Changing it up!

After the holidays, I pulled down all of the Christmas decorations and left everything bare for a little while. Obviously, given my decorating ADD, that didn't last all too long. The buffet in the dining room felt huge and empty with nothing on the surface. I wanted to create a little tabletop vignette that didn't feel season-specific, and that I could stick with for a while. Here's what I put together:



There are some wintry hints, but nothing too literal, since I want to be able to leave it alone for a while.



That is one of my favorite photos of me and B, in a frame that I fell in looove with at TJ Maxx. (Oh, the Maxx. How I love and loathe you all at the same time.) The print in the back was my mother's from ages ago. I've always liked it, and the colors are almost exactly the same as in the area rug under the dining table. That silver vase stuck around after Christmas, when it was stuffed with sparkly stuff, and I added some texture with those balls in a vase.

On the other end of the buffet are some apothecary jars, which I love even when they're empty:



I added some cinammon sticks, but this could easily be switched up and anything could be added... candy hearts for Valentine's Day, leafy sprigs and wildflowers if the two billion feet of snow ever melt this spring... anything you want.

The prints in the frame are one of my favorite pieces I own. I made them years ago. They're polaroid emulsion transfers, made from old slides. The one on top is of my mom in the 70s, at Niagara Falls. She has enormous super sweet glasses on in it. (Love ya, Mums!)



I'm really happy with this general setup, so maybe my design ADD won't rear its ugly head and everything will stay in one place for a while... ha ha, yeah right. :)



OH, I also don't think that I ever drew proper attention to the painting hanging to the right of the buffet. B and I got it at an antiques store a couple of months ago... it's an old portrait of a Saint Bernard! I know that probably makes us like crazy dog owning people or whatever, but we don't care. We both genuinely liked the painting and the frame is gorgeous walnut. It's kitschy and kind of weird, and we like it that way.


Over on the other side of the house, I switched up the shelves above the television in the living room (again). After the Christmas stockings were down, they just looked pretty bare. So I decided to shop around the house and see what I already owned that I could put up there. We still have boxes of things that haven't been unpacked, so I dug around and had actually forgotten about some stuff!



Those three ceramic vases I picked up for $1 each, I think. They're each a different texture and they look exactly like the Ikea ones that I've seen pop up around some design magazines.



In "shopping my house" and making use of what I already have, I found a stash of postcards that I collected while living in London. I spent a lot of time at different museums and galleries in the city (the Tate Modern and National Gallery were my favorites) and I'd buy a few postcards from the gift shops here and there. The one in the frame above is of a Gilbert & George installation. Amazing stuff. I have a bunch of different cards, so it will be fun to switch them out from time to time.



I also dug out this woodblock painting that I bought a number of years ago from a local artist in Portsmouth. The colors are so vibrant, it just makes me happy.



So there you have it. Everything un-Christmas-ified, and probably staying put for a while. Did anyone else feel the itch to ditch their holiday stuff pronto?


In other news, we've been getting dumped on with snowstorm after snowstorm around here. Lucy is loving it, of course, but I don't know how much more I can take! Here she is just soaking it up during one of the (many) storms last week:



(Oh, and see that tiny sliver of reddish wood near the fence back there? That's the retaining wall that we built this summer. It's about 2 1/2 to 3 feet high, and you can barely see it at all... When is spring, again?)

Watching grass grow

Work on the house has slowed down quite a bit since our house was afflicted with the plague. Okay, so it's just bronchitis. But it feels like the Black Death sometimes.

Anyway, the grass seed we planted a few weeks back over the spot where the shed was has finally sprouted. It's coming in pretty well!




It's been so hot and dry that we didn't think anything would grow at all. So I'm definitely pleasantly surprised.

Since we've all been feeling lousy around here, most of the big projects are at a bit of a standstill. There's a stack of tiles in the mudroom just waiting to finish off the floor, for example. We have managed to get a lot of yard work done, found perfect matching nightstands for the bedroom, and picked up some nice accessories to style the living and dining rooms. I'll share those pics soon. Things are coming together!

Also, Miss Lucy turned one year old. And yes, this happened:


She actually didn't hate wearing it! I swear.

For Lucy's big girl birthday present, we got her the biggest bone we could find. It's called a "mammoth bone", though I'm mostly sure that it didn't come from a Woolly Mammoth. I can't be positive, though.

Welcome to Lucy's House!

We bought our first house!!

It's a 1920, 2-story bungalow in seacoast Dover, New Hampshire -- our first real home. Coming from countless apartments in various towns for years, we're excited to be planting some permanent roots. And with our 95-pound (and still growing!) Saint Bernard puppy Lucy, we needed to give her some major room to roam.

In apartments, we've never had the freedom to paint, nevermind renovate, and have had to just live with whatever the place is like, regardless of style or function. But no more! Now, as makers of our own destinies, we are free to transform our 1,500 square foot "character home" into what ever we want. No more living with ugly paint colors, unusable kitchen layouts, dingy floors, and old bathroom fixtures!

I thought I would create this blog to document our struggles and (hopefully) victories when it comes to decorating and remodeling our very first home on a limited budget.

Here is our (ambitious) game plan for the house:

INTERIOR:
-Strip wallpaper throughout the house and paint -- the old, dingy wallpaper is a theme that runs through most of the house and hasn't been changed in probably 50 years. After the paper is off, we'll likely have to do lots of patching, sanding, priming, and finally painting.

-Major kitchen renovation -- this will be a major investment and likely the biggest project that we take on. Our plan involves knocking down the wall between the kitchen and dining room, opening it up into one big space. Then we'll add a breakfast bar, new cabinets, countertops, lighting, and hardwood floors, and install a dishwasher (!!!), since the kitchen currently doesn't have one.

-Reroute washer hookup -- the washing machine is currently hooked up in the basement, but the dryer hookup is in the mudroom off of the kitchen. Don't ask me why! We plan on redirecting the plumbing so that the washer can claim its rightful place in the first floor mudroom.

-Refinish upstairs hardwood floors -- the three upstairs bedrooms have original hardwood floors, but they've seen better days. All they need is some refinishing and they'll shine again.

-Add a half bathroom -- our second biggest renovation would involve adding a half bathroom on the first floor. By expanding the kitchen/dining area, there will be a perfect spot left over to add the bathroom. The only bathroom is currently on the second floor, so adding a half bath will increase the home's value and be super convenient!

EXTERIOR:
-Fence in the backyard -- this is priority #1. Lucy needs a safe place to roam, bark, and eat sticks. We plan on completing the backyard fencing before we even move in our furniture. Plus, we'll be adding a kiddie pool in a nice shady spot for Lucy to cool down this summer, so stay tuned for that.

-Replace patio -- the current patio is poured concrete, and it's in rough shape. Our plan is to build a wooden platform deck over the existing concrete slab. Nothing too big, so we can maximize the green space, but big enough to fit a table and chairs and a grill.

-Remove or re-purpose oversized shed -- the existing backyard shed is about twice the size of our detached garage. It's a monster! One idea is to remove it completely to free up some more yard space. The other idea is to open it up into a covered patio space.


This "laundry list" is just the start of our plans, and I'm sure that things will change once we get in and start living in the house. It's a huge amount of work to take on, but we plan on picking away at everything one piece at a time, and keeping this blog up to date while we do it!