Image courtesy of Ikea

This is the Liatorp, a big square coffee table with a glass top and a pullout drawer that is divided into four spaces. It'd be perfect for what I have in mind for the living room.

Image courtesy of Ikea

I was eyeing the storage systems primarily, so these Pax wardrobes were calling my name. $500 for a new closet sort of makes me want to cry, especially since it looks like we'd need two of these, but it's good to know there are options out there.

Image courtesy of Ikea

This beautiful behemoth is called Elga. I'd like to get Elga just to refer to it by it's proper name, as if Elga is our head housemaid and we are characters on Downton Abbey. But more to the point, the size of this thing is more fitting for us, and at $540, it makes me feel less weepy than the concept of buying two Pax wardrobes.

Image courtesy of Ikea

And I was head over heels for this rug. It's only $20, as if it's made specifically for me.

Mum was still on the lookout for a futon for the guest/entertainment room, and while she found one she liked, she ended up leaving without it. (She does this a lot, whereas I take more after my dad and tend to buy things on the spot... when I have the money.) 

As she stood there contemplating it, along with the different mattress thicknesses and fabric choices, Shane and I were running low on energy.

After that, we went downstairs to the non-furniture goods. Mum bought six or seven new wall-mount picture frames to supplement our new family wall gallery while Shane sat on every piece of furniture in sight.

We dashed into the "As Is" section (most of it was display furniture that was damaged and sold as final sale) and then, after four hours of shopping, we finally got to the checkout line.

Thanks to my Ikea Family card, Shane got a free frozen yogurt cone at the bistro, and our Ikea adventure came to an end.

In a perfect world, I would've met the lovely Jenny on this excursion, but since the trip was so last-minute, it didn't work out this time. It turned out for the best, I was dead on my feet in the checkout line and wasn't myself for the rest of the night. 

I came home, plugged in my dead phone, took some headache medicine, and fell asleep. What an exhausting but awesome day.

Master Bathroom Floorplans

It occurred to Mr. Cheddar, during one of our lengthy texting sessions, that if we convert one of the bedrooms into a master bathroom, we're only gonna have one bedroom for our future bambinos. 

Uh... duh?

I guess I should go ahead and accept that my darling husband isn't gonna think of these things as soon as I do. He always has other things on his mind, and it's weird, but our ways of thinking are very different. Usually it makes for good collaboration, but it ended up causing a disagreement between us today.

I think it's worth losing that second upstairs bedroom for the sake of gaining a functional master bathroom.

He does not.

The conversation literally stopped there, since he had to leave his phone in the truck and head into work. (Sidenote: He said something about "wrestling in the mud" and I have to wonder what these cops get up to...?)

He wouldn't get his phone back for four hours, when he had his first break, so I stewed for the first hour, angry at this turn of events (and at the abrupt end to the conversation).

Then I started scrolling through design and DIY blogs for inspiration on what to do with our funny little bathroom.

I came across a picture on Young House Love of a house they'd crashed way back in 2008. (Oh my gosh, I was a junior in college! I was a baby!) The bathroom was especially interesting:

Image courtesy of Young House Love

Notice how the double vanity is in its own shallow nook? And just beyond that nook, you can barely glimpse a bathtub?

That got me thinking...

... it could totally work.

So I opened up Photoshop and started working on a floorplan of the bathroom itself.

The original (in all of its navy-blue-counters glory):

Until we find out what is in that black area by the shower stall, I'm gonna work around it and assume it's unusable space. For all we know, there's a water heater or unmovable duct work in that space.

But after quite a while of tweaking and editing, I came up with this:

Voila! A double vanity in our closet space!

I loved the idea of filling the former master bathroom space with a simple, elegant tub. Tub-and-shower combos are not something I want in the master bathroom. However, Hubs and I are both primarily shower-ers, so a standup stall was still necessary. Enter the wonky, weird shower stall.

Before you hit the "comment" button, I'll admit that this isn't my favorite plan. It sucks because I spent a lot of time working out the logistics of this one, but in the end, I don't love this layout.

Back to the drawing board!

I found this on Google and fell in love. A huge shower! Why not?!

Of course, one of the only hard-and-fast rules I have with this remodel is that the master bathroom must have a separate water closet (aka toilet room) to keep me and Hubs from trying to kill each other.

I looked around for more of this designer's work and landed on this beauty:

Image couresy of Feldman Architecture

Ding ding ding!

The half-wall at the end of the vanity would open up the space so much more, but it's not necessary. I'm actually pretty intrigued by the idea of leaving the full wall up. I'm also not brave enough to leave an entire wall inside a shower stall un-tiled, I've seen too much drywall damage from water in my lifetime.

So back to Photoshop I went!

I was joking around with the two showerheads when I emailed this to Mr. Cheddar, since the original inspiration had two showerheads. I think it looks more balanced aesthetically, but in practicality, I'm still not sold. And knowing us, we're just gonna slap some WalMart showerheads on there for the first couple of years until we save up some dinero for the good stuff. 

The second inspiration picture is more realistic to the size of the space we're filling up. Like I said, I'm notoriously horrible at spatial reasoning, plus I tend to be an enthusiastic person, so "HUGE shower!" to me is not necessarily a huge shower to anyone else. 

I also made the decision to eliminate the tub. As I said above, Hubs and I have functioned for 6 living-together years without the need for a tub. If the need arises for one (like a sore back that needs to be soaked, or a visiting/future baby that needs to be bathed) then there is a perfectly adequate tub/shower combo in the guest bathroom. Getting rid of that tub opened up this room to a lot more possibilities. 

Lucy gets bathed in tubs normally, since we trained her in an apartment sans garden hose, but a shower that size would be perfect to wash her and any future dogs, plus there's the bonus that she won't have to hop in and out of a tub for us anymore.

We thought we were done with the design stage (as done as we can be without solid measurements) until Mum asked to see my layouts after I'd emailed Hubs. After contemplating this one for a while (since it was Hubs' favorite) she suggested moving the toilet to where the linen closet is. "That way, that bulky plumbing only has to move a little bit instead of all the way across the room." 

BACK to Photoshop!

I actually had trouble figuring out storage placement for this one. It seems weird now, to put a random closet in that corner. I may actually leave it open and use the underside of the vanity to store linens, a la the very first inspiration pic in this post, and leave that area open to evolve on its own over time. After all, this house isn't lacking in storage space.

And of course, if we crack open that black space and find a big fat NOTHING in it, then I'll be back in Photoshop again. 

If any of these plans look grandiose to you, just remember that this is the space we're working with:

It isn't going to be a luxury bathroom suite like it could've been in the third bedroom, but it would still be more functional for us.

And if all through this post, you were thinking, "Wait... what about the closets?"

Um, yeah... that's a hurdle we still have to tackle.

The interesting twist to this is that I'm drawing up floorplans for a room that we won't even be starting for quite a while.. The more Mr. Cheddar and I talk text, the more it's starting to look like my original wish is coming true, and the kitchen is going to be our first major overhaul. 

But deciding once and for all that this bathroom reno is doable? That's gonna go a long way toward house planning. Now, having decided on the third design as our chosen bathroom, we can finally stop thinking of that third bedroom as "the future master bathroom," which opens up a whole other world of possibilities.

I feel like I should close this post by saying that all of these floorplans I've done are just fun mock-ups that I'm doing out of pure boredom and excitement. If you think I'm crazy, that's fair, these plans look like something an insane person would create. But look how great this bathroom evolved over just a few hours! Over the course of a few months, going back to it and tweaking and actually measuring things, it's gonna be awesome.

T-minus 10 days!

Wappoo What??

In my Family Room Makeover post, I snuck in this picture my grandmother painted and mentioned offhand that it was a landscape of the Intracoastal Waterway.

Well, I was wrong.

Today, my dad was going through the paintings in my grandmother's estate and happened to mention this painting above the mantel, again referring to it as "my favorite painting." I asked him why that particular painting was his favorite. After all, he has many of her seascapes, landscapes, flower renderings, and paintings of The Citadel (the college he and his brothers attended). He's always been partial to the shrimp boats or magnolia paintings... What was so special about this one?

It's one of those funny childhood memories, ones that we all probably have, of driving past the same point so often, and seeing a particular landscape over and over again, that it becomes part of your childhood. 

This painting is actually of Wappoo Cut, which runs between the Stono River and the Ashley River in Charleston, S.C. Dad said every time they drove over the Wappoo Cut bridge, this is the view they'd see. 

I've gotten one gorgeous painting from my grandmother's estate, and we are planning to bid on a few more. She painted thousands of watercolors and quite a few oil paintings as well, and was something of a local celebrity. 

New House Reveal!

Mr. Cheddar signed the lease yesterday at 1:00.

We are renting-to-own, as I've mentioned before, and it's a 70's style house in a small town outside of Tallahassee.

Now... prepare yourselves. The pictures Mr. C snapped on his iPhone are not very pretty. This house is not our dream house as it looks right now, but it has great potential if we stay diligent and budget properly for the next couple of years. There isn't a single room or aspect of this house that doesn't need work--it's a fixer-upper in every sense.

First, a rough floorplan I drew up on floorplanner.com (and then was forced to re-create and edit in Photoshop since Floorplanner has some irreversible glitches). 

I'm phenomenally horrible at spatial reasoning. Just... completely hopeless. So obviously, all of these dimensions are off (like I'm sure Guest Room #3 isn't that long, the master bedroom is certainly not that big) and minor details don't make a lot of sense. One thing that is accurate is the size of the bathrooms, especially compared to the rest of the rooms. Postage stamp-sized bathrooms! The homebuilders must not have spent a lot of time gussying up. But we'll get to that.

Now, on to some pictures.

Family Room Makeover

As I was putting the finishing touches on the guest room, we learned that my dad had to take an impromptu trip to Tampa on Monday and would be gone for two, possibly three days. 

My mum and I both perked up: That would be the perfect time to paint the family room!

Allow me to explain:

1) My dad's job takes him out of town for upwards of 200 days a year. We were hoping he would get sent out while I was living here so that we could get this project done, but instead he was "sent" right here to Jacksonville.

2) My dad is the sort of person who loves his routines. I get that from him, but not as severely. His main routine consists of coming into the family room after dinner, sitting in his recliner, and watching his flatscreen (usually Frasier or Cheers reruns) until he falls asleep. Then he goes to bed. Disrupting this routine, even for a couple of days, would result in a very grumpy father. 

Also:

That's our couch... in our foyer.

And our loveseat in our living room. That's pretty disruptive too (despite how much my brother loved climbing all over the furniture like a monkey) so it was best to do this when my dad was gone.

{Recipe} Keleguin

This is a special post, because this is a recipe that isn't very common, but is amazingly delicious. My mum got it from her mother, who was born and raised on Saipan, a small island located north of Guam. My dad calls the dish "Pelican" just to drive my mum crazy and I'm pretty sure my youngest brother is convinced we're actually eating pelicans.

I want to emphasize that this is by no means an "official" recipe. My mum does it the way she remembers her mum doing it, and her mum never had an exact method. As such, this recipe is also not precise--these are all estimates, but as close as we could get to accuracy. 

While this recipe takes a good bit of time and effort, the payoff is worth it, and it's a dish that gets better after some time in the refrigerator as well. I highly recommend trying it if you're feeling adventurous.

Ingredients:

12 boneless chicken thighs
lemon pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper for seasoning chicken thighs
4 cups freshly grated coconut
3/4 of an onion, diced
2 tbsp banana peppers
1 tbsp red pepper paste
3/4 c lemon juice
salt and pepper

Guest Room: Finished!

Whew!

Sorry for the delay in this post--this room was actually done on Saturday, but I wasn't able to get to it until now due to circumstances I will explain in another post.

So, without further ado, let's get rockin' on this final chapter!

Ahh, the trim. I had lofty goals for the trim. I was going to sand it all down and primer it and give it a nice bright white finish. But that was a corner that had to be cut, because I didn't have three hours to spend sanding down the baseboards by hand.

This is my personal tape trick I use when I have to touch up baseboards along the carpet. I hope not to have this issue in the foreseeable future, but we'll know more about that in a month or two.

I smash the tape down onto the carpet and use my fingertips to get it into the crevice against the baseboard. It's 95% effective, and it works for me.

Painting it was a bit of a nightmare. The paint beaded up (that's what I get for cutting corners) and refused to stick unless I went sloooowly around the room... twice. So, those three hours I would've spent sanding? I spent those doing two coats on the baseboard. But it still saved time (and elbow grease!).

I was also going to sand down the closet and bedroom doors before painting them, but that plan was scrapped too. The paint stuck to the closet door a little better, but it took three coats to get it looking white instead of yellow.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to paint the bedroom door. I figured people won't notice it anyway unless the door is shut.

This in-progress shot shows the difference in color... the front of the door is white, but the side of it (the one that closes) is still the old off-white version, as is the trim. It looked so dingy next to the beautiful deep blue-green.

And my baseboards were looking (sort of) pristine! 

My mum took this somewhat-blurry picture of me touching up along the trim (again!) with the green paint. It was easier for me to paint the wall along the baseboard than it was for me to paint the actual baseboard along the wall.

(And yes I have dipped my hair into my paint can/tray many times using this crouch-down-to-eye-level-with-baseboard method, it would be adorable if it didn't happen so much.)

I like checking the swatch against the actual paint when all is said and done, to see the accuracy of the color-matching as well as the accuracy of the swatch itself. This one was near-perfect.

Of course it's a bit greener in the picture than it is in real life, but at least you can tell the colors are close.

Finally the tape peeled off, the drop cloths were gathered up, and it was time to vacuum the edges of the room.

And finally, the furniture was moved back to the walls!

Voila! What do you think?

It's actually their guest-slash-entertainment room. Various game consoles, a cable box, and my brother's Vizio are in there for anyone to use. My mum and I already chose a futon to put on the opposite wall, and that lone bookshelf? Well, it didn't stay lone for long...

Remember when I said my mum has a slight book obsession? This is probably only 50% of the actual books she has around the house. Has anyone heard of this Magic Treehouse series? My youngest brother and sister swear by them, I think they're the modern histroy-based version of the Babysitters Club. Or Goosebumps. 

Up on the white shelves, we have more books (consisting mostly of A Series of Unfortunate Events and the Pretty Little Liars books she got secondhand) and some DVDs. The top shelf will have framed family photos.

Until we get the futon in here, my mattress-on-the-floor bed is public domain. Oh well, at least I get free reign of the Netflix channel on the Wii after all the little children have gone to bed.

That's the same black desk that was in Shane's room. He really did a number on his old desk, it's graffitied like the side of an old warehouse, so we figured we may as well let him keep it until he outgrows that charming stage.

Oh, and that's Lucy, she thinks this is her bedroom since she sleeps in it every night.

What? What was that? You want... comparison photos?!

We started it in a tropical storm and ended it in 100+ degree temperatures.

Goodbye, clouds! Hello, pretty blue-green paint!

And of course, as I showed above, the shelves have been re-installed.

I wish I could say I took a nice, long break after cleaning and repainting two bedrooms, but I did the exact opposite of taking a break--I helped to paint an entire family room and hallway in a matter of three days. Stay tuned for that post!