How I made those eyes

Someone requested a tutorial for the spooky house eyes. It's a pretty simple process.

1) Go to an office supply store, like Staples or Office Depot, and buy several packs of black poster board. The bigger the sheets the better.

2) Place enough pieces together to fill the window and tape them together. Some trimming and measuring will need to be done so it will fit nicely into the window frame. Our windows are 3 feet by 6 feet so we needed a lot of poster board.

3) Once the two panels are taped together, draw an eye on one of the panels. I made sure the pupil was in the center of ours so it would cover as much of the center window frame as possible. This may not be the case for you.

4) Flip the second panel over and staple/tape it to the back of first panel. I did this so I would only have to cut out the eye once and both would match perfectly. Just make sure you flip over the second panel otherwise you will have two eyes facing the same direction.

5) After everything is cut out place the panel in the window frame and tape it to the edges. This worked out fine on one window because there was nothing in front of it. However, the second window had a desk in front of it and made it difficult to tape up all the edges. The lack of proper taping and the fact that our windows get covered in condensation on the inside caused the eye to fall down after a few days.

6 - Optional) Cut some scrap wood, I used quarter round, and tack it to the sides and top of the panel. That made it more structural and prevented the sagging.

7) Attach some semi sheer fabric to the back of the eyes so you can't see in the window. Unfortunately, the fabric we used was a little to sheer so you could still see through the windows some. Next year we will just get some better fabric.

8) Arrange the light(s) in the room so it will illuminate the eyes nicely. Usually we just place a lamp in the middle of the room that is sitting window height. If the lamp is too close to the window it won't look right. This will probably involve you walking outside and looking at the eyes numerous times until you find the right arrangement.

The hardest part of this whole process was laying out the poster board to fill the window. I went through several arrangements until I found the one that worked the best for our window. I know this probably isn't a big deal, but I wanted to use as little poster board as possible.

Next year I will most likely get a couple of sheets of luan and cut the eyes out of that. That way I won't have any sagging issues like I did with the poster board since our windows are so big. If your windows are smaller the poster board will be fine.

Since I didn't take pictures while putting the eyes together, here are a couple of after shots so you can see how it was done.

Here is the back side of one of the panels. This is also the one I attached the wood strips to.



Here you can see the panel placed in the window frame and the fabric attached to it. We were lazy and didn't trim the fabric to fit.



This is what it looked like during the day.



I hope this helps you make your house extra spooky next year.

Be seeing you.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from the O'Cropolis! We're watching you.

The most adorable way to clear a yard

We had a VERY exciting week over here!

Since we bought the house our backyard has been a jungle. We don't have any official "before" shots but if you look in the background of these pictures you will get the idea.







Now, take what you just saw and multiply it by 20 or maybe 200. Only then can you understand what the yard was like. We couldn't even walk back there for fear of falling in a hole, getting bitten by a snake or being lost for all eternity. Every time I attempted a venture I would get a horrible case of poison ivy.

We got a lot of estimates from lawn companies to clear everything out. They were all laughably expensive. So after much (well, not really) debate, we hired a much cheaper (and more adorable) alternative!

Eweniversally Green!



The guys came to our house and set up an electric fence....



...that runs on solar power!






Then the real fun started!



Sheep and goats in the yard!






Lyndsay was the friendliest lady.



Ruby is the Anatolian Shepherd who makes sure everyone stays safe.




Nom nom nom!





In this video the sheep are being herded so that the fence area can be widened. You get to see the border collie at work and a cute puppy in training at the end!



We miss our temporary livestock. They made the house a lot more exciting. However, it is great that they're gone because look at the yard! We can walk back there!











Before they came EVERYTHING in those pictures was completely covered in English and poison ivy (as well as some terrifying spiny thing that would wrap itself around your pant leg and refuse to let go). We had been fighting it for months. The sheep and goats happily munched it all away in a matter of days. Now we can see that what we thought were mounds of dirt are actually trees. Hooray!? There are some other random goodies we will post about later


We tip our hats to you, Eweniversally Green! Thanks for giving us our yard back in the most amusing way possible. If you are reading this, tell Lyndsay we said hello!

Coming soon

Two big things are about to happen at the O'Cropolis. The first one is a new roof. This is not something we had planned on but it needs to be done. It will be exciting to get rid of the tar and gravel and put down some modified bitumen. I'm tired of moss growing in the gravel and all the rocks piling up around the house. Also, the new roof will be insulated unlike our old one. Hopefully, that will make things a little better this winter.

The other big thing is the yard being cleared out. We had planned on having our yard landscaped this summer but the roof took away our hopes and dreams of that. However, we found an effective and cheap way to clear out all the ivy. Goats and sheep. That's right. We are going to have a bunch of animals clean up our yard for us. It should be fun to watch.

I'll be sure to post more about these projects when they happen in the next few weeks.

Be seeing you.

Hole in the wall

A while back when we were re-doing the door we removed an old window unit from the side of the house. This project was completed a couple of months ago so I apologize for the tardiness.

The first thing we had to fix after taking out the A/C were the two studs that had been cut out when it was installed. We cut two pieces of 2x4 and screwed wooden strips on the side so they could be attached to the existing studs.



We ended up enlarging the hole for two reasons. The first was just to clean up the edges so when we put the patch in the joints would be nicer. The second reason was to hide the vertical joints under the new slats of wood we were going to put on.



Here you can see the patch with the four new slats we put on. We ended up cutting our own slats because the 1x2's today are not as wide as the ones that are on the house.



Primed and ready.



It's not perfect but I think it turned out really well. Then again, anything is better than the old AC hanging out of the side of the house. Eventually we will replace all the siding with Hardy board but that is way down the road.



Patching the inside was pretty straight forward. We filled in the hole with some new insulation and then cut a piece of drywall to cover the hole.



The main issue we had with patching the inside was that the wall was warped. The weight of the AC had pulled the wall in above the hole and pushed the wall out below. Once we started to do the mudding we realized it was going to take a lot it to make the wall look smooth.

This is the only picture I took of this stage of the job. Once all the mudding was done the patch was about 3 times the size of what it looks like now.



Now that everything is sanded and painted you would never know there had been a giant hole in the wall. We are so happy to have this fixed. Now I don't have to explain to people what the box on the wall is anymore.



I took this shot because Hayward wanted to be on the blog again.



Be seeing you!

We didn't forget the blog.

Hello readers! Eric and I would like to apologize for being such terrible bloggers. We have no good excuse and can only give you the truth: We are lazy. Not with the house, there are a lot of new things going on there. And not even with taking pictures, there are tons on the camera. We have just been lax about getting the pictures from the camera to the computer. No more! We are going to be better bloggers! We will post at least once a week from now on until we forget about our promise to post once a week.

With the apology out of the way, here is a quick little post to show you some new things around the house.

My friend Lauren brought these great Fish's Eddy (click on the link! You will want to buy everything!) glasses to me when she came to visit from New York.



Lauren has since become a permanent resident of the ATL. I plan to drink many long drinks out of these glasses with her, hopefully on a patio.





I saw these cats on the wall at Sauced and decided I had to have them. My sister-in-law bought me a set off of Ebay for Christmas.



They look like they were made for this spot!



We have a few more recent acqusitions as well.


We took a trip to Kudzu Antiques today and got this coffee pot.



It is in really perfect condition with only a small scratch at the very top.




We also got this trivet. Who doesn't need a teak fish?




Last weekend we went to I.C.E. Atlanta to see what crafty goodness we could find, and also to support our friend and neighbor who owns Fattycakes Handmade! This little guy that she made now resides on our sofa downstairs.



Eric's favorite addition/obsession to the house has been kittens from the local artist known as Catlanta. You can read about him here on CNN.



Well, that's all for now. Like I said, we have a ton more posts coming up with everything from new furniture to a new backyard.

See you soon (for real this time)!

Northcrest home for sale

Some friends of our are selling their home in Northcrest and I thought we should help them out. This is one of my favorite houses in the neighborhood so if you're looking to get into Northcrest this is a great place. Even if you're not looking to buy a house please check out the amazing photographs on their site.

http://www.wix.com/lynnray3386/mod