Bark in the Park

Last night was bark in the park at the Durham Bulls baseball game. This is the one baseball game Derrick and I go to over the summer and it's obviously because we can bring our girl. 

Michael and Rebecca asked if we wanted to go a few weeks ago so we joined them and their dog Zoey.  Crosby loves Zoey, and Michael and Rebecca, so she promptly flipped out when we met them for dinner before the game.

The dog zone was so crowded and there were dogs everywhere. It was heaven! Crosby did awesome and mostly ignored everybody except Zoey.

I love french bull dogs. Derrick thinks their weird looking but I think they are so cute! We saw a grey one that Derrick didn't completely dislike so maybe one day :)

This photo makes me laugh. We were trying to get a family photo for Michael and Rebecca. You can just make out Zoey's nose as she disappears between Michael's legs.

One inning in and Crosby was already napping. She's been napping all morning today too...the game wore her out!

The weather was perfect, no rain and not too hot. We stayed for a good chunk of the game but by the 7th inning the Bulls hadn't even gotten a hit off so we headed out early. Crosby is so good at these types of things...she mostly just ignores the other dogs and is content to lay under our feet during most of the event. It makes her easy to bring along. Can't wait until next year!

GOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL!

Last weekend Derrick and I road tripped to Hickory to meet Nikki and Justin to then road trip to Charlotte. Bayern Munich, Derrick's favorite club soccer team from Germany, was in town and playing at the Panther's stadium in Charlotte on Saturday night. We've had tickets forever and we were both really excited when Nikki and Justin could come too. Justin is also a big Bayern fan and Nikki and I were happy to come along, cheer, and get some time together.

We arrived to Charlotte early to hang out for a while. We booked an escape room for early afternoon because....duh...travel with the Marceys and you're going to do an escape room. While we were waiting for our time slot we walked around downtown Matthews. It was such a cute little town.

There was an adoption event going on and this guy was almost too cute to leave behind.

I do not get to see this girl enough. We've been friends for 15 years now...is that right Nikki?? I love hanging out with her and this was the perfect weekend to get a lot of hang time with one of my favorites.

We did the detective room at Escape Hour. We've done a room here before with Jay and Jack so Derrick and I were familiar with the place. It was a 10 person room that we did with just 4 people and we were minutes from escaping! We were on the last puzzle and we were just doing it wrong. Bummer but still a fun room to do.

Officially my first experience in a game store. Impressions: nerdy. Can I put that on the internet? We had some time to kill between the escape room and the soccer game and there was a game Justin wanted to check out so he and Derrick tested it for an hour. We ended up walking out with 2 games each, so as nerdy as I felt in this store, it was well worth the visit.

Our hotel was awesome. It was the Marriot city center and only a 15 minute walk from the stadium. The rooms were fully renovated and this was our penthouse view.

I have mixed feelings about the game experience. The game was actually great but, word of caution to anyone going to the panthers game, no purses allowed! At all, ever. It wasn't on the tickets and there weren't any signs. We had to wait in a super long line, then get shuffled to a bag line, and then get told we can either throw our bags away or take them back to the hotel. Luckily Nikki and I split off from Derrick and Justin when we went to the bag line so they were able to go on into the game while Nikki and I walked back to the hotel. In the end, we missed 35 minutes of the 90 minute game. It honestly felt like we didn't even go....it was such a short time actually being in the game.

The dreaded bag line. 

Bayern won 4-1. Three of those goals were scored while Nikki and I were still trying to get into the stadium :(

Dinner after. Like my wHagonweel jersey? Funny story. I bought a Bayern tank top for the game and accidentally threw it away while I was cleaning the house. My wHagonweel jersey fit right in though.

While we were at dinner we found an empty escape room and booked it for redemption. It sucks to fail a room and we were all itching for a win. We found Codescape. It had good reviews and an empty room at 11:15. We always try to book last minute so we have the best chance of not getting random people in the room with us. It's never as fun.

This was hands down the BEST escape room we have ever done! I can't explain it and give it away but I'm serious. We couldn't stop talking about it and I woke up talking about it the next morning. It was amazing and immersive. Everything was so incredibly well done. It was a bit scary which was unexpected and I screamed the whole way through but holey moley. If you get a chance to try Codescape you won't be disappointed.

We got out with 17 minutes to spare which seems like the room is too easy but we were just clicking on all cylinders and the room was so amazing we could have gotten out in 10 minutes and probably still felt like it was awesome.

It was an amazing weekend and I'm so glad we got to have some friend time with Nikki and Justin. They are some of the best!

Drying Rack for the Laundry Room

The laundry room is one of my favorite rooms as far as what we did with it. It was really easy, mostly paint, but it's really cute and functional. There was a big empty wall next to the garage door. Derrick and I had talked about doing a built in ironing board but....we don't iron! We do, however, have a ton of clothes that hang dry.

When I saw plans for this adorable hanging rack I knew that was the answer! Plans here. I won't do a step by step because they aren't my plans but if you follow that link you'll be taken to the site with the plans.

My version turned out pretty well although those hinges were a pain to install and mine still doesn't sit perfectly flush. I painted mine the same yellow color as the door leading to the garage. 

I used the same hangers that we used to hang our headboard. They work really well but they are SO hard to use. You have to blindly hook them onto the opposite piece on the wall.

While we were hanging the headboard Derrick had the brilliant idea of using painters tape as guide lines.  We put guide lines on the laundry rack and on the wall so we knew exactly where to slide them down the wall.

 It worked like a charm!

This is one of the first things that I've built for the house that adds function and I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's not perfect but I did it! I built it and it works!

I also hung a mirror from an estate sale that mom and I hit up over the weekend. My best $1.50 find to date.

Perfect height for a quick hair or teeth check as you're running out the door.

Living Room Facelift

I don't know why I haven't been able to get into green. I also don't know why I couldn't find any other pictures of our living room! I searched and searched but this was the only one I could find that actually showed the whole thing and it was taken forever ago. 

The green was fine. It was really a pretty nice color and in person it was a lot less obvious than in the picture above. I could just never get completely behind it though. Well...one thing led to another and the living room now looks like this.

In person it's a much more subtle change than I thought it would be which is really good. I worried going grey on the wall would feel boring or make the room darker but it actually feels and looks great! This was a spur of the moment change last Saturday and it was all because the curtains I ordered came in and I knew I wouldn't like them with the green. I didn't want to hang them up and then paint down the road when I could just knock it out from the get go.

Speaking of curtains....CURTAINS! This wall of windows has had me stumped. The old owners just used white shower curtain rods inside the window casing with simple white curtains. It was actually a genius and simple solution.

See that wall of three windows by the fireplace? There is hardly any room on either side of those windows for rods. The rods have to end almost immediately so anything with a ball at the end of the rod wasn't going to work. I also couldn't decide if I wanted one long rod going all the way across or if I wanted 4 little rods. Did I want the curtains to function? Maybe I only wanted two curtains, one on each end, and no curtains in the middle spots. #firstworldproblems to the maximum!

Also, curtains are expensive! The don't seem like they should be! I was pretty picky, didn't want anything to bold but still wanted color, and I wasn't going to pay an arm and a leg for them. I found these on Wayfair and they were back ordered. They were the only ones I liked in all of my searching though. I needed 8 at 96" long. I put myself on the watch list and assumed I'd never see them again and that I'd be curtain-less forever but I actually got an email two weeks later that they were re-stocked. So, at 11:30 PM, with Derrick sleeping naively beside me, I pulled the trigger! At less than $20/curtain they were way cheaper than anything else I found and way cheaper than the 24 yards of drapery fabric I would have needed to make my own. Yeah...think about that....$20 per curtain was cheap!!! I need to go sell a house now. 

I kind of love them. They were worth the cash. Derrick would probably agree, but only because he doesn't pay our credit card bill. 

What do you think of those rods?? I made them out of copper piping I found at Lowes. I bought basic brackets at Lowes and sprayed them copper to match. I LOVE the copper color...I was thinking I'd just spray paint pvc or silver metal tubing but when I saw these copper pipes I was totally sold. It went something like this: 

"OMG...COPPER!"

"Can I do that?"

"I can't do that!"

"I think I'm going to try it......."

"It's never been done before...you're crazy...stick with boring ORB!"

"You're right...I can't do it"

"I'm doing it! And it's going to look amazing!!!! and Shut up!"

 

I just used basic copper pipe caps on the end to solve the issue of not having a lot of space for the ends of the rods. I think they look super clean and fresh. 

And I got to use a pipe cutter which was pretty sweet. I had to join a couple pipes together for the two larger windows so I just used couplings to attach them and put in a squirt of hot glue to keep them in place.

These rods were a lot less expensive than they would have been if I had bought them. I needed three total and one would have had to be 10.5 feet. Not to mention it's hard to find them without some sort of ball on the end. 

Also...while we're on the topic, can someone please tell me why hanging curtain rods is so hard!!?? Seriously...I think it's the hardest DIY project I've done to date. How do you get them straight? And level? And how do you hold the drill and the bracket and the anchor and the hammer at the same time? I climbed up and down that ladder about 10000000 times and I also dropped everything twice that many times. Curtain rods are hard!

Here is the before. 

And the after.

Before. 

And after. 

Here's a pretty accurate picture of the new wall color.

Our house looks so fancy now! Curtains are so fancy! I'm so glad to have this project behind me....it's been a long time coming but I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Meanwhile....in kitchen land....