Thanksgiving 2010

J and I rotate where we spend the holidays each year. This year we spent Thanksgiving at his parents house and we'll spend Christmas at my parents. Next year we'll rotate it as we always do. This works well for us since his family and my family are located several states apart.

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This year we got to meet J's brother's girlfriend's two little boys. This was RIGHT before their bedtime as you can see below.



While we were spending our time with his family, my family was also celebrating the gender revel of the first grandbaby. As you can see below, my SIL and brother are having a boy! So excited! (Thanks Lar for the picture!) Also pictured is my present for them since we couldn't be there. I wanted our little nephew to have a onesie with a joke that is near and dear to SIL and I! If you don't know what the image on the onesie is, google, "Peanut Butter Jelly Time Video." As soon as I saw it, I KNEW the baby had to have it!



When we got back from our Thanksgiving trip yesterday, J decided he wanted to revamp our bedroom. We painted it the same color we have in the hallway. )It's MUCH lighter than it appears in the picture. It's a pretty gray.) Also pictured is the new white duvet set as an early Christmas present from my parents! Pardon the wrinkles. We got everything together to show my parents how it turned out. It will be nice and neat later. I promise! As you can see, our two kitties wanted to be photographed as well!=)

New Decor in the Formal Living Room!

Saturday night, we were in our storage room looking at some of our home decorations we had boxed up and put to the side. These were pictures, wall art, photographs, etc. that we wanted to eventually put up...we just hadn't done so yet. While I was making dinner, J decided to look through some of it and see what we could put on the walls in our formal living room. He picked a few selections that we looked at together and decided where to put in the room.

For some time now, J has mentioned he would like to put up curtains in that room as well as a nice rug. After we put those pictures on the wall, we had gotten pretty ramped up about decorating the room. We ended up looking at rugs online to find out what we thought might look good in the room. We didn't find anything that we immediately liked. However, we agreed to continue looking. I mentioned our search to a few of my online friends and they suggested a few stores we could go to.

After church on Sunday, we decided to get J some new running shoes. While we were out, we went by JCPenney's and picked up some beautiful chocolate curtains for the room. We couldn't find a curtain rod we liked for the price, so we agreed to look elsewhere for a better deal. I mentioned to J that some people had mentioned we go check out Lowes for rugs and that he might be able to find a good price on some curtain rods as well.

I had to go to our home office to get some work done so I suggested J go ahead and look for curtains rods and rugs while I was working. J went to Lowes and not only found a fantastic deal on some great curtain rods, but found several great rugs as well! Since I was having to get some work done, he took pictures of the rugs on his cell phone and sent them to me so I could take a look. We found one we both really liked!

Here is a picture of the room before the rug. I took a picture of the room AFTER we put the rug in place. However, I absentmindedly left the blinds closed and the rug looks much darker than it really is. (Please pardon the mess. We had been decorating there and left some of our items temporarily on the couch.)





Here is a closeup of the rug from where J took a picture of it in the store. The rug ties all the major items in the room together from the chocolate sofas to the Light Silver Sage paint color to the tan chair in the corner.

Halloween Decor and Visit to the ER

Halloween isn't my favorite holiday. However, J's excitement for getting the house ready for any holiday really rubs off on me. We DO enjoy handing out candy to trick and treaters. It's one of our favorite things we get to do every year. We play music, enjoy food and drink, and greet the kids when they arrive. It's a tradition we REALLY enjoy!=)

Saturday, we decided to carve pumpkins. I had a fundraiser that morning and a football game watch party that afternoon, so we planned to do it that evening. Here are some clips from the day!

Before you get to one picture in particular, I'd like to note the following: 1. Yes, I know how to properly cut a vegetable. 2. It was an accident. I don't even remember moving my hand from it's proper location on the vegetable to where it would have been in danger. I think I was talking to J.

Now, you may proceed=)

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That morning, we noticed we had the PERFECT Halloween photo op! One of our little black kitties curled up right behind the pumpkins we had set out for the evening.



Later that evening, J started out little "carving party." He has such a cute smile!=) I love how crazy his hair got!



This is where I had my accident. Before you judge, please re-read the disclaimer above. This picture was taken after we got back from the ER and had my hand stitched up. Not fun.



This is the final product of our decorated front porch. We are just now acquiring fall decorations, and our collection will grow throughout the years. Right now we have our front door decoration and the little pumpkin we placed on our mantel (bottom picture). Next year, we hope to add a few more pieces.

Flowers & Den Update

J and I have been very busy lately with work and dance! However, we have had some time to make a few updates to our home=)

I mentioned to J that it would be really nice to have some hanging flowers in our front and back yard. I would prefer white (always) but I know it would be important to him to have some color. I got to thinking about it and thought purple would be really pretty in front of our house! I mentioned that to him in passing about a week or two ago. Well, J went out and surprised me with them when I came home this past Saturday! So very nice of him!! He completely read my mind too! I had this picture in my mind of purple flowers hanging over their baskets. He did a great job!=)




We also purchased new couches for our Den! We love them! They are casual, but very nice! They are comfortable to sit in (and nap!) as well!

Here is our new chair & 1/2. (Vit decided to be in this picture! He's such a funny cat!)




Here is out new couch and wall art created by J! He cut all these pieces of wood, stained them, and hung them! We worked together to place them on the wall=)

Den Update and Kitchen "Before"

Here is the new paint color for our den! We chose Ralph Lauren "Old Violin" because it was dark enough for J but was also neutral for me! Again, please pardon the mess. We ARE renovating!=) We are very pleased with the color. We are looking for furniture for this room. We hope to find cream colored (or something lighter than the carpet) sofa and chair & 1/2 for the room. We'll use an existing chair currently in the living room as an accent chair as well. We still have to correct the trim where paint got around the painters tape. We are looking forward to decorating this space!

***Next...the kitchen! We will also begin painting the kitchen later this week. We will continue the chocolate color on the bottom half of the wall. We'll then paint a lighter color on top. I hope to have pictures soon!

This is the the wall that connects the kitchen to the dining room. We are probably going to paint the color currently in the dining room on the top portion of the walls in the kitchen. You can see we went ahead and painted a section of the wall in the chocolate color.

Sauna Room & Den Renovations - "Before" Pictures

J's brother, A, and J have recently began renovations in our sauna room. We will also be painting our den as well! Here are some of the before pictures. I will also say that J and A did all of this! I told my hubby, J, that I will help anyway that I can at this stage in the process...without hurting the progress of the project. He knows I'll help any way I can at this point. I'm fortunate that J and his brother are so skilled in doing all of this. They have certainly done a great job so far!
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Sauna Room (Located on the 1st floor of our house) before renovations. You'll notice the sauna blocks a door to the back of our house.



In progress: Sauna was removed. Bro-in-law, A, will be taking it to his house. The wood paneling was also torn down and the carpet was ripped up. Dry wall was put up and they have begun putting the "mud" over the dry wall. You'll also notice a nice new door was installed so we now have an entrance to the back yard from the first floor of our house! Thank you guys!!!

We aren't sure what color we will paint this room. J and I are talking about using a lighter color since it is a smaller area. We'll probably continue that color into the adjacent laundry room too. The beige color that is currently in the laundry room makes it look dingy.

We are planning on putting tile here in place of the carpet. I wish the guys had me take a picture of them working in the room!

Here is a picture of the den with the paint color originally on the walls when we bought it. We normally have a white couch cover over the couch, but it was removed so we could paint in here. One of our cats, Vit, has apparently decided to help model our couch! PLEASE pardon the mess! Renovation is soon to begin!

You can see where we started taping. This is the view from the couch towards the french doors that open to the deck on the back of the house. Those white cabinets connect the den to the kitchen.

View of the fireplace from the kitchen next to the den. As you can see, the guys rocked out to some Rock Band. I shyly attempted two songs and didn't do too bad....LOL

I can't wait to decorate this space after we paint!!

***I will post more pictures as we go along. We got some work to do in both rooms for sure, but I know we will have fun!

Christmas Decor Storage!

Every time I get anything new, I have at least one of the following two questions:

1. How do I clean it/wash it?

AND/OR

2. How do I store it? (OR "Where do I put it?")

For J and I, this was our first Christmas together! It was also our first time to decorate our own space for Christmas. We decorated as much as we could. We put up lights on the outside of our house, we put decorations on the mantel, and we put up a very nice tree! We hope to add on to our decorations every year and try to build our supplies slowly!


SOOO...you can imagine my first reaction to buying all of these decorations, was to figure out how we wanted to store it all. Fortunately, Target had a sale on plastic bins yesterday. We bought a large, deep bin to put our garland, wreaths, lights, etc in and 4 of the smaller bins pictured below for all of the ornaments. These smaller boxes actually come with cardboard inserts to organize the ornaments. Very nice.

Three-Room Update

Recently I posted pictures of the three room project we have been working on for some time. We were generously blessed with hardwood flooring from some dear friends. You can read my below post to see what all we had to do to these rooms. Here is the finished project....so far!

Please take note that we still have to "accessorize (lol)" and put in lamps, curtains, pictures, small tables....you know the deal! Therefore, it's a work in progress. This is the end of stage 1...if you will=) My hubby did an amazing job with the floor, trim, knocking down cabinets, and more! We also enjoyed getting to paint together.

****Picture of the entryway. This color is a more dark grayish-blue color than the picture lets on. I think it looks almost hunter green here.

Here is a picture from the entryway to the living room to the dining room. As you can see, all three rooms flow into each other. The entryway is painted Restoration Hardware-Blue Sage. The living room is painted RH-Light Silver Sage. The Dining Room is painted RH-Silver Sage. We painted RH-Light Silver on all of the trim. The lovely couch and chaise lounge are fro American Signature.

This is the reverse view coming from the dining room. Look at that GORGEOUS floor my husband put down!

Chaise lounge with added picture bonus...our kittie Vit!

Close-up picture of the floor.

Crown molding my hubby put up.

View of the dining room from the living room. The color in this room is more green than the living room, but it doesn't show up so well in these pictures.

I'm so embarrassed I didn't clean the mirror before taking this picture=( I promise I dust and Windex every day. It must have been the dining room's turn this day!

Dining room curtains.




The lovely, useful china cabinet my parents gave us.

Baseboards.

Entryway, Formal Living, and Dining Room

Let me start off by saying these renovations have already been mostly completed. I hope to have pictures of the completed rooms sometime next week! Since we took the below pictures, these rooms have been completely renovated with hardwood floors, crown molding, new trim, AND we have painted each of these rooms. I'm just about done painting the second coat on the trim in the entry way. So CLOSE!

Disclaimer: I want to acknowledge how hard my husband has worked. He put down these floors himself as well as the crown molding and trim. I have tried to assist him where I can with things like holding up the other end of the crown molding and cleaning up excess glue from the floors. However, the credit belongs to him for sure! We have done an excellent job partnering up to paint too! We painted all the rooms with colors from Restoration Hardware.

All we have left to do is for me to finish the second coat of paint on the trim in the entry way and for J to finish two pieces on the floor to complete the entryway. So close!

Part 1 - Entryway, Formal Living Room, and Dining Room. I'm not sure the video shows up correctly. I had some problems uploading it. It should be a short clip of J asking me to take some pictures so we could see the progress of these rooms.



J knocked down cabinets that had been added to this wall. You'll see in some of the other pictures there wasn't a set of cabinets on the other side. It looked really lopsided. J sanded down this wall and afterwards we painted Restoration Hardware's Light Silver Sage in there. There's such a nice entrance to the dining room now!




After tearing out the old trim, J patched up places like this in the formal living room and dining room. New Vents from Lowe's were put in as well.



Entryway.

My hubby gluing down hardwood floors! They are GORGEOUS! I can't wait to post the completed pictures. He did an AMAZING job!