Totally Radical / Nautical Giftwrap

An hour before you leave for a birthday party, are you crazy enough to try and do this? I found myself without a gift bag or wrap on Sunday and you know how they say necessity is the mother of invention? Well yeah, it totally is.  Cue a fabric remnant, some neon embroidery floss, leftover neon paint from Easter and a couple of starfish I had stashed away and I had myself some totally radical, nautical gift wrap. Tucked just inside the chevron fabric was a mermaid themed gift and since we were on our way to celebrate dockside at a local restaurant, this solution ended up working out perfectly.

{3 Things} I Want to Make Right Now

House of Earnest

Modern Kiddo

Design for Mankind

{Project Reveal}: Painted Bathroom Countertop

When it comes to renovations and updates around Holtwood House, we've come a long way baby. But there are still many things still on the punch list for a day when money, time and resources will allow. Both bathrooms most certainly fall into that category. With more immediate fixes taking priority, my dreams of tinted glass subway tile and Carrera countertops will have to wait.

But one can only stand to stare at fugly for so long. We've been fastidious about keeping things clean, but no matter how good, long or often you scrub a 1960's era, yellow compressed marble countertop for example, it still recalls visions of a cigarette stained bathroom in a grody roadside motel. True, a replacement countertop is somewhat affordable (we priced a replacement at under $200). But I'd rather invest that $200 elsewhere for the time being and wait for the big reno in the next couple of years. (As a side note: why does everything seem to cost $200 when you are renovating a house?) We'll probably tear out the vanity altogether in the end, so why buy a custom cut countertop now?

Somewhere along the line, in my frustration I turned to the web for a solution. I had spotted the Rustoleum Countertop Paint at the paint center and despite the warning label saying that it was intended for laminate countertops only and not marble, I still felt that I could make it work. I dug around for an internet DIY, sure that I could find someone who successfully painted a compressed marble countertop.  Yeah, not really...

I still was not deterred. I rationalized that if I screwed it up, we could always pop for that replacement. But there were also a couple of other things that really sealed the deal for me.

The bathroom is not heavily trafficked, this would be a temporary solution and bottom line, the yellow marble was so depressing to look at (especially in a galley bath with little to no natural light), that anything would be an improvement.

See what I mean? Here it is just in it's primed state. I would have taken this as is over the yellow marble.

Here's the finished product, all painted up.

I explain my process after the jump.

What Labor Day Weekend Looked Like at Holtwood House

First, let me say that I did not intend to take time off from the blog last week. But it just sort of happened on Thursday and Friday and so I just went with it. I think my little brain had already started focusing on the long weekend ahead and of course all of the fun we had planned. 

You see, here in the States, most of us are just returning to work today following a long holiday weekend.  Though summer does not officially end for a couple of weeks and we can still expect summertime temps for at least the next month, Labor Day weekend has always been the traditional bon voyage to the season. So naturally, a proper celebration was in order...

One that involved poolside lounging on daybeds...

...and monotone beach balls for pool-time fun...

...and a big screen for movies after-dark...

...and a table full of toppings, where revelers could dress their own slice just the way they liked it.

The Mister tends to spend the majority of any party mixing drinks. So this time around we thought ahead to make it easy on both our favorite mix-master and thirsty guests by pre-mixing cocktails. We presented them like adult-sized "Capri-Sun" drinks served in 5x8 plastic zip-lock bags with a straw. Unfortunately, there are no pictures because they were snapped up and gone in a flash! 

After a quick clean up and once the last of Sunday's party guests had packed up and returned home, we happily spent the whole of Monday recovering from Labor Day Weekend festivities by floating in the pool... just us two.