It's A Celebration!

This title is inspired by my sister's boyfriend.  You will only get it if you are me or my sister.  Sorry if that's not you.

I am FINALLY writing on my blog.  My summer has officially started.  Even though the last day of school was a week ago, today is the first official day that I have had absolutely nothing to do.  Coincidentally, I spent it doing tons of stuff.  Mostly outside work.  But I'm okay with that.  

Today is also the ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of living in our home.  Yep, we closed on this house on June 15, 2011.  So, to celebrate, we spent most of the day working outside, we had a great lunch and dinner at home, and tonight we will probably watch non-stop episodes of Weeds.  

And to celebrate, I am going to make this Post Number One of a few posts to update you on our lives.  Three posts will be house-related and one about us.  Because my summer mind is thinking "house work house work house work".  I took tons of recent pictures of our house so I will try to split it up into three posts so you aren't looking at 700 pictures at once and so I can get a break from uploading them.  

I figured I would post in 3 sections: downstairs, upstairs, and outside.  Outside has seen the biggest transformation, but we have done some awesome work everywhere :-)

Starting with the living room... Here is what my living room looked like last time you saw it:

And here it is now:

Now too bad, but not too great, either.  This room has been kind of neglected due to "inspiration" issues.  I am terrified of spending money on things if I don't know if I will like them.  Anywho--I got a sewing machine for Christmas (Josh's gma's old one) and I am in love!  Josh's mom taught me how to use it and I can't stop.  That little yellow and white chevron pillow is my first thing.  Don't think it will stay in this room, but whatever.  The curtains are the real deal, though.  I got the fabric online for MUCH less than I would have in a fabric store and I got to work.  I won't bore you with those details, but I will say I'm in love.  Also--the lamp is new.  It's from Target.

The view from the dining room.

How SWEET are these?!  I wanted something cool and funky, but not too in-your-face.

The view from the foyer...

...speaking of foyer... I did some adjusting in there as well.  I have actually never shown you our foyer.  Silly me.  I have been wanting a console table there for convenience sake (as well as pretty-ness).  So when my mom was visiting a few months ago, she offered to pick up the tab and off we went.  We found it at Target...

The view from the living room.

This sweet table is made of REAL wood and it was only 119 bucks!

From left to right: the white candlestick is from a local fabric store; the rattan cup, Marshalls; the blue bowl for keys, Anthropologie; the wooden tray, Target; the white ceramic flower, Michael's; the two glass vases, Goodwill; the planter, IKEA; the beautiful lamp, Target.

I love this palm plant.  It creates oxygen.  That's sweet.  And that lamp even makes Josh drool.

Anyway--enough of that table.  Back to the living room.  Remember this unused and boring corner with my new Target chair?

Well, it's still kind of boring, but MUCH improved:

The sweet curvy lamp is from *surprise* Target.  I made the little pillow from leftover fabric from the curtains.  The white pillow is Walmart.  And the little table is from *surprise again* Target. 

I piled some cool books on the bottom.  The top has another sweet ceramic tea light flower and an awesome flower, which was a gift from a student.  Oh--and a picture frame that still has the models in it.  haha.

The dining room looked like this last time:

And like this now:

Pretty much untouched.  We are still working on some ideas for this room, but they take money, so they have been put on the back burner.  We did expand the table with the leaves company and then were too lazy to put them back.  I did bring some beautiful hydrangeas in from the yard, though:

 

The kitchen last looked like this:

And now:

My favorite ever.  I painted an old chunky frame white and added this awesome lemon photograph that I bought on art.com.

Oh!  And remember the pantry?  I hated it...

Well, look!

I painted it the same color as the kitchen.  It looks soooo much better.  I hung some pots (which I have not planted anything in yet) and added a white frame with free art (from an old wall calendar).  

And see that little white key ring on the wall?  It's actually a small ceramic sea horse.  How precious.

Picture of my niece and an aloe vera plant, which I planted in a dessert dish because I did not have a pot.

 There you go.  A VERY long post about my downstairs.  Upstairs coming up!

A Hung Jury

The chair came in.  We don't know how we feel.  We have heard great things about ordering Target furniture.  Maybe we got a dud.  Here is our experience:

1. The chair is officially NOT the color that was listed.  It is called "sage" and it is not "sage".
2. The chair took nearly 2 hours to put together (even though there were only 3 simple directions).  This is because the holes drilled into the wood underneath the chair were not lined up properly.  Josh said a lot of curse words in those 2 hours.
3. A small piece of fabric has started to come up underneath the chair.  It's not much of a big deal and can be fixed very easily, but still...
4. And it's not comfortable.  It's over-sized and looks comfortable, but when you sit in it, it kind of creaks like it's supposed to be there for decoration only or something.
5. And the biggest problem:  I really like it!  Just look:

I added the old lamp that I got from a dumpster behind it.  I hope to replace it with another floor lamp someday, but for now, we think this will do. 

The chair is cute.  I like it.  I don't want to take it back.  But it has so many bad qualities.  Yuck.  

And another thing... the gallery wall got scrapped.  Well, not completely scrapped.  But we painted all of the frames, put art in them, arranged them in an awesome set up and then realized we didn't want it in our living room and that it would work better in the office.  So that's what we will do.  More on that later.  Any thoughts about the chair?  

Finally!

We painted the living room!

We went with Tidewater by Sherwin Williams color matched to Olympic Premium No-VOC paint (from Lowe's) in eggshell.  We are pleased with our paint job (which took forever) and are happy with the color.  We did this paint job in tiny steps.  We were so super busy so every night we would only have about 40 minutes or so to paint, so I would do the trim on a wall and a half a night and Josh would roll about two walls per night.  It literally took us about a week.  Here are some in-progress photos:

Josh left me a message :-)

This painting process was a learning process!  Things we learned:

1. Maria must do the trim and edging.  It is necessary.  She is wayyy too much of a perfectionist to trust anyone else (sorry, hubby).  Also, tape is not allowed.
2. Josh must use the roller.  It hurts Maria's arms.
3. Don't ever do it over the course of a week again if you plan to use that room during the process.  Instead, wait until you can schedule a day to do it.
4. Trust your instincts.  Tidewater was our first choice, but we were scared so we tried a bunch of samples until we got back to our original favorite.
5. Always buy Olympic No-VOC paint.  It has barely any odor and it's safe.

 

I bought this at TJ Maxx a few weekends ago when my mom  and I went shopping during a WVU game.

The vase on the left was in a box in the attic.  It's from Kohl's over a year ago.  The one in the middle is my first purchase from Hobby Lobby (awesome store).  And on the right is a wine bottle my friend Meghan gave me.

Bought this cute yellow orchid from TJ Maxx with my mom.

 So, we are happy to have our painting finished and even happier to have some decorations in there (even if it's just a few).  We have big plans for this room in the (hopefully) near future.  Here is the short-list:

1. Make or buy some curtains with some cool (and hopefully cheap) fabric.
2. DIY some art for above the couch.
3. Purchase a small chair for the wall by the staircase.
4. DIY a frame gallery to encompass the chair.
5. Buy a floor lamp.
6. Make or purchase some big art for the other walls. 

 My favorite part of the room is this corner:

I love the contrast of the colors at the bottom of the staircase.  I would love to put a huge sunburst mirror on the aqua wall right there... maybe in the future.

On another note: my baby brother had his first baby this morning.  Pray for little Marrisa's continuing health :-)

Paint Problems

We suck.  We have never painted before and have never had to choose a color so we are having a hard time.  But I think we finally found one.  Before we announce the winner and actually go buy the paint and paint the dang room, I will show you a history of how we chose the color:

First, buy some paint chips.

Then, buy some more.

Then, when you have it narrowed down...

Go purchase a sample for $5.

Realize it's wayyy too bright.  Go buy some more samples...

Still a no-go.  Go buy one more.  Except this time the guy at the paint store gives it to you for free because you have been there so many times.

Finally find the right one.  Then realize that if you don't paint tomorrow (Sunday), you will have to do it during the week (which isn't easy).  Or do it this weekend.  Oh yeah, you will be out of town, duh.  Ok.  Next weekend.  Oh yeah.  Out of town then too.  Whoops.  My wall might look like this for a looonnnng time.

Before and Oh-So-After!

Thank goodness I did something about this crazy office.  In the last post I told you that I painted one of our small bookshelves, but didn't give you the final product yet.  Well, I am happy to announce that our office went from this:

to this!: 

A little better, right?  The other day, Josh was at band practice (he is the percussion instructor for a local high school marching band) and while he was away I totally re-did the office in two hours and then surprised him when he came home.  He was shocked that I did it all on my own (especially moving the heavy stuff).  I moved the desk from the left wall to the wall with the window so I could look outside while I worked.  It has, of course, proven a distraction.  Especially when the neighbors are playing football.  I added a small table we already had with a lamp we already had in the corner.  I kept the filing cabinet out, even though I hate it.  This "oh-so-after" room is really just an "in-progress-but-way-better-than-it-was" room.  And where the desk used to be:

The new bookshelf!  Well, it's actually an old bookshelf, but it's freshly painted, so it's kind of new.  

Even though we need storage for all of our books, I really didn't want to crowd our clean bookshelf and once again make this room feel tight and over-stuffed.  So I opted for a few books and other random stuff.  Josh doesn't understand why we would have a book shelf if we aren't going to have books on it, but I totally get it. And in the future, I will probably either paint the other bookshelf and add it in here, or get something bigger or put shelves on the walls for storage for office-type-stuff, books, and school work stuff.  But here are some close ups of my happy, neat, and clean bookshelf:

Some things to note: 

1. On the top shelf, there is a stack of books.  That stack of books is so random that it includes: "The Purpose Driven Life", a Lewis Black book called "Me of Little Faith" (I know, ironic), a book titled "Stumbling on Happiness" (also ironic), "Catch-22" and "Day Trips in Delmarva".  I swear that was an accident.
2. The big round vase on the top is awesome.  It is by far my best vase.  And I have a lot.
3. The art hung above the shelf is only there because it is the 2-D version of the teal vase in the shelf.  I made that art with a bunch of paint chips.  I cut them up into same size squares and glued them on a thick piece of paper and then framed it.  My inspiration came from this DIY art from paint chips.  It didn't come out perfect (you can see the imperfections in the picture) but I don't think it's too horrid.  Josh, however, was not happy that it was on our wall.  He called it "kindergarten art".  He is lucky I love him.

Speaking of paint chips, I went to (almost) all of the local paint stores and picked up some paint chips for our living room.  And by some I mean a lot:

And we couldn't really find one that we like!  AHHH!  So we picked up more:

And still haven't found one.  Shucks.  So, the in-laws are here today visiting for the weekend.  Josh and his dad are going to a sports bar to watch the Mountaineers game shortly since we won't get it on cable today.  I think that while they are gone, Josh's mom and I will go to the only paint stores left on the Eastern Shore (Home Depot and Sherwin Williams) and pick up the rest of the teal-ish paint chips left in the world and hopefully find one we like.  

Then the plan is to go out for crabs for dinner before it's winter and we can't get them anymore.  We go to a local crab house right on the Chesapeake Bay.  They say that Maryland crabs are best in the fall, so we will see!  

Have an awesome weekend!