Hello, it's us (we've been wondering if after all this time you'd like to read about our house still).

Hey guys, just wanted to say that we're still here and we still talk about the blog and you guys and working on the house and hopefully someday soon I'll post some "real" content again. We keep bumping into old friends who want to know what we've been up to on the house and since I've officially left my day job (hooray!) to work on Lamphouse full-time, I might have a few minutes here and there to do some actual work on the ol' girl. It is her 99th year after all, so she deserves a little extra care and maybe, just maybe, some paint. No promises, though ; ) 

In the mean time, here's a round up of what we've been up to in the year and some months since I posted last: 

For my birthday last April, my folks agreed to work on building a little "patio" for our backyard. Call me crazy but I do NOT like sitting around the fire pit, feeling all the little creepy crawlies on my feet so it was "Goodbye grass!" and hello pavers, edging, and mulch. *Sorry in advance for the cell phone pics y'all*

First, we measured, dug a hole, leveled everything out...

...then the rains came and...unleveled things. We put gravel and sand underneath the pavers and then added new edging and mulch, along with a little half wall and a mini berm. 

Here's a crap shot I took from our sunroom windows (are they dirty? I can't tell). 

And yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, that is an ABOVE GROUND POOL. Listen, when you live in Kansas and you don't have central AC, you do what you gotta' do. And I gotta' pool. It cost about $150 and we spent almost every.single.night. bobbing up in down in there, smelling the moonflowers, and bringing our body temperature back down to a reasonable level before going to bed. 

Sure, it makes me want to listen to High Life every time I look at it and sure it looks like a little eyesore in this photo (the grasses on the berm have grown considerably since this was taken) but man, it's a treat. 

Conan built my little boardwalk you see there out of scrap wood we had lying around and it helps keep the dirt out of the pool. 

I still want to do some type of lighting underneath the little bench edge and maybe paint or affix some fake stone to those cinder blocks but it's our little oasis and now...get this...we actually USE our backyard instead of just staring at it from the laundry room windows all summer long! 

Which is awesome because...MOONFLOWERS!! They are by far, the best part about summer in Kansas. They love the heat, don't mind the dry spells, and they smell like perfume. 

Around the same time, Conan got a wild hair (no pun intended for that wild hair pic down there lol) and decided he was sick of our basement being a totally messy, unusable space so he cleaned the whole thing out, drylocked the walls, and built work benches and shelves. There's even a little spot for the mini fridge! (Oh, and Shorty "helped"). 

Next up, we headed to Estes Park for our 7th summer of hiking until it hurts. Or, as we call it, ~a very relaxing vacation~ lol. 

Here's Conan on our descent from Mt. Chiquita 

It was pretty hazy this year which was a bummer for summits but it did make for some incredible, sort of Great Smoky Mountain-style sunsets. Here's Conan in Moraine Park, near our campsite. 

The rest of the summer and most of the fall was devoted to Lamphouse and all that photobooth-ery but we did manage to make it to our friend's wedding in Philadelphia and have a 16 hour whirlwind tour of New York as well. 

We left Wichita and drove to Kansas City at 3 am and when we arrived at Newark, we immediately just went to Penn Station and started walking. The whole day was incredible but also like a weird, half-asleep, half-awake dream. 

We walked from Penn Station to the Freedom Tower then across the Brooklyn Bridge and then trained it back to Newark. Phew! 

Philly was beautiful. So much history and neat buildings. We pretty much had the same game plan as New York outside of the wedding-y stuff: walk and walk and walk and walk. 

On our last afternoon, we walked down to Independence Seaport Museum and blew Conan's tiny, boyhood mind but WALKING AROUND IN A SUBMARINE! If you look closely, you can see him actually losing it : D 

For Conan's 35th birthday in February, we went out to Estes Park with our Philly friends for a two day run around RMNP. It was so neat to finally see what the park looks like in winter after seeing it in only the summer for so many years. 

The past couple of months have been spent getting back to photo booth stuff. We took the "Lampy" camper out for a run of photos last month. It's the first time she's left the driveway in a couple of years and she handled it like a champ. You can see all of the portraits we took and developed here on our Facebook page. 

And last but certainly not least, we added another Birdie Booth to our fleet! Now we officially have two indoor photo booths, the Grand Wagoneer Photo Booth, and ~occasionally~ the Lampy camper.

Here's Birdie #2 in our dining room this past Saturday before her first event <3

I think that pretty much brings things up to speed. 

Just a couple of low lifes, livin' the high life

travelin' all over

buildin' photo booths like it's compulsory

still NO paint on the house since we started prep like, two years ago ughhhhh....

Until next time, 

Keep Smiling! 

~ Katherine

Buffet Blog Post: Screened Porch, Raspberry Plants & Dream Houses

How was everyone's Memorial Day weekend? Hopefully it was perfect! Ours was pretty close. I had to work all weekend but I did have yesterday off and so Conan and I were able to get some stuff done around the house and have a little fun as well.

What did we do? Let's have a look.

We took the wicker off the back porch, gave it a much needed wash and then...

we screened in the back porch!

Look at him go!

We used a reasonable amount of staples for the task at hand. Like normal people would.

We still have to put the outside pieces of trim up and a door but aside from all of that stuff it's basically done. I can already tell we're going to love it. We did this mostly so we could open the back doors and get a nice breeze through the house without having to worry about the pets running out. No air conditioning, remember?

Speaking of porch living, I started making these little puppies to put out there with my ever-growing collection of paper lanterns.

The tutorial is from Oh Happy Day.

I'm thinking of putting some in the tree in the backyard for our June 15th David Bazan show as well (Which just sold out! Eek! 17 days til' 50ish people descend on casa de Fugit.)

What else? What else?

Oh, my parents have been down South visiting family for the past week or so and my mom brought us back a raspberry bush from where I grew up in the beautiful hills of northeast Tennessee.

It may not look great now but just you wait.

If you're reading this Aunt Kathy, I miss you all and your embarrassing amount of wild raspberry bushes terribly!

Speaking of my mom, today is her birthday so, Happy Birthday mom you're awesome! Without you, we'd all be up a creek!

How did such a big baby come out of such a small woman, we'll never know.

Last but not least if you followed us on twitter (Which you should! Why don't you?) you might have seen my "Dream Home Pic Spam" yesterday evening. We went for a walk around the neighborhood just East of us (known as "College Hill") and we decided to share some shots of our most favorite houses over there.

This one has copper flashing. COPPER FLASHING, people! How cool is that?

This one is probably our most favorite. Embarassing fact: we have actually stalked this house so fervently that we know what kind of car the owner drives (an MG kind of like Conan's) and we can spot it around the 'hood.

This one is probably my favorite. It's taken a little convincing for Conan to get on board just because it looks to be in not so great shape on the outside. But man oh man, that garden.

Okay, back to non-instagram pictures.

Today's projects include, me putting up the bunting on the front porch

and dragging that thing out of the basement and taking a few pictures of it. Swear.

Shorty's just as intrigued as you guys are (well, he's probably a little more intrigued to be honest).

Cheap Plant Party

Cheap plant party over here, y'all!

Where my cheap peeps at?

Too much?

Yeah.

Sorry.

I just get so excited for cheap stuff, you guys! Cheap plants are no exception. While at Lowe's today (for like the fourth day in a row) getting stuff for the light hack of the century, my mom and I stopped by the garden area, natch. Imagine my surprise to find plants already marked to closeout!

Here's the haul:

Six plants.

Nine. Doll. Hairs.

(hey, they're not worth nothin')

Shameless 30 Rock reference only Conan will get.

But I mean, $9!!!

I got two ornamental grasses to go on the north side of the house. Every good Kansan must have ornamental grasses in their yard. It's in the handbook. Go check. These things love heat and aren't too thirsty. Perfect Kansas plant.

I got three of the creeping phlox for $2 each. I think we're going to put these near the driveway.

And did you see that wierd thing in the middle? That's a Coral Cactus. Super cool lookin' thing and not something I would normally get but...

$1.00 (with the container)? Yes, please!

He's inside in what I am now affectionately referring to as "Cactus Corner".

And yes, I realize those other plants aren't Cacti. It's just that...he's new...and I want him to feel...special. "Name-a-corner-after-me" special.  

I did buy one plant at full price ($3.00).

I just couldn't resist.

I mean, look at this thing:

The picture is deceptive. He's actually like two inches across. TWO adorable inches!

My mom said it reminded her of a dinosaur.

The lady at the register said it looked like an alien.

I just think it's cute.

Yay! Cheap plants! Now back to those lights.



Mulch it, Mulch it Good

Hey everybody! How was your weekend?

We spent ours mostly outside since the weather was so nice and I actually had Saturday and Sunday off for once (whoa!). One thing we didn't do outside was finish "closing in" the kitchen ceiling. My mom and dad came up on Saturday and while my mom and I planted irises and bought the aforementioned mulch (with which to mulch it good) my dad finished closing in the spaces between the beams along the dining room/kitchen wall.

Now to paint it. Today. I swear. Everything gets painted today.

Funny story:

Me: "So dad, did you hear what I wanted to do to the floor?"

Dad: "Yeah, you want to tear up all of the linoleum then paint it to look like linoleum."

Me: "Pretty much."

Moving along.

On Sunday Conan and I tackled a few things that have been sitting on the to-do list shelf, getting dusty.

Thing one:

Mulch around the roses in the front yard (so Conan doesn't have to try to mow around them, poor guy.)

Excuse the bad picture and the bad yard, we haven't overseeded it yet. The bad picture, you can just blame on me and my poor camera operating skills, okay? Okay.

Now normally, we had been using edging around flowers and then mulching in but after taking a few walks in the "fancy schmancy" neighborhood up the hill and admiring their professionally done landscaping I figured, "I can do that!" and so we skipped the edging in favor of just digging down an inch or so beneath the grass line and mulching in, like this

Conan started by making an outline around the flowers. Hey, you gotta' have a plan!

Then we dug down about an inch or two and loosened up the dirt in the center, taking out what little grass and what bunch of weeds that were there. We didn't dig down two inches all the way back, just near the front so the mulch wouldn't spill out into the yard.

Oh, my poor headless tulips. They were pretty a few days ago, I swear!

Then you just mulch it up! We shopped around for the best price on this dark brown mulch and got it at Menard's for $2.99 a bag. It took about three bags.

I'd like to do something similar around the tulips and some other flowers in the backyard. And so, on the to-do list it goes.

While we're here, let's just stop and smell the roses, shall we? Mmmmm rose smells...

While we were out and about, Conan got me this neat little Jade Plant to add to my ever growing collection of succulents. He spent the afternoon outside, soaking up the sun but now he's indoors, on the bookshelves.

Conan mowed the yard something fierce. It's amazing to me that even without overseeding it still looks this nice! It's also amazing that it has been three years since it looked like this.

Then Conan grilled up some dinner while I admired his perfectly manicured lawn and his ability to not singe his arm hairs off.

Man make fire, mow lawn. Woman like.



Smell-O-Vision

Let me preface this post by saying that if you have allergies and just looking at these pictures makes your eyes water, I'm very sorry for you. I however, have no allergies and so I've spent the past two weeks sticking my nose in anything that even remotely looks like a flower. People see me when we walk the dog and say, "Here comes that lady with the nose, sniffin' up all of our good smells." Maybe the best of these smells: the Lilac.

When I came home from work today I found that one of my Hydrangeas had gone to that big garden in the sky. To fill in, I took a few cuts of Lilac off of the bush in our front yard.

 

Pretty!

Aside from the roses which we tried repeatedly (not intentionally) to kill this bush is one of the few things that was here when we moved into the house and we've actually kept it. I mean, who could get rid of something that smells soooooo good.

I don't want to strip the entire bush but I always like to put one on the mantel for a few days.

 

I like how it looks like those girls in Conan's painting are taking a picture of this giant flower.

Got any favorite, low maintenance flowers or bushes that you like to invite inside?

I'm always looking for new ideas. I keep trying to get Hydrangeas of my own to grow but no luck : (

Succulents

Spring is bustin' out all over around these parts. But this unusually warm weather, paired with last year's summer from H E double hockey sticks had me worried about what kind of container plants to put on the porches this year and personally, although I love me some hydrangeas I'm not really a flowery girl. In Kansas it's best to bet on something that can withstand the heat and needs minimal watering.

Enter: Succulents

My mom bought me this old, metal cafeteria thing-y at a thrift store last year and I thought it would be the perfect place for some succulents. These are the two I picked up at a local greenhouse. Whadaya' think? I have a lot of similar metal containers that I don't want to drill holes in either so I'm thinking succulents for EVERYBODY! YOU get a succulent and YOU get a succuelnt!

You can probably tell from the sheer pointlessness of this post that I'm avoiding painting the kitchen ceiling with every fiber of my being. You'd be right. Stop judging me.

I'll paint when I'm good and ready. 

Yard 'n stuff.

Well the grass came back quite nicely after the winter, and I have to say I think we have the best looking grass on the block.  I still have to mow it down real real short and overseed, but I'm always so afraid it's just going to drop dead if I do that.  I'm also going to try some flea and tick killer this year, because Schnitzel was just covered in them last summer--I think it was all the watering.  Anyway:

The house still needs to be painted of course, and I'd like to put in a privacy fence next to my neighbor's house to complete it all the way around the yard, and I need some sort of gate across the driveway, but I can't quite figure out how I want to do it.  Suggestions?

Oh, and I can't remember if I've ever posted a picture of the garage doors since Katherine's parents put them up, so:

I swept out the garage before it became a spider trap again this year, and now my birthday present is parked inside:

A 1967 MGB.  Pretty sweet, huh?  I can't thank my dear sweet wife enough for allowing me to get it; I've always wanted one, but figured I'd have to wait until my mid-life crisis to get it.  I first had to figure out why it wouldn't start (improper choke), and now I have to figure out why the break lights and turn signals don't work, but I drove it around the block yesterday anyway, and it drives great.

So yeah, things are well.