Santa came early!

Yes! Santa paid us a little visit a couple of days early, when he (and by "he", I really mean two delivery men from Home Depot) came and dropped off our brand new washer and dryer!!

Branden's father generously gifted the pair to us for Christmas. We picked them out a few weeks back and now they're finally here!





Let me explain my excitement. I haven't had a washer and dryer in my house (that I didn't have to stick coins in to operate) since I lived with my parents many years ago. I am beyond excited to not have to haul my laundry around and kiss the laundromat goodbye forever!! Now I really feel like a real grown-up with my own house.

We've got the washer downstairs in the still-under-construction new laundry room that we're building. We had a plumber in last week to get the pipes all set up and we had that new utility sink installed that you can see in the background of the photo above. Most of that room has been framed now, so once we get drywall up we'll get an electrician in to install an outlet for the dryer. For now, the dryer will get hooked up in the mudroom upstairs where a dryer hookup already is. Whew.

The oven is preheating and I've got Christmas cookies to bake. I'm looking forward to family, food, presents, and all other festivities coming our way over the next few days. Also laundry. I plan on washing everything I was too lazy and/or cheap to wash before (living room curtains, I'm looking at you). I hope everyone has a wonderful, warm, and very merry holiday!

Lucy does too!

Tree trimming details!

I know I've been a little quiet around the blog lately... I've been busy with parties, shopping, gift wrapping, and general holiday craziness. You know how it goes!

I did want to share some pictures of our lovely Christmas tree. For the last few years I've wanted to do a tree in those fun Dr. Seuss-esque colors. I always see ornaments in those bright and happy non-traditional colors: hot pink, lime green, turquoise, purple... and I've always wanted to use those colors for my own tree. So this year I picked up some cheap-o ornaments from Tar-jay (yeah, I said Tar-jay, deal with it) and went for it. And it looks so pretty! The colors makes me seriously happy.





Way up at the top of that last picture you can see our Lucy dog ornament. The dog has floppy ears and one patch over its eye, just like her. We saw it last year (back when she was just a teeny baby only a few months old!) and couldn't pass it up. I know it makes us those people. But whatevs. We love our pooch.

And cause I've got crazy Christmas fever, I got some holiday throw pillows to swap out for the couch. Does anyone else have seasonal pillows? Or is that a seriously kind of insane thing to do?



I couldn't resist the lime green and polka dots! So very merry.

And here's one more peek at the tree, all lit up at night and stuffed with presents underneath:



(Yup, it's December 15th and all my presents are wrapped and nestled under the tree! Woo!)

Oh, and after looking at it for a while, Branden and I both agreed that the outside of the house needed more lights. :) So he climbed out on the porch roof to string a few strands above the second floor and we stuck candle lights in the upstairs windows (the third one is hiding behind the porch roof). (I'd like to also mention that it was at night, while it was about 18 degrees out with 30 mph winds, that he decided it was time to climb onto the roof...)



And might I also mention that we, without a doubt, have the best lights in our neighborhood. Eat it, neighbors! (That's what the holidays are about it, isn't it?)

More Christmas cheer!

When I said I was like a crazy Christmas fairy lately, I wasn't kidding. I've been buzzing around the house putting little sparkly things here and there.

Here's the new buffet table in the dining room, all decked out for the holidays!



I went for metallics in mostly gold and silver, with some touches of green and red.



Love that reindeer! I filled the apothecary jar and glass vase from the living room with sparkly ornaments, sprinkled mini ornaments around the votive candles, picked up two cheap-o metallic candle holders, and a silver vase at Homegoods. Then I shoved in some glittery branches with beads and crystals on them from Michaels. Easy peasy.





The dining table got a new centerpiece, too.



We picked up a holiday tablecloth. I used the same wicker charger from the fall centerpiece and threw on a big candle, wreath with berries on it, and topped it off with some red bead garland. Then I popped some red tapers into the candlesticks and called it a day!



I'll post pictures of our tree next, so stay tuned! With the lights outside done, stockings out, and tree up we are officially ready for Christmas!

The faux-mantle, holiday style

Soo, remember when I showed how we hung shelves above our tv to mimic a mantle? That was mostly spurred by the terrible realization (in October) that because our house doesn't have a fireplace, come Christmastime we wouldn't have anywhere to hang our stockings! (BTW, I don't really know how our 90+ year old house doesn't have a fireplace, but whatevvvvs.)

I've been the crazy Christmas fairy the last few days, adding little decorations and dashes of holiday cheer throughout the house. I made some quick changes to the "mantle", adding some snowflakes, jars of ornaments, and of course our stockings!





You know my love of sticking stuff in glass containers...



Works every time. Plus sparkly ornaments make the easiest prettiest decorations!





We decorated those stockings a couple of Christmases ago and they've held up well. I meant to embellish Lucy's last year but didn't get around to it. I wanted to make a felt goose to put on it (since that's her nickname... Goose, Lucy Goose, Goosey, Gooseinator... she's smart and responds to all of them) but then forgot about it. Maybe this year!



So there you have it. Nothing too crazy, but a little added holiday sparkle. It might be a fake mantle, but it holds our stockings. Even the dog's. And someday we'll buy another house with 1,481 fireplaces in it to make up for this one. :)

Oh, and we put the Christmas tree up last night, so I'll post pictures of that in the next day or two!!

Decking our halls!

We are transitioning into full Christmas mode around here. It's the first Christmas in our own house and you know we're doing it up big time. I've been decorating the shelves in the living room and the buffet in the dining room, and will post pictures of those soon.

In the meantime, we're the first house in the neighborhood to be all done up, Santa style...



1,800 lights!

We got a few of those industrial spools and ended up using about 450 feet of lights. That's a lot of Christmas cheer. :) (Oh, and please ignore that extra fence panel that hasn't found its way to the garage yet. We're lazy, but at least in the meantime the window would be safe from a zombie attack.)





Branden spent a long time measuring and meticulously planning how the lights would be strung. I think he might be fulfilling some kind of childhood dream to be the Clark Griswold of the neighborhood.

After looking at lots of tacky, busy wreaths, we opted for the simple and classic approach. Pine wreath with a big red bow. Nothing says Christmastime quite like that.



We're having so much decking the halls around here. We've agreed to restrain ourselves and not put up the tree until December 1st though, so we'll be busy trimming our tree on Wednesday for sure. Happy start of the holidays!!

What a weekend!

We got so much accomplished this weekend, it feels so good! Most importantly, my 5-month long quest for a buffet table for the dining room has FINALLY come to an end!!!

After searching endless antique stores, furniture stores, and consignment shops within a 1-2 hour drive from here, plus scouring Craigslist every day, I was ready to give up on ever finding the right piece (at the right price). Then today we took a last-ditch drive down to an antique store in Newburyport, and we found exactly what I had been looking for at an amazing price!



It's seriously exactly what I've been envisioning. And the woodwork is beautiful.



From researching the manufacturer's plaque inside one of the (dovetailed!) drawers it's from anywhere between 1917 and 1959. My guess is 1940s. (Those things on top won't be staying--I threw them on top quickly just to get an idea. I'm also thinking of hanging that mirror above it, but before I commit to mega-holes in the wall I'm going to keep it propped up for a day or two...)



The dining room is so much more pulled together. But most importantly we gained tons of storage space, which was the biggest reason I've been looking for a piece like this. With nowhere to store things, we would end up dumping stuff in the corner of the room. And it was driving me completely nuts. Like, borderline homicidal. So now I can breathe easier. :)

In other weekend work, I painted the beadboard and almost all of the trim in the bathroom. It took a few coats and was pretty time consuming, but it's almost finished now. So once that's done (I only have a couple of sections left around the door) I'll be able to post some complete before and after photos!

We also started tackling the next enormous project (did you really think we'd rest after the bathroom??) and are finishing part of the basement. It's a huge deal! We have no easy place to put a washer and dryer in the house, so after discussing many options, Branden came up with the idea of finishing off half of the basement to make into a laundry room. The floor is already underway!

This weekend I also picked up a new chair for the computer desk in the living room. Having the giant office chair on wheels had always driven me crazy. I've been searching everywhere for a parsons chair for here for a long time (almost as long as the buffet table, but not quite!), because I knew the smaller footprint would help this corner feel less bulky. They go for $80-$100 everywhere, which is just too much for me to justify paying for one faux-leather chair. So I was psyched when I found this guy for less than $40!



It takes up so much less space, is the perfect height, and it's nice and comfy too. Also, Branden is happy to see his favorite Picasso finally find a home. :)



In other news, I'm getting geared up for Thanksgiving, and I'm going to try my hand at piping icing for the first time. We'll see how that goes!

Also, these guys have been feasting early on my front porch pumpkins. Lucy hates them more than anything.

No escaping!

Branden and I finally got the gate to the backyard installed which means that it is finally entirely closed in and there is no escape!

This job was a big pain in the butt. More so than the rest of the fence. Granted, I didn't have to actually physically do anything when the rest was installed, so I'm really just saying it was a pain in the butt because I had to hold and lift heavy stuff this time. :)

Anyway, it really wasn't that hard of a job, I guess, it was just cold out and I'm really bad at holding heavy things. Seriously, I'm probably the worst mover ever. I hate carrying things. I would not have made a good Amazonian. Or donkey.



Despite my deficiencies, it came out well! We bought two latches (one for the top and one for the bottom) so we just need to screw those in and it will be completely Lucy-proof. :) From the front it just looks like a continuous length of fence (we're not putting a handle on the outside) so you can't see where the gate is.

Lucy has been running around like a crazy beast out back. She's so happy to have room to spread out.




Around the house I've been switching up some little bits of decor to make things feel a little more like Thanksgiving and to gear up for the real exciting time of year... Christmas! Yup, get ready.

I threw together this harvest-y centerpiece for the dining room table:



(Lucy must love it because she's pretty much melting over there in the background. This is why I call her The Puddle.) The woven disc I got at Target for around $1.50, and the candlesticks were from Goodwill for 50 cents each. The gourds I had gotten earlier for a buck or two I think. The whole thing was super cheap. And together it reminds me of a flattened cornucopia. In a good way.

I also switched up the telephone table to make it a little less Halloween-ish and more late-fall-early-winter-ish. (These are real words.)





I love this apothecary jar. I feel kind of like a scientist with my specimens, but I believe that whatever you put in a glass jar instantly becomes lovely. I just picked up a branch with some berries on it while on one of my walks with Lucy. Then I snipped some dying dried hydrangeas from one of our bushes in the front yard. I stuck some cinnamon sticks at the bottom, and voila! A beautiful little November time capsule.

Next to that I also filled a glass hurricane with some lovely glittery apples:



I've already started planning out my holiday decorations so it won't stay like this for long! Seriously, Branden developed his plans for the exterior lights weeks ago and is planning on purchasing multiple spools of lights to string the day after Thanksgiving. We're crazy over here, I know. But it's our first Christmas in a real home... you really can't blame us for wanting to get into the spirit early!

Slow... but steady, at least?

I know, I know, it's been almost two weeks since my last update. I've been a rotten blogger! I haven't updated because there's really hasn't been too much to report.

Since we finished all of the major renovation in the bathroom (walls, ceiling, tile, paint) we're down to just the annoying little details, which is why we haven't been quite as gung-ho to "git 'er done" as we were at the start. We're stuck with tedious jobs like putting up trim (Branden's the math whiz so that is allll on him, thank you), painting the endless little nooks in the beadboard, and painting all the trim throughout the room (and there's a lot of it).

That said, on to what we have done...

We installed a snazzy new light fixture:



It's chrome with white details. I just love the shape of it... the mount looks almost like a shower faucet!

I threw together some super cheap art (coast about $13 total, I think) for the walls:



This consisted of buy-one-get-one-free frames with mats, downloading free images from 19th century zoology books, and making prints at wal-mart for a few cents each. Yup, I said super cheap and I wasn't kidding.

We've got most of the trim up around the room, but you can see where we skipped over the particularly challenging cuts in the image above... don't judge. We'll get to it. But it makes our brains hurt.

So here's the room as it stands now.





I have a really hard time capturing this color, but it's a hint more blue and brighter than it looks here. I'm too lazy to correct these in Photoshop before I post them, so take my word for it. :)

We've got unfinished trim, beadboard to paint, and the shower tiles still need a good amount of grout scrubbed off of them:



Like I said, don't judge. We'll get there!

In the home stretch

Renovating a bathroom is messy.



Like, really messy.



It would've been awesome to have a second bathroom to use while we did this work, but alas. No such luck in our old house. (We have plans to add a half bath downstairs when we renovate the kitchen... next project!) Everything is cleaned up now and we're able to shower in our own house again...

The renovation has gone really well. We got all of the big stuff done--drywall, new ceiling, tile, paint--in our long four day weekend. We're working on buffing the tiles to remove the grout haze (from what we've read, it takes 1-2 weeks for it to come off completely) and still have to put up the ceiling trim and paint the bead board. We also got a lovely new light fixture that will be going up tomorrow.

Here's the bathroom after we primed the ceiling and that horrible yellow paint on the walls.



We ran into a minor problem when it came time to put color on the walls. We bought our paint in a semi-gloss finish, and oh man, it looked horrendous. It was way too shiny and the brush strokes were super visible.



See how terrible? Yikes a bikes.

Side note, though, see that lovely smooth ceiling up there? Branden did a great job putting it up. It's so much nicer than the gross panels that were up there before.

So, another trip to Home Depot and we got the same color in an eggshell finish. By the way, yes, the cashiers do know us and ask how our projects are coming along... it's sad.



Sooo much better!

Once the trim is up and painted I'll do a full reveal of the before and after. Until then, I'll leave you with another shower tile preview, all grouted!