House list update!

You may recall that I have a lovely list of house goals for 2012? Well, I am pleased to report that I have actually completed three of those goals!

Goal: Sell the futon in the office.
Goal: Find a suitable futon replacement.
Goal: Hang the Dark Side of the Moon picture (this was actually one of last year's goals. Oops.)

The futon in the office, which was inherited from Geoff's mom, was just too big for that room. I don't have a good picture of it in the whole room, but it basically took up the whole wall, and most of the room when it was set up as a bed. So, after much discussion with Geoff, we decided to sell it. I listed it on Craigslist for $100, with the goal of getting at least $75 out of it. When no one bit, I was planning on re-listing it for $75 when the listing expired. Before I had a chance to do that, though, someone offered $75 and wanted to pick it up ASAP! I'll take it!

There was much debating about what we wanted to replace the futon with, because I did like having that second bed as an option. In the end, however, we decided that it was best to put Geoff's huge beanbag chair in there, along with a small bookcase with all his gaming magazines and books.
We only have one bathroom, and our couch (while we still have it) has a pullout bed, so that's an option in addition to the guest room. I don't intend to have that many people staying here anyway, because it's just too small for more than 2 extra people, especially with only 1 bathroom.

Anyway, here's the office with it's new arrangement! Much better. The bookshelf, by the way, is another Craigslist find. It's heavy duty and seriously looks brand new, and it was only $10! Score! Although it is particle board, it's the same color wood as the desk, so it matches and that makes me happy.

Meanwhile, in the den/TV room, we had a big open spot where the bean bag used to be. No good.

I decided to move the two bookshelves (one from Craigslist a while back and one from Geoff's childhood bedroom, painted black to match everything else) into that corner. They have movies and our other DVDs on them, so it only made sense to put them in the corner near the TV.

Next to them is my knitting basket (picked up at Goodwill) and, out of sight is our Wii balance board.


This opens up the areas where the bookshelves used to be for a place to drop Geoff's laptop bag, my banjo and my purse. You can see the before in the link above, and here's the after.

I have a hard time with this area, as it's slightly narrow due to the placement of our couch, and it's also right in front of the garage door, where we come in and out. I'm a little afraid it will become a dumping area, but we do need some place to put those things, and hopefully I can just stay on top of it.

Finally, here's the Dark Side of the Moon poster!

I let Geoff take care of this, because it required measuring and leveling, and it was a big pain, but now it's done! Only took us a year and a half.
So there you go! I love rearranging because it makes everything fresh and new! Plus, we sold something and only bought one thing, so in the end our rearranging profited us $65 (after the $10 bookcase). I'll say that's a good use of our Sunday afternoon.

What do you think?

2012 House List!

Since my 2011 house list was mildly successful (thanks to the encouraging comments I received!) I thought I would try again for 2012!

We are really lucky in that our house was "move-in ready" as they say on House Hunters. The walls were all freshly painted (although we did repaint a few rooms ourselves) and there were no major repairs that needed to be done. Thus, I was able to focus on fun, cosmetic or decorating aspects of the house. Here's what I'm hoping 2012 will bring:

Living room:

• Paint the Freecycle chairs
• Repair the grandfather clock
• Hang the ceiling fan

Kitchen/outside:

• Stain the deck
• Clean up the backyard garden
• Replace or repair the screen door
• Get patio furniture
• Organize the pantry/closet

Den:

• Get new furniture
• Get rid of the Freecycle sectional
• Fix the weather stripping on the garage door!
• Find a nice mat/rug for the garage door (inside)
• Hard wire the cable

Master Bedroom:

• Find something to hang over the bed. (I know what I want now!)
• Refinish/repair the hope chest (This was inherited from Geoff's grandmother, and needs a few minor repairs)
• Replace my Ikea dresser
• Get a ceiling fan and hang it

Office:

• Recycle desktop computer
• Set up Geoff's Ham radio stuff
• Sell futon (it's just too big for that room!)
• Find a suitable futon replacement (I do like having a spare bed in addition to the guest room)

Guest room:

• Paint the bed frame white!
• Replace or repaint dresser (I think I will paint it.)

General house projects:

• Get the carpets cleaned

What do you think? Can I do it all this year?

2011 House List

Back in January I put together a house list of things I wanted to accomplish this year. Now that it's almost the end of the year, I think it's time to post an update.



Living room:

• Hang a wedding picture on the wall
  I hung a canvas print in the family room, and two prints in our living room!
• Hang and decorate with frame shadow boxes
• I did hang these in the bedroom, and there are a few things on them! 
• Get a new rug
• I decided to take the rug we had in there out, for now. I may get a rug at a later time, but I'm still undecided.
• Hang the mirror (a gift that I haven't gotten around to hanging up yet)
• Done!
• Get 2 chairs and get rid of the Freecycle couch
• Done!
• Get a small coffee table 
• Done! You can see my whole living room in this post.

Kitchen:

• Replace switch plate covers 
• I posted about that right here!
• Get a new dining room table 
• This is not feasible right now, based on the space we have so I'm putting this off until later when I decide how to proceed.
• Find a nicer way to store our plastic to-go containers (please tell me I'm not the only one who battles with this!!)
• For the time being, they are going to remain where they are. For now, it works!
• Fix screen door
• Stain deck (OK, this is outside, but it's off the kitchen, so that counts!)
• This didn't happen this year, for a variety of reasons, but I'm hoping for next summer!

Den:

• Get his and her recliners and a couch
• We are actively saving for this!
• Sell/get rid of Freecycle sectional (seeing a pattern here?)
• This will happen after we buy the recliners, of course.
• Hang Dark Side of the Moon poster (it needs to be leveled...it's kinda a pain to hang, but it needs to be done!)
• Decided not to do this, but I have yet to find some place to put it.
• Replace switch plate covers
• Done!
• Fix weather stripping on the door to the garage
• I have no idea why this didn't get done, because it's a simple task.
• Replace door to garage? (I'm not sure if we want to or need to do this, but it has a doggie door that we don't use, so a new one might be nice)
• Since the current one works fine, I'm not stressing about this right now.
• Find better curtains
• Done! By the way, the whole house is curtained now! (A whole curtain post coming eventually)

Master bedroom:

• Hang something above the bed (we have a big, empty wall!)
• No. I don't know what to put there!
• Sand and refinish my bedside table
• Done!
• Build a stand for the TV and DVD player
• Nope.

Office:

• Repair and rehang broken frame
• Nope. I forgot about this until now. Oops.
• Mount speakers on the wall 
• We decided to sell these instead!
• Find a desk with more storage 
• Thank you Craigslist! They even delivered!
• Sell the desk we currently have 
• Again, Craigslist!
• Organize!!!
• I actually try to avoid the office, so no, this didn't happen.

Guest room:

• Find a small mirror or full length mirror to hang
• Not yet.
• Replace or paint dresser
• Not done. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with that.
• Spray paint bed frame white
• I'm determined to do this before the winter is out!

So, I didn't get all the things I want to get done this year. I definitely have my work cut out for me in 2012, but that's OK, because we're planning on being in this house for a long time, so I have time!

What do you think? Do you have goals for the year that you accomplished, or didn't accomplish, as the case may be?


By the way, I'm sponsoring another giveaway, so go here and enter to win a pair of earrings from my Etsy shop!

Book light switch covers

When we first moved into the house I began the process of replacing the light switch covers. For some reason the idea of constantly touching something that someone else used to constantly touch really bothered me! I replaced the covers in our bathroom, bedroom, kitchen and living room with Etsy-bought switch plate covers, but I just couldn't find something that I wanted for our family room.

We spend the most time in our family room, probably because it has the TV in there. The decor in this room has a movie/TV/music theme, so I was constantly on the look-out for something that would go with that theme. I toyed with several Harry Potter themed switch plates, but I didn't like any of them enough to buy, so I left it. That is until I found this on Pinterest. It was perfect!
Rather than using Harry Potter, however, I decided to use my favorite book, The Giver. I bought a copy of the book for $4 used on Amazon.com with my Swagbucks, and prepared to cut up a perfectly good book (yikes).

I chose one of my favorite passages for the single switch plate, and a happy passage discussing happy memories on the double switch plate. I followed the directions in this post, (mostly) and was very pleased with my work!

You can see the words on the other side slightly, and the sealer made it look different than I thought, but I think it looks a little old fashioned, so I like it.


What do you think?

Who doesn't love a good giveaway?? I'm giving away a pair of earrings right here!

Updated House List

Back in January I put together a house list of things I wanted to accomplish this year. Since we're a little more than halfway through the year, I thought it as appropriate to update my list!
Crossed out items, obviously, are finished, but I italicized the items that I'm in the process of, or are coming up soon.


Living room:

• Hang a wedding picture on the wall
• This is in progress because I recently bought an Eversave Seattle deal for a canvas print. I only ordered one, which will go over the mantle, but depending on how that comes out I will move forward with the living room pictures.
• Hang and decorate with frame shadow boxes (I will post about these when I hang them up; they were another Freecycle find!)
• I did hang these in the bedroom, and there are a few things on them! My mom is bringing some things from home that I think I will put on the boxes.
• Get a new rug
• Hang the mirror (a gift that I haven't gotten around to hanging up yet)
• Done! You can see it in this post.
• Get 2 chairs and sell the Freecycle couch (or at least get rid of it, but I'm hoping to sell it!)
• Get a small coffee table 
• Just completed this weekend! I will post about that soon.

Kitchen:

• Replace switch plate covers 
• I don't believe I posted about these but I bought coffee switch plate covers from Etsy, to match the coffee theme in our kitchen.
• Get a new dining room table 
• This is not feasible right now, based on the space we have so I'm putting this off until later when I decide how to proceed.
• Find a nicer way to store our plastic to-go containers (please tell me I'm not the only one who battles with this!!)
• Fix screen door
• Stain deck (OK, this is outside, but it's off the kitchen, so that counts!)
• This may or may not happen this year. It is a lot of work, and since it's already August it might have to wait until next summer.

Den:

• Get his and her recliners and a couch
• We are actively saving for this!
• Sell Freecycle sectional (seeing a pattern here?)
• This will happen after we buy the recliners, of course.
• Hang Dark Side of the Moon poster (it needs to be leveled...it's kinda a pain to hang, but it needs to be done!)
• Debating whether or not I want to do this...it might make the wall too crowded.
• Replace switch plate covers
• I have yet to find something I like!
• Fix weather stripping on the door to the garage
• Replace door to garage? (I'm not sure if we want to or need to do this, but it has a doggie door that we don't use, so a new one might be nice)
• Since the current one works fine, I'm not stressing about this right now.
• Find better curtains
• When my mom comes to visit we're going to go shopping! Curtains are going to be my birthday present this year.

Master bedroom:

• Hang something above the bed (we have a big, empty wall!)
• Sand and refinish my bedside table
• Build a stand for the TV and DVD player

Office:

• Repair and rehang broken frame
• Mount speakers on the wall 
• We decided to sell these instead, to no avail at the moment
• Find a desk with more storage 
• Thank you Craigslist! They even delivered!
• Sell the desk we currently have 
• Again, Craigslist!
• Organize!!!

Guest room:

• Find a small mirror or full length mirror to hang
• Replace or paint dresser
• Spray paint bed frame white
• This is on my list of goals this August. We'll see if it happens.

Small decorations

It's the little things in the house that make me happy. It is one of my goals to replace the switch plate covers in all the rooms in our house. Sadly, it only went as far as my bedroom and bathroom for several months. However, I found a couple more Etsy sites that I liked (I had different ideas for each room, which is why I went with different sellers) and was able to find switch plates I liked for our front room, hall and kitchen!

The front room (living room) and hallway are painted green...it's a difficult color to describe, but we like it a lot. I wanted something classy for those covers, and since I would need to get three, I also knew I'd need them to be something I was really happy with! It took a while, but I finally settled on one that I liked a lot...especially when I got them on the wall!

The picture really doesn't show the colors well, but I was lazy (an on a picture-taking roll) and was taking them at night.
I happen to love our hallway, by the way. I found these frames at Bed Bath and Beyond, and it was $10 for all 4. I know I might have been able to to better at my favorite thrift store, but this was prior to discovering it, so these worked for me!

Since we've combined families, I wanted to have a tribute to both sides, so there are wedding pictures with Geoff and I alone with our families, a picture of my brother and sister-in-law, and one of all 4 "kids" (but not my sister). I really like the way it looks!

Anyway, back to the switch plate covers. In the kitchen we have yellow walls that I love, with a little brick above the stove and red curtains over the sink. We also have a wall with 4 coffee pictures. You know the kind, the ones you buy as a set at Target. Nothing overly exciting, but I do love the look of coffee decor, so I knew that's what I wanted in the kitchen. These just arrived this weekend so I was thrilled to put them up! And they match the walls so well!

It's difficult to see with the walls, but again, I was taking the pictures at night, so bear with it! In the kitchen I replaced two switch plates, but also a plug cover because we had a decorative cover there that I wanted to match everything else.
The best part of all is that I now have 5 decorative covers that are listed on Craigslist! If they don't sell, I will try either Freecycle or just donate them, but I figured I'd try to make a little cash first.

What do you think?

House list

I don't remember where I read about it, but I read somewhere about a blogger who made a list of house improvements that she wanted to make this year. I thought it was such a good idea that I made my own list! Unfortunately, I then completely forgot to post it here. Oops. Well, better late than never!

I divided my list up by room, and tried to make it not too expansive, because even though I have a year to complete them, I don't want to bite off more than I can chew, of course!


Living room:

• Hang a wedding picture on the wall
• Hang and decorate with frame shadow boxes (I will post about these when I hang them up; they were another Freecycle find!)
• Get a new rug
• Hang the mirror (a gift that I haven't gotten around to hanging up yet)
• Get 2 chairs and sell the Freecycle couch (or at least get rid of it, but I'm hoping to sell it!)
• Get a small coffee table (I have my eye on one posted on Freecycle, actually!)

Kitchen:

• Replace switch plate covers (check! Post coming soon on that!)
• Get a new dining room table (Not feasible right now, based on the space we have so I'm putting this off until later)
• Find a nicer way to store our plastic to-go containers (please tell me I'm not the only one who battles with this!!)
• Fix screen door
• Stain deck (OK, this is outside, but it's off the kitchen, so that counts!)

Den:

• Get his and her recliners and a couch
• Sell Freecycle sectional (seeing a pattern here?)
• Hang Dark Side of the Moon poster (it needs to be leveled...it's kinda a pain to hang, but it needs to be done!)
• Replace switch plate covers
• Fix weather stripping on the door to the garage
• Replace door to garage? (I'm not sure if we want to or need to do this, but it has a doggie door that we don't use, so a new one might be nice
• Find better curtains

Master bedroom:

• Hang something above the bed (we have a big, empty wall!)
• Sand and refinish my bedside table
• Build a stand for the TV and DVD player

Office:

• Repair and rehang broken frame
• Mount speakers on the wall (We decided to sell these instead)
• Find a desk with more storage (thank you Craigslist! They even delivered!)
• Sell the desk we currently have (again, Craigslist!)
  
• Organize!!!

Guest room:

• Find a small mirror or full length mirror to hang
• Replace or paint dresser
• Spray paint bed frame white

I will keep you posted as I progress in my goals!

Show us your life guest room!

I typically don't take part in Kelly's Korner's Show us your Life, but I couldn't pass this one up! Our guest room is my favorite of all the rooms we have in the new house so I can't resist showing it off!!
Many regular readers have seen it, but I will post again.

Here is the room from the doorway, when you walk in. I have since added curtains, a different end table and a floor lamp, but my memory card is acting up so I couldn't take a picture of it. Also I'm lazy.

The bed is my husband's childhood bed, and next summer I'm going to take it apart and spray paint it white to match the rest of the room (the new bedside table is white). The bedding was from JC Penney on clearance! We also had a gift card so I ended up spending all of $15 on it! I was quite proud of myself.

This is the wall opposite the bed, the same wall the door is on. The lava lamp was a gift to Geoff from me one of the years we were dating, but it matched so well that I put it in here! The dresser is also Geoff's childhood dresser. It needs a little work (I have since replaced the drawer pulls because some of them were broken) but I haven't gotten to it yet. Eventually!

I found these curtains at Bed Bath and Beyond in the children's section! My mom suggested we hang a white sheer curtain under them, so there is now another curtain there. It looks really nice, so I will hopefully get around to showing you one of these days.

Even though we don't always live in the guest room, I absolutely love it. It was the room that took the longest to paint and work on, but it is totally worth it in the end, I think!

Check out more guest rooms at Kelly's blog!

Curtains!

Curtains are an important part of a house, in my opinion. I don't think I notice if houses don't have curtains, but I definitely noticed that my windows lacked curtains and it was starting to get to me. So yesterday I took my babysitting and birthday money and went curtain shopping!

I didn't buy these, but found them in the pile of things from the old apartment! I think they used to be in the kitchen before I found the current curtains (a coffee theme!) and hung them up. I didn't take a picture of those though.
Anyway! These matched the office walls so well that I couldn't reason spending money on another set of curtains to put in there.

Don't they look nice? We were lucky in that the previous owners left a lot of curtain rods for us! I'm thrilled because that saves me having to buy them myself!

In the guest room I had an idea of what I wanted, but I was having a hard time finding curtains in the colors that I wanted. At least that was the case until I looked at the kids section in Bed Bath and Beyond curtains! Score!

They match so well, and I think they look pretty good too! I was considering getting a sheer curtain as well, but ran out of money this time around. Anyway, at this point I think they look pretty good!

I had a few ideas for the bedroom, but I wasn't sure what I could afford until I actually went shopping. I settled on this for our bedroom, and I'm really happy with it. I wanted to be happy with the master bedroom because I knew those were the ones we'd be looking at most often!

After I got them home and up, I felt like they are missing something...but I'm not sure what. The issue is that the window is so high up from the floor, so I feel like sheer curtains wouldn't look right in there. I think I will ask my mom when she comes to visit next week.

I like our living room curtains, but I would like to replace them at some point. However, with such a big window in the living room and these curtains already here from the townhouse, I guess we will live with them for now!

I got sick of the empty window, so I hung the curtains up last week. After a couple days of looking at them though, I realized that they needed something to hold them back. So, when I was at Bed Bath and Beyond I was looking at tie backs, but then I found these!

I love the way they look, and, best of all, they were on clearance! I was so excited that I bought two sets of them because they were only $4.99 each! So why not?

What do you think about my new curtains? Are you sick of house decorating updates yet??

Making it mine

One of the first things I did when we bought the house was go around and replace (most of) the switch plates and plug plates. I'm not sure why, but it bothers me to think about someone else touching the switch plates in my house. I don't know why because it never bothered me in the townhouse, but that could be because I knew I was renting it. This one is ours.

Anyway, I was browsing Etsy recently and came across this shop! I was very excited, especially with the price! I immediately picked out switch plates for the bathroom and our bedroom, three of the rooms we use the most.

I bought two plates for the bathroom, since there are switches next to each door, the one from the hallway and the one leading into our bedroom.
Here is what I picked!

As a reminder, this is what the shower curtain looks like in our bathroom:

I just LOVE how the motifs are similar and the colors are almost identical! As a side note, I would like to paint the bathroom, probably that yummy red-orange color of the tree, but for now I'm happy with the beige the previous owners left it.

Our bedroom had a decorative switch plate that just didn't go with our decor.

Which, as a reminder, looks like this:

I knew I'd never find a switch plate that matched the lovely teal that is on 3 of the 4 walls in our room, so I went with the dark brown. I love it!

I think it matches very well, it's simple, and the contrast with the teal wall makes it stand out all the more! One thing that is bothering me, however, is the fact that the switches are ivory and the design is white...but that will be a honey do project for the near future! It's easy enough to fix anyway.

What do you think?

Storage solutions

Ahh, peace and quiet. It's something we haven't had much of in the past 3 months or so, since we decided we were going to buy a house. But (most of) the boxes are unpacked, the visitors are gone (for now!) and it's just Geoff and I. Well, tonight it's just me, but usually it's just Geoff and I!
Of course, all these little things, along with a kitty with raging conjunctivitis who is forced to wear the cone of shame, I've just not gotten around to blogging because, at the end of the day, I just want to relax!
Kind of like this:

Without the cone, of course. Poor thing, I'm not sure which is more irritating to her, the (presumably) itchy eye, or the collar that prevents her from doing pretty much everything and causes Hermione to hiss at her! Poor thing.

Anyway, I recently had two big boxes of stuff in my kitchen. Stuff we needed, but stuff we didn't have the room to store! See, we had an awesome island in the middle of the other kitchen, so our appliances and pots and pans just expanded to fill the space. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my new kitchen, but it has a little less storage, so it's taking a little getting used to. Those two boxes were stressing me out and I didn't know what to do with them!
Well, a little repurposing (read: stealing) of a cart from Geoff's office helped store our plastic storage containers!

I'm bound and determined to keep these in order this time around. Aren't we all?

That took care of our plastic storage, but not the few larger, awkward (and needed) appliances! I'm talking a blender, food processor and all it's attachments, for example. This time it was Craigslist to the rescue!

This microwave cart is perfect for this corner of our kitchen. It's in great shape and was only $40. I may later replace the hardware with something a little more to my taste, but for now I'm not worried. Although, you may notice that there is no microwave on said microwave cart. We're working on it!
In case you were wondering, living without a microwave is...interesting. It makes reheating take a little longer, but if you have some patience, mashed potatoes reheated on the stove...

or chicken heated in the stove really isn't that bad!

One of the things I love about most about my kitchen is the sink! We went from having a double sink to having just one, and I have to say, it's helped me keep the kitchen much cleaner. When the sink fills up, it's time to load the dishwasher, and most of the stuff fits into the dishwasher in one load!

This was before dinner, so it's not as clean at the moment. But the dishwasher is running, and it was clean for a bit, which made me happy!

Home, sweet home!

Our last guest left on Sunday, so it's (finally) been just Geoff and I in the new house! While I loved having my dad and Geoff's best friend here, I'm also loving getting used to the house on my own.

We are, for the most part, unpacked. Some rooms look better than others. Our bedroom is one that is unpacked and lived-in already! With the exception of a box of stuff and those bags of clothes in the corner (which are going to be donated), this room is ready!
For those of you (if there were any) who questioned our brown and teal room, rest assured, there was a reason for those colors!

We found these at Bed, Bath and Beyond, and used my babysitting money to buy them. I wanted something new and different for the bedroom, but Geoff wasn't so sure. When we both found and agreed on these I knew there was hope for color!

Our guest room was the first one I was able to put together! As soon as the bed was in there I made it, put a lamp on the bed side table (that one won't stay, but I needed something!) and put Geoff's childhood dresser in there as well.

I absolutely love my guest room. I love the way everything matches, and how good it looks. It has even already had a guest; my dad slept there while he was here. He didn't seem to mind the color scheme.

Geoff has adapted to his orange office very well. It feels a little small with the desk and a futon in there, but I do like the layout and, of course, the orange! Life's too short for beige.

Lest you think all our rooms are in good shape, let me set you straight!

The front room (or living room) still has boxes in it that I haven't had the patience to go through, yet. It doesn't even have pictures hung up, but we will get there. Our kitchen also has a couple boxes, but I am working on finding extra storage for our plastic reusable containers, which I am determined to keep organized this time!

For a week into living here, I think we're in good shape, what do you think?

I've been a little busy...

I just wanted to show you a few of the things that Geoff and I did this weekend.

Taping...

painting,

touching up...

taping some more,

and nailing. Among other things.

However, I'm happy to say that after three days of hard work we have two of our three rooms painted! My goal was always to get the master bedroom, guest bedroom and office painted before moving in, and we have done more than half of that!

I needed a painting and touch-up break, so we are spending tonight packing and relaxing before heading out to the house to paint the office tomorrow. The Comcast man is coming to install our cable and internet, so I will touch up the guest room and when Geoff gets there we will start on the office! The office is simple...all one color and nothing complicated so I'm confident it won't take long.

My dad arrives on Friday, and moving day is Saturday! Our first night in the new house will be Saturday night as long as everything goes as planned!