Friday, June 29, 2012

Blogging WORKS!

At least as far as my motivation is concerned.  Last week, I posted that I may feel like painting the hallway upstairs.  Once it was posted for the world to see, it made me apparently go out and do it.  I hopped in my car on Sunday (Scott's weekend work day) and made my way over the Sherwin Williams.  I purchased my paint, and went to work.

Other than a minor alarm mishap that took quite a few hours from my painting, the hallway looks great.  I'm not allowed to cut in on the ceiling anymore (you should see my dining room!) so the hallway is just waiting on Scott's final touch.  What that means in layman terms is I will have a white strip at the top of my hallway for a VERY, VERY long time.

But, I must move on!  I have quite a few projects that I am starting to work on at the moment.  The first is my big dining room/living room redo.  I may want to turn redo into just do seeing as the rooms are 99% empty right now!

I created inspiration boards for how I am planning the two rooms:
For this room, I already have the chairs (need to be reuphoulstered) and the mirror.  I am looking for the other 3 pieces (sideboard, coffee table and chaise/setee).


For the dining room, I already have the hutch and table, however we are still mid refinishing on the table (the sanding was pretty brutal).  I haven't decided if I want to do the wainscotting on the walls or just the crown molding.  Originally, I was all about wainscotting and crown molding.  But because of all the white in the furniture, I may be leaning towards not having it.

Because the rooms are connected, the flow was really important to me.  I think the styles compliment without being overly matchy matchy.  I may stain the entire credenza/sideboard in the living area wood to prevent the overly matching decor. 

One thing I am on a mission for this weekend is fabric.  I am LOVING ikat fabric right now, but not the prices.  Ideally, I'd find a gray and white fabric.  I've scoured the internet attempting to find a suitable option for under $40/yard.  I am having no luck.  And with each chair needing approximately 7 yards, that is not in the budget.  I am going to venture to Joann's and Hobby Lobby to see what they have on sale.

The rest of the items I have already found where I will be purchasing in the future.  My goal is to have the house a little more put together for our August guests!

Hopefully I will have some great pictures to share next week on my weekend accomplishments!

Sunday, June 24, 2012

I Almost Think...

I am motivated to paint today.  Scotty and I did the majority of our gigantic downstairs by ourselves.  We still have the top inch of all the super tall ceilings left.  Every time we get on the ladder to paint, the ladder moves.  The trim has officially become a two person job.  That is fine and great, but on Scotty's days off, I'm usually not home and vice versa.  With Scott's new schedule he works 4-10's (which he loves) but is off Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

Luckily, I have become accustomed to not looking up at that top little space.  Easy enough - avoid the issue by not looking at the problem.

Now, our upstairs is a completely different issues.  The only room we have painted is the guest bedroom.  I love the room and it is nice to have a "finished" space for our guests.  When I say finished, I am lying.  I just realized we will need to paint the dresser in there.  So...almost finished room.

We also have 2 other completely not done rooms as well as the guest bathroom and hallway.  The lack of painting wouldn't have bugged me so much if while I was painting the guest bedroom, I hadn't rolled little spots of the gray in the hallway to see if I liked that color there too.  I don't know what I was thinking.  Of course I like gray.  I have a small obsession with gray paint.

So now, every time I walk down that hall (I shower in that bathroom - so basically everyday) I cringe at the paint spots.

So today may FINALLY be the day to work on painting the hallway area!  I'm tentatively motivated.  I really do dislike painting.  And am REALLY sick of painting. 

Some of my other motivations stems from the fact that we start having guests again soon.  June and July were Scotty and I's "off" months.  We have guests scheduled for August (Mommy and George), September (Dad and Gina and POSSIBLY my best friend Megan and her boyfriend) and then November.  For November, I may possibly be getting the entire Wilcox clan (and hopefully some McHugh's or Dorcas') at my house for Thanksgiving! Because of the sheer number of humans in the house, I figure it's time to set up 1 other guest bedroom.

When we got our new bed, we moved our old bed into another guest room and figured we would just purchase a mattress when the time came.  Unfortunately, with the rate at which we are remodeling lately (a rate of ZERO!) I think I should get started sooner than later.

While I do feel almost motivated to paint, I can't quite decide on colors.  I think for the hallway I am going to use my old standard, Kilimin Beige from Sherwin Williams.  You can see small areas of the upstairs from downstairs and I HOPE the complimentary colors will look nice.

Now for the last guest bedroom (the other empty room we plan on keeping empty), I have no idea of how I want to decorate. That in itself makes it hard to paint it.  I figure maybe by the time the hallway is done, I'll have some ideas on that last room.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Puppies, Puppies, Puppies!

We have had a bit of dog drama! About a week ago, Chewy ripped all the pads on his paws playing too hard on hot ground at the dog park.  He may have been the cutest, most pathetic thing I have ever seen.


 

He HATED his foot wraps.  But he couldn't really walk without them, so he was stuck in them for about 5 days.  We did a lot of wrapping...and rewrapping.  He had this funny tendancy to rip them off and put them in his food dish.

And I had to share some of these cute pictures of the pups in action over the past few weeks:


And my two little ying yang puppies:

Now mom, you may not want to read past his point...  Scott and I are thinking about getting a puppy!  We have really been wanting one for a long time.  Tonight, we have an appointment at a breeders to talk to them and see if this is the right place for us to work with.








A bernese mountain dog! We have both been huge fans of the breed for a long time.  Once I am out of school, we are also looking into volunteering for canine search and rescue and avalanche patrol.  These breeds are GREAT working dogs, great family dogs and love to please. They also love the snow and look like GIANT Chewy's! Oh, and they get close to 120 lbs!!  Don't worry mom, we don't expect to have one in the next 6 months so your next visits to my house are safe!

Bedroom Progress

Right now, I really feel like I have no free time.  I work at least 50 hours a week, go to school full time and attempt to exercise for an hour everyday.  That barely leaves me time to sleep, cook dinner and pack lunches for the next day.  I've decided to solve this problem I will quit my job. 

I ran that idea by my husband and it was a miserable failure.  Oh well, at least I tried.

So since time is so tight, I feel happy that we've accomplished a few small projects and have ideas for new ones.

The first update I have is a picture of our bed.  I realized I posted the stock photo but never of it in all it's glory.  We also ended up getting the dresser about a week later.

















And yes, that obnoxious monstrosity is the TV in our bedroom.  I'm the type that wants no TV in the bedroom.  But my husband showed up with a 50" one day.  Welcome to my life.

Chewy loves the new bed! It also helps that we put about a 6" goose down topper on top of the tempurpedic.  He's moving so fast in his roll that his paws are blurry.  Cute little boy!


The next step on our bedroom shopping list is to get the nightstands.  We are waiting for another sale at the furniture shop or to find the pieces at the outlet (unlikely).  I am slowly designing what we want the bedroom to look like.  We really, really need to paint but we have not had any motivation to paint again lately.  There's our other guestroom (more on that later) that needs paint too.

Awhile back, I found a coverlet at Target online that I thought would go perfectly as an accent for the bottom of our bed.  I really like the layered bed look.  For the almost $100 that is was, it really wasn't worth purchasing just for an end of the bed decoration.  But while I was at Target over the weekend getting a new laundry basket, I found the king size on clearance for $18.  Score!  I really don't like the shams, but I figure for that price, I can just use the coverlet as an accent or use the shams in another room.

We are thinking of painting the bedroom gray (surprise, surprise) so the yellow should bring a nice pop of color.



We also purchased a decal to hang over the bed.  It's one of our favorite quotes.  We don't necessarily want to stick it as a decal so we are thinking of how to frame it or mount it to hang.  We purchased ours in black.













We are also eyeballing a rug for the room.  I hate carpet in general, but until we do the hardwood upstairs (a LONG way out), I figure a rug will help camoflauge my dislike for dirty, old, builder grade beige carpet.  It was 60% off for mother's day, but I didn't buy it.  I'm waiting until another great sale happens and I'll probably get it.  I can't understand why rugs and other random items are so expensive! 


Friday, June 8, 2012

I'm a horrible blogger...

I can't decide if my life is so boring that I have nothing to blog or if I just don't blog.  I am leaning towards the boring option ... but in my opinion, it's perfectly fine to have a boring life.

Scott's mom came out and visited and helped with my craft room.  It's not quite finished, but a definite improvement!  The picture is a little dark... The fabric draped on the table is a potential valence fabric.  I'm not sold on it, but I'm still deciding. I think my favorite part of the room is the rug (and the rug ornament). 


Scott and his mom were also able to (almost) finish the island!!



The red that you can see in the photo is the paint from the plywood.  He found some trim and painted it glossy black.  They haven't been attached yet, but the end is near! By the time it's DONE DONE, it will be time to install the slab over it.  Sucks to be him! He should just be a faster finisher...

Looking at this picture really makes me look forward to finishing the floors (slate in the kitchen) and our new fridge!  It is our last kitchen appliance left!  We have our eyes on a Kitchenaid french door model that matches our other appliances.  I think I also might need some knobs on my cabinets.  I must consult George!

Scott and I traveled over the weekend to my dad's 50th surprise birthday party in Seattle.  The first surprise was us.  The second surprise was the party.  It ended up being a huge success!!

While we were in Seattle, we also found ourselves attending a tattoo party.  Ok, not a party.  My husband wanted to start on his next piece and my best friend wanted to get her first tattoo.  We went to our favorite shop over in Bellevue called Easy Choppers and Tattoos.  Scott has known the owner, Keahi, forever.  He also did our first anniversary snowflake tattoos back in December. 

Sage worked on Megan.  She absolutely loves the result! Personally, I don't think I could get a tattoo in that location, let alone my first one.  More power to her!!  I think my brain would rattle around too much...




Keahi started the first part of Scott's arm piece. 

The compass has an outline of Washington State with a red trident pointing towards Seattle.  He really, really likes it.  Keahi designed the entire piece off of snippets of ideas from Scott.  I am extremely impressed in his creativity and Scott loves the tattoo.  The next part of the piece will be to add a background of trees or a mountain scene.  They are not sure yet and since we have no clue when we will be back in Seattle, they also have all sorts of time to plan.

I may have also had another snowflake put on my back.  Maybe.  It depends on who is asking.  If my mom is asking, I only maybe got another one.  And yes mom, I do know they will be on my body when I'm 80.  But on the plus side, they are on my back so unless I'm looking in a mirror from behind, I really won't see it.  And who EVER wants to look in a mirror from behind?!? 

I might put a picture up after awhile...it's in it's healing stage right now so it's not the prettiest.  You either have to photograph them right after (when they are all pink like Scott's) or a few weeks after to make them look decent.