Stills - Before and After

Here are the photograph stills of the living room. The prior post has the how-to video for staining concrete floors.

Before with nada and a bunch of disgusting.

And afterwards with our walls painted "Plateau" by Behr, our floors with Kemiko products, and of course all of our original artwork by Dax. ALL of our furniture is hand me downs from our parents, mixed with a few craigslist finds.

The best part is my absolutely favorite painting "Leslie" returned from City Hall after being on display for over a year for the public.

How to Stain Concrete Floors

After months of promising I would do it, I have finally uploaded my How-To Guide to Staining Concrete Floors.

When we purchased the house in October, it was in disarray. Granted we knew that when we purchased a short-sale home. The previous owner had moved out six months prior, plus appeared to have never done any upkeep in the home. So Sad. This house is a charmer.

The carpeting was absolutely disgusting in the living room and master bedroom. There were these huge, scary stains everywhere. We have our theories of what caused the stains (hehe), but just knew the carpeting had to go. Even in the appraisal of the home it clearly stated the flooring reduced the overall value. Anyways, when we lived in Florida we rented a home that had concrete flooring. I had never heard of this flooring option, and quickly fell in love with it. The ease of cleaning was remarkable. Because no dirt or dust can hide anywhere, it did become an addiction to always clean the floor. Mostly because the dirt had no where to go! I would swiffer it at least every other day (knowing now to NOT use swiffer cleaning agents on my floor due to the chemicals breaking down and eventually wearing out the wax and sealant)

This flooring always stayed in my head as we moved to California and then back to Texas. When we purchased our home, updating the flooring was an easy decision: Concrete! We did start looking at professionals coming in to stain for us, but after talking to a few people they said doing it ourself wouldn't be difficult. I started researching on the internet and realized it would be a manageable task for us. Mostly the cost was the deal maker. Contractors were quoting $4.00 - $4.50/square foot, and we came in around $1.10/square foot. Can't beat that.

D and I did almost all of the labor. My father-in-law had sealed floors in year's past, and really did an extraordinary job putting the sealant and wax on.

Check out the video below. I made this video the way I would have wanted to see the process explained to me. Watch the video in its entirety, it has lots of information from beginning to end. Please ask any questions you may have.

Happy 2011

It's been near forever since I last blogged. November and December quickly approached with so many activities that I nearly forgot about ye little blog. Here's a quick wrap up of the end of 2010.

Christmas was a very fun time this year. Miss E was well into the holiday spirit and loved all of the gifts. At my parents house she opened everyone's gift for them. Watching her unwrap gifts was a gift in itself. Absolutely adorable.

Here's a picture we took of her the week of Christmas...

Her little pig tails are sooo cute. She has started to finally let me add bling to her hair.

Actually the next day after this photo was taken, D and I flew to New York for a 2-day extravaganza. Several of his animations have been playing on a 30-foot screen in Manhattan since October, so we seized the opportunity to view his animations in action. His work is shown all over the world, but we rarely get to it in action.

The evening we flew in went to dinner with Amid. He is a huge mover and shaker in the animation biz. We had an absolutely wonderful time getting to share an evening with him.

The next day we did some sight-seeing. We walked around Rockefeller Center, watched the Today Show and visited the MOMA (Modern Museum of Art). The 6th floor of the museum held more pieces of artwork than so many museums we have visited. Every wall had a "known" image. It was extraordinary. No surprise we spent over 2 hours just on the top floor.

Here's some pics

Terrible picture of the "Today Show" studio

Van Gogh's "Olive Tree"

Halloweeeeen!

Yay!  Sunday we celebrated our first Halloween at our new house.  We had so much fun preparing for the day.  For dinner I made chili (a small tradition we started last year).  We eat a lot of chili in our house, but for special occasions I bring out the 1988 Chilympiad winning recipe to make.  It is sooo delicious!
Anyways, we had chili and prepared to pass out candy.  Our family themed costume was "The Wizard of Oz" starring us!  Dax was the Tin Man, E was Dorothy, Roxy was Toto and I was the Scarecrow.  We made our costumes (a requirement in our household!) and went outside.  Well...not too many people showed up at the house, and even less homes had their light on.  I was really excited to meet all the neighbors, when in actuality, I only met 3 households.
Anyways, we really enjoyed the evening and already planning our costumes for 2011.  What is it you may ask???  Hah! Like I am going to share that with you now!  You wouldn't come back to read in twelve months if I did that.

Friday Night Cinema - on Thursday

Bonjour, Ya'll!

It's been awhile since I've updated. Well the big news we've been holding close is that we BOUGHT A HOUSE! More details to follow when I post the pictures and all the details!

Ok, So we've been holding onto our most recent DVD rental for about 2 weeks now, "Magnificent Destination" a documentary about the space shuttle program. Recently I've been on a kick on NASA, space travel and really all things science related. My secret dream is that E becomes a science superstar, and her interest stemming from our DVD picks. Yes I realize that is pretty absurd.

Unfortunately for the DVD queue, my obsession with space means bombarding it with anything space-related. So until I actually watch the movie we rented, I've decided to go old school.

Thanks to the miraculous Netflix website that keeps a list of every movie ever rented or watched instantly, I'm going to review movies that I watched one year ago. So below are all movies we watched around the end of October/beginning of November in 2009. Doing this is my version of time-travel through my awesome movie watching. So we can consider this a science experiment because it is science related. Kinda.

1. RocknRolla: A Guy Ritchie action paced movie on English mobsters. Woah, that is deep (insert sarcasm). Thandie Newton starred in this comedic, action packed adventure. She usually choses interesting roles, so I was excited to see what she would bring to the table. Gerard Butler (300 Hottie) also starred. He was so amazing in 300 that ever since that, all other film choices have just been meh. Anyways to be honest, I do not remember the movie much at all. I gave it 3 stars meaning in Netflix world that i "liked" it. But if I like a film I usually rate it 4 stars, so I'm assuming I wasn't impressed with Guy Ritchie's latest flick. Though I haven't been impressed with much of anything he's done lately.

2. Pollock: Biopic on famed artist Pollock. From his humble beginnings to watching him find his iconic style and continuing onto his death. Ed Harris starred and directed. He did a great job. Bio pics are Hit or Miss most of the time and this one Hit Hard. It kept moving and kept me entertained. Well if after a biopic movie ends and I find myself on Wikipedia, than I liked the film. It's an older film (2000), but a great flick to watch anytime you can.

3. Roy Orbison: Black and White: This has a blazing 5 Stars. If you have PBS (and watch it!) you've probably seen excerpts of this concert of Roy Orbison rocking his awesome tunes. D is a huge Orbison fan, so he loved watching this.

Friday Night Cinema - on Monday

It's that time of the week again when I impress everyone with all of the movies we have watched.

1. Un Prophete (The Prophet) - 2009 french film that is incredible. It's about Malik, a 18 yr old boy sentenced to 6 years in prison. He has to make his way and ends up being involved with many interesting characters. The movie is captivating because even though he is in prison, he learns a lot and even gets to do things he never thought possible. I'm a HUGE shawshank fan, and though nothing holds a candle to that film, this movie holds its own ground. I believe it was nominated for Best foreign Film during the Oscars last year.

2. Couples Retreat - RomCom starring who else but Vince Vaughn. He and his gaggle of friends embark on couples counseling in Bali for the week. Laughter ensues? I don't know...my expectations were low low low for this film so it was a kind surprise when I somewhat watched the entire film without completely gauging my eyes out. It's one of those flicks where you can do a load of wash and organizing the tots toys with out missing anything integral.

3. Social Network - D and I actually went to the movies last week at the Alamo Drafthouse. We love that place! Unless you've been hiding under a rock the past 4 years or so, you know what Facebook is and how your grandmother keeps calling you, begging for you to show her how to get on "The Facebook". Anyways this film goes biopic to see the inception of it and all of the fallout that comes with becoming a billionaire by the age of 26. The film was good, no questions about that. Sorkin never disappoints and keeps you interested with interesting dialogue and characters.

4. A Perfect Getaway - 2009 film starring Milla Jovovich (5th Element & Dazed & Confused) and Steve Zahn as a couple on their honeymoon in Hawaii. There is a grotesque murder on the island as they trek around in the trails of the beautiful oasis. Ummm, it was a good film. During the climax I began to get confused about everything and magically, lost my interest in the film. Well not really lost my interest, but moreso I was watching it alone and had no one to explain what was going on. Some of the character development was meh. Zahn and Jovovich have given stellar performances in the past, so I'm not sure why they didn't bring their A games to the screen with this one. They did come off as an unlikely married couple -- I mean c'mon, she's a former model!

That's all I got for now....Later!

ACL 2010

D and I attended Austin City Limits on Friday. It was so much fun! The weather was amazing! It was 80 degrees with not a cloud in sight. With the fab weather, we saw even more fabulous bands. The Black Keyes rocked, Beach House was mellow (perfect for people watching!!), Spoon sounded amazing and Ryan Bingham did not disappoint. We read in the paper the next day that it was estimated 52,000 watched the Black Keys with us. Wowserz! Vampire Weekend was also performing, but me not being a huge concert goer, plus what seemed like a billion people wanting to see them perform was enough to deter me. Crowds are not my style people! You know me...I love live music, but I like classical venues in beautiful concert halls. Send me tickets to "Wicked" anyday!