Boo

I don't know about you guys but our front porch has been decked out for Halloween since late September. I think our over eagerness was equal parts an uber excited 3 year old and a mom so desperate for the temperatures to get out of the 90's I thought a pumpkin or 10 could give me good ju ju.

The strategy this year....take every spooky decoration I typically set out around my house and put it all, every last bat, rat and bone on the front porch together.

It's a lot, but it makes me smile every time I see it. And see it I do, just about every night as Croix and I go outside to "look at the stars" with the skeleton. He has been excited about Halloween for months. Literally watching Halloween cartoons on YouTube since Easter. Every other day a new super hero costume arrives at our house. Brent + Croix = T R O U B L E, So at this point I'm honestly not sure if we will see Spider Man, Black Panther, Captain America or Hulk Round 2 this year.

One thing we know for sure.....

The skeleton on the front porch is definitely going as BATMAN!

Over the weekend I added the purple mum and Brent and Croix carved our Jack-O-lantern, so I would say we are all ready for the big night next week. Stay tuned to see which super hero graces us with his presence.

All photos are my own. 

Chair Sale

You guys...I'm a chair-aholic. Wait, maybe I should say....I like chairs with good bones and potential that are relatively in expensive so I can customize them to make them awesome. Yeah, that sounds better. 

Regardless, I have a making-chairs-cool obsession. It all started a few years ago with these chairs - my twin girls, adopted in 2015....

                                                                            

They underwent a BIG makeover (read all about it in this blog post), ahem...check out their BEFORE

                                                                          

Yikes, right? But the bones were good and with a little love they quickly became the pride and joy of our office in our first home.

These chairs were perfect for this space and I wasn't about to leave them behind when we moved, so I took them to my office over at Bell Cabinetry & Design where they have hung out with me day in and day out for over 2 years. Honestly, I would sleep in them each night if it meant I could keep them forever, but they deserve better, they deserve to shine. So I have decided to sell them. Over the years these chairs have gotten a lot of love on social media and I've received numerous inquiries about purchasing, so now is the time. I wanted to write about them here to give you guys first dibs, but they will be going live on Facebook Marketplace & Craigslist later this week.

In a world full of ho hum options in the category of office chairs, this is my gift to the world. Too dramatic....oh well, sorry not sorry! :)

Here are the details:

Office Chairs on casters. 

26 1/2 " high x 25" wide x 24 1/2" deep
Seat height off the floor is 17 3/4" and seat depth of 17"

Floral Fabric + White Vinyl for easy clean-up 

Qty: 2 

Email me @ hicourtneyshearer@gmail.com with serious inquiries about purchasing.  

All photos are my own. 

Chicken Drama

I have to tell ya, I never thought I would have a blog post titled - "Chicken Drama" but here we are....no really, here I am holding a chicken and a baby. Ha - what a sight :)

OK, on to the drama....

In mid July around 6:40am each morning we started hearing a loud crow coming from our backyard. Not an ideal sound to hear when you live in a neighborhood in the city, not a farm and you are under the impression that you had 3 female chickens.

Now let me tell you, figuring out whether you have a male or female chick is kind of a crap shoot to begin with. There are no obvious, um... "parts"... if you will, to confirm the sex of the baby chicken. What there is, is a lot of voo-doo-like tricks that are done to guess. In our case the guy held each chick in his hand and dangled a piece of copper wire on a string over the chick to determine the sex. Umm...yeah....maybe we should be thankful we don't have a backyard full of roosters.

The crowing culprit - Lou our Barred Rock chicken. In this post I described Lou as the undeniable leader of the group. When the crowing first started we dug deep into Google to find out if it was possible to have a crowing hen. Turns out, it is. From what we read, in small back yard flocks with only hens, it is not uncommon for one of the hens to take on the role of alpha and crow. We hoped this was the case, but even if it was we couldn't have a crowing hen, alpha or not. So, we decided to do what any sane-minded person with 3 chickens, one of which crowed and two children would do - we got another chicken. Actually we got 2 more.

Meet Dolly

& Pearl

Our thought - if we brought in a new chicken that was a bit older then it would be the alpha and Lou would stop crowing. So, we got Dolly - a Lavender Americana. Dolly is a year old and was already producing eggs when we got her. Because Lou, Dot and Pip had been together since day one we didn't want to introduce Dolly to the group alone so we got Pearl at the same time. She is a Silkie and a few weeks younger than the original 3. 

We quickly learned that a pecking order is real. The new chickens did not receive a warm welcome from the group. Maybe I'm naive, but in my mind, the girls would invite them in, show them the nesting boxes, Lou would stop crowing and the 5 of them would live happily ever after, producing an array of colored eggs for us. WRONG. The OG chickens were not happy to meet the new chickens and were down right mean to them. Especially Lou. Dolly, our hopeful alpha was clearly intimidated by Lou and quickly owned her lowly position on the pecking order.  So now we had chicken fights AND a crowing chicken. Sadly, we were forced to make the hard decision to send Lou to live on a farm in Tifton, GA. It was a bummer to lose her, but the flock as a whole as been better since. Now, a few months later all 4 chickens are friends, no one crows AND Dolly started laying eggs!

It took her some time to get acclimated, but once she did we started getting these pretty blue eggs just about every other day.

Once we started getting eggs we took right to Amazon/Etsy and got ourselves all set up with half dozen boxes. Once the other girls start laying too, we may go with the full dozen size containers, but for now, how legit do we look?

Life with our backyard flock is pretty sweet right now. It's fun to check the nesting boxes each day for an egg and the excitement in finding one never gets old! We look forward to the multi-colored eggs in our future, but for now,  we are just happy everyone is getting along and no one is crowing.

All photos are my own. 

Console Table Makeover

Well, I'd say the first week of October is a good time to come back from summer vacation :) We had a great summer and really did try to lay off home projects and enjoy all the work we had done, namely our pool + backyard (hello...chickens!!). It was nice to relax, well as much as one can relax with a 3 year old and a now crawling baby roaming around. But now that it is officially fall we are ready to dip our toes back into some home improvements.

The first project kind of fell into my lap by way of my friend - Facebook Marketplace. Every time I'm in a new town I like to peruse the site to see if there are any treasures waiting to be snatched up. Last Saturday I found this gem in Tifton, GA for $65.

Yes, her coloring is, well hideous, but look at the bones. I love the fluted details, the curves of the top, the leg positioning, etc. Plus, I've been in the market for a console table for awhile now for the stair wall off the mudroom.

We've had this hutch that belonged to Brent's Great-Grandmother on this wall since we moved in and while I like the piece it just wasn't working for two reasons. Number one, several rooms in our home open to one another in the center of the house. An open floor plan is great, but the issue I was having was too many wood furniture pieces with different tones in one line of sight. We have our breakfast room table, a china cabinet, the antique laundry room door AND this hutch, all wood and all in different tones. It was just too much and this hutch sat in the center of it all, so it only made sense for this to be the piece to go. And number two, I don't have very many surfaces to house picture frames and I felt like this hutch was taking up prime real estate for a nice family photo right when you walk in from the garage.

As soon as we got the table home I started testing out possible paint color contenders.

We settled on Elephant Ear a pretty, true gray by Sherwin Williams. The next step was to sand the beast down and get the shine off.

Next up we got to painting. We bought the Behr Ultra paint + primer in one from Home Depot (did a color match for the Sherwin William's hue) which worked out really well, because it only took one coat. There were a few areas we touched up after it was all dry but the paint went on nice and smooth and the piece became prettier with each stroke of the brush.

Things got fun when Croix decided he wanted to help, so I talked him in to letting me paint the body of the piece and he could finish it up by painting the top. He was SO excited and only asked me 100 times if I was done yet and ready for him. Finally, it was his turn, and while wet paint (inside) + his 3 year old bouncy self could of been a disaster he did a pretty good job.

As soon as the paint was dry I was maneuvering this piece into it's new home and wow - love, love, love the way it turned out.

I had plans to replace the hardware but the distressed, brass knobs that came with the piece looked great with the new color. This side of the house feels so much more airy now and I love having a place to check my teeth before I walk out the door :)

For now I put a family photo from a few year's ago on the shelf, but I'm excited to get an updated version with Lot in there soon!

All photos are my own.