A Home for My Cupcakes

I'm not a big cake person. (I'll pause here so you can gasp in shock.) I don't know what it is, but cake has never been my favorite dessert. I LOVE anything chocolate, and I have a mean sweet tooth, but cake just never did it for me. So I decided to have cupcakes instead of cake at my wedding. I'm even going to have a giant cupcake so that we can have a cupcake-cutting ceremony--and because the idea of a giant cupcake just makes me smile.

Check out this beautilicious giant wedding cupcake I found here.

On my hunt for the best "cupcake dealer" out there, I came to the realization that the markup on dessert for weddings is ridiculous. I mean, $4 for each cupcake? (Yes, I did come across a place that charged that.) At 200 guests--that's going to almost double the cost for food! Upon this discovery, I decided we should not have cupcakes at our wedding--one giant cupcake, yes; but cupcakes for everyone, no.

I was okay with this decision. Then one day at a bridal expo in town, we passed a cake vendor's table, and they had a nice spread of different flavored pieces of cake and a plethora of frosting choices to sample. I would have walked on by, but my future mother-in-law was on the hunt for a good cupcake vendor for her own daughter's wedding (my future sister-in-law is getting married a couple months after us...let the parties begin!).

So we stopped to take a look at this vendor's table. Tyler took this opportunity to grab a sample of chocolate cake with coffee frosting. It was love at first bite for him. And since we had to test out some of their other flavors, I tried a piece of white (is that a flavor?) cake with champagne frosting. Wow. These people don't mess around! The best part? They are reasonably priced! Needless to say, I left that bridal expo excited like a kid on Christmas Eve. I will have my cupcakes after all--and they'll be delicious!

Okay, this whole back story leads me to my purchase this weekend at World Market (love that place). This adorable cupcake stand was on sale for $9.99--and I had to buy something.

                                               

It won't hold all of the cupcakes I plan to have, but it will add some serious adorableness to my dessert table.

From Floors to Walls

Exciting things are happening in our basement! I am starting to see the vision for the finished project. I had something in my mind before, but now it’s really starting to set in. AJ has been kind enough to spend the past couple of nights at our house starting to frame the walls with Tyler. (Since he is just finishing putting up walls in his own basement, he’s the perfect guy for the job.)

                                           

                         

                                        

I threw this picture in to show a little bit of the floor. It'll look a lot better with some walls up.

Our house has been pretty noisy these past few nights with nailing, sawing, and shouts of frustration. It turns out the only thing that is level in our basement is the wall, thanks to the careful work of those guys. But despite the challenging space, it’s coming together nicely—and quickly! The guys have framed one of about six walls, and they accomplished that in just a few nights after working their usual 7-5 (yikes!). They plan to be at it full time this weekend, so we may get a good chunk of the basement framed. Yay!

Naturally while they’re busy putting together the skeleton, I’m moving on to the fun stuff. I’m already jumping ahead to how I want to decorate the walls, where the TV and furniture will be, etc. (I have this problem with wanting immediate gratification—guess I’ll just have to wait this time though.)

Actually, one of the things that kind of made me jump ahead to the wall décor was the fact that our friend Michelle’s mother-in-law was switching her laminate floors out for carpet, and the floors are still in good shape (You’re probably wondering what floors have to do with wall décor, but bear with me). Michelle is eco-friendly and hates to see perfectly good material go to waste, so she let me know about the treasure that would be thrown out. She sent these pictures via text to show me what it looked like put together:

Beautiful, right? Of course I wanted that material! So I talked to Tyler about where we could put it. We already painted the concrete floors in our basement, and we didn’t want the cost of paint to go to waste, so that was a no go. Our living room upstairs is currently carpeted (white), and our pups have broken it in a bit, so I thought maybe up there, but the rest of the floors throughout the house are darker wood, which would make for an odd combination.

So I reluctantly turned down the offer for the free flooring. But then I realized that I’ve seen flooring put on walls before and I think it looks really cool and modern! (I want to make the distinction here between wood paneling and wood flooring on the walls—I am talking about laying the flooring horizontal, which makes a huge difference, and it will be used sparingly.) So I decided we should take it after all. Let me tell you, it is already a battle trying to get Tyler to see my vision. He hasn’t said he doesn’t like it or that he won’t try it, but he’s sure not as excited about it as I am. I even showed him this clip to try to sell him on it (hey, if HGTV does it…):

But he’s still not sold. I did draw him a little sketch of my vision too, but nothing. His response after seeing the video was, “It’s still flooring on the wall.” He has a point, but I think it will look great. It won’t hurt to try it!

Patching and Purchasing

This weekend we prepped the basement floor to paint the concrete (photos of that to come just as soon as the paint dries). My goodness, there were a lot of holes and cracks! Here are some photos of the patch work. Attractive, isn’t it?

                          

                                            

And we had to add one more crack to the floor before painting. Tyler carved out a deep trail to run tubing to the drain that sits in the middle of the future guest bedroom so that we could remove the PVC pipe that currently does the job. (Side note: I actually have no idea what drains there, so I don’t know what “the job” is.)

                             

                             

So our first exciting purchase of the weekend was an angle grinder to carve out the trail to the drain. Wait, did I say “our”? Oops, only one of us was truly excited about this purchase. I’ll let you figure out who. (Hint: This person also said he/she would like a new set of tools as a wedding present...it’s the little thrills in life.) Here’s a reenactment of Tyler using his new toy.

                            

Sorry there’s no action shot of him grinding that concrete. But that leads me to our second exciting purchase. And this one really was exciting for both of us. Sunday we bought a Canon EOS Rebel T2i (my gosh, that is a mouthful)! It’s our first DSLR, so it is going to take us a while to get the hang of it, but I’m excited to see what kind of pictures we can take when we do. For obvious reasons, there is no photo of the camera, but I did break it in taking photos of our babies, Molson and Slagathor. (I can't promise anything, but I will try to keep the puppy photoshoots to a minimum.)

Fun fact: Both of our dogs have underbites--we did not plan it that way.

Molson has an addiction to tennis balls and gets a little crazy over them. This is her jumping to grab the ball out of Tyler's hands 

And chewing on a bone.

This is Slagathor's usual pose. Her favorite things in life are food, sleep, and cuddles.

A Little Bit Goes a Long Way

Slowly but surely this basement is coming along. We haven’t put any walls up yet, but we took some down and really cleaned the place up, and that improved the look already. No offense to any wood paneling lovers out there, but I hate the stuff. And that dark path down to the basement wasn’t a journey I enjoyed taking. So here’s the before photo (I didn’t want you to miss the paneling, so I circled it for you):

 

And the in-progress photo (the cinder block cell of a shower actually came in handy here…easy storage as we ripped stuff out):

 

                               

And finally, the after! Look, I can see all the way to my laundry room…

                     

(I wonder why “Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead” just came into my mind.)

I’m just so excited about all of the possibilities now! While I love the open feel, we can’t just leave it like that. People will be showering in there, and I don’t think they’d be up for giving everyone in the living room a show every time they got out. So the options are putting up another wall (no paneling this time), which would close off the space again; putting up a wall of curtain panels that could be left open when we want an airy feel; or Super-Secret Option C, which we haven’t come up with yet. (By the way, regardless of which option we choose, we will be making the space under the stairs a closet, so it won't be that open.)

Personally, I’m leaning toward the curtain panels. Something like this:

 

But I haven’t heard suggestions for Super-Secret Option C yet, so I’m not going to rule that out. Any ideas?

On Another Note

Oh, and as promised in my last post, here are the photos of our beautiful new backsplash. Here's a side-by-side before and after:

And a close up:

And one more view:

We have a tiny kitchen, so we didn't have to do much--just that one wall (the other one is lined with appliances and a pantry). I can't imagine doing much more though. Grouting in between teeny-tiny tiles is back-breaking work! But it was so worth it. This little project cost just over $150--not bad considering the drastic change it made to our otherwise bland kitchen. Special thanks to our friend AJ for helping us put the tile up!

Why "Chintzy Chic"?

"Shabby chic" is just so widespread nowadays; I had to come up with something different. I love things that are rustic, country, vintage, chic, but especially when I find those things at a bargain! In my two years of living in Iowa, I have come to appreciate garage sales, flea markets, side-of-the-road “junk,” and all things DIY. So, with this blog I will chronicle my attempts to accomplish DIY projects that are “chintzy chic”—including my wedding, home improvements, and whatever “junk” inspires me. It doesn’t have to be expensive to be amazing!

First Up, the Wedding

As you know, weddings are expensive. But I am determined to prove that you can have a beautiful wedding for less. Although I guess “less” doesn’t mean much when the average wedding costs close to $30,000, according to The Knot! It’s expensive to feed and entertain around 200 guests, but I think it can be done for far less than $30,000. Our budget is $10,000, but I want to see how low we can go. Hey, I got my dress for $38, so anything is possible! And check out the raw cotton that will be used for my bouquet (that and extra for decorations cost about $60...cheaper and easier than fresh flowers):

So that takes care of the chintzy, but what about the rustic, country, comfy part? We have a big, beautiful barn for the venue, and we have two great decorators who share our vision of a chintzy chic occasion (and are able to turn my hodgepodge of ideas into something cohesive and beautiful). I get a little carried away visiting the great wedding blogs out there (my favorite is Style Me Pretty, which is where I discovered the fabulous barn just a couple hours from where we live). But being obsessed with those types of blogs has led me to some awesome ideas that I can implement in my own wedding, including using mason jars as drinking glasses (got them all for free, thanks to the groom’s dad!), making my bouquet out of cotton, and using old wine bottles for water and lemonade for guests, just to name a few.

And Because We Don’t Have Enough on Our Plate…

We have decided to tackle some home improvement projects in preparation for friends and family coming out for the wedding. Our house is currently two bedrooms, one (usable) bathroom, but our unfinished basement has the potential to become a family room, third bedroom, and second bathroom. All we have to do is level and finish the concrete floors...

frame and put up walls and a ceiling (and take hunter green out of the color scheme)...



fix up the bathroom so that it doesn’t look like it belongs in a prison...

 

(this cell of cinder blocks is the shower)



beautify the laundry room so that it's fun to spend time there (okay, well at least less scary)...

 

and have the entire basement rewired. Sounds easy, right? (Haha.) But given our recent success in putting up a beautiful backsplash in our kitchen (photos to come), I think we can turn our basement into something great (you have to start small).

Oh, but that’s only our biggest undertaking. Tyler has decided he wants our backyard to be “an oasis.” (I have no green thumb, so that part is up to him.) And we also want to repaint the entire house (interior only) and maybe change up our furniture a bit (paint some white, get some chair covers, etc.).

We have 7 months until the wedding, in which time we want to entirely redo our house. Can it be done? Sure! That’s 30 weekends away; we have all the time in the world…