Kitchen

My favorite corners (living /dining room)

Since I am such a slacker I will probably NEVER EVER catch up I am going to share snippets of our home, my favorite corners.
Some are completely done, some still need some work (and by all means if you have ideas on how to improve or what to add or take away feel free to comment) I promise I won't mind.

I will try to do major updates as a seperate post but also add little snippets when I want to share a little something I have done.

Well better start now.....................

I will take you on a quick tour starting from the entrance.
We have one long room (which is a combo living/dining room) for quite a while we have had just the dining room and a empty spot....................but now
We have a couch and a table and a rug (this is the view when you walk into the house). The corner chair will be replaced at some point with a smaller one, but for now it will stay (without anything in the corner the room looked wierd, we tried).
We want to put something in that right hand corner (sidetable, lamp etc) and probably womething along that wall too).
All in due time (we have to pay this baby off first.....................any takers?)

Any who the next room is our "formal" dining room. The one that we use only a few time a year..........

Behind it is our buffet table, and here's a close-up of what's on it, family pictures and shiloettes I made for Rob for Xmas of the boys:



One last picture the wall opposite the "living" room. I love this little table (but hate the BIG BLANK WALL above it) . Any ideas (I have a few but haven't found what I am looking for), anywho here it is..............

I made little vingettes (is that how you spell that?), those tall glass canisters are filled with rocks, glass marbles and shells (from our visits to the Outer Banks) and the pictures around them were taken there as well. I also add words of "inspiration" (that I change about every 2-3 weeks)



On the other side I put my favorite frames with pictures of my favorite "guys" (if you can see they are pictures of the boys when they were younger and then some recent ones) and also some of Rob with the boys (when they were younger and then some more recent sorry for the flash I took these at night and needed the light).................
Here is a closer look:

I am really liking how this part if the house is turning out. We still have lots to go and it might take a while and even though sometimes I get frustrated I am still enjoying the journey.

I hope you stick with me and continue the journey though our home, next up our back yard...............
There's something new added!!!!
Be sure to check it out.

Yard Work!

Ok since we have been working on the outside of thehouse now that the weather is so nice I am going to lump together our work from the last 2 or 3 weekends.

Here is what we started with (it's ok just a little plain jane)
This is the "flower bed" right next to the door (sorry I guess this is the best picture I have of the before):

This is the little patch that sits in the very front (right next to the sidewalk) to the right of the above picture, were the waterworks are (YUCK) I hate this spot (every house in the subdivision has it)

So we decided to go hunting for stone that would look well with our stone front and finally found some we loved at Homedepot (by the way this weekend May 24th, some people from the neighborhood asked where we had found it that it looked beautiful). I agree but let me share and you tell me................

We started by raising the flowerbed:
Here is a closer look at the NEW flowerbed

Then we pulled out the UGLY redish bushes and went flower shopping.
These pictures show you what we added:
AHHHHHHHH much better, yeah they are small now, but it's only the begining of Spring and I am sure they will do well (at least I hope they do)

We also fixed up the spot up front where the water-works are and I love it!!!!!!
See for yourself I think you might like it too!
We will still need to find something to edge it with but it does a pretty good job of hiding those pipes.

So there this is what we have been doing this Spring............
Enjoy!

IT'S (almost) DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well kind of..............
I don't know if I shared this with you but one of the rooms in our house is now my "CRAFT ROOM/guest room). How do you say? Well let me show you .................

I do have to show you the embarrasing amount of "stuff" I have and why I need a whole room just to myself.................
and believe it or not (I am crafty.............well at least I like to make crafts and needed to organize my stuff)
We decided the only way to not lose a guest room (one of the reasons we got a bigger house is because we love having the whole family for holidays , especially Xmas and HATE sending them off to a hotel.................) was to find a way to fit a BED and a CRAFT room together.

HOW? With all the stuff I had to store? Can you Guess?
A MURPHEY BED!!!!!!!!!!! Yep a hide-away bed that disapears and leaves me with a nice sized home office, craft room (GETAWAY) .................

I looked around a lot and compared prices and attitudes & trust me it makes a difference, because I needed a lot of storage and am very picky.................

Anywho I went with Closet Factory,met the nicest person Suzanne that put up with all my questions and specifications and wading though all my mess to get the measurments "just right".

It took about 5 weeks for them to finally be able to come and install, but once they were here it only took a couple of days, see below for a few pictures of the install:


This will be my desk and it is surrounded by shelves (for all my books of course)

On the other side of the window there was a little nook (we took advantage and made some shelves and storage for my machines)
That black metal thing you see in the above picture is a bed (or will be) it's the Murphy bed I mentioned before (all we need is a mattress)
If you turn around you can see the closet (filled with shelves of course) and a little hanging room (for our guests)

Here's a little look of the finished product:


My desk all finished up. Now all I have to do is fill up those shelves.................

That's the little nook with the specially made pull-out shelves (holds all my machines: sewing, serger,Cricut & Xyron)
And then we have the wall with the Murphy bed. I think It looks quite nice and when it's closed the room has enough space to put a small working table in the middle.

For now that's all I have. Mom's comming soon and she will be helping me arrange all (or most of) my stuff, she has quite a small room but it all organized so I ca't wait for her input.
I will show you the progress as I add all the details and store all my stuff.....................

Keep watching...................

A little tour

I just realized that since we moved in I haven't really shared the little snippets of our home.
We still have lots to buy, decorate............but I can show you little bits..............

My kitchen (it's one of my favorites not because I love to cook, just because I love the way it turned out), it's almost finished.
I say it's almost done because we want to get a couple of bar stools, so the boys can eat or do homework at the island, we also want to change our "old" table (still debating if we want a NEW one or if we sand and paint/stain this one, I think we will try this first, not sure what combination though).

HMMMMMMM what else can I share....

Not my favorite but definatly the boys (their computer area), unfortunatly we have tried more than once to buy desks but the ones we found were a little to large and haven't really found any we really like, so for the moment (get ready to cringe) we have a FOLDOUT table OY! (It will be changed when we find something that works better and well looks better)

You can see they love it!

Let see if I turn around from the kitchen we have our family room. When we got the OLD house ready for sale we bought a new sofa (to be put in this room and it fits perfectly).
Yeah that's a BIG TV on the wall, that was Rob's housewarming present (I promised we would get one as soon as we had a bigger house, and guess what I kept my promise and love it too)

See for your self:


As you can see it's still pretty sparse (we are trying to be mindful of what we purchase), it may take us a while but when we get stuff we want to make sure we LOVE it.

For now that's all I am showing (it's just Febuary so we've only been here 4 months).
Hang in there I will have more to share soon.
Promise ...................

WE have SNOW!

The first snow at the new house. It looks so beautiful (mainly because we have no other houses surrounding us) so there was a blanket of white stretching all around the house.
No home improvements I just wanted to share ................

This was 1st thing in the morning (I actually snuck out, in my PJ's)



Do you see those wave at the roofline?

Here's a closeup (isn't that cool)

I guess they formed because it was windy and we have no barrier so the wind blew the snow on the roof like waves...................

This is the backyard (I say about 6 inches) .

I love how snow make everything look clean and fresh and beautiful...................

That's it, the FUN pictures are on the other blog

Promise next time I will have a home improvement or maybe I will share a few pictures of the rooms that are semi-done....................

Later