Wordless Wednesday

Ideas

Things that have been on my mind:

1. Chorus went great today.  It was our first rehearsal and the kids had fun.  Not to mention that they are pretty good!
2. My ankle still hurts.
3. Josh's parents are coming to visit this weekend.
4. Tomorrow I am going to pick out teal paint chips for our living room! :-)
5. My grad school paper this semester is going to be the jam (updates on that later).
6. I really want to go to Ikea.  I have never been to one but I have to wait until I save up a load of money because I know I'm not walking out of there empty handed.
7. A teacher from my friend's school in Salisbury was missing for a few days.  Her body was found on Sunday.  They think her husband did it because he committed suicide a day or two after reporting her missing.  Scary stuff, dude.
8. I am teaching mellophone lessons.  Yes, I know the mellophone sucks and I have always hated it, but a local band director is paying me 50 bucks an hour to teach private lessons.  So, yeah, I'll be doing that.
9. My after school program starts next week, so I will be at school from 8a-6p instead of 8a-4p.  Yuck.
10. I spent the better part of my weekend painting.  Updates on that later!
11. A friend of mine recommended that I start "Tasty Tuesday" on my blog where I post a favorite recipe every Tuesday.  I was going to start today, but... life got the best of me.
12. I have been eating too much pasta.  Why do I like it so much?

Inspiration Nation

In light of the 10 year anniversary of September 11, 2001, I thought I would share some inspiration that comes from viewing the TV shows, the news, and just thinking.

First off, I know everyone has a "where-I-was-on-9-11" story, but I think it's kind of important to share it because it is still what my mind goes back to when I hear the words "nine eleven".

I was in 9th grade English class with an excellent teacher, Mrs. R.  We caught wind of some crazy stuff happening and turned on the TV shortly after the second plane had hit.  I think it's worth mentioning that if it hadn't been for an 8th grade field trip 4 months before, I wouldn't have even known what the World Trade Centers were.  On our middle school trip to NYC, we actually went up to the top of the Twin Towers and took pictures and did the whole "tourist" thing.  But I specifically remember driving in the bus up to New York asking "What are the World Trade Centers?" after reviewing our itinerary.  I think that most of us 13-year-olds were in the same boat.  But when we got there, we learned quite a bit and even got to ride the 25 mph elevator that took us to the top!  I still have the tickets and pictures from that trip and I looked for them to post on here, but couldn't find them (we still have boxes to unpack from the move).  Whoops.

Anyway, seeing as I was actually on top of the World Trade Centers only a few months before, watching them crumble on TV with all of my classmates was really weird.  I remember thinking that it was crazy, scary, and incredible at the same time, but somehow felt very distant.  My English teacher, however, felt very close.  Her husband was in the military and she hadn't heard from him all day, so she was very worried and was really upset.  My friends and I were trying to talk to her and console her most of the time.

I kept thinking of it all day and was pretty upset when my biology teacher wouldn't turn the TV on.  I still remember the biology lesson that day.  We were doing jumping jacks with partners and then recording each others' blood pressures.  I was partners with my future high school boyfriend at the time and I even remember him flirting and me wanting to flirt back, but I was a bit in shock still and just kept thinking about how badly I wanted my teacher to turn the news on.

Recently, as in yesterday and today, I have been thinking a lot and have started to realize the massive impact this event had on our country.  And more than ever now, it scares the pants off of me!  But at the same time, I have watched some really inspirational stuff on the TV/computer this weekend that I just have to share.

First of all, I found this video on Facebook.  This is a video of David Irvin, who works at the Pentagon and was there the day of the attack.  He was interviewed about his experience that day by a project called Voices of 9.11.  This archive of videos includes about 500 interviews of survivors from the The World Trade Centers, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, PA.  David Irvin was among the 500 interviewed and it was really neat to hear his story.  It also made things a bit more personal, considering I have met him and these videos were just released even though they were filmed in 2002 and 2003.

The History Channel put together an excellent documentary called 102 Minutes That Changed America. Although I watched it on TV, you can go to the website and watch clips as well.   It is made up of only home videos of 9 New Yorkers who took their video cameras around the city that day.  It included a lot of footage that I hadn't seen at all before and it was honestly terrifying.  But it put things in perspective because I truly felt like I was seeing everything through their eyes.  I realize now that if I had been there, I truly would have felt like the world was ending.  You just have to watch this footage.

And NBC, my trusty NBC with my trusty Matt Lauer, is proving to be the network to watch this weekend.  On Friday, Dateline NBC did a special called America Remembers.  Tom Brokaw narrates the 2 hour show full of first-hand accounts.  Many of the accounts were from survivors and widows.  And many of the stories were ones I hadn't heard before.  Those two hours were really emotionally draining.  And right now I am watching "As It Happened".  It's just the NBC Today Show exactly as it happened that morning being replayed on NBC.  It is sooooo weird to be watching the entire thing all over again.

These are some excellent videos and shows that have put things in even more perspective than even before.

Count your blessings.

One More Thing Off the List

If you remember in this post and this post, our Pre-Paint process included some very important steps.  I am happy to announce that we have officially crossed all of the things on the list!  The only thing that was left was to mount the TV on the wall.  We did that on Thursday!  Well... we didn't do anything.  Josh and his friend did that for us.  His friend was the same one that helped us install the in-ceiling speakers.  It was a simple project and didn't take long.  They made sure they were finished before the first NFL game of the season.  And then promptly watched the game on our newly-mounted TV:

The picture taken from a phone, which is why it sucks.  The batteries in the (also-kind-of-suck-y) camera died and I haven't bought new ones yet.

So, here is our final Pre-Paint to do list:

1. Wait for the TV stand to be shipped and make sure we like it and like the color of wood against a teal wall.
2. Mount our TV on the wall (mounting hardware is already purchased)
3. Install new in-ceiling speakers.
4. Run all of the wires through the wall and install all electronics.

YAY!  Now it's time to go pick up paint swatches and see how they look!  I am super excited to paint, too!  I recently helped a friend paint her living room.  It was the first time I had ever touched a paint roller or brush against a wall, so I was naturally a bit nervous to be painting someone else's wall while I was "experimenting". But at the same time I was also happy to be making any first-timer mistakes NOT on my wall.  But it turns out that I actually really enjoy painting and I'm not too bad at it.  Believe it or not, I like doing the corners and edges the best!  Being a Type-A person, I appreciate creating perfect paint lines and actually find it quite exhilarating and "risky" to be painting something permanent right next to something I am not supposed to be painting at all.  Is that weird?  Maybe.  But I am not a risky person at all, so that's about as exciting as I get!

Since I posted my Before and Not-So-After living room post, I have found some excellent teal living room inspiration which I will share soon. Have an awesome weekend!

Small Project.

I haven't really posted much this week.  That's because I had a few setbacks that I wasn't expecting.  First of all, beginning Tuesday morning and worsening throughout the day and evening, I developed a cold, which turned into sore throat, which turned into loss of voice completely, which turned into body aches.  Yeah, that sucked.  So I was useless for about a day and a half.  I still did make it to school, though.  Then, Wednesday evening, just as I was feeling much better I decided to go to a step aerobic class at the gym.  Well, about 75% of the way through the class, I missed the step.  I thought I twisted my ankle.  But it felt much worse than all of the other times I have twisted my ankle.  I finished the song with great pain, thinking it would go away, then promptly gathered my things and left in even greater pain.  By the time I got home (10 minutes later), I had a bruise on the front of my ankle.  But I didn't hit it on anything.  So I think I sprained it... which I had never done before.  Unfortunately, after some research, it doesn't seem like it will get better fast.  I am a little sad about not being about to do my regular gym workout, but we will see how it goes.  On to the real topic of this post...

We have a problem in our house.  All of the door knobs are brass.  I hate brass.  I saw on a young house love post how they spray painted their door handles/knobs.  It was a success.  But they spray painted them brown.  I don't exactly want brown, but silver would be okay.  I found some cool ones that we could replace them with here, here, and here.  I really like the look of silver door "handles" as opposed to brass "knobs":

NO.

YES!

I talked a little in this post about how I went to Wal-Mart ("Wally-World" or "Wal-Market") and bought some spray paint to give it a go and see how it went.  I bought primer, very fine sandpaper, two different metallic spray paints (one light and one dark) and glosser to go over it.  

The reason why I chose to go this route is because if we actually purchase all of those door knobs, it will be pretty expensive (at least a couple hundred bucks).  So Plan B is to try and spray paint them a nickel-ish/silver/metallic color. 

I decided to use the door knob from our home office closet because it's not in the "public view", as in, if it doesn't work out and people come to our house, it the first thing they see when they walk in the door won't be so offensive.  So, I took the door knob off myself.  Yeah, I totally thought this was going to be a hard job. Uhh... NOT.  I took a screwdriver and screwed the thing off in about 43 seconds.  I took it outside and set it up on an old piece of cardboard:

In fear of scratching the metal, I chose the finest grit sandpaper I could find (320).  Aren't these things awesome?  They are easy to hold and handle, and they fit into corners easily:

Yes, I am wearing bright yellow nail polish.  Don't hate.

And after sanding, it was much less shiny...

I primed it (two coats)...

Then spray painted it with the lighter color that I chose (4 thin coats).  The darker color was clearly not going to work.  It looked almost black:

Then I sprayed two coats of the "crystal clear enamel".  It's essentially just like a spray gloss.  Then I screwed it back on the door upstairs in the office and this is how it turned out.

There is a dilemma.  We can't tell if we like it.  It looks generally like the look we were going for.  But it has that spray-paint-textured kind of look.

So, it's not too bad. But it reminds of a bit of plastic.  I can't tell if it looks cheap or not.  And if it does look cheap, I definitely don't want to do the rest of the doors like that.  But if it doesn't look too bad (better than the brass) I will do the rest.  What do you think?

Then, of course, there is the other debate.  Should I also spray these brass parts so they all match?

 

Wordless Wednesday (a day late)