Prepping the home for winter

I write a guest blog, Hey Neighbor, for Dwell Denver Real Estate once a month. This is September's post.

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Hey Neighbor,

It’s that time! The nights are cooler, the leaves are edged in yellow, and we’re a few short weeks from what always proves to be a snowy Halloween in Colorado. So how best to prep your home for the months ahead? Follow the checklist below and you are well on your way to a stress-free winter. 

1. Check gutters and downspouts for debris. Buy extenders that divert downspout water 3-4 feet from your home. I love these downspout extensions from Home Depot and have used them on 2 homes to great success. 
2. Scan your roof for missing shingles or damage from summer storms. Make sure all flashing is secure.
3. Clean your fireplace and chimney, making sure the flue is open and free of debris.
4. Clean your outdoor furniture and cover or store for winter.
5. Blow out your sprinklers and outdoor faucets before turning them off for the season. (We call a professional for this, but you can always try your hand at it via a Youtube tutorial.)
6. Remove the bag from the lawn mower and mulch your leaves to allow them to protect and feed your grass through the winter. This is also the time to mow down seasonal grasses and wild flowers to allow them to reseed next spring.
7. Add soil amendments (bone meal, manure, compost) to your garden soil and cover with leaves until spring. Alternately you could plant a winter cover crop like rye. Check out Plant Talk Colorado or Organic Gardening for more info.
8. Drain the gas from mowers and power tools before you stash them away for the winter.
9. Make sure snow blowers, shovels, salt and ice melt are stocked and in working order before the first storm hits.
10. Fix drafty windows and doors. You can address the issue yourself, or pop over to Ogsplosh on Etsy and order a few cute draft snakes for the home. Sometimes the easiest fixes are the best!
11. Reverse ceiling fans (there should be a switch on the base) and use on the lowest setting to blow hot air back down into your living space.
12. Install a programmable thermostat if you haven’t yet. Check out this Lowe’s tutorial – super easy. 
13. Replace the filter in your furnace.
14. Test the batteries in smoke and carbon monoxide detectors as well as flashlights.
15. Stock a few essentials for snow days so that you aren’t one of the masses hitting the local grocery during a blizzard. Easy go-to dinners to keep at the back of the pantry include macaroni and cheese (yep, we have little kids!), canned chili, canned soups, crackers, and that all-time classic, the frozen pizza. Better yet, make double batches of soups, sauces and casseroles going into fall and freeze them!
16. Put your feet up with a spiced apple cider and a good book – you’ve earned it! Bring on the snow.

Homemade Chalk Paint Renovation

I write a guest blog, Hey Neighbor, for Dwell Denver Real Estate once a month. This was August's post.

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Hey Neighbor,

My newest DIY infatuation is with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. It's easy to use, the colors are beautiful, and a complete furniture transformation takes place in a day or two. The only drawback is the price - the supplies last a long time, but the cost of entry isn't cheap! Enter my sister-in-law Li. She's so frugal she'd make a penniless monk look like he lives his life with frivolous abandon. 

Li and my brother recently moved from a 700 sq foot New York apartment to a 3000+ sq ft, 4 bed / 4 bath home just south of Denver. Movin' on up! The trouble of course lies in the fact that they do not have enough furniture to fill their new suburban palace. It's a familiar story, but fortunately for us, we get to learn from a thrifty lady, her auction find, and a Pinterest recipe for success.

Li bought a $10 end table at auction to go with her new couches and super fab $100 estate sale rug. The table had good bones, but an ugly finish. It also did nothing for their decor.

With her sleuthing skills, Li then did a Pinterest search for chalk paint and found the following recipe on LiveLoveDIY's blog:

Homemade Chalk Paint: 2 cups paint, 5 TB Plaster of Paris, 2 TB water.

The bonus of the self-made paint is that you can pick any color you want - Li went with Benjamin Moore in a punchy Japanese Kimono color - and all of the supplies cost her less than $50. (Full disclosure, on my first trip to an Annie Sloan dealer I left the store with $230 worth of similar merchandise in my bag.)

We spent a Saturday together transforming the little end table that could.

First, a quick sanding to take off any peeling varnish. Then, Li made her chalk paint. 

Two tips: 1) mix the water and plaster of paris first to make a slurry before adding to the Benjamin Moore paint and 2) if it's too thick, add a little water until it's the consistency of normal paint.

Three painstaking coats were added to the table. If Li had been going for a distressed look she could have gotten away with two, but the goal here was a modern pop of color.

After letting the table dry between coats, and then overnight after layer #3, Li applied Minwax Paste Finishing Wax with cheesecloth and buffed the table to a shine.

Voila!

As the recipient of half a bag of Plaster of Paris, I can't wait to try this new painting technique in my dining room on a sideboard begging for a facelift. I'll let you know how it goes! And Li and I would love any tips you have on furniture restoration. We are officially addicted. Thanks, neighbor.

Let's put the social back in social media

I write a guest blog, Hey Neighbor, for Dwell Denver Real Estate once a month. This is July's post.

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Hey Neighbor,

So I like Facebook as much as the next person. And it's fun to check in on my "friends." But what I really seem to be missing out on right now is checking in with my FRIENDS. The real people. The ones who live across town that I still only see at a yearly barbecue and the occasional big event, like weddings and reunions. The ones I used to grab coffee with daily when we worked in the same office. The pals who can just share a look with you in a crowded room and you know exactly what they are talking about.

In the spirit of being truly social - with eye contact, and body language, and the sharing of food and drink - I am challenging myself (and you) to use Facebook to create a real life happening instead of relying on a virtual "like" or "share" to feel connected. I'll even offer up party ideas. Now all we have to do is create an event and invite our "friends" to become our real life FRIENDS once again. Super easy, no collecting of emails or addresses, just a few clicks of the mouse. 

(No shame if you don't know how to create a Facebook event. Follow the guide here.)

10 Ideas for Facebook Events with Friends

(How you doin'?)

1. 
   Alumni Happy Hour. Organize a Happy Hour with friends you know from a particular time or place. It's a great way to see a bunch of buddies in one swoop and everyone has something in common. (Jonesy's, Vita, and Billy's Inn all have worthy happy hour specials.)
2. Playdate. This is a no-brainer, and a great way to introduce friends who have kids. Dave and Buster's is a fun, easy option for dads hanging out with older kids on a too-hot summer day, while the Denver Zoo is always a hit with moms and kids of all ages. (FYI - the snack bar by the bears serves alcohol...!)
3. Pinterest Party. Admit it, Facebook and Pinterest are the two biggest Internet time sucks of your day. Why not combine them and have a night with the ladies? Guests would bring a drink or dish they found on Pinterest (like this! or this! orthese!) and the host would pick a Pinterest DIY project and provide the supplies. 
4. Denver Dive Bar Crawl. How about a once-a-month get together with friends that rotates between Denver's best neighborhood locals? With friends spread out across the city, you could take turns picking the date and place. Just make sure you assign the next host before parting ways! I'll even get you started: Berkeley has relied on Patrick Carroll's since before the neighborhood was trendy, Virginia Village / South Cherry Creek boasts a laid back brew-pub with The Bull and Bush, and Lodo is graced with the very un-Lodo-ish Herb's Hideout. 
5. Old-timey Canning Party. Get your late summer canned goods on! Hit up great produce deals of the week at organic produce suppliers like Sprouts, your local Farmer's Market, or a Pick Your Own farm. Then head to the friend's house with the biggest kitchen, crank up some music, and follow the easy instructions on your box of pectin. Need a preview of the process? Check out my solo Strawberry Freezer Jam endeavor. Next time, I'm adding company!
6. Brunch. There's a reason that it's so common it's cliche - who doesn't love brunch?! Head to an eatery with bottomless mimosas, bellinis, or bloody marys to get the conversation flowing - Breakfast on Broadway, Panzano, or Maddie'sperhaps?
7. 14-ers Club. Start with the easy ones, and work your way up. Make a goal of once a month and you'll have a reason to get together with friends for years! And your Facebook photos will improve dramatically.
8. Matchmaker, matchmaker. Ever think that certain friends would hit it off, either romantically or as friendlies, if only they knew each other? What's holding you back? Select a few like-minded friends and meet up at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Botanic Gardens, or Canvas and Cocktails. It will give you something to do, but still offer plenty of opportunities for finding out all that you have in common.
9. Friends with Friends Lunch. Sometimes I am surprised by the "friends" that certain Facebook friends and I share. This is a great excuse for an intimate gathering with a few pals. Who knows what kind of fun things you'll learn about the people you thought you knew! Some easy and delicious lunch suggestions: Sushi Sasa, Marcos Coal-Fired Pizza, or Hi*Rise.   
10. Six Degrees Get Together. This one has infinite possibilites! Using Facebook as a tool to make new friends in real life, start an event at an easy gathering place, like a picnic in Wash Park, and invite 6 friends...who then should invite six more friends...who each invite six more friends...and keep it going until you've reached six levels. Make sure there is plenty of food and booze to share, and try to find the common person that eventually links you to each new friend you meet! 

Who's with me? Or did you need to get back to FarmVille?

$6 Pallet Compost Bin

I write a guest blog, Hey Neighbor, for Dwell Denver Real Estate once a month. This was June's post.

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Hey Neighbor,

What has two thumbs, 12 chickens, and more poop than she knows what to do with? This girl!

 

Urban farming has been an adenture so far. Harder than I anticipated when reading about it, but more gratifying than I could have imagined when I see our hand-raised chickens scratching for bugs, or the bees coming and going at the hives by the dozen. Lately we've turned our attention to waste, both the noun and the verb. 

The chickens are great garbage disposals and save a lot of food scraps from the trash. But once they process said scraps, there is a different kind of waste to deal with. Since I'd love to divorce myself from buying big box garden soil, a compost bin was the logical conclusion. And then I priced them. Yeah...After building a 200-square-foot chicken palace out of cedar, we were a little short on farm funds.

So, I hightailed it to my local feed store. I purchased used wooden pallets for $2 each. I saved myself $94 and saved the wood from the trash heap.

The fastest way to compost, besides having a huge pile of grossness rotting somewhere in the yard, is a three-sided bin with no top, no bottom, and plenty of air and moisture. Our perfect pallet composter was assempled and in use in under 10 minutes. 

Think you need 5 acres in the country to be able to compost? Think again. We are lucky and can hide the compost bin in the trees, but we've seen bins stashed at the side of the house, in a corner of the yard, hidden by bushes, painted to match the lawn furniture, and right smack next to the garden in all its rotten glory. 

Composting is easy, and virtually smell-free, if a few basic rules are followed:

1. Try to keep a 3:1 browns to greens ratio. 

• Browns (carbon rich): dead leaves, small animal bedding, cardboard, newspaper, dead flowers and plants, sawdust, straw.
• Greens (nitrogen rich): manure, grass clippings, fruits and vegetables, coffee grounds.
• Do not compost meat, bones, cooked foods, cat litter - when in doubt use common sense. Or Google. 

2. Shred large materials for faster breakdown. For example, run the lawn mower over a pile of raked leaves before adding to the bin.

3. Add moisture. The best description I've heard is that the compost should be as saturated as a sponge that has been wrung out.

4. Turn compost weekly. 

5. When the compost is dark brown and smells like soil it's ready for the garden!

Good luck on this next project, neighbor! If I can do it, you can do it. Go forth and biodegrade!