"Truss" Me, I'm a Professional!

One of the great things about being your own boss is that you are able to maintain your own schedule.  Therefore, when an opportunity arises to help out within the city of Largo, I am able to forgo showing properties to clients in order to help build homes for Habitat for Humanity.

Pinellas County has a very robust Habitat for Humanity program.  If you are interested in volunteering, you can do it with a group like I did, or come individually.  All you have to do is fill out an online application and select a date.

Anona United Methodist Church is the group that I volunteered with.  They are another organization that is active with outreach and community service in Largo.  This particular Saturday was the day before Mother's Day and Anona was asked to cut back on their volunteer workforce from 10 to 5 volunteers because Habitat was having a special event in which Mothers and their children were invited to team up and volunteer their time together.  Unfortunately, building a house was not exactly what many mothers and their children wanted to do--and who could blame them for preferring mani-pedis over sore muscles and blisters!

There were about 8 individual volunteers, 5 in my group, and 3 site contractors.  This was my first build since moving here from Texas.  My experience there included putting up siding, picking up trash and excess building tools from the job sight, painting, and putting in landscaping.  So, I was quite surprised when the contractors explained that we would be installing roof trusses.  Yes!  I helped build a roof.  2 of the ladies who had come with the Anona group were not able to stay because of back ailments that prevented them from heavy lifting, so we were short handed, but optimistic that the job could get done!  We were on a deadline too because the grant that funded the build stipulated that it had to be completed by a certain date or the grant was revoked and the deadline was rapidly approaching.

I can not remember a time that I worked so hard in my life!  But everyone who was there quickly learned how to communicate with one another, anticipate the needs of each other, and connect through our shared value of community involvement.  I was pretty tuckered out by the end and I am glad that I was able to expand my knowledge of home building, but I will definitely be asking next time "What EXACTLY will be on the agenda for today's build" so that I can mentally prepare for the task ahead.  I love Livin' the Largo Life!

Day 1: Cruisin' with Gma Becky

Living in the suburbs of Tampa Bay means that I have direct access to cruise ships.  Now, as an avid traveler I know what you're thinking, heck!  I used to think it too--cruises suck.  But do they really?  The older I get the more I like them.  With as 'on all the time' and 'plugged in' as I have to be and with all of the 'changes' I've made in my life in the past 5 years (changing time zones, careers, marital status), sitting on a lounge chair on the serenity deck of a boat that is sailing (term used loosely) through the Caribbean sounds pretty darn good.

So, when my grandmother offered to take me with her on the Carnival Ecstasy I said yes!  The first day was nice.

We arrived at the Port Authority terminal early, but the line was already pretty long.  A tip for you:  if you plan on paying cash for your on-board expenses, they’ll zip you to the front of the line in a heartbeat and you’ll begin your vacation before the rest of the folks paying with credit cards.  The workers at PA were very kind to my grandmother.  They carried her 24 pack of waters over to the seated waiting area, allowing me to keep our place in line while she rested.  They didn’t make the ole lady stand for 30 minutes until it was her turn to check in and for that, they get an A+ rating from me.

Once we were on board, since this was my grandmother’s first cruise, we did the usual assessment of the amenities.  We toured the pools, slide, smoke stack, food!, and the mini golf course for the best view of our embarkation.

I was really mad at the photo bomber in the background

After that, we went to get our muster station training.  Of course there were butt heads in our group who had to be hushed several times, but that is what happens when you’re around other people sometimes.  Not everyone likes to follow the rules—nor should they—except of course when it is a matter of life and death in my humble opinion.  I mean, seriously, have they not seen the news lately?  A cruise ship goes down every other month now-a-days ;)

 

At our muster station

I treated my grandmother to a massage.  She tried to protest, but I wouldn’t take no for an answer.  I was determined to get this vacation started off right.  Here we are waiting for our pampering.

 

Grandma Becky enjoying the Serenity Deck

Beginning of what I'd do for the rest of the trip

We're on the move!

Forcing Becky to get a massage--it's what I'm here for!

Dinner the first night was good.  I didn’t eat everything on the menu, which is a hard thing to do while cruising.  AND you’ll be happy to know that I did wake up every morning and go to the gym to do my 2-mile run.

 

More is to come on this wonderful vacation with my grandmother.  Make life worth living everyday with the choices you make!

-Melissa

Seein' the Sights; Beautiful Lights

At the entrance of the park

While my Grandmother Becky was in town, there were many Christmas time celebrations in and around the Largo area.  The Central Park lighting display was gorgeous, however, my favorite was at The Florida Botanical Garden so, Michael and I took her there one night during her visit.  It was very inexpensive, $2 per person, and the money goes to sustaining the Gardens.  Well worth the price, easier than driving around to different neighborhoods, and is also a bit of exercise.






They have a beautifully decorated tree at the entrance to the park and we were able to take some family photos.  Can't pass up a pic opportunity!







As you continue through the gardens, you are greeted by many lighted animals that were so pretty that these photos don't do them justice.  I especially love the palm trees when they are all lit up.

                                               

Michael in amazement

We couldn't pass up the opportunity 

to have a 'feet pic' at the mosaic Koi pond

Nor could Michael or I fail to be mushy at the Wedding Garden.  If only I'd known about this place when I was planning our wedding, we might have had it there.

Love truly is the flower of life!

Michael, Grandma Becky, and I enjoyed our time at The Florida Botanical Gardens here in Largo and will definitely be going back during the daytime to see their various plant exhibits.  Don't miss your opportunity to see the beautiful botanical garden lights next year!

It's a good thing she likes dogs...

Well, actually she doesn't.  In fact, she is pretty uncomfortable around them.  She gets this shrill high pitched voice going when they come near her to give a sniff or HEAVEN FORBID! lick her TOES!  But she is my grandmother and although she excels more as a cat grandmother, she did alright by my doggies on her first visit to Largo since I moved here and adopted my Kira.

"Don't lick!"

"Good girl, Kira!"

Her last visit was filled with mostly decorating for my wedding and I was bound and determined to make her visit more eventful and more vacation-like than her last.  I mean, it is the least I can do for all that she does for me.  And what is the first thing I caught her doing the minute she got a free moment, mere hours after I picked her up from the airport?

THIS!

Kids these days and their technology.

So what does any T-ex-an do in a situation as dire as this?

Make GUACAMOLE!

 

Tex-Guac with FL avocados.  Yum

My guacamole is delicioso and I only have to use 1 Florida avocado for the usual 3-4 Hass avocados this recipe calls for.  After I peeled her away from her Kindle, called off the toe licking dogs, and served her my new and improved guac recipe, she and I continued to catch up with each other and plan out the next few days we'd spend together in my new hometown before boarding a Gma/Gdaughter, 4-day cruise!  But that is a story for another blog post...

Do they even still MAKE carpet?

When we moved into our home in June 2013, each of the bedrooms was carpeted.  As is the current trend for multiple reasons, we too were eager to rid its pestilence from our home--I mean, seriously!  Can you even begin to imagine what is in carpet?  Especially when you are not the first owner.  But I digress into my rabbit hole of OCD...

Laminate?
Since Michael and I are beginning a new life here in Florida, we aren't exactly in a position to spend vast amounts of money immediately on this new home, so we are using what we have and doing small projects at a time to bring this short sale property up to the standards of its former glory as 'The Gem of the Neighborhood', which is what our neighbors told us of the home when we first moved in.

A need for frugality is why we are using some left over laminate flooring that Michael retained, transported over half of the U.S., and stored in our garage for months after installing it into the home he owned and lived in back in San Antonio prior to our engagement.  Plus, we needed the garage space for our other hobbies and endeavors into woodworking.  So, although I would prefer tile or hardwood...this is what we've got and it looks great.  We'll have to see if it holds up to the wear and tear of 2 dogs and 2 cats (and a husband).

To begin with, we put a water resistant underlayment as a barrier for spills and to provide some cushion for our comfort.  We used a skill saw and jigsaw for the angle cuts around the doors, closet, entryway to the room, and to stagger the slats.  Unfortunately, Michael did most of the work laying the flooring, so no pictures of that.

Nothing gets done without a sense of urgency
This room, prior to our removal of the carpet and installation of the laminate was kind of the 'catch all' room.  We had set up a bed for guests in another room and had not gotten around to unpacking some of the moving boxes labeled 'office', 'books', and 'teaching'.  In order to get the ball rolling on this install, Michael took all of the boxes and moved them into the guest bedroom.  It was stacked full and there was hardly any space after all was said and done.

This is a problem when your grandmother is traveling from Corpus Christi, TX in a day and will need to have a place to call her own during her visit with us.  So, one day prior to her arrival I zipped over to Home Depot in my little 2 door Nissan Altima Coupe and purchased four 60ft strips of quarter round.  My car is not 60ft long.  Plus, I was in heels.  It was hilarious and more than one contractor gave their advice to me as to how I should accomplish the transport and in hind sight I should have strapped them to the top of my car like a Christmas tree, but instead I laid down the back seats, ran the strips of quarter round from my front seat floorboard through the backseat, through the trunk, and it still hung about 4ft out of the back of the car.  A very nice Home Depot clerk held the strips up for me as I backed out of my space and then I was on my own.  Thank goodness it is only 3 miles from my house to the Home Depot, that the strips only scraped the concrete occasionally, and I didn't run into any cops in between.

The rest is pretty straight forward.  I used a mitre cut box to make the angles in the same degree of cut as the molding.  But first I had to cut the overflow of the underlayment. I will still have to go back with caulking to create a seal and give it a finished look, as well as, painting all of the molding, but for now we can take all of the boxes from the guest bedroom and place them back into the 'catch all' room in time for my grandmother to enjoy her stay here in sunny Largo!

New molding and qtr. round strips

We cut down the underlayment

Test to make sure we put them back correctly

Old nails had to be reversed to reuse

Reuse nails when you can

Reuse old molding where you can

Must peel old caulk off of the reused molding

Looking so smooth!

View of the closet

View of the bedroom door

The finished product

 

  



Child Room Organization Designs from a Childless 30 Something

Apparently, it doesn't matter to my mother that I have no children.  She is still going to send me ideas on how to organize kid rooms anyway.  Well, that isn't exactly true; really, she know's I'm crafty and looking for inexpensive ways to design and organize all of my many belongings.

So, the other day my mother found a really cute way to create a reading nook in an office or children’s room.  The picture she showed me from the internet was very child-specific and at first I was thinking she was really hitting hard with the grandbaby hints.  But in this instance, I don't think that was her primary intention (I'm leaving it open for secondary, subconscious motivations).  

I mean, if you have toddlers, getting toys, games, and books off of the floor is HARD, CONSTANT work and making these shelves low enough for them to reach can help them to be independent, create preferences, AND teach them how to clean up after themselves.  In education we called those ‘teachable moments’!

Another benefit to these is that you can remove them from these lower positions on the wall, add a few One Direction pictures (that was a joke), or repaint them/add adhesive designed paper to make them more teenage friendly when your babies become WONDERFUL teenagers! (I’d suggest lots of bling if you have girls).

But for ME--I was able to look past all of that to see that the concept was actually pretty cool for grownups too and that the overall idea could be made ‘adult friendly’ and applied to a study or office room in any home with just a little spray paint.  So, my next project will be to make this happen in my office/spare room:

RecycleArt is a great website for additional re-purposing ideas!

Getting Crafty with Candles

Several months ago, when I moved to Largo, I began surfing Facebook for things to do in the area.  One of the things I found was the Brocante Market.  It is a great place for finding vintage items of all types that have retained their charm or have been updated with more modern styles.  But if you're like me, this is also a great place to get ideas of cool things you can do to update what you already have in your home!  On our first trip to the Market, Michael and I spotted this beautiful piece:

Last month, Michael's parents asked him and I to visit "The Lester Family Home" to help de-clutter the home they've lived in for the past 30 years.  They are in the process of moving to the Largo area as well.  Something about getting older makes living in a warm climate make more sense.

Translation--they need my Type A personality to drill sergeant them up every morning and to help keep them on task and motivated to clean out the 30-years worth of junk-I mean treasures-that they have not used or needed in QUITE some time.  We took many, many, many truck loads to the recycling station, dump, and Goodwill.

But we did come across these beauties:

My mother-in-law spent her life as an artist.  Her medium was pottery.  She was commissioned to create this unique container by a fragrance entrepreneur.  He met her at an art show, paid her to create them, and then never came back for them.  So, almost 3,000 (yes, that is THOUSAND) of these votives have been sitting in her basement garage for years.  She was going to throw them out, but I asked if I could have them instead.

You see, back at the visit to the Brocante Market, I had spied a beautiful lavender plant.  I did not, however, want to pay the $14 they had it marked for and as a result, went on a multi statewide search for lavender seed or plants.  Unfortunately, most of the local nurseries in Florida and in Virginia where already stocked for winter plants and didn't have any lavender.  But I still had it in the back of my mind that I would find some lavender and use it to create homemade candles.

A few weeks ago, as I was leaving the office and stopped on a whim into Petal and Vine off of Indian Rocks Road and they had 2 lavender plants leftover from the summer season!  I purchased one and skipped off merrily home.  Before I left the parking lot, the store clerk came after me and gave me the remaining plant since it was the last one and they were likely not going to sell it.  SCORE!

Off I went to learn how to make lavender scented candles.  I Google Searched and found a great blog, Lavender Gardening, that was instrumental in making this process easy for me.  They even had links to other websites and blogs that provided even more information and tips for best practices of candle making.  Check them out if you're interested in easy candle making.

One of the first things I learned was that you don't need lavender plants for making lavender scented candles.  On the other hand, my home is painted a color that attracted many wasps, especially around the front door.  We'd spray them with wasp spray, remove the nests they had built, and still they returned!  Since placing the lavender plants outside my front door, the wasps haven't come back.  I can't prove that the lavender had any effect (and my husband would tell you it that the wasps left because of the fact that we removed a softball size nest from under the retaining wall pavers that were ALSO right next to the front door) but in my mind, it was all due to the lavender!

 I went to Michael's at Largo Mall and purchased 1 lbs. of soy candle wax, zinc core wax wicks, and lavender essential oil.

I did not use a thermometer, but I placed 4 cups of the wax into a glass bowl and heated it 30 seconds at a time until it was all melted and for one last 30 seconds for good measure.  I did not have a dropper to put the 8 drops that Sara Elliot suggested, so I guesstimated that 8 drops would be the equivalent of 2 cap fulls of the essential oil that I purchased.  This amount was perfect to create a candle that has a hint of lavender and does not overpower your senses.

I stirred in the oil and began to spoon the liquefied wax into each of the blue votives that I had made ready with the zinc core wicks before I heated the wax.  This was not time effective, but did the job of getting the wax into the containers.  Any excess wax was extremely easy to remove once it was cooled.  However, I'll have to figure another way to do it for bulk batches to come later.  The wax took about 3-4 hours to cool since these containers are quite small.  But here is the final product:

 

I will be giving these away to neighbors and coworkers as Christmas gifts.

 I created a little tag for them

 

 I made a base out of tissue paper

I placed them in a festive bag.

Then I tied  it up with holiday ribbon.

The holiday season only comes around once a year and I have THREE THOUSAND of these votives lying around...what to do?

Well, since Michael has scrap pallet wood from his wine rack and other woodworking crafts, I'll use that scrap pallet wood to make miniature crate boxes.  I'll line the bottom of the boxes with colored shredded paper and place the candles securely in the box.  I'll probably create a 'nicer' gift tag and get clear plastic to wrap around the box with neutral colored ribbon.  Then, I'll give the candles to my clients when they buy or sell a home with me as a way of wishing the "warmth of the candle and scent of lavender to calm and soothe their souls" as they make memories in their new home!