Holiday Dazzle

View from our bedroom window during our mini snow storm!

Here is our mantle with everyone's crazy mix-matched stockings. My aunt and grandmother hand painted the small houses on the left (three of them) and for some reason, I collect Nutcrackers(I love them, but this collection started when I was a little kid). Kyle and I have our stockings on the far right, with Jet's and Jaina's on top of ours.

My brother and I went to buy a real Christmas tree this year because the 10 year old artificial one was done. I don't think I ever want another real tree, I'm sweeping, sweeping and sweeping all the time.

The tradition in my family is to let the kids decorate however they want (as long as breakable things are placed out of range of the cat and possibly the 5 year old).

 Here is the whole tree, minus a topper. I enjoy how eclectic and insane the tree is (5 year old and 10 year old did the beads).

 Two favorite ornaments! I have a Pickle ornament and the brand new "Kyle and Juli '13" ornament. My mom likes to buy ornaments every year and these are my favorites!

Here's a zoom in on some of the lovely beadwork and crazy ornaments. 

Upstairs in our cavernous bedroom is the grown up, matching tree.

 Jaina has broken one hand-made ornament so far this season, I'll be gluing that together this weekend. I enjoy these tiny gift bags and use them to decorate under tiny tree. :)

Silly bit of bedazzle on the way in the house. I love blurry Christmas light shots.

Even more blurry! Fun!




Kyle and I have off for *almost* two weeks (starting Monday), so I'm hoping to tackle some serious painting while we have a chance. Stay tuned for before&after shots of stairs and terrible pink room!



Happy Holidays everyone!

A tiny bit of Christmas Cheer

'Tis the Season (to make lots of holiday themed things!)

I saw a cute wreath on Pinterest the other day that was Candy-Cane yarn wrapped fun. I clicked through hoping for instructions, but only found that it was for sale, for 80 dollars. And of course, I thought "I can do that for MUCH cheaper!"

So off to Michael's I went. 

 I bought an 18" foam wreath, red and white yarn, wreath push pins and then some dazzle for later.

 Project is very easy, just extremely time-consuming! I wrapped one color of yarn for an approximately similar distance and then pushed a wreath pin in to hold the knot transitioning to the white/red color.  It took me an hour and a half to wrap the yarn around the wreath.

 My helpful cat covered the scraps of yarn for me.

And here's the wreath all hung up on the door. I think it's fun, but it is a little skinnier than the one I saw online.

It was all put up using the wreath pins, no hot glue gun or anything else. Nice and simple!

Today my siblings are coming over to decorate the tree and the house, so I'll put more pictures up once that's done. :)

Happy Holidays everyone!

The Great Outdoors!

Today (since it is a LOVELY 65 degrees here), we're touring the exterior of the house.

 Somehow I failed to mention that our Master Bedroom has a DECK! (That we don't use, yet). Here is Jet, my photography assistant for the day. I decided I would show off the deck first, and then move to the front door. :)

 I'm not digging the red shutters and they'll have to be repainted anyway (next year, when we do the wood trim around the house as well). I'm learning towards a navy blue color.

It is REALLY hard to get a shot without the neighbor's houses in it. I'll figure it out one day.  Also there are "No Trespassing" and "Beware of Dog" signs screwed into the fence. I don't like them, and will eventually take them down.

 Our flower beds need to be re-graded and re planted. :(

 Here is the left side of the house, you can see our fancy master bedroom deck and the doors that go into the eat-in kitchen area.

 Here's a zoom-in of our dirty garage door and siding. We're going to power-wash EVERYTHING come spring time. EVERYTHING.

Here is the view looking along the back of the house.
What's the floating box out of the back of our house you ask? Why it's the weird fireplace hole that they build in. Clearly necessary.  Previous seller also left us a broken tub of water with an electric power washer in it.

Here is the second deck and the other side of the yard. I'm planning on planting a vegetable garden here in the spring. ( on the left side, along the fence, I believe)

 There you can see the gate into the backyard (that's the right side of house). This is the stairs to the basement door. Also our radon system is sticking out there on the right.

 Here is my photography assistant bringing me a tennis ball. He is absolutely in LOVE with our yard. He zooms back and forth all the time.  You can see our Den door there that has a mini wood deck and stairs down to the patio.

 Directly behind where I was standing in the last shot is a creepy container, it is home to spiders currently. I would like to throw it out.

Another major outdoor project to do is to cut off the old foam sealant, re-seal and then put the concrete caulking on top of it so it is a bit less noticeable.




To-Do Outside:
repaint the white wood trim (hire out)
repaint the red shutters and top of bay window to a navy blue
Mow
Build elevated garden plot (to keep out Jet) to plant some veggies and fruit!
POWERWASH (so dirty outside, ew)
Cut the foam sealant and re-seal!


This concludes our ENTIRE house tour! Crazy! Stay tuned for progress updates!  (Soon: Christmas Decorations!)

Kitchen & Den Tour!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Turkey jokes! Fun fact: I had one, and a friend had another (inside our poppers/crackers) and I read aloud "What do you get when you cross a turkey with an octopus?" and he yelled "Enough drumsticks for Thanksgiving!!!" and I was very impressed by his cleverness, but said "No! Eight feather dusters!" And then we realized we had the same joke with different answers. Weird!

 Now that we're back home and I got a chance to catch up on schoolwork and housework...the tour continues!

 Here is our Foyer/Entryway view of the kitchen.

Here is the dining room looking in, pantry on the left.

 The left side that shows the eat in kitchen area...

 Ignore the clutter on top of the fridge!

 Get a glimpse of my schedule there, with a better shot of eat in kitchen and a breakfast bar waaaaay over there.  The curtains hide the sliding glass doors to one side of the house.

Here we see some more seller goofs. Terribly caulked counter top line, weird plastic outlet that is broken over protruding drywall, unfinished ledge on pass through window?

We are planning on: replacing the counter tops to something a little more durable(granite?), extending it to the edge of that wall right there (more fun seating), painting the kitchen to something NOT YELLOW (I just do not like yellow), HOPEFULLY re-painting the cabinets to a white color & adding hardware, replace the large fluorescent light and put in a backsplash!

Now onto the Den! This stands directly above the murder room (both are additions, but unsure of when they were built)

 Thanksgiving Decorations are packed away, but not in this shot. Oops!

 We see a chalkboard having an identity crisis (reads: I want to be a mirror (I am planning on tackling the mirror project soon))

 The right side (curtains are again hiding the sliding glass door out to the deck)...TV is unsure of its position in the room yet.

 I'm standing on the chair for fun.  Jaina (cat) has discovered how to hop through the pass through window there, so we have to keep stuff up there to deter her. She is skulking in the background by the other curtains (oh, and that's our laundry closet)

 Here we have a VERY large shelf. Our friend came over and commented "It's very shelfy in here." That seems pretty accurate. We're not entirely sure what we're doing with that shelf yet, but it does need to be primed and painted. Lazy seller point two!

Just so no one misses the fake fireplace. Kyle made fun of me for days for picking up this fake fireplace on clearance (originally 170, then priced at 45, woo savings!). But as you can see, we have a pretend fireplace that has cloth hanging down and insulation directly behind it. It bothered me, so I put a fake fireplace in.

Now we use it every day as the den is a bit chillier than the rest of the house. 

We have to: paint this room (same color as kitchen when we re-do the kitchen), finish the very large shelf.

Oh, and bonus garage shots:

 As you can see, nothing is very organized. Everything is tossed in. Kyle likes the pegboard on the far wall there.

The floor is kinda fun. We haven't entirely decided if we're going to motorize the door and park in there yet. 

One day we will muster up the motivation to repaint the pink?! garage, but it is not happening any time soon. Perhaps when the weather is nice and we can throw open the door for ventilation!

That concludes the interior of the house! 

Orange walls, bad paint jobs and Tiger, OH MY!

Today is the Master Bedroom Tour!

This is a picture taken from the listing website.
Although Kyle fixed my computer, my original photos from Day 1 were magically lost. :( I'm hoping once we track down my old camera's SD card the pictures will still be on there.

Now, some of my favorite features of the house are the fact that there are cathedral ceilings in the master bedroom and also in the den (the den& kitchen were the real sellers of this house!). However, cathedral ceilings and two rookie painters do not mix (especially if they are sleep deprived).
So, we hired this job out. It was a huge relief to just have the darn thing done and not worry about it.

Now, weirdly, the GINORMOUS(19 x 19) room has ceramic tile. The picture above has wood floors and carpet?  But the combination of swirly reddish in gray tiles with the orange walls was EXTREMELY overwhelming and orangey. Not a fan.

Enough text, here comes our (mostly) finished master bedroom!

 We went with Sherwin Williams -Rain color, which is a soft blue (kinda gray) color that works with the ceramic tiles way better.

 Banana for scale in the doorway there. UPDATE: Jet has a stuffed banana and it happened to be there, I did not plant a banana in the doorway.
 The cat did not teleport, these were taken at different times. :) You can see the lovely cable hanging down out of the wall above the right bookcase. We have to run it along the line of the wall to fix it. Previous seller decided they could wire the house themselves and it is a nightmare for the bedrooms. We originally had over 50 feet of cabling just laying around the bedroom. Verizon guy was upset and said they would not have come if we had done this ourselves.

 This looks greeny, but it's blue! Also, fun story about that lovely fan. I think Day 2, the painter came in and was eyeballing everything when we noticed a wasp flying around the room. One wasp was annoying, but not that big of a deal. Finally we kept seeing more and more and realized that a wasp's nest was IN the ceiling fan. Painter murdered all the wasps for me because Kyle was at work. Woo!

 We are keeping things real here by leaving the clutter. Eventually it will go away.  I'm still on the fence about these Venetian blinds. First off, someone splattered orange paint all over them in original paint job, so they have to go anyway.  I'm leaning towards curtains because I'd like to put some on the three windows on opposite wall and think it'll look a little more balanced. Plus I've discovered I like curtains, who knew!

 We have a HUUUUUGE walk in closet. It's also full of clutter.

 Master bathroom! Has a walk in shower, that has some ledges in it and tons of shelves. So nice!

 I was SO excited about the double sinks. Definite perk.

 Self portrait of horrible clutter and the vanity area (have not washed out shelves in mirror or below)

I thought this was exceptionally silly. Why on earth did they wire an outlet to the middle of the wall that is covered by a door anyway? Oh, and when I went to use it yesterday for giggles, it didn't work. Oh well!  The door on the right is a very gross closet that needs cleaned out and currently is the home to kitty's litter box.


There's the master suite!