VOTW #10, Laundry List of To-Dos

Howdy, Folks!  Yep, it's Friday again, Friday evening even here in CA.  Sorry I've been slow to get this up- busy family night last night!

So, welcome, to another edition of VOTW: Victory of the week!

As I said last week, and the 8 other times before (can you believe this is week 10 of 2010 already?!  ALREADY?) to goal of VOTW is to to remember the small (or large!) Victories that we all have each week.  It's good for morale, stress, and our attitude to remember that sometimes, it's the small things in life that matter.  So, whether you're proud of a recipe, a project, your kids, or whatever, link up and let the world (well, at least the blog world!) know.

I know I've built these grand to-do lists before, but for some reason this weekend I seem to be extra motivated.  Go figure, huh?  Maybe it's all the extra sleep I've been getting.  :)

Anyway, my victory won't really be counted until about 9:00 on Sunday night, but for now, I'm working off of the lofty goal of doing the following things this weekend (some starting RIGHT NOW- well, after I post this...)

1. See if my buffet is still available (and offer $50 for it)
2. Find a basket for off season sheets for the linen closet (and fill that awkward space)
3. Paint ceilings that are above where the flooring will be installed and popcorn was removed (I've resigned to doing the other spaces later)
4. Get my Spring wardrobe weeded out, and go shopping (if necessary :)  )
5. Browse HomeGoods, clearance section first of course.  New linens for the bed are calling my name.
6. Check out lease options on some of the cars from this post
7. Fix the car seat protector (for the dogs) 
8. Read, sort, and recycle magazines

What am I doing tonight?  Sitting down with these magazines:

 

That's 2 Verandas, 2 Everyday, 2 Good Housekeeping, 3 catalogs, 1 Better Homes & Gardens

Oh, and for that awkward storage shelf I was talking about?  Yea, it had popcorn on it too!  The door was never re-attached after a few weekends ago, but either way, it doesn't go all the way to the ceiling.  Totally weird.  That's the space I need a basket for.  :)

  

 It's like the smallest linen closet ever.  sigh.  But, that's why I'm reorganizing, and using wasted space!

Sorry for the bad photography- used the iPhone tonight.  Another symptom of being lazy.  I promise to do better this weekend :)

So, what's your victory this week?!  Link up you fabulous friends!  We had 29 links last week- are we gonna beat that?!  

Have a fabulous weekend everyone!

PS:  Did you see that we're almost up to 300 followers of D-A... (295 this minute!) Holy Moley!  And yes, I have totally slacked on getting our 200th follower up.  Now, it feels like it's going to be a let down that I'm scared to post.  :(  But, I promised, and I'll get that going soon.  :)

VOTW #9 & The recaps 6, 7, & 8

Here we go with the 9th edition of VOTW: Victory of the Week!

We do this every week here at Design-Aholic, and the goal is always the same: These links allow us to remember the small (or large!) Victories that we all have each week.  It's good for morale, stress, and our attitude to remember that sometimes, it's the small things in life that matter.  So, whether you're proud of a recipe, a project, your kids, or whatever, link up and let the world (well, at least the blog world!) know.

:)

So, my victory this week?  As I mentioned in my posts this week, I've been tired beyond belief.  I'm just excited to recap the last 3 weeks of VOTW.  Here we go!

Week 6, there were 9 Links:

Missy @ The Little Green Bean made an awesome Memory Necklace:

 

Carolyn @ My Backyard Eden had a grand old time with her power tools after trimming out her new bathroom!

Rocio @ Casa Haus made a real life topiary, growing and all!

 

Week 7 brought 23 links- 23!!

 

Leanne @ Organize & Decorate Everything showed us how to spell it out in frames:

 

Golf Gal @ Tales of a Golf Gal shows us how to Make (yes Make!) baby crib bedding.  Um, bookmark?  Yes!

Bird @ Bird Crafts showed us how she transformed those thrift store finds into amazing pieces:

 

Chelsea @ This Fresh Fossil repainted her WHOLE living room!

 

Erin posted about taming her long necklaces on this great project:

 

Week 8 also brought 23 link-ups!

Over @ A Crafty Amateur, we learn how to really replace a seat in a chair.  I could have used this about 5 months ago!

By far, my favorite was over at Simply Stafford, where we were shown how to SPRAY PAINT (yes, SPRAY PAINT!) our kitchen cabinets.  Check, and check.  :) Can you believe that spray paint was used here?!  I can't, but I'm elated!

This yummy oreo ice cream delight was shared from over @ Kuzak's Closet from her birthday!  (Yay Feb birthdays!)

Karli @ The World Spins Madly On did this fabulous full on chair re-vamp:

 

And I have to show this one by Stephanie @ My Frugal Lifestyle where she uses cereal boxes as magazine holders, because I'm seriously dealing with the magazine explosion in my place right now.  Come on Z, eat up that Life Cereal quicker!

 

So, now, come on, with all that inspiration YOU were bound to have something you're proud of.  It doesn't have to be just from last week, so as I stated earlier what this party's goal is, link up folks!

(oh, and grab a button if you don't have one already- code is on the right side at the top of the page!)

Have a great weekend all :)

VOTW #8 Smooth Sailing...

Welcome back, everyone!  It's that time again for VOTW: Victory of the Week!  (Grab a button below, or the code on the right frame.)

Because I've had some time off earlier in the week, I've been blog surfing and I know there's awesome stuff goin on out there!  So, each and every one of your should have something to post this week.  Can you believe that I'll have 3 weeks to recap?  You all amazed me last week with the links you posted, and the number!

So, as I mentioned last week, we had the ceilings scraped of all their popcorn nastiness.  Here's some photos as you requested to show the progress.  We've yet to prime or paint, but I already love it 1,000 times more.  :)

 

Here's a closeup of the new knock down texture...

 

In some areas, you can see the tape lines from the drywall

 In our bedroom, we had to take the blades off the fan, which is actually in the center of the room, but the photo angle is off :)

 

In the office.  Guess we'll have to do some touch-up painting on the walls too.  They were nice enough to repair though

 another closeup.   Ahh, so much more relaxing than the popcorn!

Anyway, yes, this is still our VICTORY of the week! 

And, another thing I'm super proud of?  The coding, and blog changes I've made recently, most notably, the small party buttons on the right frame, and small blog buttons on the left that show the sites I've been featured on.  (if you want to do this too, you can read the post HERE where I spill the beans on how to do this after some coaching from Kim @ Cheap Chic Home)  I can't believe some of my projects have been featured on such prestigious sites!

So, now, don't be shy, link up YOUR victory of this week, last week, last year or whenever.  What are you proud of?!

And, yes, I promise that the 200th follower giveaway post will be up in a day or two!  You guys shock and amaze me- now we're nearly at 250 followers, 25% more than the number to reach the giveaway in the first place!  Wowsers!

Have a great weekend everyone!

VOTW #7 + Popcorn Scraping

Hey Everyone!  Happy Friday- actually, Happy LONG WEEKEND.  Woohoo!  I have a 5-day weekend, and yes, I'm gloating.  :)

I've got so many things planned over the next 5 days.  I think I need to get some sleep, after just thinking about it!

So back to the post, now that I've made you jealous...

My small victory for the week is the decision we made to hire out the ceiling finishing- scraping popcorn, repair, and texturing.  We'll do the priming and painting ('cause really, $1000 just to paint the ceilings when the whole thing only cost $1650?  um, no thanks.)

 

 

Remember when I told you about how we tried the scraping of the ceilings a few months back?  Or showed you how that ugly stuff looked next to all the pretty wall colors we have in the house?  Well, it turns out that our vaulted front room ceiling was so daunting, we decided against finishing the project ourselves.  We actually did over half the house ourselves, but the last room just was so messy, I wasn't overly excited to do it again.  Had all the ceilings in the house been standard height, it could be done.  It's not difficult.  It's just... messy.  Even with taping up super well, the last round was super messy.

 

 

Anyway.  I'm super excited that a team is coming in Monday and 8 hours later, it'll be 90% done!  (we'll just need to paint soon)

What's your thought?  To Scrape, or not to Scrape?  To texture yourself, or not?  Painting a ceiling?  (I hope we're not crazy...)

So yep, a victory of mine is deciding to shell out the money to just.finish.this.project!

And, what was YOUR victory?  Link up folks :)



And, don't forget to grab a button!  The code is on the right frame, if you need that.

Thanks again for stopping by, and don't worry, I have NOT forgotten about our 200th follower giveway.  :)  Stay tuned!

VOTW #6: Happy Birthday to Me!

Yea!  Really!

Happy birthday to me!  28 years ago today, the sun opened up after a long rainstorm, and I was born, bringing sunshine into the world.  HA!  Anyway, a very similar story today- we had a break in the weather in CA, and the sky was sunny.

My victories of the week, are summed up in these great things:

1.  Hearing about my birthday present from Z early, and learning that we're sitting middle orchestra for the theatrical production of WICKED on March 13th!  I've wanted to see this show for some time now, and lucky he works in San Francisco- he was able to get prime tickets.  Can't wait!

2.  One of my best friends has a birthday 5 days after mine, so we often celebrate together at functions each year.  This year, we celebrated at the Cheesecake Factory, and our two other sly friends slipped them our names, and we were served with our desserts on plates with our names written in chocolate!

 

(yes, that is my friend's present behind my plate- a book of Dirty Japanese.  Let me tell you, hilarious- but very, very dirty.  Man we had fun :)  My present of course was something house related, and just as fun for me!)

3.  As much as the office can drag you down, this morning I walked into this!  How hysterically funny- and it was perfect after a really cruddy day yesterday.  Since I'm the manager, I took everything down tonight and taped it to everyone else's chairs.  They'll have a surprise on Monday!

 

My real office is where that window above the cubes are.  I hope to get to go back there soon.  Sigh.  What a long 8 weeks of ups and downs.

4.  Cute floral arrangements make me feel like a little girl!  (In a good way, of course!)  Coming home in the dark is no fun, but coming home to a small box with a cute floral arrangement is!  My sister (who's in her last year at UCSB) is a sweetheart.

How cute is that?!  A carnation cupcake floral arrangement?!  Holy moly!  :)

Anywho, those are the small little things that made my week so far!  Now, it's off to another fattening brithday dinner with Z at Chili's- my request because I love love love their milkshakes and the buffalo chicken salad.

What were your victories this week?!  You have all been so creative, I'm sure there are tons :)





By the way, I'll keep this MckLinky open longer than Sunday since I'm getting it up late on Friday.  It'll be open through midnight on 2/8/10.  Remember to grab  the button for your page!

 

Just a question- do you think this party would be better held on a Sunday, and say open with the MckLinky through the middle of the week instead?  Let me know.  I'm open to suggestions :)

Oh, and remember, when we get to 200 followers (which is just a stones throw at this point) we'll do another crafty giveaway!!!

Happy Weekend, and Happy Birthday to me!  :)

PS:  Did you love all the posts this week?  There are more coming too, duh!  The weekend is officially here, which means it's project central at this casa.  You'll be happy you came back.  Here's a recap from this week so far:

Sunday
Ballard Inspired Bee Bulletin Board

Monday
How I arrange a picture ledge/gallery wall

Tuesday
Pink felt kissing balls

Wednesday
That magic red lamp

Thursday:
Thrift store table turned bench

ENJOY!  :)