So. Many. Showers.

I've helped plan/decorate/host five (basically six) showers in the past four months...if that doesn't make me an expert, I don't know what does.

And I'd say that it qualifies as blogworthy. LONG blogworthy, to be more accurate.

Shower #2 was a baby shower held for my friend and Connection Group leader Carley. My friend Jessie planned for the food and I cleaned my house from top to bottom. An arrangement I was really okay with, if you know me and understand my strengths.

Colors: Baby blue, kelly green, yellow, red, brown
Food: Yogurt bar, muffins, juice, coffee
Committee: Mollie, Jessie, Haley
Decorating Expense: $0
Attendance: 15-17?

The shower was at 9:30, so a yogurt bar was a perfect idea (props Jessie). It was easy and fairly inexpensive. We met a couple days before the shower to do some minimal crafting, which included cutting and tying some fabric scraps to twine and hanging the garlands all around my house. The banner hanging behind where Carley sat and opened gifts read, 'Baby Hoben' since Beckett's name was still up in the air at this point. :) We added a cute chalkboard at the entrance and ta-da! Shower prep completed in less than an hour!

Shower #3/4 might have been my favorite, but I'm slightly biased. The most heart/work/effort was put into making this bridal shower for my future sister-in-law, Hannah, Pinterest-worthy and adorable. My sister-in-law, Jillynn and I started planning our theme and menu a couple months before this shower took place and the key to it's success was delegating. We assigned some different things to both Patti and Hannah's mom...aaaand I might have also had my mom make some lemon bars. Moms are the best.

Colors: Navy/coral, spring colors
Food: Cupcakes, veggie cups, fruit cups, pinwheels, lemon bars, raspberry crumble bars, Crystal Light, coffee
Committee: Mollie, Jillynn, moms
Decorating Expense: $0
Attendance: 17-19?

The shower was held at 2:00 in the afternoon so we went for light snacks since we weren't feeding people an actual meal. I borrowed some engagement pictures from Hannah's mom, put them in frames and hung them all over my house. Thank you Pinterest for the idea of the century: Scrabble letters as decoration. I usually like to keep an extra invitation to set out somewhere at the shower too. We stuck to a rustic theme with old windows, Mason jars, burlap, and added some spring colors. The paper flower garland that hung behind where Hannah sat and opened gifts was made by Patti...all I know is that it looked adorable and she used a lot of scrapbook paper, hot glue, twine and determination. :)

And see that wedding dress made out of cupcakes? EASIEST THING EVER. Step one: Make (or order from Scratch!) 30-ish cupcakes. Step 2: Pull Pinterest up on your iPad. Step 3: Copy the picture. DONE.

There were so many Nathan-Hannah pictures around our house that Josh and I felt
like we were living in their house for the few days I had everything up before the shower. :)

Bridesmaids before the shower!

This shower came in two parts. The first was a personal shower held at my house, and the second part was a 'Bachelorette Night' held in Des Moines at Jillynn's house. Remember that silly invite tutorial? Here's the pin-up theme we were going for:

Totally adorable, right? Bachelorette, but also classy. I just printed these pictures off of Pinterest and we used a banner Jill had from a one of her kids' birthday parties. We were actually pretty impressed with ourselves. The evening included dinner out to Fire Creek Grill; coffee and games at Smokey Row; and wine, games, and Frozen back at Jill's house.

Shower # 5 was a bridal shower held at my home church for my dear friend, and Boersma Lawn Care's newest employee, Ben (and his bride-to-be :). I absolutely LOVE being part of shower committee's with the ladies from Faith and this shower was no exception. Besides the decorating, it's fun to spend a morning holding babies and visiting with everyone.

Colors: Terra cotta, turquoise, rustic
Food: Egg bake, muffins, fresh fruit, cinnamon bread, juice, coffee
Committee: 15-ish ladies?
Decorating Expense: No idea. All I know is I un-decorated my house and hauled it to church.
Attendance: 50-60?

Ben's aunts did a terrific job of putting this shower on. I just lent my decorating advice and some of my Mason jars to the effort. And also everything I could find that had the letter 'B' since Boersma and Butcher have that in common. :) Terra cotta pots with succulents planted inside were centerpieces that doubled as gifts for the bride, mom's, and g'mas to take home after the shower. The 'guest book' was a metal container everyone signed (above right picture) that can be used for storage or decor in the couple's future home.

Once again these chalkboards made an appearance, along with silk hydrangeas, burlap, Scrabble letters, seed packets, and all the old windows I use to decorate at our house. I was at a cheer conference on Friday night before the shower when all this set-up happened, but I was so proud of my little decorators when I kept getting texted pictures of the progress. :)

With the groom!

Shower #6 was a bridal shower held for my friend Susan and it pushed me to my decorating limits. When Susan's Maid of Honor, Kara, emailed and said she wanted to do an 'outdoor/camping theme for our girl' I was at a loss. It's not a typical bridal shower theme, but it turned out to be pretty adorable. :) This is what we pulled together:

Colors: Red, brown, plaid
Food: Fruit cups, veggies and dip, chickens salad sandwiches/croissants, chips s'mores, pink lemonade, coffee
Committee: Kara, Mollie, Jessie, Christy + CG girls
Decorating Expense: $0
Attendance: 20-22?

I went through our closet and grabbed every plaid flannel Josh owned, then sprinkled them around the house. I used flannel fabric I had on hand for the food table and brought up some Christmas trees and pine cones from the basement. Again, it was super easy to print some Landon-Susan pics and add their faces all over our house. Plus I used flannel scraps from cutting apart old flannel shirts and made more twine/scrap garlands (not pictured). I draped flannel blankets and old quilts across the backs of all the furniture, changed the pillow cases from spring back to Christmas/flannel, and sat Susan on a plaid picnic blanket and a vintage camping chair to open her gifts.

Of course an adorable chalkboard was also necessary.

CG girls with our favorite bride! 

I feel like quite a few people have been asking me about all the shower hosting I've been up to this spring, so I thought this would be an easy way to explain everything. I hope you enjoyed the little details and extra touches in case you're ever a friend/sister/maid-of-honor and are having trouble coming up with ideas. :)

MmB

Life After Kitchen Cupboards

There are still three cupboard doors waiting to be hung and a few spots for touch-ups...but as far as I'm concerned, the kitchen cupboard project I was putting off for three and a half years is as good as finished.

Which means it's requires immediate and annoyingly detailed blogging.

You might ask why I put this project off for so long. I'll gladly share...1. I knew it would be an absolute mess. 2. I wanted to work on this project during the 'sweet spot' where Josh isn't working in the late fall/early spring. 3. That sweet spot didn't happen this year, and it got cold too early and stayed cold too long. 4. We kept going back and forth about buying another house/moving/etc. 5. Remember that one time when we overhauled a farmhouse? Ya me too. Kind of kills the motivation for those 'extra' 'fun' projects.

Without further adieu...the Great Kitchen Cupboard Monstrosity of 2014.

RESEARCH: My research was made up of 10% unhelpful blogs and 90% helpful tips from my 'Wood Guy.' Yes, I have a Wood Guy. His name is Nathan and he is a realtor at my office and you can't have him.  He's MY Wood Guy. Anyway, Nate came over a few weeks before the kitchen mayhem ensued to check out the cupboard doors and offer advice and suggestions.

At first glance, our old cupboards looked 'nice'...they were in good shape...didn't show any signs of wear and tear...they were just painfully outdated. People who really love wood (like grandparents and my dad) couldn't believe I wanted to CHANGE these beautiful cupboards. Turns out, when we took a closer look (at the doors specifically) they were just made out of plywood and covered with a thin layer of maple wood. Glued together, and then finished with a 'Rot Stone' technique.

My kitchen circa 2010 is so offensive. Let's move on.

Nate explained the Rot Stone finish is a really labor-intensive, interesting finish using smooth stones to sand the wood and make it super smooth, then stain, then stone, repeatedly until the final finish was achieved. It sounds like it was a really expensive way to make our really cheap cupboards LOOK really expensive. Lovely.

PLAN/PREP: Saturday, March 29th was the first weekend in 6 months where we had NOTHING planned. Perfect day to kill ourselves with a project, right? I estimated this project would take around two weeks since I wasn't taking any time off to work on the cupboards (turns out that was a good choice since the time it takes for each coat to dry meant a lot of down time). I read blogs about how this project could be accomplished in a weekend. And how it's so easy a toddler could help do it. Those blogs are blasphemy.

I went to Lowe's and bought two small cans of Dark Walnut Rust-O-Leum stain and one small can of satin Rust-O-Leum polyurethane (Nate recommended flat or satin poly because anything with gloss would have brought out imperfections that might be in the cupboard doors). I bought small foam brushes to use for this entire project...they cut down on brush marks significantly.

First I had to unload ALL of our cupboards and drawers. This included pitching some kitchen junk we never use or haven't touched in years and was just taking up space. While I was doing this, Josh was taking all the doors down and removing the hinges. This might have been the most overwhelming part. Everything had to go. Curtains, rugs, pictures, and anything and everything that was on the countertop. So all that stuff got piled here:

We used fine sandpaper to sand the doors and drawers outside. I taped up some plastic and with help from my mother-in-law, we went to town sanding the 'bones' of the cupboards. This would be the messiest, most uncomfortable part of the process. I've never had such a longing in my heart to vacuum.

The next day my sister-in-law came over and we knocked out the rest of the sanding of the cupboard doors plus some staining. When we're together it's like there are two of me and the productivity goes through the roof. I love it.

Here's the worst of it. Rags, tools, stain, dust, and junk everywhere. Paper plates and plastic silverware were our saving grace during this project.

STAINING: I think a lot of people are confused about the final product. The cupboards look like they were painted rather than stained. Because of the way my cupboards were finished in 1956, the stain wasn't going to 'soak in' to the wood...remember that part about not being able to sand down to the bare wood because it would be some gorgeous plywood? Yeaaaa. I was freaking out the stain wasn't soaking in like the directions on the back of the can instructed.

So 48 hours in I panicked and sent an all caps, bold email to Nate (he's a Realtor and they only respond to emails about 7% of the time) and re-asked all my questions. I was instructed to just paint the stain on the wood and let it dry. The stain is oil-base, so EVERYTHING took a lot longer to dry than if I had been doing the stain and wipe technique.

Let me break this down for you. I needed to get two coats, plus a final 'touch-up' coat on the bones, the doors, and the drawers. And after all of that, still needed to do two coats of polyurethane. Each coat took a good 24 hours to dry before I could do the next coat...and since doors have two sides and I couldn't flip them for 24 hours...getting them totally done, took a solid five to six days. If we had more room outside or a 'shop' there are better techniques for painting and staining, but I basically set up my shop in the middle of the kitchen with plastic and some rags laid on the floor. I used a stool to lay each door while I painted on the stain. When I finished, I lifted it up, and laid it somewhere in dining room, living room, or hallway to dry. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

After everything was stained and the cupboard bones had all their stain and poly, I was able to put our house back together a little bit.

This felt reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally good.

FINISHING: We added fresh brushed silver hinges and knobs (those were my Christmas gift two years ago in an attempt to motivate me to do this project :) Josh hung eight doors before getting frustrated and calling it a night last Thursday. Jamie's boyfriend Keaton came over the next night and hung eight more. On Saturday morning I hosted a bridal shower for a friend and Josh got up and hung four more doors so the kitchen wouldn't look quite so unfinished when guests arrived.

I forgot to do a "Man Candy Monday' on Instagram yesterday, but this should have been it. This is 9:00 on a Saturday morning. Bless.

So here's our new and improved kitchen after $30 of stain and poly, lots of coffee, lots of help from in-laws, and a frustrated husband who didn't think the cabinets looked that bad in the first place:

Not so crazy, am I? :)

MmB

That one time when I lost some weight and people started asking me how I did it...

When we first got married, both Josh and I experienced something "How I Met Your Mother" refers to as 'Relationship Gut'. In my case this could also be called, 'Relationship Butt.' We were newlyweds who liked going out to eat and eating junk food with our friends, just like we did in our college days (which, coincidentally overlapped with our newlywed lifestyle, making quite a combination). Factor in the cruise Josh's family took six months into our marriage with our love for Christmas and all it's home-cooked meals and goodies, and we had a bit of a weight gain situation on our hands. 

"Hi we're the Boersma's and we like Buffalo Wild Wings."

This cycle was easy for Josh to combat. As a natural athlete and hard worker, Josh tends to gain some weight in the winter, and lose it easily in the summer. Over time, I inherited a few of his horrible habits (ie: drinking Monster, eating out a LOT, having supper at 10pm, etc.), and I didn't fair as well during the transition into married life.

January 2013 rolled around and I decided I wanted to go back to being a smokin' hot trophy wife, to match my smokin' hot business owner-of-a-husband. And here we are. I've lost 35+ pounds and random people are starting to ask me about how I did it...which is interesting because I don't have an exact answer. Here are a few of the ways I kicked the old habits and replaced them with different, slightly less horrible options:

1. When we order drinks, instead of White Russians and Mudslides (seriously, best. ever.) I opt for a vodka cranberry and the occasional Sex on the Beach. They're usually cheaper anyway. Win win.

2. I can't remember the last time I ordered a frappucino...it's been well over two years. Instead I get latte's or the fruit refreshers at Starbucks. Sane people who are trying to lose weight clearly can't cut out Starbucks altogether.

3. When Josh says, 'HEY WANNA ORDER BURRITOS?!' at midnight on a Saturday, I've started vehemently saying, 'NO.' There are times (like two nights ago on a Sunday at 8pm when we hadn't had supper and I didn't want to make anything because I'm staining my cupboards and every time I look at my kitchen I want to cry - but that's another blog) when I'll say, 'yes,' but I make sure to only get one scoop of rice instead of two. 

4. I rarely drink pop. I've replaced my afternoon can of pop at work with a Trenta-sized Starbucks cup of Crystal Light throughout the day. My goal is to drink four per day...ask me how many times that has happened...it would be less than 10...but I know I'm drinking more water than I used to if I always have it with me and filled with flavored water. But I won't deny my constant and undying love for Diet Coke.

5. I eat something for breakfast. In college the only days I would eat breakfast were days that I opened the Rec so I know exactly where that bad habit came from. I try and make sure I eat a Special K bar or Nature Valley granola bar in the morning.

6. I've always hated working out. But I don't mind squats and I don't mind Pinterest arm exercises. So if we're watching TV or movies at night and I'm not doing anything else like folding laundry or scrapbooking, I get up and do as many as I can. I also like going on walks with friends and sisters. With tips like that, clearly I'm a fitness expert.

7. When Josh says, 'Hey wanna order a Papa John's pizza?!' every single night of our lives, I usually try to remind him I did have something planned for supper (except for the past 2 weeks I've given in because of kitchen project mentioned in #3). On the nights when it's just easier to order pizza, I try not to scarf all 3-4 pieces of my half and save the other two for lunch at work the next day. Because again, what sane person trying to lose weight can cut out Papa John's pizza and garlic sauce altogether? Well my sister-in-law did but I'm convinced after the past 6 months and her incredible weight loss, she is clearly NOT SANE.

8. I got my tonsils removed in September. I lost about 10 pounds. Everyone said, 'Oh you will gain that right back,' but I didn't! It was sort of magical.

9. Buying cute, new clothes in smaller sizes is fun. Today I'm wearing some jeans three (almost four!) sizes smaller than I was wearing last year at this time. Which is pretty fantastic. And motivating to say, 'No,' when Josh will undoubtedly ask me to order a Papa John's pizza with him tonight (If you think I'm kidding, ask any of our siblings and they will tell you he pulls this crap on me every night! :)

10. When we go out to eat I stick to the salads, chicken strips, or steak section of the menu. As much as I would love to order a matching burger with Josh (This man eats the SAME burger wherever we go: the Tangler at Perkins, the Old Timer at Chilli's, the Traditional Hickory with Cheese at Hickory Park) I realized I need to get a grip and use, like, an ounce of self-control. 

Plus, what is better than steak and A1? Answer: Nothing.

It's been good to give God control over areas of my life that I've never given Him control of. In fact it was my silly little desk calendar at work that kicked me in the butt a couple of times with verses like 1 Corinthians 6:18-20.

So thanks for that desk calendar. 

"The Power of a Praying Wife" isn't exactly a 'silly little desk calendar'...it's actually excellent...I would highly recommend.

Time to get back to those (insert expletive of your choice HERE) cupboards. Blog on those coming soon. Or maybe not. Because they make me physically ill. Or maybe that's the fumes and the poor ventilation in our house.......................................................................................

BUT HOW DOPE DO THESE PRETTY DARK DRAWERS WITH PRETTY SILVER KNOBS LOOK?! 

MmB