Random picture bonanza.

So, when I was taking some pictures off of mine and the Mr's cell phones that I wanted to post, I ended up taking just way to many that were entirely un-relevent to any particular post. So therefore they make the perfect random post!

Here they are in all their glory:



This is Margaret. So we are told by our neighbors, she was abandoned by the previous owners. So she sits outside out backdoor staring at me and making me feel guilty. We feed her, and are going to ask Clint's mom to adopt her.

Ohh, and she's technically a boy, but I just thought she looked like a Margaret so now she is transgender and there is nothing wrong with that. LOL.

This is the gorgeous ceiling fan Clint installed all by himself (Well I handed him the screwdriver a couple times)
It makes the room looks so much warmer, and I love it.

This is Clint and his niece Haley at her 5th birthday last week. This picture just makes me melt it is so cute.

On that same note, here he is with his brand new nephew, Angelo. Ha, he wore the same shirt both those days.

One of Henry's favorite new spots to hang out. So cute it makes me wanna puke.
I also exercise extreme restraint in not turning on the water while he's asleep. I know, I know, I'm awful.

Our bedroom, with the new duvet cover we got. That paint really doesn't photograph well. Here is the actual color.

That one picture is also the only thing we have for the walls in the whole room. We need some art in there bad.

And this is Dorothy and Jacob, my absolute most favorite Christmas decorations. I just happened upon the picture in my phone and had to share. We got them in Nevada City and I feel we will buy one every year until the house is overrun with adorable hand carved wood reindeer. It doesn't hurt that they are sold by an adorable old man at the Victorian Christmas fair who does them all by hand.

This year we are gonna get the big ol 3 ft tall one for the front porch. I think his name will be Malcolm.

Ohhh so excited!

The Birds!

Well it's about time I tell you about my favorite project thus far on the house.

I saw these birds while perusing the web and was struck with inspiration. Either that, or I saw the idea on someone else's blog and decided to copy it.

I'll never tell.

So I got 2 sets of those bad boys with plans for them to go on the staircase wall. I really didn't want to do a wall of pictures like most people do up staircases. I'm sure once we have some chitlin's running about that will change. I had to paint them though. As they were in black they totally reminded me of The Alfred Hitchcock movie which would have made me afraid to walk up my stairs.

Anyhoo.....

I took those bad boys out back and primed them up with some spray paint, back and front.

Then I picked out a lovely blue spray paint for the top coat (Mountain Blue). BTW- I highly UN recommend the Krylon spray paint. It doesn't spray from any direction. That is officially on my must have list from now on.

Once the primer was dry on both sides (as much as my patience could handle), I painted them.

While they were drying, I took some sticky dots and tried to get a rough layout of where I wanted them on the wall. I tried to take a picture of this, but those tiny dots just didn't show up. It ended up being a picture of a blank wall.

So, once I had the layout I wanted, I just substituted the dot for the little nail that the birds are held up by. Then when they were ready, I just popped the birds onto the nails.

It was SO SO easy and I think it looks like a million bucks now.



These 2 pictures refused to go next to each other.
Aww, look at Allie hanging out on the stairs. So Cute.

So, there is is. I love it!

It's Distressing.

So here's the thing. I read like, 12 billion and 7 home decorating/furniture makeover blogs.

I looooovee them.

But it seems that the big thing these days is "shabby chic" and doing alot of distressing on furniture (painting it, then sanding off some of the paint to look old and worn in).

I gotta tell ya kids, I hate it. I can apprecaite the beauty of  it and if its your style then rock on sister, but for me- I want a nice glossy clean finish. I get one smudge or scratch in my paint and you better believe I'll have a few curse words flying and then be right in there with some touch up paint.

I don't know what struck me to have to write about this, but I just can't get over how many people are taking antiques and refinishing them with distressing. It just doesn't do it for me!

So on that note, here is the buffet table I bought on Craigslist.

Ya, Ya my picture is crooked I know.

You can't tell so much in this picture, but the glass is very yellow with little cirlcle texture on it. I love the texture, hate the color.
I haven't decided what to do with this yet.

Either go modern- paint it black, replace all the handle with shiny clean stainless pulls and put in frosted glass,

or

leave the wood finish (since it is clean, in good condition and kinda matches the kitchen cabinets it sits by), still replace the pulls with some updated black ones, and then do I have no idea what with the glass.

On a fun side note- we have so many kithcen cabinets in the new house that they are comically empty. So, I bought this piece because the space needed something and it was perfect- but it is totally empty, with no plans to put anything in it, LOL.

Any ideas??

Adventure

We had a nice little weekend, in which I remembered to take pictures most of the time. I even sat down with full intentions of writing a nice blog about it for my masses of loyal readers.

It didn't happen. And now the phone with all my pictures is upstairs and I am downstairs. Ohh well.

The one thing I will share at this moment-

Every time I go to Bed Bath and Beyond I think of Will Ferrell in Old School taking about his 'nice little saturday'. I love it.

I need a vote!

Well today I need your help kids.

My stupid jerk of a  bestest friend Andres told me my house has to much blue. I happen to think it looks beautiful, but he got under my skin a bit at first. So, I bought an area rug with absolutely no blue in it.

My issue is now that I can't decided whether to put it in the living room or the dining room. So, I am calling all my (3) trusty readers to tell me what they think.

Living room:

or dining room:

Pardon the messy countertops and leftover paper towel from cleaning the table.


So, whatcha think? I'm to lazy to figure out how to insert a poll here, so leave me a comment. Should the rug go in the living room or the dining room?

Hello Kids,

For those of you paying attention, before we moved I started A mirror redo project. I got the most of it done moving, but just completed it tonight.

In case you didn't click the link, here is a before shot.



Well I painted that bad boy black at the old house and it came out like this-



Simply delicious. But in the move, it got good and scuffed up since I had painted it with satin finish paint (at the Mr's demand. He ssswwwwoooore it would look so much better than semi-gloss.) so I knew I was going to have to seal it with some poly.

Plus I had ordered a little goodie for it from here.

Well I got off work tonight, taped the mirror and busted out the poly.

Disaster. I was using the totally wrong brush, and the poly gooped up in all the little dots on the edges and it was just awful. I almost cried. I did decide I was done with projects for the night, even though my bedroom has been half painted for 2 days now.

Well, once I let the paint dry and added my decal, it looked better. I slapped that puppy back on the wall and it now looks like this-



I'm in love. Bonus there, you can see the reflection of the collage poster I had made of all my favorite pictures of me and the Mr.

I think I will buy some spray poly and give it a coat with that later on. You don't get to see the finished table redo that lives below the mirror-
1. Because it needs to be poly coated still, and
2. Because it is covered in all the stuff displaced from the bedroom while we paint in there.

But for now, it makes me happy. I love that decal so very very much.

And while I was doing that, the Mr was hard at work installing the new ceiling fan-

Someday when the house is photo-tour worthy, I'll show you the finished project.

Ohh, see those birds on the wall behind him there? My fastest and favorite project by far in the house. But that's for another post. I gotta build some suspense you know!

Hello World.

Well, I suck at blogging. It's a good think I don't do this for a living, because I sure would get fired quick.

We moved into the house. Yippee! It was the most exhausting 4 days I've had in a long, long time. Well, more like a week actually,

Tuesday- Loan funded. After work and a quick trip to the old house to eat, we went to the new place and started.....I have no clue, I don't even remember what we did that night. There was no water at the house so it couldn't have been much. But we were there late.

Wednesday- Got the water turned on and again after work went to work on the house. Started cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. The kitchen and bathrooms in the house were all grotesque and I'm sure I lost 5 pounds in sweat scrubbing so much. To bad we ate take out and fast food for a week so I balanced that right out, eh?

Thursday- Had the carpets cleaned (yay!) which turned out waaaayyyy better then we were expecting them to. Clint took a half day from work and him and a friend spent 6 hours installing the garage door opener. Once I got off work, it was right back to the house for more scrubbing. I've gotta tell you about my shower. The bottom of our tub/shower has the texture of orange peel. Now, I don't know what kind of genius thought THAT was a good idea, but I'd like to smack him. The floor of the tub was almost black with 4 years of peoples filth ground into all those little nooks and crannies. It took me HOURS to get it out, along with a hard bristle brush, a Scotchbrite pad, and a box of magic erasers (I flippin love those things!)

Friday- We moved in! The boys did all the U-Haul packing while I was scrubbing my counter tops with heavy chemicals (grout = gross). Everyone who helped went up and down the stairs at least 20 times. Stairs suck.

Saturday we spent trying to get the new place in some kind of order.

Sunday we spent 9 hours getting the last of our stuff out and cleaning the old place.

Monday we were planning to "relax" and ended up organizing the garage, setting up the game room, scrubbing cabinet faces....etc...

Tuesday was back to work and "normal" life. We have still been working on the house every day after work and I don't see that ending anytime soon. The list of projects is never ending. Poor Clint, he is such a trooper.

Million more updates, but I gotta go do some work kids.