one year in Michigan House

Well, we've done it.

We've hit a first time milestone in the course of our marriage.

we have now lived in the same place for a whole year!

Amazing.

Let's review what we have done in the home in that year, shall we?

We have:

• painted the upstairs bathrooms, master bedroom, loft, and the laundry room.


• begun to do a little bit of organizing.


• started to put a yard in (it has a long way to go). To see where we are at right now visit here and here.


• done a little bit of trimwork.

This is a good start.

Here are my goals for the next year:

• Paint some more. I want to paint the two guest bedrooms this year, and maybe the front room.


• Accessorize. My walls are still wide open. I have a whole shelf in one of the bedroom closets full of framed art...but most of it is small scale and of a style that I will only be using it in the two guest bedrooms as they are finished. So, I need to force myself to spend some of my monthly household budget on stuff that finishes a room. It's hard though. I love accessories...but I *absolutely adore* the high-impact-low-cost paint projects. I'm addicted. I just have to keep telling myself "you can't take the paint on the walls with you when you move next, only the stuff that is not permanently attached".

• Flesh out the Yard. We got the bulk of a basic yard put in this year, but in the next year I want to make it pretty.

Alrighty, I will check back to this post in one year and we'll see how many of the goals we meet.

Grosgrain

Have you ever heard of the blog Grosgrain?

It's such a neat concept.
The lady who created it creates (as in designs and sews, amazingly talented) outfits and then gives them away! Can you believe that? I don't know how she can part with this stuff, especially some of her children costumes, they are exquisite.

At any rate, I'm entering for a chance on this fun Christmasy dress. I love it.

Closet Makeover

So, you know the point that you get to where you walk into your closet, scrutinize every piece of clothing you own, and say to yourself "I just don't want to wear any of these again"?

Well, I had just gotten to that point when a good friend of ours asked me "so I have a couple bags of clothes that don't fit anymore and are destined for goodwill, do you want them?".

Ummm, let me think about that. YES PLEASE.

So, a "few" bags turned out to be six.
And there were a lot of really, really awesome clothes that fit me perfectly.
Gosh that's cool.

Well, this lovely turn of events brought a focus on the closet, and I decided that our closet needed a bit of organizational help.

So, after a trip to IKEA, the organizational Mecca, we were ready to at least start the project (because, can you ever really be done organizing?).

First, I took out everything I didn't want in the closet.
Then I put up some shelves underneath my hanging items so I could put pants where I can reach them easily. I think one of the reasons the high shelf got so messy was because I am short and it is hard to reach all the stuff. To get stuff up there I sometimes had to resort to tossing.


While at IKEA we found some neat holders for another problem area, Curt's ironing station.


Pause: when you are mounting anything on a wall you need this tool.

It is a stud finder.
But it's not actually its stud finding ability that I value most, but its feature of telling you when you are near or over electrical wires. I can put an anchor in drywall not backed by a stud, but I can cause some serious damage that is dangerous/hard to fix if I drill through a wire.
Get one. It's $20.

End Pause.

So, using the glorious, no-word IKEA directions, I knew that I needed to mount a metal plate to the wall.


Kind of annoying that no IKEA item comes with its own screws, but I always have a few packs of screws/drywall anchors on hand, so no biggie.


My tool selection for this job.

Drill, drill bits, hammer, screws, anchors, stud finder.

I decided where I wanted the iron holder to be and found that there were no studs behind it. I decided that two drywall anchors would hold the weight needed.

As you can see I also mounted a small basket to stick the spray starch in.

So let's remember the before...

...and here is the current view of my side of the closet:

{Wowsa, that is sure some reflective stuff on my favorite CAT hat, huh?}

Before, Curt's side...


...and after:

Leaving a whole entire empty top shelf exposed.
I think I might get a bunch of baskets with labels to fill this space, but I kind of like how the white upper walls reflect the light, it is so much brighter now.

So, what do you think?

iphones are the bomb

Not that I have one.
Or am planning on getting one.
But Dad and Nina each have gotten one and guess what they send me?

*LOVE*

Practically a new color every month...

Gosh it's fun to play with my hair.


This week I went from this...

...to this (don't freak out, this is with the stripping solution still in my hair getting the brown out)...

This is the stripped hair, isn't it cool? I would have kept it till Halloween, but I did this last weekend and a full week of hair looking like this is just not something I can do when I like to think of myself as professional.

...and this is the end result...
I've never been a red head before. I like it a lot.

Fall Decor

So, I ran across this post on waxing fall leaves the other day and thought to myself, self, that looks like a lot of fun.
And I sure love the fall colors, so bringing them inside is a clever and (nearly) free decor idea.

Step 1) Gather leaves

I'm sure I have some sort of compulsive disorder. I wiped off the leaves and then sorted by color/coolness.

Step 2) you need some wax.
Yeah, I didn't know where to get it either.
The post said to get wax from the canning area of your local grocery store.
Well, I was seriously unsure if my local grocery store had a canning section.
Turns out it did.

It came in this little box. $2.99, not bad.
There were 4 blocks in the box. I melted 3, should have done only 2.

Step 3) Melt in disposable pan on stove.

Step 4) dip leaf into melted wax.

I shook it off a little after, but don't get too crazy or you will have little droplets of wax to clean off in the most unlikely places. Not that I speak from experience or anything.

Step 5) put on wax paper.
Shoot, no wax paper.
Improvise....yes. Enter tin foil. Works like a charm.

Spiffy leaves, huh?

Step 6) sprinkle at random throughout the house.

I made my dining light into a leaf mobile, sweet.



Step 7) look at leaves inside, get happy. Look at leaves outside, get happy.

may I present.....FALL LEAVES 2009

As much as Michigan and I do not get along, I have to admit that the fall colors are absolutely glorious.

Don't you agree?

Dressers Redo: Part III

Parts I and II of this series can be found here and here.

I'm wanting to give a distressed look to all of these pieces, so wherever the sanding took the finish off of the wood...

...is where I want to use this...

...to cover it up.

This will insure that I get some brown peaking through the final paint color when I lightly sand the finish.

I put some brown paint wherever there was an edge.

And then I primed over it.

And that is the end of Part III.

Foliage

While we are talking about plants in the yard, let me introduce you to our new beauty.

I love hydrangeas, and this one should grow into a large bush...

...the better to hide the un-aesthetically-pleasing transformer box which sits to one side of the front yard.


And while we're talking about things that I love...

...how cool is the variety of plant life at our back property line?

Beautiful, no?

It makes me happy that we chose this lot.

Trees!

We came home the other night and found some unfamiliar shapes in the darkness of our yard.
The builder had come and planted two {very large} trees!

Look at how puny Curt is compared to these things.
They are no twigs stuck in the dirt.

I'm a tree nut, so I was so excited to see them.

Here's tree #1 in the daylight.

And both trees . This is just awesome.
The yard looks so much better with some vertical vegetation.