Dream house part 2

Last week I took you on a tour of the pins of furniture that would be in my dream house. This week I decided to dream a little bigger and give you a tour of what the rooms in my dream house would look like.

My dream house would have a laundry room. In our current home, our washer and dryer are in the garage. Don't get me wrong, it's better than not having a washer and dryer, but it is such a pain to have to go out to the garage when I need to do laundry.

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My current kitchen is small. It has all the normal stuff, but I am dreaming of a large kitchen where both of us can be in there without feeling cramped and would have tons of storage space. Big windows are also a must.

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My dream house would also have a true master bathroom. Our house has one, sort of. The toilet started leaking so my husband turned off the water to it, so we really can't use it. Boo. Clearly I need a giant tub and giant windows in my master bathroom.

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What's in your dream house??

Dream House... part 1

I had Monday off. Back in the day, an extra day off during the week meant an extra day of fun. Now, it means an extra day to do laundry, clean the kitchen and other super fun grown up stuff. One of the tasks I assigned myself was washing the cover on our couch. As I was struggling to put it back on, I started thinking about how nice it would be if someday I owned a couch that didn't need a slip cover. Here is a secret I have been keeping from you all: pretty much every piece of furniture in our house was given to us. Most of it was when we were in college and before we knew each other. (We did buy a brand new mattress last year though.) Honestly, we could probably afford to replace a lot of our furniture. Both of us have decent full time jobs and we don't have kids, but we have been choosing to use our money in other ways. We both have emergency funds and we have gone on a pretty nice vacation every summer. Both things I am so happy we have/did. But as I was wrestling with that slip cover I started to think about my wish list:

Let's start with the sofa:

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One thing that we have actively looked for is a dining set. Our current table was given to my husband. Right now we have 2 matching chairs, one random wooden chair and a folding chair around our table. What I want is a regular height, dark, real wood table. It needs to have a leaf to make it larger and I love the look of the farm house style tables

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And finally our master bedroom. Despite what these pictures show, I don't think white is the best color for bedding. 

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What does your dream home have in it?

Resolutions in Motion

At the first a of the year, I posted 13 goals I want to complete in 2013. You can call them resolutions if you want. It has been a week since I wrote them, and I haven't forgotten them, so that has got to be a bonus. I asked for you all to keep me accountable in these goals, and then I stumbled across this

It is a 6 week little linky to help keep people motivated/encouraged with a specific goal. Plus, there are prizes. I never win anything (except for my awesome Alaskan prize pack from Angi), but I like the idea of prizes. So... my goal that I will be working on this 6 weeks is...

The Mister and I moved into our house on Valentine's Day 2009. When we moved, many things were just put into the garage, and then we would go out and get boxes/unpack etc. WE NEVER FINISHED! Then we got married, and our generous family gifted us many new things. Our old things went into the garage. When my mom passed away, I inherited quite a bit of stuff from my child hood. Guess where it is? The garage.  I have taken things to Goodwill before, but I have never just taken care of the disaster that is the garage. I am hoping that this little link up will give me the motivation that I need to get my butt into gear, and get the garage emptied and organized. 

I can't believe I am about to show you these pictures. But I like to keep things real around here. Here is what my garage looks like today.

That is embarrassing. It looks like I belong on Hoarders or something. (there is no poop in bags. I promise you that) I hate opening my garage door when my neighbors are outside and now I am showing all of you the disaster that is my garage. We could play a fun little game of I Spy. 

So there you have it. That's what I am starting with, but I am hoping that in 6 weeks I will be able to hold a Zumba class in there. Or at least park my car in the garage. 

How have you been doing on your goals for the new year? 

Conquering my fear... of spray paint

Two posts in one day? What? Is it like spring break or something? Why, yes, it is spring break around here, which means I have some extra time on my hands. Today I worked on two projects... a small one and a big one that I am thisclose to finishing. Y'all are on the edges of your seats. This post is about the small project, and how I started to overcome my fear of spray paint.

Source
Don't they just look scary??

First off, I have no idea why spray paint intimidates me so much. I mean really, it doesn't seem to scare the teenage hoodlums that are tagging up the fences at the park. Boo for them. Anywho, after redoing our floors this weekend, two big eyesores popped out at me: the air vent thingys air return registers on the floor in the bedroom and the living room.

As soon as the vent cover was put back on the floor, I just really didn't like how it looked against the laminate floor or with the paint color on the walls. My brother said they made wood ones that could be stained, so on Sunday morning I was off to Home Depot. And BOOM! Home Depot was closed by police for a bomb scare. (Maybe boom was the wrong choice of expression given the situation...) Monday I headed back over there, bringing with me a sample of our floor and the measurements of the covers I wanted to replace. I walked over to the aisle and saw lots of these covers, I went to grab a wood one when I noticed it wasn't the right size. I started to search around, and I discovered that we have "interesting" sized vent covers, and a wood one would have to be special ordered. Hmm. Special order = expensive.

So I wandered over to the scariest section in the store, and faced a wall filled with spray paints. None of the spray paint is named "wood colored" so I finally decided on glossy khaki by Rustoleum. I figured $4 was a much better price than special ordering two floor vents AND if it really looked ugly, I could always order them later.

Today I went out to the garage, laid down some paper, and after fighting to get the cap off  I sprayed.

Action shot

And, it wasn't that bad. In fact, it was pretty easy, and went on quickly and pretty even.

Please ignore the badly painted trim area on the wall. That is part of the flooring project that hasn't been finished yet.

It is a really small change, but I like how it blends in much better with the floors in both rooms. I think I am ready to do some more spray painting now. In fact, I think spray paint may be used to finish up the "big" project I worked on today. :)

Do you use spray paint? How come no one told me how easy it is to use??

New Floors!

This weekend was spent listening to the sound of nail guns, saws and hammers. We decided it was finally time to say goodbye to this:

and this:

and a big ol' buh-bye to this:

and say hello to this:

I actually posted about it way back in October. All of that is a result of some separation anxiety from this guy

The stars finally lined up, and my brother and his nephew came down and installed those babies. 

First off, I am so thankful to have such a talented brother. He is a general contractor and he has installed these types of floors before, so it was no problem for him. The Mister and I briefly discussed doing it ourselves, but after watching these go in, we definitely made the right choice in having someone else doing it. Yes, the pieces snap together, and as I was watching, there were times when I thought "hey, I could do that." Then there were other times like down this hall where my brother was making cuts into the pieces to fit in the doorways and into the closets.

It took them two days to install the laminate in the living room, down the hall and in the master bedroom. I am loving the look of the floors so much more than the carpet. I am not loving the "clackity clack" of my dogs nails and the hourly sweeping job I have created for myself.

Why yes, we do have a very high tech TV...

I will be do get to do a little bit of work myself. The trim on the walls had to be lowered about a half an inch, SO after I paint that part of the wall, I will be reinstalling the trip using a fancy nail gun that my brother left me. 

Have you ever installed flooring in your home? Did you think it was easy? 

Dare to DIY... Dare to Entertain

There were about a million reasons why I was going to skip this week's Dare to DIY challenge. This week is Dare to Entertain, and the idea is to show off your table settings.

1. I am not cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I honestly don't know if I will ever cook Thanksgiving dinner. It's not that I don't want to, it's that the Mister has a HUGE extended family (his mom is one of 9 and his dad is one of 8) and we live fairly close to them. They have big coordinated dinners where people bring dishes, have cake walks, play BINGO etc. It's not weird for both sides of the family to have holiday dinners of over 50 people. (my family is much smaller: 10 is a huge gathering for us.)
2. We don't have any "nice" China- well, that's only kind of true. I inherited my great-grandmother's China when my grandma passed away. But, it's not a whole set, and its packed away until we get a hutch to display it in.
3. Our table sucks. It is small, and we only have two real chairs. There is a folding chair that we keep at the table too. If we have another couple over for dinner, we bring in a patio chair. I'm kind of embarrassed that I just typed that.

But here is the real reason I was going to skip this week:

Our table is a dumping ground for junk mail, bills, random papers and keys/jackets/my purse/my lunch box. As soon as both of us get home, stuff from our pockets/in our hands goes on the table. I go through it every month and a half or so, but I get frustrated/overwhelmed with it all.  So when I saw what this week's theme was, my immediate thought was, that's nice, but not for me.

Then I decided to use it as motivation. This challenge gave me a reason to find homes for previously homeless items. I went through papers, put a bunch in the shred pile and others could go straight to the recycling. And just like the spare room, it really didn't take that long. Then I got to the fun part.

Our dishes are Fiestaware, which I love. The place mats were actually a set of 3 gigantic cloth napkins (A gift from Crate and Barrel or Willams and Sonoma I think). A friend of ours cut them each in half, hemmed them and then viola, we had 6 place mats. The center piece is a basket of paper mache fruits and veggies. I am slightly obsessed with these bad boys.

Guacamole anyone?

How cute is that banana??

Here is the rest of the collection. Sometimes I switch out the
small baskets with different combos of fruits and veggies. Is that weird?

The Mister was very happy that the table was cleaned. I figured he would want me to put all the dishes away after my little photo shoot, but he said that we should leave it out for awhile. Then the fat cat jumped on the table, and after shooing her off, we cleared it.

Besides for the napkins turned placemats, there isn't any DIY involved in our table. Except the cleaning and organizing of the stuff that was on the table. That was enough DIY :)

So there you have it, our everyday table. Someday I wold like to have a holiday table scape, but it will probably be awhile.

Are you hosting any holiday dinners this year?

Our House: The Walls We've Done

I mentioned yesterday that our house was in really good shape when we moved in, but it definitely needed paint. The people that lived here before us loved a country-ish styled home and had stencils everywhere, and that is so not us. BUT, we had no idea what color to paint. I painted one bathroom the first year we lived here. The room had a "fishing" theme, including lure and tackle wall paper border. I don't have a before picture of this room, but here it is now:

This is kind of a funky angle, but one wall is "jungle green" and the other three are a lighter green. But seriously, this took me about 6 months to pick the color and get it done.

The next summer, I tackled the master bathroom. This one had a "boat" theme, complete with a porthole shaped mirror.

I didn't really ask the Mister about what he wanted in this room. It's where I get ready in the morning, so it's kind of like my space. For this room I went with "sassy lilac." You've seen glimpses of this bathroom here and here. I don't think the Mister likes it very much, but he doesn't really go in there, except in the middle of the night, so he deals with it.

This last summer I decided to tackle the living room and kitchen. Some before:

Stencils around the large window

Stencils in this weird closet space

Now the kitchen:

Tulip stencils as a back splash that went around the entire kitchen

Dining room with more stencils



The problem with these two rooms is that there is a wall that goes in both the living room and dining room, so we needed colors that looked good together. Every time we went to Lowe's or Home Depot, we both would be overwhelmed with the choices. This started before we even moved in. So we never did anything. But after 2 and a half years of looking at those stencils, I had enough. The only thing I knew was that every time we went to a Mexican restaurant the Mister would ask me what I thought about the colors it was painted. (you know: oranges, yellows and reds.)

So, I went to Lowe's or Home Depot, whichever place we had a gift card to and grabbed a couple different shades of yellow paint chips. And what goes perfect with yellow? Grey! I grabbed a couple paint chips and brought them both home. I gave them to the Mister and told him to pick.

The living room is now granite grey:

This is Gus's bed. It doesn't really fit in the space, and we don't ever shut the door, so we should probably get rid of the crate soon. Probably when we do the floor.

And the kitchen/dining room is pineapple squeeze:

I love the bright yellow and the cool, rich grey color together. I also love my paper mache fruits and veggies.

Soon, I will post about the next two areas: the hallway and the master bedroom. We  I chose "marshmallow fluff" as the trim color for the interior of the house.

I have to ask, does anyone else take years to pick paint colors or is it just us?

Our house: The floors

The Mister and I moved into our house Valentine's Day 2009. When we moved in, the house was in great condition, but I didn't really like a lot of the decor. For example, the kitchen cabinets. They are super nice, but they aren't something I would choose. The walls were painted with stencils. Like all over. They were really well done, but not my style. The carpet was the same way: great condition, super clean but just not what I wanted.

See the stencils around the window? See the carpet- it's nice right?

If I had my way, we would have gotten rid of it before we moved in, but The Mister is much more level headed then me, and he said "there's nothing wrong with it." Enter: Gus, our 75 pound lab. Now see what Gus does to the carpet when he's home alone?

These are three of the worst spots, but he has ruined several spots in the living room, hallway and in our bedroom. So we decided that it was time to replace it. We wanted hardwood floors, but our budget said that wouldn't work, so we started to look into laminate flooring. We went to Home Depot and picked up several little samples to see how they looked in the house. We laid them out and to get a nice visual. Then in our head we picked our favorite, and the one we disliked the most, without telling each other. Our next step was to take out the ones we liked the least. My heart broke a little when I watched him grab my favorite. The Mister was also unhappy that I took out his favorite. The Mister wanted the lightest colored floor, and I loved the darker, richer tones. We were stuck. So we took the samples to a few different people, and still we couldn't decide.

Fast forward 3 or 4 months to this weekend. The Mister and I had heard that Costco had flooring and we happen to be in Costco, so we walked over from the ice cream sandwiches and frozen cookie dough and over to the boring other side of the store, and looked at their selection. Two very great things happened: it was on sale (yay!) and they only had 3 color choices. Decisions are much easier when you only have a couple things to pick from. We settled on a color and came home with this:

Now we just have to schedule some time with my brother to get these bad boys installed.

Do you and your significant other have different styles? How do you make decisions?