Garden

 When we first moved into our house 13 years ago (Wow I can't believe it's been that long!) we had a garden in the back yard.  It was more than I could manage and after a few years I gave up.  The girls have been bugging me for the past few years to do a garden and we have this patch by our front door that we can't ever figure out what to do with, and we decided it would be fun to try a garden there.

We decided to try some raised garden beds.



We got a little bit of a late start, but so far we are getting some great results.  Lots of tomatoes, Zucchini coming out our ears and even some carrots and peppers.



Our garden is a bit overgrown, but we have learned a lot, and look forward to lots more fresh veggies this summer.

If you give a mouse a paint brush?

I really want to paint my basement....... but if I paint my basement, I'll want new carpet....... Then I'll want a new rug....... Then I'll want a new couch.......... And new pillows....... And new drapes..... You get the idea. We've been in our house almost 13 years, we've redone almost every room in it, the cycle is starting all over again.

A project

I decided that the cure to my winter blues was to find a project. I mentioned it to Jon and he agreed. The only problem is that post-Christmas, funds are a little low. So we decided to update our down stairs bathroom. It has been several years since we did this bathroom, and it really needed a paint job and a new look.

Here is the before picture.I really liked how I had it done up

And this is the new and improved bathroom. We did paint it though you can't really tell from the pictures. It was white before and we had some paint left from when we painted our house a few years ago, but decided we didn't like the color. It's a nice taupe now, much warmer.

I changed the butterfly babies for pictures of wildflowers that I've taken over the years on our trips. I'm really happy about how it turned out.

How does this happen

This is a plant growing out of the wall in my living room. The thing is, is that this is in the middle of my house. It's not near an exterior wall it is smack in the middle of the house.



I think it's best not to think too hard about how this happens it makes me very scared about the construction of our house.

I can't believe it's been 10 years!

Ten years ago today Jon and I became first time home owners.

The plan when we first bought our house was to only be here for a few years and to fix our house up and buy something bigger and better. Well, we have done a lot to fix up our house and some where along the way we fell in love with our little house.


I don't think the original owners would even recognize their house now. About a year after we bought it a wind storm blew the siding off the chimney at the time we didn't have the money to reside the whole house so we put rock on the chimney instead. About a year later we were able to replace the siding to a much nicer color. We've also replaced the roof and planted many trees. We have done a ton of work on the inside. When we moved into our house we called it the amazing technicolor dream house. Every single room was a different color. We had a Sunshine yellow room (carpet and all), a pink room and mint room, a rust room, a blue room, a peach room and the main floor was a lovely shade of hospital green. Slowly we have redone almost every room in the house including the Kitchen, all the bathrooms (which all were carpeted.)

The best part of our house is of course the location. It is close to everything but still on a rather quiet street. And our neighbors are the best. Any night of the week we can walk out and talk to any of our neighbors. There is always someone to borrow any egg from, help move furniture and we all just generally look out for each other and we have made some really great friends over the years. I don't know how we could ever leave our little house now and I hope we don't have to.
It truly is Home Sweet Home.

Decorating dilemma

We are pretty much finished with the major projects on the main floor now we just need to decorate. The problem is that we have no idea what we are doing. We like the way the fireplace wall turned out with the clock and my figurines, the bookshelves need some help but they will get there.


We finally figured out how to dress the bay window and even thought it isn't even close to our original plan, we really like how the cornus boxes turned out. Happy accidents.

We also go a new couch. I've been making pillows to add a little color and make it blend in the room a little more.

We have this huge tall (vaulted) wall behind the couch that we have no clue what to do with. we'd like to maybe put up some shelves (floating?) but I have a lot of shelves in the house. I also have a lot of pictures I want to put up. Before I had pictures all over in a million different frames and I need to figure out how to make it not look so random. I do have this great portrait of my my that my cousin Nina did that I want to put up but we just can't figure out where.

I also want to do a little spot to show off my quilts. I have this antique sewing machine from one of my great grandmothers, and two different quilts that were started by two different grandmothers and that I later finished, plus some that I have just done on my own.

So we want the room to look chic and put together, but still look like us. the problem is that Jon and I are more, cluttered and comfy than chic and put together. And we have all this stuff that we want to go in the room that doesn't all really go together. I don't really like to just put stuff up either. I like for everything I use to decorate a room to mean something to me. I'm sure it will all come together eventually, I just wish I knew how to put it all together.

Our New Fireplace

Many of you know that we have spent the better part of this year redoing the main floor of our house. We finished the kitchen mid summer and took a bit of a break before starting on the living room. We painted and put in new floor, but our biggest project was the fire place.
I've always loved that we had a fireplace and hated how it looked. This is a random picture that shows the before.

This was taken right before we started to work on it.

And this is the finished product. I absolutely love it. It turned out far better than I imagined. We decided it would be to expensive and to big of a pain to tear it out completely so we decided to tile over it in slate. Jon and I layed the tile together. I even used the tile saw and finished it by myself one day when I got antsy to get it done. We also built the mantel ourselves. I love it. I never loved my house before because it didn't feel like us. Now we can never move because we have put so much of ourselves into it. As much as I want to be done, we really have had fun doing our house. Jon and I are a good team. He is becoming much more patient with me and lets me do thing he wouldn't have before because he know I want to learn. Now we just have to figure out how to decorate the rest of the room.

FLOOR!

I'm starting to see the light at the end of the remodel.
Our house has been torn up since June. We just have a bit more to do to get the floor installed, then we can work on Base boards and we are in the home stretch. Hopefully I will get my house back soon. Jon has worked his butt off and I think he is awesome.

Before

I don't have very many good pictures of my kitchen
before the remodel. I had good intentions to take a
picture. but it was never clean enough to take a picture.
SO I took this one before we tore everything out.

TA-DUH!

Here are some pictures of our newly remodeled Kitchen!








We hired Carolina Cabinets to install the cabinets but Jon

and I did the rest of the work. Painting, electrical, pluming,

new floor and Jon's pride and joy the under cabinet lighting.








We were only planning on getting a new

dishwasher and microwave but ended up

getting a new stove as a gift from our

cabinet guys.

We chose to do corian counter tops.


We did a built in bench and got a new

table and chairs.

I had never decorated my old kitchen because

I never liked it before. So I had lots of fun

decorating this time. I had lots of special

nick knacks that were perfect for the kitchen.