These lovely, succulent, delicious strawberries…

are my favorite part of June.

And ya know what?  They came straight from my garden  Don’t ya just love summer?

I’m back for part 2 of our exciting edge-of-your-seats installation of our dishwasher.  Let’s get to it!

Yesterday, I told you how we solved our little plumbing and electrical problem by cutting a few extra holes in our cabinet and rerouting the electrical hook-up and cutting the copper pipe so we could thread the hose connection into the sink cabinet base.  Here’s a picture of what the final configuration under our sink looks like:

That’s a lot of stuff going on, so as said in the Princess Bride, lemme ‘esplain.  No, that is too much.  Lemme ‘sum up.

It’s a crazy mess of hoses and wires under there now, but it works!  The Inlet hose attachment comes up through the cabinet floor and then has a loop that sticks into the side of the cabinet before it attaches to the shortened copper pipe.  That large weird looking attachment at the end of the hose is a “leak detector”…or something fancy-schmancy like that.

The drain hose also comes in through the cabinet floor and then loops up high in our cabinet so there is an air pocket before it attaches to the garbage disposal.

The air gap is necessary so that you don’t have back flow into the dishwasher or nasty sewer or disposal smells, which was a major problem with our previous dishwasher.  You can see that for now, we just used a bit of electrical tape to hold the hose up.  Fear not, eventually there will be a more permanent solution.

Last, there’s the junction box, which connects the electrical line that DH changed in the basement to the electrical to power the dishwasher.  Again, eventually we’re going to try to nestle the junction box towards the back of the cabinet so that it’s out of the way.

Once we had all of the hoses and electrical in place, and had leveled the dishwasher, we did a test run to make sure everything worked okay.  We were a bit concerned that all the kinks and bends in the pipes would cause problems, but not so!  Everything worked perfectly!

We finished installing our new dishwasher by putting in a few screws under the countertop and putting on the kick plate, and then she was done!

All bright, shiny, and new!  Looks great, right?

I was a little concerned about how stainless steal would look in our kitchen with our other white appliances, and with our dark cabinets, but I think it’s a HUGE improvement over our old dishwasher.

Here’s a before and after so you can see the difference

Love it!  We’ve started filling it up for our first load, but we already know from our test run that it is SUPER quiet.  This makes me giddy with excitement.

Of course now I must venture into the world of cleaning stainless steal appliances.  I’ve heard of the never ending fingerprints and smudges.  I’m actually more concerned about water.  As you can see, right above our dishwasher is all of DH’s coffee-making stuff (I’m really resisting using a more negative adjective…) and there are often drips and pools of water after he’s finished in the morning, many which will end up on the dishwasher.

Does anyone have any stainless steal cleaning tips?  I’d love to hear ‘em.

Hope you enjoyed our dishwasher installation play-by-play.  I realize a lot of our “problems” are fairly unique to our house, but hopefully it will prove helpful for anyone else who chooses to go the DIY installation route.  We figure we saved about $100 by doing a self-installation.  And since we’re still DIY newbies, we’re giving ourselves a big pat on the back for this one

Guess what finally was delivered today?

No, not a cute snuggly new puppy – though my heart would melt if we had one of these:

I love corgi’s – they’re so adorable!

But no, what was delivered was much more sleek and shiny.  It’s one of these:

At last, we have a new dishwasher!  It’s a Bosch 800 plus fully integrated dishwasher.  It’s full of crazy features like a delay start timer, built in water softener, and an option for half loads.  It’s also energy star certified, which means it’s super energy efficient and only uses about 2 gallons of water per load!  Factor that into our current water bill, and we could save around $100 a year with our new fancy-pants dishwasher.

I’m most excited about the fact that this lovely new appliance is SUPER quiet.  As in, barely heard when you walk by it.  How do I know?  My parents have an almost identical dishwasher in their recently remodeled kitchen, and the noise is almost undetectable.  It clocks in at 40 dBA, which technically makes it one of the quietest dishwashers you can buy. When I googled comparisons of 40 dBA, I come up with these descriptions: quiet residential area, quiet office, and library!  That will surely be a huge improvement over our current dishwasher, which sounds like a hurricane passing through our kitchen.

Speaking of our soon to be recycled dishwasher – it’s from 1992!

I had to do some searching online, but did you know that you can date almost any appliance if you have the model and serial number right here?  It’s pretty handy.  I found out that our dishwasher is a teenager, as well as our refrigerator.  No wonder they’re so noisy!

I’m super excited to replace our old worn out leaky and smelly dishwasher with our new upgraded one.  Sparkly clean dishes, here I come!

Today, I’m participating in the “How I Met My House Party” over at Our Suburban Cottage!

I first met our house in the summer of 2008, right before I got married.  My husband and I were planning to move to Iowa to start new jobs and a new life together (awwwwww!)  We had already signed a rental contract, so we weren’t in the market for a house.  Except, that our contract stipulated we could back out at any time if we decided to purchase a home.  Suh-weet deal, no?

You better believe I checked out realtors listings for the fun of it!  Even though we really had no intention of purchasing for at least a year, I was curious about the offerings in our new town.  And so, one beautiful summer afternoon, I stumbled upon a listing for our house.

It was beautiful!  Wood floors, original woodwork, and an awesome finished master suite on the 3rd floor!  The price was alright and the location was perfect.  I was in love.

About eight months later, we were starting to seriously consider whether or not we should buy.  The housing market was good, and loans were super-cheap, plus there was the homebuyer tax credit.  Since the time was ripe, we started looking at listings online…and wouldn’t ya know, the house was STILL there!  I thought for sure someone would have snagged it up by now.

Our realtor took us for a visit on our first time out and I loooooooooooved it.  It was the only house I could think about.  Sure it had a tiny kitchen and the 1st floor bathroom was right off the dining room, but I was in love, and well, love is blind.  Ha!

We considered a few other homes, but after repeated walks past the house, a couple more visits, and some fervent prayer, we made an offer.  A month and half later, we were moving in and painting walls.  We love this house!

I have a remodeling/homeowner confession:  we move at the pace of a snail.

Way way waaaaaaay back in November, we traveled to Kansas for Thanksgiving to visit family.  We had a wonderful and joyous time during our few days away, only to return to a not-so-wonderful situation in our master bathroom – plumbing problems.  A 4 inch square bubble in the paint on the wall backing up the shower clued us in to our bathroom woes.

Before I knew it (and before I could take a “before” picture for my blog!) my husband had pulled out a knife and cut a hole in the dry wall in order to “expose” our problem.

Since our master bathroom, along with the entire third floor of our house, was renovated and finished in 2007-2008, we have some relatively new plumbing known as PEX, which is made of polyethylene.  It basically looks like really thick flexible plastic tubes.  At first, we were sure that one of our pipes had a seal problem at a junction or fitting, but unfortunately it’s difficult to see or reach either of these from our peep-hole.  Thus, the hole has remained.  For 4 1/2 months.

I confess, it bothers me that there’s a hole in the wall right next to our toilet.  And the 4 inch square cut out of dry wall is still hiding behind the toilet.  Sad, I know.

BUT.  There’s been no water issues since then.  So, we’re kinda waiting to see if anything happens again before we go through the work to patch up the wall, re-texturize, and re-paint.  Plus, we may still get a plumber out here to investigate.

Honestly though, I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes us another 4 1/2 months to fix it.  We’re slow pokes.  Seriously slow.

That’s my confession for the day as a new homeowner.  We’re slow.  How about you? Do you have a confession?  Or do you have a hard time getting projects started, let alone finishing them?  Please tell me you do so that I’m not the only one!

It was a beautiful balmy spring day here in Iowa today – we reached 86 degrees!  I’m pretty sure that must be a record for April 1st.  It felt like summer and I actually had to use the AC in my car for a bit.  There were wild fires in a few of the corn fields as I was driving home from a quick trip to northern Iowa – with all of the wind and heat, we’re on fire alert in a few areas of the state.  I’m pretty sure the rain that is expected tomorrow will be more than welcome!

We’ve started our seedlings for our garden – it looked like this last year when everything was planted:

This year, we have a few surprises in store   Not only are we starting everything from seed (which we’ve never done before) but we’re also starting some flowers as well!  And eventually, I’m hoping to plant some hydrangeas, peonies, and some bulbs too.

But first, we have to prune this sucker:

We’re yanking him out, or at the very least, severely limiting his take on the yard.  He’s gigantic.

What will be in his place?  These:

I just have to figure out what kind of hydrangea, order them, and oh yeah, yank out the crazy monster taking over the south side of our house.

How about you, how is spring in your neck of the woods?  What are your garden and yard plans?  Got any tips for flower gardening or hydrangeas?

I posted earlier this week about some spring cleaning I’ve got planned.  Here’s the progress I’ve made so far this week:

• Clean our vacuum cleaner (yup, it needs the filter cleaned REAL bad)
• Deep clean the kitchen (scrub the walls, cabinets, counters, floors, clean the inside of the microwave and oven, clean out the refrigerator)
• Deep clean the 3 bathrooms (clean toilets, sinks, mirrors, tubs/showers, and mop the floors)
• Dust and mop our hardwood floors in the entire house
• Vacuum our 4 rugs, our master bedroom, and the basement
• Sweep, mop, and vacuum our basement staircase
• Dust all of the shelves, windows, and blinds in the entire house
• Clean all of the windows in the entire house
• Clean all of the window screens in the entire house
• Vacuum the sofas in the living room
• Vacuum the 3 season front porch
• Purge old clothes from our closets

I guess next week I’ll be working on windows and the remaining floors in the house

Today, I’m going to share about where I spend probably 65% of my day: my desk.

You’re excited, right?

In general, I love working from home.  There’s some obvious bonuses: I can stay in my PJs until noon, there’s always snacks available, and I don’t have to deal with office gossip or endless chatter and distractions.  But there’s some downsides to it too.  For instance, I often feel torn between getting work done, and cleaning the house.  That’s a big one for me.  I’ve found that I just CAN’T work if my house is messy.  It drives me batty.

I’ve also discovered that in order to be productive and continue to work at home, it’s important for me to have a dedicated space.  I share an office with my husband, who really only uses it for a few hours on Saturdays, so basically, it’s all mine.

Even more important than having my own space, though, is having an ORGANIZED space.  I love organizing.  Unfortunately, I’m not very good at it, and I’m always trying new systems or ways of keeping my space, and my life, organized.  Nothing is perfect, and neither am I, so I just go with what works…until I find something better!

Here’s the current state of my desk:

Wow, all of those cords going every which way below my desk?  UGLY.  Same with the stackable in boxes on the top right.  Yikes.

Let’s go in for a close-up, shall we?

That’s better. At least I can pretend all the unsightly cords don’t exist, right?

1.  My new Kassett boxes from Ikea!  They’re slightly too deep for the cubbies, but I figured I could do one on the bottom and offset it with one up top.  Right now, the one on the bottom left has stationary and envelopes in it (I write a lot of thank you notes for my job) and the top right one is still empty.

2.  My handy dandy 500 GB  external hard drive.  I got it on Black Friday a couple of years ago for $50 or something ridiculous like that.  I partitioned it so that half of it is for storage (mostly photos) and half is for backing up my laptop hard drive.

3.  A picture of my younger sister and I at Versailles from my trip to Paris in college.  It’s one of my favorite photos of her and I because that trip was such an adventure for me, and I loved that I got to share the last week with my sister and my parents.

4.  A random assortment of things: a small journal I was given by my supervisor, a blue glass bird that belonged to my husbands mother, an origami flower I made, and hiding in the back is a little tin that used to be a candle that was my grandmothers from one of her trips to Asia.

5.  A picture of my cutie-patootie niece in an old green frame a friend gave to me.

6.  A large red wooden pencil that says ” Mrs. W_______” that belonged to my mother-in-law, who was a school teacher.  My husband gave it to me, and I thought it was just right for my desk

7.  A beautiful glass frame with pressed flowers in it, holding a picture of my older brother and my niece.  It’s a picture I took at my grandmother’s funeral.  This picture means SO much to me.

8.  A small frame with my sister’s senior picture (I need to get a new one of her and her husband), my favorite box of stationary from my dear friend Linnea that she gave me in college, and an Eiffel tower ornament my mother gave me after our trip to Paris.

9.  An electric pencil sharpener that I should probably move since I never use it…and a stack of books I’m either currently reading or using for work, including: In Defense of Food, In the Name of Jesus, Peppermint-Filled Pinatas, a Bible commentary for Genesis, and one of my favorite prayer books my friend Cindy introduced me too, Face to Face.

10.  My stack of plastic “in boxes”.  Each of them has a different label that I use for sorting items or my “next actions”, for all you GTD folks.  In theory, I should have probably about a dozen more, but I’m not sure I could actually handle that.  Currently, I have four.  They include House (which is currently overflowing), IVCF (job stuff), Computer (anything I need to type up or complete online that comes to me in paper form), and Inbox (which is for general tasks)

11.  A hilarious mug that says “Lefties are better lovers!” from my husband, who happens to be left-handed.

12.  Some random notes to myself or from my husband.

13.  A pretty empty picture frame.  I need to find a picture for it, because it’s been sitting empty for quite a while.

14.  Scrap paper and a random CD that needs a home.

15.  My new Target lamp!  I mixed and matched the base and shade so that it would fit on my desk.  I need to find a different bulb, though, because it peaks out above the shade.

16.  My old Manhatten desk from Target – they don’t make this style anymore.  But this one is fairly close.  It has three drawers, and the middle one is a keyboard drawer where the front folds down.  The hutch matches, and is also no longer available, but Target has a few nice options that are similar.  I really wish I had a desk that was a bit more right-hand friendly, and had a wider keyboard tray so that I could also put my mouse on it – something like this.

17.  A small black plastic container to hold pencils.  I’d love to find a cute mason jar at Goodwill to replace this.

18.  The main event, my 15 inch MacBook Pro (here’s a newer one, even though the permanent battery is just about the worst idea EVER), on top of two large dictionaries.  Why?  Because buying a monitor is not in the budget, and I needed to raise the screen so that my posture wasn’t awful.  It looks ridiculous, I’ll admit to that, but it’s functional and free.  Hiding behind my laptop is a large bottle of hand lotion that I snagged at Whole Foods the last time I was in Minneapolis.  I’ve got really dry skin in the winter, so this was essential to have close at hand.

Below my desk is a small file box, and next to my desk is a wire basket for trash.  My chair is just a basic office rolling chair, hopefully someday replaced by something a bit more elegant and comfortable.

And that’s everything!

Thanks for taking a tour of my desk.  I hope you enjoyed it!  Probably my favorite thing right now is all of the green – I love green!  It’s so fun and punchy, and very appropriate for spring.  Next on my list would probably be the pictures of family.  Since they’re all 4+ hours away, I like to have little reminders of them close by.  I definitely need to get a picture of my parents and my nephew though!

What’s your favorite thing about your desk?  Either at home or at the office?  Do you keep pictures of family and friends? Are you super organized, or is yours covered with paper and really an “organized mess”?  Do tell!

Seriously, I am shopped out.

Small-town Iowa doesn’t offer much in the way of selection for pretty much anything except sweet corn in the middle of August.  I’m stuck with a Walmart, two local furniture stores with outdated styles, and two interior decorators that charge too much for custom designs.  Several consignment stores and a Goodwill round out the offerings, often with spotty selection.

So I was excited to visit a few stores during my time in Chicago.  I even planned out my stops so I could hit them all up.  I had a few items I was looking for, and I was also interested in browsing. Here was my list of hopeful purchases:

• lamps for our master bedroom
• a new (smaller) lamp for my desk in our office
• fabric or drapes for our master bedroom windows
• bath rug for our master bath
• hardware for our first floor bathroom (toilet paper holder, towel bar, and two nobs)
• storage boxes for the office (I’ve been scoping out some from Ikea for a while…)
• coffee table for our living room
• serving tray for dining room to corral all our dining table goodies and use for transporting food from kitchen to dining room
• and completely unrelated, a new pair of jeans since all of my current ones are either ripped or not fitting well (*cough cough*)

Quite the list, and only 4 hours to complete it.  Here’s where I went and what I scored:

• Target – I love me some Tar-jay.    I scored a cute little lamp and shade here for $20 for my office.  I also found some potential lamps for our bedroom.
• TJMaxx – 1 pair of guess jeans!  A bit on the pricey side, but they fit really well and were long enough!  Woot!
• HomeGoods – Holy cow, talk about home decorating overload!  I walked away with a bath rug, some candlesticks, and two decorative glass jars.  A lot more damage could have been done here, but I resisted…
• Ikea – It’s been a few years since my last visit to the Swedish superstore, and I was (predictably) overwhelmed.  This is where my feet started hurting…I had fun checking out the fabrics, drapes, and hardware, but only ended up snagging some sleek storage boxes for my office.  I have to say though, I was definitely inspired by the Ikea kitchens.  They’re pretty nice!
• Anthropologie – I’ve never been, and I was excited to find out there was one in a nearby mall.  Oh the beauty!  If only I could afford something there.  Probably the best I’ll ever get is a scarf or necklace   No purchases made here…
• Z Gallerie – I’ve window-shopped their online store, but this was my first time in brick and mortar place.  I have to say, I LOVE this place.  Affordable and stylish.  I definitely found tons of stuff here to like.  Unfortunately, most of it is a bit more mod and I haven’t quite figured out how to blend that with our traditional house.  Tips?
• Crate & Barrel – Oh man, talk about decorating lust.  This place is loaded with beautiful furniture, linens, and entertaining items.  I was hoping to scope out a nightstand I’d like to save up for, but they didn’t have it on display

By the end of my 4 hour spree, I was exhausted and tired, and frankly, a bit overwhelmed.  I used to love shopping.  But I felt like I was drowning in a never ending rush of choices and options.  It was on the one hand very exciting, and on the other, rather disconcerting.  The tyranny of choice and consumerism was very apparent.  And in the midst of my spree, I was reminded of my desire to keep things simple.  No, I don’t need 5 different place settings for various holidays and occasions.  No, I don’t need xyz item brand new or right now.  No, I do not want my house to look like an Ikea magazine threw up in it.

All I really need is a roof over my head, some food, and good friends.  Everything else is just a bonus

Pictures of everything coming soon, I promise!

One of the things we’ve desperately needed for a while is a duvet cover for our down comforter.  When we got married, we really could not find anything we liked and ended up registering for an entire bedding set at Macy’s.  But we never really liked it.  Plus, it was ridiculously over priced.  So, for the last 18 months, our comforter has been naked.  No duvet in sight.

Naked comforter

This, however, was not a good long term solution.  Apparently, the natural oils from your skin, sweat, and any left-over cosmetics begin to stain the fabric of your comforter and can break down the fibers in the comforter.  A quick Google search turned up this article, and several others about down comforters and the need for duvets.  We have a goose-down comforter -mmmmmm, it’s lovely! – and we’d love for it to last a long time, but you’re only supposed to have them cleaned ever 3 years or so.  So, in order to make it last a life-time, we needed to invest in a duvet.

One added bonus to having a down comforter is that you can easily change the style.  Duvet’s are like a pillowcase for your comforter – they are both protective and add some pretty decoration to your bed.  You can find inexpensive ones at many different stores, and I imagine it wouldn’t be too difficult to make your own.

The hunt was on for our new duvet.   Our budget was around $150, including shipping.  I looked at all of my usual haunts: Amazon, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond.  There were some good contenders and  a good selection, but reviews for my favorites weren’t very positive and encouraging.  I knew I wanted something high quality, but not exorbitantly overpriced like the $400+ duvet we registered for at Macy’s back in the day.  I also wanted something that was fairly classic and could adapt to changing styles, yet would fit in our modern bedroom.

After a good deal of searching and considering several options, I finally found this at West Elm:

And I loooooooooved it.  Simple, clean lines, but also not too modern that I couldn’t completely change the style of our bedroom in 5 years and have to to replace it.  It’s an organic pleated voile duvet – what is voile? – and I ordered it in white.  Maybe that seems ridiculous since the comforter is already white, but it’s classic and can go with anything.

The best part?  It was within our budget AND on sale!!!

I placed my order and patiently waited, and yesterday it arrived in a box, neatly packaged in a little carrying pouch, which will be great for summer storage.

I decided it would be a perfect time to change our sheets (definitely overdue…) and make the bed up all nice with our pretty new duvet.  Here’s her debut:

Isn’t she pretty?  Ignore the wrinkles, apparently ironing would have been a good idea, but who has time for that?

I am, of course, no incredibly aware of the sparseness of our bedroom.  We have hand-me-down endtables as nightstands that are about a foot too short, and the bed is in sore need of either a bed skirt or a true bed frame.  Obviously, neither is necessary, but wouldn’t it look better than the exposed corners and seemingly “floating” bed?

It’s funny how one new thing leads to another, isn’t it?