Downtown Houston

How about an Ollie caridgan?

arrrgh… it’s got to be shedding season for our puppy and as much as I love her I can’t spend anymore money on tactics to get the shedding under control. We’ve got a lint roller in every room, a shed blade, a furmintor (which I spent way too much on). I vacuum 2-3 times a week, use a roomba too and have tried that Pledge fur remover thing. On my quest to google around for some help I came across this website, that just horrifies me….

http://www.vipfibers.com/

Collect the dog hair – send it in – they spin it into yarn…. WHAT?! You mean now I can have a sweater made out of my dog??? Oh wouldn’t that be so GREEN of me? ….. yuck, no thanks.

The worst part – if you click on the link on the website that has information on just WHAT you can do with your dog hair yarn, a photo of a BIKINI comes up… yes folks, they are suggesting you knit a bikini out of K9 fur….

"you're going to do WHAT with my fur?"

Any dog hair control tips are much appreciated!

It’s come a loooong way

Spring is here and after such a long winter it is amazing to feel the sun on my skin and to see green everywhere again!  After two freezes this winter I am still waiting to see which plants are going to come back and grow for us.  We’ve been gearing up to do some landscaping,  to spruce up the front and back yard.  We keep feeling like the yard is so plain and ugly – but in comparison to what we started with just a year ago, not so much. I dug out some old photos to show how far the yard and exterior of the house has come since we moved in around this time last year.

First the backyard.  When we moved in we were dealing with a chain-link fence and poles that used to hold clothesline – and perhaps one of the hardest things to dig out was the upside down metal bathtub that you can see in the before photo.  We’ve dug it up but still have it in the backyard with thoughts of having it refinished and used in a future home as a soaking tub! How cool would that be?  In the after photo you can see the patio that David and Jesse installed awhile back and see how amazingly green the grass got with just some TLC (a.k.a. some fertilizer, sun and water.)

Along the side of the house you can see where we had two huge beautiful hibiscus bushes that bloom these gorgeous fuchsia flowers…. I’m afraid we may have lost them to the freeze/snow this winter.  Right now the stubs that are left have a few leaves trying to grow from them, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed that they’ll come back as big as they were in the before photo!  From the angle of the before photo you don’t notice that there was actually NO giant town home next to our house (the tan one that is clearly visible in the after photo) Believe it or not, they will soon be breaking ground on 4 more of those town homes to occupy the lot between the existing one and our house, the lot that we love to take Ollie to play in, so sad…. Because of the fact that our neighbors will be literally on TOP of us -  one of our goals of landscaping is to have some hedges or trees to hopefully grow upwards to give us some privacy in the backyard – and perhaps something prettier to look at than hardy plank of the neighbor’s house?

And now to my favorite photo from today – the front porch.  We’re planning to add more bushes and flowers to the front yard, and are waiting on some plans from the landscape architect.  I can’t get over how much better the columns look than the metal poles that were there prior to our renovation.  David and I are pretty much obsessed with those beautiful hanging baskets we snagged at a floral vendor down the road for $30, I love the house and flower colors together.

Along the fence next to the driveway we have some climbing fig that we hope will one day cover the entire fence, and a rose bush that was there before we moved in, it’s one of 3 on our property.  I have no idea how to care for rose bushes, actually I have no clue how to care for most plants, and I don’t believe the people living here before us were doing much yard work, so luckily the plants that are alive in our yard typically thrive with very little specialty care – i.e. this rose bush… You can’t really see from this photo but I counted and there are about to 14 roses blooming on it, I’m so excited!  This is one of the lovely blooms that I snagged off that bush earlier this week.  I love having fresh flowers in the house, love them even more when they are from my own garden.

Life in the Heights

Hands down my favorite thing about Houston is the are we live in.  Had we not found the Heights area to be our home I’d probably have high tailed it back to Austin long before now.  With the nice weather these past few weeks we’ve been taking bike rides as often as possible, taking off on the trusty cruisers we snagged awhile back at the Common Goods market on Yale Street.

This is my bike before, and then after David’s put some TLC into them:

Exploring on a bike allows you to really see the details you miss while driving in a car.  The azaleas are blooming everywhere, the whole area seems to be covered in pink. Every time we ride we see new places we want to shop, eat, or new houses that we like (and many we don’t *ahem*townhomes*ahem*). We’ve been utilizing the new paved bike path that’s part of the Rails to Trails program which we rode last week until the paved part ended. During this ride I discovered that I can get to Target via bicycle – David’s newest project is installing a basket on my bike now

Information on the bike trail can be found on the Houston Bikeways Website – along with a map  that apparently shows where the bike trails lead – it’s quite possibly the most confusing map ever, we learn where they go by hopping on and figuring it out.

As the neighborhood grows we see new houses going up, some amazing old homes being torn down (sad), and tons of new businesses and restaurants opening in the area.  I’ve been following two blogs that give great information about businesses and real estate in the area.  The Heights Blog is great at answering the question “what is that place?”  And Swamplot, follows real estate changes in the Houston area… Sadly reports properties up for demolition that week – which usually includes stuff in our area.

Recently opened one of our favorites is Pie in the Sky (website here) on 19th street.  I’d been seeing their sign for months and as a lover of pie couldn’t wait to get some in my belly.  If you can get 3 others to eat there with you, you get a free slice of pie for the table.  Their peanut butter chocolate pie is to die for…..

Across from BerryHill on 11th street is a cool little building that David has loved since we moved here, it’s rumored to be opening as a wine bar. (Sorry David your vintage car shop is going to have to find a new home)

Next door is a small bungalow that is going to house Zelko Bistro.  A food blogger from the Chronicle just wrote this blog about the place which got me super excited.  Looks like it’s going to be a great new addition – and hopefully the food won’t be a huge let down like Lola (at 11th and Yale) was for us a few months back.  More info on Zelko Bistro on The Heights Blog here.

But the one David is most excited about?  They are turning the old Yale Street Coffee House into a restaurant that serves mac-n-cheese!!!  Jus’ Mac’s Facebook Page here.

On 19th street a new coffee shop is coming bearing the name Love Street Coffee – I’m excited to have another place to get my fix before I head into work for that 3pm-3am shift!  Blog post from a Chronicle Heights Blogger about Love Street here.

Best thing about all of the new places opening is that we can bike to all of them!

thank you sun

This winter is killing us in Houston.  It’s been abnormally COLD and rainy.  We love our old house, we love the character, the original hardwoods, the feel of it, however, I started having more of a “love/hate” relationship with the bungalow over the summer after our $350 electric bill.  It’s HOT in Houston, we run the A/C!  We started researching our options with insulation in order to make the house more efficient.  Anyone that knows me know that I’m both a penny pincher and a tree hugger, so our goal was not only to lower the crazy bills but to quit wasting energy.  We ended up with a solar powered attic fan and blow-in insulation in the attic, along with some nifty solar shades my dad made for us.   This lowered our bill significantly.  YAY, success in our eyes, with winter ahead of us we’d only have to worry about higher energy bills in the summer.  Winter is here, and it won’t go away, and BOY WERE WE WRONG about the bills….

Remember how we kicked off our winter here in Houston?  Reminder HERE.  Well when it’s cold outside, our old house is cold inside.  In some areas you can see through the cracks in the hardwoods to the ground below = no insulation in the floor.  So when it SNOWED we cranked up the heater.  Well a month later we got a $437 gas bill… crap.  [And you may be asking, no we don't have a leak.  Centerpoint has been to our house twice to check, and multiple A/C & Heat companies have come out to see our setup - more on this later]  We’ve spent the rest of winter in layers of clothing, sleeping in fleece hoodies, walking around with ski socks on and sitting in front of two $14 space heaters I bought at Target to try to stay warm. We thought we were doing so great at keeping that gas bill down, until we got the electric bill.  Damn the heaters! WE CAN’T WIN THIS BATTLE! And this winter, unfortunately, has to be the longest, coldest, rainiest winter on record – at least we feel like it is. (I blame the groundhog for seeing his shadow)

As we continue to work on making this house more efficient we have been told by several heating companies that our furnace is a “beautiful antique.”  a.k.a. it’s working great, but sucking gas, thus being terribly inefficient and expensive.  If you stand outside our backdoor you can hear the gas meter spin, and no, I am not joking, come over and listen.  Exciting news ahead though – we will be replacing the beast with a new furnace thanks to our tax return $$ and plan to have a “Hot as Hell” party to commemorate the GIANT purchase (isn’t home ownership so glamorous?)

All this back story is just to set up for what I really want to share.  Since the weather has been so terrible I have neglected getting outside to work on several pieces of furniture that have been collecting dust in the garage, but Sunday was sunny and David and I went at it in full force sanding, priming and choosing colors for the following pieces.  After stumbling upon a fabulous sale on hardware at Anthropologie and bringing home a bag full of beautiful drawer pulls, I can’t wait to see how they turn out:

[Table was bought at a local Heights junk store called "Uncommon Goods" on Yale St for $100; Dresser was a Goodwill find for $30; Cabinet has been around since college, when taking it apart David discovered it's from IKEA, go figure]

So a few great new pieces for the house, a new heater, did I mention a new rug in our master? Could there be even more exciting news?  YES, YES THERE CAN!!! Our shower glass comes this weekend! It’s taken us a year to get it done but it comes Saturday!  I can’t wait to shower in an enclosed steamy shower area.  Photos coming soon!

Master Bedroom

The one room in the house that has evolved the most has been our master bedroom.  During the renovation we knocked out a vanity counter, mirror and closet that existed on the right side/corner of room if looking at the “after photo from below.  The room has endure 4 (yes, 4!) paint colors… Originally we chose a color that we thought was brown, it had turned out a Pepto-pink color, so we went for a neutral beige, then to grey… then to a total rearrangement of the room and my favorite color yet, Benjamin Moore’s Palladium Blue (which of course we had mixed at Lowe’s for way cheaper).  Since I had to work this Christmas, my mom came to keep David company that day and they graciously painted our room (again).  We still have lots of blank walls but seeing the before and after transformations are fun, so I had to share.

More transformations to come!

Christmas 2009

Christmas was great… we had a lot of quality family time, good food, good cookies, good conversation – great gifts! I finally got to give David the 46″ LCD TV I’d been hiding from him for over 2 months.

The hubby hooked me up with THE BEST gift this year! It’s a wireless SD card for my digital cameras.  It’s called an Eye-Fi and it’s pretty much the coolest thing ever… it automatically downloads photos from my camera once I step foot within my home wireless network.  Not only that but then it uploads them to the internet! (more here: http://www.eye.fi/)

I now have no more excuses to not be uploading photos – hence a new beginning at blogging and some revamping to our old site (used to be @ thekeymers.com but we aren’t going to renew that domain)

I can’t wait to post photos of the house – it’s time to show progression from the house we bought, to the home we now live in.

Winter Wonderland…

…in Houston? Really!  Wow.  Record breaking snow today inspired me to snap some photos to share – just so everyone believes be.  Especially since it’s supposed to be sunny and 60 degrees here in Houston tomorrow.

Hope this doesn't kill our roses that just started really blooming!

Ollie - not so much a fan of the snow.

What a great day to have off.  Ollie and I have been bundled up, sipping hot chocolate, trying to stay warm!

Re-Beginning

Where to re-begin? I’ve started working nights, which means I can stay up and play, catch up on blogs, new music, emails etc til something like 2:00am that it is now. All of my ability to research, read and explore has spawned on multitudes of different little home improvement projects that David and I have started tackling. We first started with this dresser  (given to us for free) that was hanging out in the garage since we moved into the house.

After lots of sanding, some primer, some paint, then an afternoon of distressing, glazing, sealing and a set of new hardware here are out before and after photos:

Before

After

[I know the photo quality is terrible, forgive me]

The satisfaction of finishing a project, and one that looks a lot like a piece of furniture we were drooling over at Crate and Barrel a year ago, we are so satisfied and excited that we already are searching for out next refinishing project!

Finally a good movie…

After seeing/renting nothing but dissapointing movies (I’ve literally turned off the last 3 I rented before I finished watching them) We headed out Saturday night to see (500) Days of Summer…. and let me just say I loved this movie. I loved the story, I loved the soundtrack and I LOVED the whole feel of the film. The style and fashion, and the lead character’s apartment was to die for, one entire wall of his apartment covered in chalkboard paint which he drew his own headboard for the bed, surrounded by blueprints and antique books and an old distressed leather couch that David would have purchased on the spot.
Favorite Song from the movie soundtrack : The Temper Trap – “Sweet Disposition”