Eating, Drinking and Exposing

This week we made a final decision on banisters! We found a guy through an open house and he is giving us the lowest price by far. Ours will look like this and should be ready in the next week or so!

We had a nice mix of socializing and housing this weekend and I loved it... but I'm exhausted. This is going to be a short blog post :) We kicked off the weekend with birthday celebrations for Dan! We wanted to try something new and the weather was beautiful so we walked to Strangelove's in the Gayborhood. 

It was a really nice night and hopefully the start of our Philadelphia restaurant exploration this spring! After dinner we headed home to watch the Olympics and get a good night of sleep for a big day of exposing brick on Saturday.

Starting point

We were only able to spend a few hours on the wall this week because we had plans to visit friends Saturday night. Luckily, Dan stepped in to help and we got a lot accomplished quickly.

brothas.

The best part about the whole process is the clean up and making the house go from a complete mess to oh so clean. Breathing in all the dust cannot be healthy - our snot was brown! We are happy we are almost done.

Almost done!

After scrubbing the dust out of our hair, we headed to Telford to reunite with some of my favorite college girlfriends. We had such a fun night reminiscing and catching up on life. It's crazy to think we have been out of college for four years but so fun that we can get together and have such a good time together.

Love these girls

We have a busy March ahead so I am going to focus on getting in shape, eating well, and drinking a little less wine :) 

Valentine's Day and Exposing Bricks

My Valentine's Day surprise this year was four days at home! Charlotte had a huge snow storm that started Wednesday morning so I was allowed to fly home a day early. I was one of the last flights to leave Charlotte and came home to another big storm in Philadelphia.

10 inches in Philadelphia!

Both Andrew and Dan stayed at home with me Thursday since the roads were bad so we were all at home, attempting to work. After a quiet morning, the boys got cabin fever and decided to expose our brick wall.

It created a huge mess but it was a good start to see how much work we were up against. The brick is covered in a thick layer of cement, so the boys had to chisel away at the cement inch by inch. We had friends planning to be at our house on Saturday morning so I cut off the brick exposing pretty early.

Day 1, approximately 1 hour of work

On Friday the weather warmed up and Andrew was off to work, so I had the day at home to prep for Valentine's Day. Since we have so many house projects going on, we decided no gifts, just a quiet night at home. I decided to surprise Andrew with cake balls, using a recipe given to me by a friend on my project. I made a box cake (don't judge) and put it in a bowl to destroy. In order to get the cake sticky to take on the ball form, I put a few spoonfuls of icing and mixed up with my hands.

Next, I melted some chocolate to put it on the end of the sticks, stuck them in each ball, and put them in the freezer to take form.

After 20 minutes in the freezer, you are supposed to melt the chocolate and dip each ball in it to coat it. Disaster. I was covered in cake, the balls kept falling in the chocolate and I couldn't get them out. Ugliest.cake balls. ever. Oh well, they still tasted good :)

Dinner was so much better. I found a recipe for pizza on Pinterest, which was so tasty. It was also really fun to do together, we were both pleasantly surprised.

 

Tasty pizza!

Saturday morning we were up early to get ready for our very best friends, Carly and Mike, to visit Philly! Sadly, we got a phone call that the turnpike was a disaster and they couldn't come. I was heartbroken but would rather have Carly around forever than risk the snowy roads. So, we decided to demolish the rest of the living room wall and expose the brick.

Making moves

We spent about three hours chipping away at the cement, which made the room a complete dust-filled mess. Although tedious, it was a strangely satisfying day of work.

Cutting down the dry wall

Day 2 stopping point

We were hooked. The new wall already made a big difference and gave us about six inches of space, which will be great when we get our new couch in a few weeks. We woke up early Sunday morning and were ready for a few more hours of work (our poor neighbors). We got a little smarter and covered all our furniture with old bed sheets to help with the dust.

We set a three hour time limit for ourselves and got to work!

We ended up spending about five hours on the wall, covering ourselves and the house in dust. When the chair I was standing on broke underneath me, I was ready to call it a day.

This has definitely been our favorite project and the best part is that it's free! We were in awe at the difference it makes in our living room.

Since it makes such a mess, we will hold off on doing any more work until next Saturday. Next weekend we will remove the rest of the cement and then figure out how to finish it! Can't wait!

Celebrating the Good Things

While I was in Minneapolis I had an opportunity to reconnect with my best friend from childhood, Summer. She had just moved from Tennessee to Minneapolis for her husband's new job so we had an opportunity to hang out during the week and catch up on the nearly 7 years it had been since we saw each other. It was so refreshing to take a break from work and enjoy life in the beautiful Minneapolis summer with such a good friend.

Paddle boarding in Minneapolis with Summer!

Work in Charlotte and growing up in general has not been so easy for me recently so I am happy to have another best friend only an hour away. My friend Katherine moved to Columbia, South Carolina a few months ago and we have been trying to get together for the past couple of months. We finally set a date and made it work for Katherine to come up to Charlotte for dinner. We had so much fun together, ending the night in a club dancing as hard as we could.

Forever friends

A Wednesday night out always makes for an exhausting Thursday so I was very happy to go home to my boys. On Friday we had Anvil Iron Works come to our house for another banister estimate, which was a big disappointment. We are coming to the realization that these banisters are going to cost around $3500. So sad :(

Oldest but nicest Iron Works man

On Friday night we headed to Kutztown for a family party to celebrate my Pop Pop's 94th birthday. The poor guy has dementia and doesn't know where he is 94% of the time but it's a nice excuse to get together as a family. Dinner Friday night turned into ice sledding down my parent's back yard. No one was too hurt, fortunately, and it was a fun little night.

The girls observing the sledding

We spent Saturday morning getting ready for the 40 people coming to our house to celebrate. It was a really nice day with extended family I haven't seen since before college. If I can be half the host my parents are, I will be happy. I think Pop Pop even had a nice time!

The weekend at home with family was exactly what I needed but I was excited to go home to our cats! Next weekend we have friends from Pittsburgh coming into town so I really wanted to get a few final chores done around the house, starting with painting the second floor ceiling I keep putting off.

Edging has been done for months...

Unfortunately, a chunk of the ceiling and wall came off as I was prepping to paint so I was stalled before I even started. 

Doesn't look great..

Bummer.

I ended up only spackling and completing the edging of the second floor hallway. 

What a mess.

Disappointing to not get the hallway ceiling painted today but it gave me the time to finish up the trim in the office and third floor hallway. The office really looks fantastic with the trim complete.

Before.

After

I am already so looking forward to coming home to celebrate Valentine's Day with the dinky boy and the cats and spend the weekend with our great friends!