Cheers

This weekend, Tim and I went up to the lake so I could catch up on some much-needed grading. I missed a day or so of work due to my death of cold, so there was quite a bit piled up. This was a completely spontaneous trip, a grab-a-change-of-clothes-and-throw-the-fridge-in-the-cooler-rather-than-shop weekend (aka pretty much the only way we do it around here). Just add a coupla cough drops (for our lingering colds) and some bird food (for the bird) and we had everything we'd need for a productive and yet relaxing retreat at the lake. Plus, it was raining, and what's better than a cosy rainy weekend at the lake?

Oh, poor sweet naive little Brittany. You're in for a surprise.

Our first clue should have been the creek crossing on the way in. Sure, the creek was at about 12 inches, but it was raining CATS AND DOGS and wasn't supposed to let up until late Sunday afternoon. Did that stop us? Nope!

We get to the cabin and hunker down for a truly fantastic weekend. Gallons of hot chocolate and Prosecco were consumed (almost). An bottle of robitussin was split between the two of us over the course of the weekend. Poached eggs were practiced (and failed, whoops). Forty rounds of rummy were played, thirty-six papers were graded, two movies were viewed, and two driveways were raked. See? Productive and relaxing. 

However, this was the only "clear skies" we got all weekend, and it lasted for a good seven minutes, tops. 

By Sunday, as predicted, it was still raining, and we had just enough gas to get us back to town. That means NO SIDE TRIPS TO SEE PRETTY TREES, as I was told. 

Bummer.

We drive the winding road back towards town and get to the creek crossing. Lo and behold, the creek was up ANOTHER  eighteen inches (on top of the aforementioned twelve) and rushing across the road at speeds up around thirty miles an hour. 

Yeah, you couldn't cross that in a semi-truck, let alone our car. You see those little creek-level stakes in the right-hand picture? No? Well, that's a bad sign. It's halfway into the red zone.

So, with no more food, barely any gas, and intermittent power outages, we spent another night in the cabin. Monday morning

Monday morning, we were able to get out, with barely any gas to spare. 12 hours of "dry" weather shrunk the creek back to a respectable 12 inches, and calmed the creek enough to cross. 

See? You can see the green-for-go lines.

The trip home was relatively uneventful, save some gorgeous skies, beautiful weather, and a bird who discovered how fan-stinking-tastic singing on a conference call can be (sorry to all of Tim's coworkers; I did my best!).

gallery wall: our little corner of memories

{that's really not so little at all}

I'm in love I'm in love and I don't care who knows it!

Remember this? You guys, this project has been four months in the making. We started this in July, for crying out loud!

{picking out pictures is no joke}

Part of the issue was finding a place that would print such large photos for less than thirty bucks apiece. {especially the panoramic frame}! I researched around for a LONG.DANG.TIME, and the cheapest I was able to find was Staples, believe it or not. They would do color poster prints starting at 4.99 apiece, but their size options were really limited. And, to be frank, i thought i could do better. 4.99 sounds pretty darn good for a poster print, but I needed at least eleven photos printed (not counting spares if I wanted to switch one out) and that added up quickly. Plus some of the sizes were a little odd, and that made things even more difficult.

it's been quite the adventure getting from this point to where we are now. 

My research led me to something called "Engineering Prints", a cost-effective photo-printing cheat that's been trending on Pinterest for awhile now {if you don't believe me, check it out}. Basically, Engineering prints are for blueprints, line-drawings, or anything you need both big and black-and-white, and you can get them done at any printing shop or office supply store (I ended up going with Office Depot).

They are not recommended for photos, but since they were so inexpensive I figured it was worth a shot. It would cost five bucks for a printed sheet so large I could get several photos on one page, which meant I got a lot more bang for my buck :). If they didn't work, I'd figure something else out.
{spoiler alert: they totally worked}

I picked the pictures we wanted to print, then spent some time deciding on which photo would go where. Then, I sized the photos accordingly and created a 36x48 inch slide in Powerpoint so I could arrange the photos in the most tetris-like way. Yeah baby! I was able to fit all  the photos we wanted (plus a few randoms for other rooms and spares for the gallery wall to change things up a bit if we got bored) onto two slides.

The Bottom Line? Twenty-two bucks shipped for twenty giant black-and-white photos (If I had lived closer to a store that did in-store pick-up, it would have been half that). Win. That's a little over a dollar for each!!!!!! Toldja I could do better than a measly 4.99 :)

I got a phone call the next business day confirming my order, and they arrived at my door the day after that. WHOO! We just cut out the photos we wanted, stuck them in the frames, and stuck 'em back up on the wall. Velcro is a beautiful thing. The print job was decent--we lost a little bit of the detail in printing but overall it's hard to tell unless you're up close.

I'm thrilled that we thought to get "spare" prints to switch out now and again; that way, we didn't have to pick favorites with the photos/people who appear on our wall now. Awesome! Plus we can swap out pictures for different seasons, if we get ambitious (ha, right). Since the pictures are up with Command strips, it's really easy to whip 'em down and stick 'em back up!

It's such a happy little place to hang out, especially now that the frames are filled with memories instead of a big wad of empty. Most are wedding photos, which makes it feel a teensy bit like a wedding shrine, but we worked with what we had.

What do you think? Would you use engineering prints for a gallery wall?

product review: palmolive fresh infusions // diy

Apparently, part of being a "bigtime blogger" (ha, that's a joke) is reviewing products for people. So, here you go. I was sent three bottles of Palmolive's new Fresh Infusions dish soap from Influenster for review, which is pretty darn funny to me. 

Why? Well, I hate hate hate doing the dishes. It (along with doing laundry) is the bane of my existence (and I HAVE a dishwasher, so I don't even have to handwash very much! Sheesh). I still do them, but there's a LOT I'd rather be doing instead. 

So when I was sent several bottles of dish soap, I had to laugh. Yeah, probably the only thing to get me to want to do dishes would be pretty-smelling soap. 

And seriously, you guys, it's DANG good-smelling.

Yes, I'm still doing the dishes. 

But they smell pretty. So that's cool. (and aren't the bottles pretty, too? I almost like them on the counter.

Two of these bottles have been relegated to dish duty, but the third got a higher calling.

With all the dirty work that goes on in this house (what with the painting, the cleaning of the previous tenant's gunk off the walls, attempting to garden, etc), we need a good sturdy hand scrub. As luck would have it, one of the main ingredients of Gardener's Hand Scrub is dish soap :).

I filled a container 3/4 of the way with sugar (I used an old cleaned-out candle jar), poured some soap in, and mixed. I added enough soap to make it a scrubby-consistency (maybe a quarter cup?), and voila! Seriously so easy, and it gets gunk off my hands so quickly. Jillee at One Good Thing uses something similar, and this is her verdict:

 

source

I'd say that's a ringing endorsement, eh? 

The ginger and white tea scent of the soap I used for the scrub is seriously divine. Debating using it as a shaving scrub, but I'm not sure how I feel about taking dish soap into the shower with me. Thoughts? Regardless, this could make a nice Christmas gift!
Disclaimer: I received this product complimentarily for review from Influenster, but all the words and opinions here are my own!

save it for a rainy day

We had all these great plans for this weekend. We were going to go to LA to see an installation at FIDM, check out the Endeavor shuttle's museum, pop in to see a play or something...

Instead, we did a little of this:

{Instagram username: brittymack}

And you know what? That whole lotta "nothing" was just what the doctor ordered.

What'd you do this weekend?

lessons learned

:: I re-learned that my husband's a champ!!! Finished his half marathon in a little over 2 hours (he totally exceeded his goal!). I'm so.dang.proud.

...BUT as a result of ^^^, Tim will stop at nothing to motivate me to run, including stealing my long-awaited packages before I get home from work and not giving them back until I work out {I'm definitely in the "tough love" phase of my training schedule, that's for SURE}. He's a keeper :)

:: I learned that Murphy's Law applies to Kitchen appliances, too. A week before Thanksgiving, our oven went out. Waiting on the landlady/repairman to help out has been fun {not}.

:: I learned that I bruise much easier than I originally thought, discovered during an episode involving a zombie spider and a bathroom vanity. I have a four-inch-wide bruise covering the majority of my hip that will.not.go.away!

:: I learned that little cold birdies like space-heaters, too. When that thing is put-put-putting away, he'll sit exactly two feet in front of it (never closer, never further) and hunker down. NOTHING can get him to budge after that.

You learned anything fun this week?