And He Does It Again...

Nice cabinet, huh?  My hubby made it!  We are always looking for more storage and wanted a slim cabinet for our kitchen.  We liked the Louis sideboard from Ballard Desings, but just didn't want to pay their prices.  (And we never can seem to find the time to go to Ballard's outlet in Atlanta.)  So, what do us Hartleys do?  We make it ourselves!

After looking through all my Ballard Designs and Pottery Barn catalogs, we finally came up with this design.  I am so proud of David.  He made every single bit of it (except for the hardware, of course :).  Here it is getting assembled...

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it is a distressed sage green.  David primed it and painted the whole thing green first,

and then I took over with sanding it to make it look worn and distressed.

Lastly, I coated the whole thing with a brown stain, and then immediately rubbed it off.  And here is the finished project!

Not too shabby if you ask me!

We ain't afraid of no stinkin' Earl!

We went on our second annual trip to Emerald Isle, NC with MiMi and Pop the week before Labor Day.  It was a very eventful trip...some good, some bad.  I (Mandy) got to check several things off my "bucket list" in one week.  First, we went to the Cape Lookout Lighthouse.  Last year I got to see it...from several miles away.  This time, I got to actually got to touch it.  We took a ferry to the cape where it was located and on the way we saw wild horses on the Shackelford Banks!  So, in case you are keeping track of my bucket list: 1) I got to visit an outer banks lighthouse and 2) I got to see wild horses on the outer banks!

Back to the lighthouse...when we got there, we were told the steps to the top were closed that day.  My step-sister, Jessica, tried to haggle them to let us go up, but with no luck.  So we took our time walking around the keeper's house and the beach, and then headed to the base of the lighthouse.  When we arrive, there is a Coast Guard walking up behind us with KEYS IN HIS HANDS.  Jessica immediately chimes in (nothing gets past her :) and asks if he will let us go in.  He says, "Ummm, sure!"  So, not only did we get to climb to the top (239 steps), but we got to do it for FREE (an $8 p/person charge)!  Needless to say, I was ecstatic.

Two days later we got to go to a loggerhead sea turtles' nest excavation.  The nest had already hatched several days earlier, but volunteers go back after a few days and dig up the remaining eggs and help the last few hatch and get to sea.  There were three little guys left in the nest. (It was kind of strange for me because I had just read Nicholas Sparks' The Last Song which mentions a sea turtle nest hatching. I felt like I was living out the book. :) So, bucket list: 3) see sea turtle eggs hatch and head for the water.  That's it for the bucket list.

On Thursday, Hurricane Earl started to threaten the NC coast.  We were willing to ride it out, but Emerald Isle issued a mandatory evacuation and we had to leave.  We packed everything up, drove 3 hrs. back to Raleigh to stay at my dad's, and when the evacuation ended the next morning, we drove 3 hrs. back to Emerald Isle for the rest of our beautiful weather-filled Labor Day weekend.  Overall, it was a really fun week.  Tate tolerated the beach and had a blast at the pool.  Below is a slideshow of the week's pictures.