Baby, It's (Getting) Cold Outside

Don't worry...Christmas music doesn't get turned on in this house until November 25th.

What should  be turned on soon? HEAT.

We have this rule - seeing as heat goes right through this house - that we don't turn on the heat until the 1st of November. We made it to the 30th of October last year... those downstairs girls are troopers. It's seriously amazing: we get pretty chilly upstairs, but nothing a big cup of tea or mug of coffee, slippers, and a blanket can't fix. Downstairs, however, the girls will be studying with wool socks, sweatpants, sweatshirts, sleeping bags, mittens and hats on!

Let's pray this winter we'll be warmer....if the construction. ever. ends.

Our kitchen chalkboard last February. That's $60.25 per person. For one month of heat.

We told you our house was a sieve...

"We didn't start the fire!'

On the night of Sunday October 23rd, Melissa and I (Cecily) decided to melt butter for popcorn in the microwave.

Place butter in microwave

Enter 30 seconds and "start"

"Hmmm that's making an interesting noise"

 Cowering in fear

 Running to safety

Jumping up and down screaming in Melissa's room

 Ventured back into kitchen to discover an out of control blazing fire in the microwave

"What's the ruckus? I'm trying to study!"

"I'm trying to sit indian style but am distracted by the screaming"

Melissa and I screamed for Mary's help.

"Get some water, NOW!"

After Mary extinguished the flame she epically slammed the door shut ....

... and opened the window to dilute the electric-burning stench. 

The damaged radiation coils ... and our not so melted popcorn butter.

Finally after having to walk all the way downstairs to use the microwave, we enjoyed some delicious homemade popcorn. 

Inspiration

So here's the thing: We may or may not have a roommate in the house who is absolutely obsessed with books. Ok, so a lot of us are, but one more than the others, if I say so myself.

Yep, you guessed it, Mary.

This little tid-bit of information probably explains why our room turned out the way it is now.

Based on the idea of books, we decided to add this element to many aspects of our room.

Here's the first thing we did (and by we, I basically mean Mary):

Mod podge a page of a book onto our light switch plate. This led to another idea:

We used "L-bracket" things and with the help and inspiration of Beyonce and Dreamgirls.....

....we tore some pages out of an old book and ripped them up and mod podged them unto those suckers.

After letting them dry, we nailed them into the wall (which was actually harder than necessary because our walls aren't really walls. Seriously, it was so incredibly hard to find a stud so we could nail these in). After numerous tries we finally found the right kind of "scails" (what I decided to call those nails that look like screws).

Put up two of those brackets and place a book on top acting as a self and voila pretty stinkin'

amazing shelves.

Oh....but hold on to your horses. This is not it! Sorry this post is getting ridiculously looooong. Lo siento. But our ideas kept coming and coming.

I found this amazing book globe light on etsy.com and thought, "Hey, maybe I could do this." So we decided to try it out.

We found a can (or round container) to use as a stencil to cut circles out of some book pages. After cutting out a ba-gillion of circles we added them onto a round pendant lampshade we got at IKEA for $8, which included the light kit. At first we thought we should stitch the pages onto the shade, but that took to long so we just hot glued them onto the shade itself.

Drum roll.....

A pretty dang close replication of the light we saw on Etsy. Except at a very reasonable price of about $9. Ahhhh, genius! We be so crafty!

Psalm 119: 130 "The unfolding of your WORDS give LIGHT; it gives understanding to the simple."

Someone ELSE is turning 21?!

Yep, that's right. Our darling Quinnifer is 21 today. We love her lots.

Yeah, she's pretty cool. 

Happiest of happy birthdays, Quinn! You bring so much to our house!

(kind of an old pic - but still pretty epically awesome.)

Almost done...

I would promise this to be the penultimate post about the construction, but that would be bad luck and would definitely call on fate to delay it even more. All I can say is that our house is thisclose to being finished, so of course the workers took off a week. (Actually, in their defense, they're weeks behind on other projects because of all the complications with ours, and so they're trying to play catch-up with all that extra work.)

Here are some pics of our ever-so-beautiful house before the siding was put up. I literally was embarrassed every time I walked out of the house. It was the worst when I would leave the house and someone I knew was walking past at the same time. "I promise our house isn't always this ugly!"

I may or may not have been concerned that a homeless person would be living under our house :/

Let's review some of what's happened now, shall we? Here are a couple shots of the lovely plywood we got to stare at for a few days while they took our windows out for a few days. Charming, no?

Sadly, our room looked like a total disaster zone for over a week. It was like move in week all over again. So frustrating! I just want my room to be pretty, ok?!?

TRAGICALLY, we lost four little windows. They were literally at least 50 years old, and our landlords would have needed to special order them to replace them. Rest in peace, kitchen windows, pantry window, and stairwell window. You will be sorely missed.

On a happier note, let's talk about the day the siding came. On one hand, hallelujah! Praise the Lord! The end is nigh! On the other hand, it's uuuuuuuugly. On another hand (there's obviously more than one person involved in this analogy), who cares? It's siding, and it's new, and it's all the same color omg. (Update: it's not nearly as bad-looking on the house as it was in its sorry-looking packaging on the side of the road.) [This is Becky and I totally think the siding looks fine.]

And I personally find it amazing that this pile of siding never toppled over:
 
We also have a new porch! Besides the fact that it doesn't have a railing yet, the pillar is please-Lord-not-going-to-stay-that-way, and we can't paint the wood for a year, we know it is safe and it no longer has such a steep incline that you could sled off it in the wintertime. Plus, check out what we did for our new house numbers (the idea for the moment is to superglue them to a board vertically, and then nail that board onto the porch pillar when everything is finished):

This was a super easy project: Becky brought some of her scrapbook paper out, and we just free-handed the numbers and cut them out. A couple of coats of mod podge and Krylon's sealing spray to stick 'em to some simple white tiles, and they're almost quasi sorta waterproof. More pictures when the house is done and when the numbers are up!

P.S. Sorry we fail at posting. School is hard. Midterms suck. And I'm lazy. (Becky and Mary wrote this post together, actually.)

P.P.S The night is nearly over, the day is almost here! - Romans 13:12a

Cloudy with a chance of AWESOME.

 

Let's kick off this month with some Wisco pride, shall we?

On Wisconsin!