Damp no more.

Ahh the sweet, sweet sound of (jackhammering) home improvment.

All framed up.

Ashton made me a set of truly beautiful note cards for my birthday a few years ago.  Each one has a custom designed fabric dress.  They were, quite simply, too beautiful to use as note cards (I didn't want to give them away!).

I'd been wanting to frame them for a long time, but knew that it would have to be custom and didn't want to spend the money.  Then the stars aligned (read: Michael's was having a 60% off custom framing sale and my Mom came into town and brought with her great ideas) and my long-awaited idea finally became a reality.

Now I've just got to figure out where to hang them.  Someday if we have a daughter I'll hang them in her room, but for now I am thinking of hanging them in the basement near Blake's framed matchbox car collection as as sort of masculine/feminine comparison. 

I'm absolutely smitten by them and couldn't be more thrilled to finally be able to showcase them in my home.

Thanks again, Ashton!

The first time Saturday is the worst day of the week.

Saturday is usually my favorite day of the week: sleep in, putter around the house in pajamas for a while, eat a big breakfast/brunch, relax...but this past Saturday was the anti-Saturday Saturday.  Let me give you a breakdown:

-Wake up at 8:00 a.m. to a pounding on the door.  Jump out of bed thinking it's the contractor arriving early.  Repeatedly and unsuccessful try to stuff my dead/asleep arm into my sweatshirt while answering Blake's groggy "whhaaaat?" with "he's here...he's here...the guy...the guy..."

-Race down to the door and discover that it was not the contractor.

- Lay back down in bed, flustered, confused and unable to get back to sleep.

- Wake up to 8:30 Marimba alarm to get ready for the waterproofing contractor scheduled to come between 9:00 - 10:00.

-Wait for four hours while contractor doesn't show up.

- Paint basement puppet theater and get intoxicated with fumes from the decidedly high-VOC magnetic primer.

- Shower quickly, but forgo washing hair for the fourth day in a row due to perpetual lateness.

- Drive carefully to Mr. Tire on gimpy spare and almost-flat front passenger side tire for 2:30 appointment.

- Listen as the assistant manager declares that they will not honor warranty or road hazard insurance because the cause of two flats on relatively new tires is unknown.

- Listen to Blake and said assistant manager argue about warranty and other issues.

- Sit for 4.5 hours in Mr. Tire with Blake and nothing to do. 

- Get stomach-ache and headache from smelling horrible rubber smell for 4.5 hours.

- Get stressed enough to declare that any more time in Mr. Tire would result in a self-indulging J.Crew and Dunkin' Donut shopping spree.

- Pay a fortune for two new tires and a re-alignment. 

- Think about how many nice things could be bought at J.Crew with this fortune.

- Drive home too tired and upset to do anything except pick up a pizza, put on pajamas, and veg in front of the TV for the rest of the evening.

The one in which we're rescued by two burly men.

I thought the day was going well when I headed home early from work to wait for Washington Gas to come install a new meter reader and they actually came on time.  You know how all utilities like to seize control of your life and schedule by giving you a three hour window?  Well, my window was 4:00 - 7:00 p.m. and the guy actually came at 4:30.  And was in and out in less than 10 minutes!  You heard that right: a serviceman showed up on the early-side of the window and actually came and left without any trouble or trying to up-sell me anything. 

Like I said, the afternoon was going mighty fine.

Then, at 6:45 when I went to pick up Blake from the metro and then head to dinner with friends, everything took a turn for the worse.  It is probably a three minute drive from our house to the metro kiss-and-ride, but somehow in that three minutes I managed to get a flat (VERY FLAT) tire on the front driver's side.

As I turned onto the main road to cross the intersection by our house, I started to feel a horrible shuddering/scraping and hear a screeching/scratching/rumbling coming from the car.  I felt like I was driving the space shuttle circa 1970.  It was that loud and bumpy. 

Pedestrians walking home from the metro were turning to watch me cross the intersection as sparks were flying from under the car and a sound akin to a jackhammer assaulted their ears.

I felt trapped.  There's nowhere to pull over (unless I wanted to block an entire lane of traffic).  The next block felt like an eternity, but I had no choice.

I pulled into the kiss-and-ride as quickly as I could into the spot nearest the road, stopped the car, jumped out, and investigated.

Flat as a pancake.  And giving off a rubbery-smelling smoke.

I had been driving on my rims for the last block.  I hate to think of the ruts I must have left in the street along the way.

As I frantically called Blake, I noticed a man walking towards me.  It was the young, clean-cut driver of the temple shuttle.  He ran up to see if I needed help and told me he could hear me coming all the way down the street. Perfect.  (And that, my friends, proves that Mormons really are the nicest!)

I told Mr. Temple Van Driver that we'd be fine and my husband would be there momentarily.  Well, turns out that we probably should have used his help.

The bolts on the wheel were so tight that we couldn't get them to budge. 

We tried for 15 minutes, called our friends to reschedule dinner, and then called AAA.

They routed us first through Northern California, then, when we explained we were in Washington DC, they routed us through Washington State (of course), and then finally to Maryland.  It took about 15 minutes just to talk to the right person.  We were told that it would be another 45 minutes before someone could get to us.

So we went back out into the 20 degree weather to have another go at it.  (Did I mention that I'd left my gloves at home because I didn't think I'd be outside.  Perfect.  Frozen claw hands.)  No luck for another 5 minutes.

Then, the heavens parted and two men that were meeting up at the metro took pity on us and came over to investigate.  Turns out they were mechanics.  Big, all-knowing mechanics.  What are the odds?

With some finagling, they had the offending tire off and replaced with our spare with ease.  Our spare that also turned out to be rather flat.

Luckily it was not quite flat enough that we couldn't drive on it.  We made it around the corner to the nearest gas station and filled the spare before crossing our fingers and heading for home. 

We were cold, stressed and tired.  So, after telling Blake that I was never driving alone, anywhere, ever again, we ended tried to mend what was left of the evening by ordering Chinese.  Takeout is always a good consolation prize.

Fill it up. Pin it up.

My weekend girls' trip to Charleston got cancelled at the last minute, so I had an unexpectedly productive weekend.  Friday night I picked up an ugly bulletin board from Target for $9.34 and spent an hour transforming it into a linen and nail-head pinboard courtesy of an idea I spotted in a design magazine and some left-over materials from other projects I had hanging out in our basement. 

Blake helped me hang it (I'm nothing if not horrible at centering/leveling/measuring things) and, there you have it, an under $10.00, under an hour project to fill that horrible blank wall in the study that's been staring me in the face for the past two years. 

Remember how I said that gestational period for my projects is usually about ten months?  Well, this project (from idea to completion) took only a day, but my desire to put something on that wall has been haunting me since we moved into the house. Now, where does that put me in terms of a project timeline?