Weekend Roundup

I can honestly say that I am extremely proud of myself over what all I accomplished over the weekend. It was a very productive weekend indeed!

To start with on Friday night my sister, our husbands, and myself helped a friend move. Someone at work asked me “doesn’t helping friends move end in your 20’s?” In most cases that would be true but in this case, she needed our help and we gave it. It was a good feeling to be able to help out a friend in need. You see we happen to have a very nice covered trailer we use to haul our motorcycles and it just happens to be quite handy to move other things as well. Since she didn’t have access to a truck she asked if we could help and we did. It was only one trip with just the big pieces of furniture that she was unable to fit in her SUV so it took an hour at the most.

On Saturday the hubs and I went to my parents and started the project of tiling their backsplash. My dad had just redone their kitchen (replaced counter tops, rebuilt some cabinets, rearranged a few things) but they had just the blank wall for the backsplash. I offered to pay for and install a tile one instead. So, a couple of weeks ago we went to the store and picked out the tile and this weekend we got it installed. The work wasn’t that hard actually to lay the tile. The prep work actually took the majority of the time. I did take a before picture but not on my camera so I don’t have that one handy. However, I did take a “middle of the road” picture (aka after the tile was laid but before we grouted) and then of course a final picture. I still need to go back and take a really final picture after my parents replace all the outlets and face plates and she puts her stuff all back. But, in the meantime, here are a couple of the pictures I did take. This is my mom making us a peanut butter and jelly sammy before we got started on the grouting. The tile is a recycled glass so not only does it match and is it super pretty and neutral, it’s eco-friendly to boot!

And, here is the tile after grouting (but before caulking, putting in the corner-round trim, and finishing up the outlets).

I told my parents I think we need to install a couple of under cabinet lights now too. With the dark counter tops and then the dark tile it is really dark in the corners. I think one of those small under cabinet lights would look so good and just really highlight the tile. Isn’t it really pretty though? I have to give my husband a huge grandiose shout-out too. He and I did all the work on this so he pretty much gave up his weekend to help out my parents and I sure do appreciate that. I married a winner!!!!!

Now, while just accomplishing the tile backsplash was really enough of an accomplishment for the weekend, that isn’t all I did actually! On Saturday after we got the tile up I went home and did a few more projects of my own. I hung up some more things on my entry room gallery wall and it is almost complete. It’s complete enough though to show you what it looks like. I have just a few more finishing touches to call it done and when it is, I will do an entire post on the gallery wall from start to finish…but in the meantime, here it is now:

The things I got done this weekend are the turquoise key plate hung in one of the frames at the top, the white curly frame hung inside the rectangular gold frame on the bottom, and the gold curly frame hung lengthwise on the far left by the chalk board. I have just 2 more empty frames to fill and then a few finishing touches and this puppy will be done!

After I hung those up, I finished yet another project as well. I’d seen these on Pinterest and other places and just had to have one. I’ve been collecting old salt and pepper shakers for awhile because I plan on making these not just for myself but for gifts for friends for Christmas too. This was a super easy, relatively inexpensive project. I made this “bouquet”:

I put this in my new cubby in the living room. Here she is in place now:

I have a full tutorial on that project that I will post later today or tomorrow with pictures on the entire process.

Then to finish out the projects I made myself an earring holder. If you are a Pinterest fan I’m sure you’ve seen these all over Pinterest so I didn’t take a whole slew of pictures throughout the process because I’m sure there are tons of tutorials on this project all over. I know they are super trendy right now but I just loved it so I decided to make my own. I just stapled pretty lace in strips in an empty frame and hung it up by my vanity to hold earrings. It looks so pretty and now I can see all my “non set matching earrings” at once. Earrings that match an entire set (earrings, necklace, and bracelet) are all stored differently but I had a bunch of earrings that are singles and I would constantly forget what I had so this is great. I used the lace trim from Stampin Up and a frame I got at a garage sale about a year ago for a $1.00.

So, those were all my Saturday projects…in addition to the tiling and 4 loads of laundry, watering my flowers and herbs, straightening up the house, watching a movie I hadn’t seen, and spending a lovely dinner at home with my hubby. On Sunday I was a lot more tired when we finished the grouting but I still did another 2 loads of laundry and one more project, but I didn’t finish it enough to take pictures, so that’s another post to come later. Hopefully I will finish it up tonight and can post about it later in the week.

So, what about you? Did you have a productive weekend? I am really happy with myself and I felt good this morning waking up and starting my work week over knowing I didn’t just stay on the couch all weekend. Yay me!