My Manly-Man and His Candied Walnuts & Diaper Covers

For those of you who know my husband, he tends toward the manly-man side.

He loves guns. Hates musicals. Loves getting dirty. Hates the Kardashians. Loves wrestling with the dogs. Hates shopping for clothes.

Well the last couple of weeks he has had some time off so he's been very helpful around the house doing both manly things like making our toilet flush without the need to two hands and bicep muscles to push the lever down. And he has done more wifely duties like clean the oven and mop the floor so I don't have to on maternity leave. Let me just say here: I really married a keeper...I mean jackpot!!

Annnnnyway. Beyond these chores that I had added to his list, he also surprised me (and himself) with a couple of extra domestically cute actions...

Number 1: I came home from work last week to find him making candied walnuts.

Candied walnuts.

I have no idea what it even takes to candy a walnut because if I get to a recipe that calls for me to do that I immediately balk at the thought of an extra step and move right onto a new recipe. And to make it even better, he called it "easy" and "fun"!

And they were some pretty stinking good walnuts!

Number 2: He had a friend come over to watch a movie and pulled out the cloth diapers we had purchased earlier in the day to show off to his friend.

Mind you, this friend does not have kids...is not married even...is also more of a manly-man...and I swear did not ask anything about diapers to precipitate this show and tell.

Honey contends his friend did indeed ask about the diapers...but I'm not so sure. Honey did most of the picking out of cute diaper covers at the store and I think he was just very excited.

Again I tell you I hit the JACKPOT with him!! He is my cute manly-man and still all domestic!

Viola! Changing Table Makeover

So if you read my post about painting the nursery, I promised you I'd show you the changing table makeover. Here is the changing table before. And you can see sitting on it the lovely product I used for this transformation...Rustolium Furniture Transformation.

The Rustolium product is pretty nifty because you don't have to sand or scrape or strip the old paint off, which was really important to me since I didn't want all the chemicals of stripping.

Don't get me wrong, I like to strip...wood that is...or maybe I should say furniture...

ANYWAY, I have refinished many pieces of furniture the old fashion way, but didn't have the time or inclination to do all that work here so this product takes out a lot of that hassle.

After the gloss

So in this handy box they give you some cleaner/primer stuff to wipe everything down with. Then you have a base coat that you have tinted at the store based on the color you want to end up with. Then you have some cool gloss to make the base coat more unique, darker, etc. And finally a top coat.

We went with espresso to match the crib and I did a pretty heavy dose of the gloss to make it as dark as possible.

I loved that the gloss almost mimicked a wood grain since I hadn't actually done the full stripping to get to the wood.

Some things to think remember if you ever use the product...

1. The base coat is VERY fragile...seriously putting a piece of paper towel down would take off the base coat.
2. So you definitely need 2 coats of it and then be very very careful.
3. Like sugar in your coffee, it is always easier to put more gloss on than to take it off after it dries.
4. Plan on doing two coats of the top coat and don't try to touch up with this, just redo the whole section if you need to.

Other than that everything went really well and this is the final product:

Overall I am very happy! I wasn't sure about keeping the knobs white but they've grown on me.

And the motivation to spray paint them brown has disappeared entirely :)

 

And at this point we have two more projects...a wood transfer of a 5 ft long plane image and a DIY plane mobile...and one month left to do them both...

I promise to post them once they are done as well as final nursery photos!!

What the South is Missing

I may be making an overreaching statement here. After all I have lived in only one place in the South so this may be a problem with the area I am in rather than the whole South, but I think it is a persistent problem.

The South doesn't appreciate coffee enough.

I've said it.

I may have to drive like 5 or 6 miles for a coffee shop...not acceptable. And I don't mean when I am in the country I have to drive 6 miles. I mean when I am in a huge shopping area there is not one coffee shop. Not one Starbucks. Nothing. Not acceptable.

I think it has to do with southerners crazy love of sweet tea. Starbucks are hard to find but BoJangles with famous sweet tea are on every corner.

For the first time in my life, since I left my one-stop-light town, I have to drive nearly 10 minutes from work to get to a coffee shop. And I hardly drink coffee now and it is usaully decaf or 1/2 caf.

Gone are the days I walked across the street for coffee. Gone are the days when every grocery store also has a convenient coffee shop. Gone are the days of rich coffee smells and warm caffeine highs. Gone.

And I am pretty sure my one-stop-light town has more coffee shops than Fayetteville. And it only has like 12,000 people in the whole county.

Sweet tea sucks.

I miss my coffee.