The Shafferland Shuffle

* Last Sunday we served coffee at church. Most handsome coffee maker out there, don't you think?? The rest of the day was a beautiful, restful Sunday. Braeya napped, we napped, I scrapbooked, and we watched Olympic trials. {ANYONE ELSE loving the trials as much as we are???}

 * Monday was the 4th of July, and Ryan worked all day, but in the evening, we went to Red Robin for a dinner date, and then out to watch fireworks over the lake. Despite a cloudy day and some significant humidity {read: HUGE HAIR}, it was a great night and a lovely date!

* Tuesday night we got to attend our friend's 40th birthday party, which was a lot of fun! Her husband surprised her, and the party was a great success {and can we pause to talk about the ICE CREAM??!!? It was homemade and it's such a good thing I am not proficient in that!}

* Wednesday started out crazy stormy and rainy, and I thought it would stay that way all day, but it cleared up and actually became a really nice day! We continued our garage makeover that night - painting the chalkboard part of the wall. What? Do you not have chalkboards in your garage???

* Thursday, when I was busy making lunch, someone was very interested in what was cooking! She cracks me up sometimes! :) I worked on some craft projects that day, and then that night, Ryan and I installed the pavers I told you about earlier this week. I still can't get over how different that patio looks since we installed them!

* Friday was a busy writing day for me, and in the afternoon, I spent some time learning about rosemary: a new herb at our house. I don't know much about it! BUT - I used it to cook our dinner. Ryan grilled our chicken and Brussels sprouts: delicious!! And then I hunkered down to watch more Olympic trials, and Ryan worked on reorganizing the garage. His happy place!!

* Yesterday, I had a case of the grumpies. :( Never good. But I perked up as the day went along! I went to a baby shower for Ryan's cousin in the afternoon: it was a Pinterest delight! And Ryan worked more on his list of projects around the house. And even though this picture is really bad, I have to share it. We went for a walk in the evening, and we saw a DEER!!! You cannot possibly know how happy this makes me!!!

The Saturday Six

One.

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For a girl who has complained WAY more than she should have about the "burdens" brought on by beautiful luxuries lately, this post was both a needed reminder and a HUGE conviction.

Two.

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So what are your thoughts on this topic? Do you want to inherit the stuff from your parents or grandparents? Or are you so over stuff? 

Three.

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One of my friends sent me this blog this week. And since I know some of you love finding new blogs as much as I do, I have to share it. The blog began as a way for this couple to share their home renovation projects {which is a really cool story in and of itself} but less than a month ago, the husband was in a motorcycle accident and now the blog is about their journey to healing. Read it, people.

Four.

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It's been a while since I did a capsule wardrobe post, but for those of you who might still be working your way that direction and are still in need of guidance, this is a great post that has not only good principles in it, but also some printables that can help you plan a bit more constructively! 

Five. 

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If you haven't had your tiny house fix this week, check out this one. It is one of my most favorite plans yet.  

Six.

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Last fall, I read the first novel in the Nikki Boyd Files: Vendetta by Lisa Harris. {My review on that book is here.} I read the book in one night flat and forgot to breathe for most of that night. So when I saw that book two, Missing, had been released, I had to read it. And in similar fashion, I wiped it out in one day - finishing it on my Fourth of July date with Ryan {while we waited for fireworks to begin. I paid attention for dinner and our car ride!}. Lisa has done it again. Suspenseful, heart-stopping, touches of romance - everything that makes for the perfect book you can't put down.

This book picks up just over a month after book one ended. Nikki Boyd, a member of the Tennessee Missing Persons Special Task Force is back at work after nearly dying in a hostage situation just five weeks prior. She's been called in on a new assignment: to find a missing couple, Mac and Lucy Hudson. By all appearances, Mac and Lucy are a perfect couple living a perfect life, but they wind up missing and two alleged intruders are dead in their home.

Nikki is shocked when the first clue in the case leads her straight to a boat owned by her friend Tyler, and she finds him standing over a third body. Tyler's late wife was Nikki's best friend, and she knows Tyler cannot possibly be involved in this mess. But the question is - who is involved and how does Tyler fit into the equation?

Nikki and her team stumble through a maze of clues that leads them further into a world of deception, lying, counterfeit drugs, and a mysterious killer who seems all too willing to remove anyone who gets in the way of his {or her?} mission. Nikki wants to get to the bottom of the reason for the madness, but more than that, she wants to bring the missing home before it's too late.

And in the middle of it all, she tries in vain to tell herself she cannot be in love with Tyler. He's just a friend. Just a friend. But then her heart skips a beat and she has to start all over again.

As with the first book, I loved that this novel kept up a suspenseful pace and storyline that would rival any TV show you could want to see, but it brought in a faith element, and kept out unnecessary garbage. So looking forward to book number three!

Thanks, Lisa, for writing great suspense fiction, and thank you, Revell, for sending a copy my way in exchange for an honest review!

A Quick DIY Paver Job

Who EVER EVER EVER would have thought I would cover DIY projects on this blog? Not the pre-Ryan Bekah, that's for sure! But I'll tell you what: having a handyman husband is a delight, even if it means the projects sort of continue on and on! I appreciate his hard work and vision for making our home beautiful on a budget.

Thanks for all the garage floor love yesterday. Glad you liked the outcome as much as we did!

And no, the garage still isn't completely reassembled, so my initial plan to reveal that today will have to wait until next week.

BUT NEVER FEAR!!! We did another project last night. Yep. A whole project in one night.

We have a patio area that we just love, because it's nice and private, and when we moved in, it had outdoor carpet covering the concrete slab.

It wasn't anything spectacular, but it was just fine. Well, it was fine until the first big wind. And then we learned that the tape holding the carpet to the concrete slab had rotted, and the carpet blew right off the slab. After a couple of windy days and trying to push the carpet back in place, we just ripped it off and threw it away. And that left us with this lovely taped and stained slab:

We tried to dress it up, but you can only ask so much of an old door, some flowers, and a rug, you know.

So Ryan's initial plan to fix this issue was to call a concrete stamping guy and see if he could add more concrete over what existed and stamp a pattern into it and call it done. But then we realized that if that ever cracked, we'd have to start the whole thing over and that's such a pain.

So plan B was to go to Lowe's and get stone pavers - the kind with a pattern in them - and lay those over the concrete slab. Then if one cracked, we could just replace it.

A few nights ago, we were at Lowe's pricing pavers and sand and all the things you need for a project of this magnitude, when across the aisle...I spied...

...Rubberific pavers. I had never heard of them before! Have you?

They are made of 100% recycled rubber...the same stuff the rubber mulch is made from, actually. They won't crack or freeze, their website says, and the grooves on the bottom channel water.

And guess what else?

THEY'RE REVERSIBLE!

So for the price of one paver, you can choose either design and have it with one quick flip! This duo design comes in brown and red. We got the red. There's also a cobblestone design that comes in brown and gray. {Our store didn't carry that one so I've not seen it in person.}

Ryan said they did recommend using an adhesive to secure these to your patio, but since ours is enclosed, we elected not to. Plus, we don't have kids, so it's just the two of us walking around on them. But they don't skid or slip, and we like that! And we also liked not purchasing sand and other things to add to it like we would have for the regular pavers. And these just feel so much nicer underneath your feet!

We did have to do one bit of maintenance on them as we installed them. The side we wanted to use had frayed edges from how they were cut in the machine, so we had to snip off the frayed part.

It wasn't hard...just time-consuming. We eventually worked out a system where I cut the edges of most of them and Ryan ripped the staples {that held the tag} out and then he put them in place. He said some weren't 100% square, which again, was probably just a machine cutting issue, but only one was so "off" that he deemed it unusable.

They went down pretty quickly:

{You're welcome for that picture, by the way.}

Ryan was a little unsure, at first, how he felt about the fact that not every paver was exactly the same shade of red.

I should say that if our store would have had unlimited quantities of these in stock, he would have pilfered through the entire pile to find exactly as many as he needed in the same shade. But since they only had a handful more than we needed, we bought what they had.

But in the end, I think the multiple shades gave it depth and character.

What do you think?

We love it!

I loved it most that the project could be entirely completed in ONE NIGHT. And I think it just dresses up the whole patio so much.

I also love it that our projects are dwindling.

Thanks for reading along with our adventures!!!

DIY Garage Floor Painting Adventures

We're still working to reassemble our garage after the great makeover of 2016, but I thought I'd show you the kit we used to paint the floor, in case any of you have been dying to paint your garage floor!

You'll see a bit more of this after you see the whole garage makeover process, but basically, our goal with it was to make it into a space that we could use for additional entertaining if we needed to, but we still want it to function as a garage for the majority of the time.

So...in addition to the other improvements we made, we decided to paint the floor with the Rust-Oleum Garage Floor Coating Kit. We got ours at Lowe's, and we found out you can have the paint tinted to any one of nine colors. We chose a tan, because we thought it would coordinate well with our grayish greenish walls.

Here is what came in the kit for a 2.5 car garage {not pictured: one bag of white powder that was a cleaner. Ryan used it before I took the picture!}

 

When you actually get ready to paint {we'll come back to the cleaning in a minute}, you combine the contents of the small paint cans {Part A} into the big paint cans {Part B} and stir for three minutes. {The big paint cans are only filled partway, so there's room for the contents of the small cans. Even comes with a stir stick!} The two remaining bags in the picture are the chips that look much like confetti. Those get sprinkled into the paint after it's applied to the floor, but before it dries.

So. Let's talk about the cleaning.

Ryan had read in reviews that the worst part of this whole process was cleaning the floor to prep it. And he affirmed wholeheartedly that it is TRUE. He spent about a WEEK working on these floors in the evenings after work.

He started by {obviously} clearing everything out of the garage. He purchased a cleaner and degreaser all in one and used a deck brush to scrub the entire floor. Then he hosed it down really well to get all the cleaner off. Then he repeated that process a second time. After that, he used the powder that came with the kit {concrete etch}, mixed it with water, and used that on the entire surface of the floor to clean it again. Three more hose rinsing rounds came after that, because Ryan likes to be thorough!

With the floor completely clean, it was time for drying. We put four fans in the garage and let them run for about four days to make sure the floor was absolutely dry. How long this part takes depends on how quickly your floor dries and the level of humidity at the time. It did not work in our favor that particular week.

Obviously during this time, we could not park in the garage or even walk out there in our shoes. We didn't want to track in ANY MORE DIRT.

When it came time to apply the actual paint, the temperature had to be just right, so we waited until the humidity lowered a bit and it wasn't so hot out before we applied the paint. Ryan ran some painter's tape along the edge of the garage, where the door comes down, so we would know where to stop painting, and then it was time to get started!  

Ryan combined one big and one small can and waited to see if we would need the other before mixing them. {We did not.} He took over rolling the paint onto the floor with a roller on a handle. The paint was incredibly thin and dried really quickly. We learned we had to do pretty small sections in order for it to stay wet enough for me to throw on the chips.

I went along behind and threw in the little confetti chips.

 I divided the two bags into four bowls and tried to scatter them evenly over four quadrants of the garage.

Yeah. That was a fail. I almost ran out!! We only used half the cleaner and half the paint but I could have used twice as many chips!!

I did find out later that you can purchase additional bags separately. So if you're confetti happy like I am, you might look into it!

The actual painting process took us two hours, working together. Definitely much easier than the previous week of cleaning!

We were supposed to stay off the floor entirely for 24 hours and leave cars and other heavy things off of it for a week. But the end result was stunning.

Here was the garage before we painted:

And after:

We think it looks so much brighter!

Here's a close-up:

Would we do it again? Well, please don't make us, but yes! It really was a cost-effective improvement to the space, and the actual painting process was quick and painless. Ryan may not be QUITE ready for that much prep cleaning again yet. But we are so happy with the result! Another great DIY project find!

Fourth of July Fun!

I will not lie: I have no idea what day it is this week. Ryan worked the weekend and the holiday and I am not quite sure if Monday was a Monday or a Saturday...or if I'm coming or going. Anyone else???

But I thought I'd tell you about our Fourth of July fun!

I tried to be festive with our breakfast even though we had to be up crazy early so Ryan could go to work.

{To be fair, it's the same thing we eat pretty much every day, but I just made it prettier in honor of the holiday.}

After Ryan got home from work, we headed out for our date! I should say that our fourth here in Indiana was about 2000% humidity and completely cloudy with a danger of some rain. So my hair grew quickly, but it was a comfortable evening as far as temps went. {And it never rained, so YAY!!!}

We went to Red Robin for dinner, which is one of our favorite destinations, and when I got there, I remembered why it was the perfect choice for a patriotic holiday:

I was a good girl with my dinner, so I did allow myself a treat: root beer float!!!

It was delicious. 

Also delicious? Our dinner.

Red Robin was in an outdoor mall, and of course all the stores had closed early, but Starbucks was still open, so we actually, for the first time in the history of our Fourth of July dating, GOT COFFEE BEFORE THE FIREWORKS!!! It was a pretty significant victory. We walked around the deserted mall and then drove over to our fireworks spot!

Right when we got there, some planes were doing flyovers, and it was really cool to watch!

We sat in a new spot this year, which turned out to be a bit less than ideal {sorry, Ryan! It was my idea!} but we learned from it and know where to sit next year!

The seat was less than perfect because we had some power lines conveniently located smack in the center of all the fireworks. My apologies! But it was a GREAT show. Best we've seen yet!

Spectacular show...but I have to say the end was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. In the grand finale, all the fireworks were lower, and they got buried in the smoke and you couldn't even see them. You could see their color in the smoke, but you couldn't see the actual fireworks. I've never seen anything like it. It looked like a big fire!

A great night...thanks, Ryan, for our special date! :)