New Dining Room

I did it, sorta.
I turned my living room into dining room! I am so thrilled. Here's where we started

This is where I am now

There is an extra desk hiding in the corner waiting to move back into my parents house and I still intend to choose a more rich and dining room-ish color paint. I also need to put in a chandelier. I feel like a chandelier is what makes a dining room. We have NO IDEA how to wire a box for a light on the ceiling, but we will learn!
I was nervous about this transformation. I wasn't sure the living room would lend itself to any other purpose, but now that it is done, I feel like it was always meant to be!

What I Wore Wednesday!

So excited for my first time link to Lindsey at thepleatedpoppy.com
I am doing this for the same reason she started it! My husband has to look at me each day and I am starting to feel bad for him. This is my attempt to start making an effort!!! I will warn you, my camera and lighting is terrible. I will work on improving that for next week!

So, here is goes

Sunday

Holiday decorating class at the Pottery Barn then running errands with my sister

Sweater- Victoria's Secret

Red Top- Gap

Jeans- Gap 

Shoes- Herbergers

Necklace- Lia Sophia

Terrible photography- ME

Later Sunday

Staining the deck while listening to the Vikings game

Vikings T-shirt- Walmart

Comfy gray pants- Target

Time to find a new place to take my pic's! Weird yellow background!

Monday

Work

Dark Purple Faux Wrap T-shirt- Victoria's Secret

Black Tank- Lillian's

Jeans- Gap

Dark Purple Boots- Twig from Enchanted Tree House

One more shot of the boots cause they are so different

Tuesday

Sweater AND jeans- Gap

Red Flats- Herbergers

Necklace- Lia Sophia

Wednesday

Work

Purple Sweater- New York and Co.

Jeans- Gap (finally found a cut that fits, now most of my jeans are the same)

Flats- Herberger's

Black Pearl Necklace- Macy's (gift from my mother in law)

Later that day...

When I actually went to work and realized it was cold... and I would be meeting a friend for dinner right afterward...

I added a Jacket by Rampage which was handed down to me by my aunts friends daughter... hmm...)

and a belt from express.

What I learned this week was that I STILL am not taking the time to put together something I feel good about and that even though I feel that I have many good pieces, I am not putting the thought that I would like, into making a real outfit of it. Can't wait to try again next week!!!

Blogs!

I am SO thankful to the other blogs I read!

Little by little my house is improving. NOT FAST! I do get excited with each step and I love doing the work, but I know it is not as great as I want it to be.

My saving grace has got to be each and every one of the blogs I read on a regular basis. I can see the beauty in everything these ladies can do (many without their husbands) and I start to see hope in what starts to seem like a hopeless journey! I work hard on my house, but having chosen a home that "needs work" can mean that things will still be in need of work. Even when a great project has just finished, it feels like there is no end in site.
At the end of the day, looking at the projects and "afters" that everyone else has is a little bit of hope!!!

Paint my dining room!

I have decided to turn my living room into a dining room! I need help choosing a paint color!

Currently it looks like this

I plan to use this table (I bought 2 more chairs to go on either end)

I bought this rug, which I have already received and LOVE!!!
  

 My house is very shaded in the summer by large trees so I don't get a great deal of sunlight. I plan to wire in a chandelier (once I learn how!!!) to add a lot of light.

Please leave a comment and suggest a paint color!

Living Room/Porch Remodel

The best thing we have done for our house so far would for sure be to remodel the Living Room and get rid of the nasty built in hot tub!

The room started out looking like this

The biggest obstacle here is the hot tub. First of all, it is not functional. Secondly, there is no way to remove this without destroying it! So that is what we did!!!  The phase my husband proudly referred to as "demo" looked a lot like this

Once we got to this point the only thing we could do is take the Sawzall and cut it in half. That was a great deal of agony and blade breaking to cut through multiple layers of fiberglass. We started at the top on each side and cut down. By the time we had about one foot left on the bottom, we broke our last blade. This turned into a barely efficient form of teeter totter until FINALLY it snapped. I didn't get any pictures of the cutting process. Partly because it was dangerous enough and I was working to keep Jeff from injuring himself and partly cause our "teeter totter" was too unsteady. In the end we got it split and taken outside. We got to this

Pulling cedar panels off the wall was really easy. Keeping the mess contained to just this room, very hard!
Jeff, my brother Nick and my brother in law Dan all got together and put up the sheet rock. Meanwhile my sister Brooke and I picked up food and drinks and played with the dog. Fair trade I would say!

Thanks to all my hard work, it turned out great!!!

Beautiful job, Boys! (I like to appear shorter than Jeff in photos. I look ridiculous when it's a full shot)

In the end it all paid off! I am SO pleased with the outcome. I need to do a bit more decorating (cleaning) and whatnot, but here's where we are now! We put in that outlet above the tv because we will soon be mounting the tv on the wall and then I don't have to have cords showing. Exposed cords are my BIGGEST pet peeve!

I seriously think that my dog runs to get into as many pictures as he possibly can!!!

Anyway, it's a work ing progress, but I LOVE IT!!!

P.S. do you see the table and chairs in the background (other room) I LOVE those too and are part of my kitchen redo that I will share soon <3

Lindsey

I linked to Just a Girl

Birthday Presents!

My DARLING husband bought me an ipod nano for my birthday, I could not have been happier. I have been wanting this for quite some time. I previously had and 80 gig video ipod. Don't get me wrong, that thing is AWESOME! But for me, something small with a pedometer AND an FM tuner, were just the ticket! He gave it to me a few days before my birthday (he is NOT good at keeping secrets from me, which I appreciate in most cases) I opened it up and immediately plugged it in to my computer to get it charged and synced to itunes. When I tell you I was excited, I mean jumping up and down excited and I am generally a VERY reserved person.
I have had it for just over a week now. Last night I plug it in to my computer again to get it all charged up for my long day (I HAVE to know how many steps I take when I am busy, I just HAVE to). I get to work and I pull it out of my bag to set the pedometer and get busy working. It didn't turn on. I kept pressing the buttons, but it did not respond. I FREAKED out. I plugged it in to my laptop and nothing. It acted as if I had not plugged anything in. I was losing my mind. I started sending many text messages to my husband in a total panic (I had already taken so many uncounted steps!!! I am crazy, I know) but he was not responding. It's his day off and he is still sleeping, at 10:00 am. I know this is a reasonable thing for him to do, but not when I am in a panic!!! A while later he calls, tells me to hold the sleep button and the volume down button together for 8 seconds. I hold the buttons and IT  TURNS ON!!! Seriously? I just had a meltdown over something that could so easily be solved. What on earth would I do without him. Would I even know how to turn on the tv??? Come to think of it, I called him in a similar panic after we bought our new tv and I couldn't figure out how to turn that on.
I generally consider myself to be a rational, reasonable and intelligent person. HOW can I be so baffled by electronics!

Kitchen In Progress

Let's start by remembering where we started...

Our kitchen on the day we moved in. Icks-ville! The fridge was so filthy that the doors wouldn't open and I was not about to force it. We just needed to get them out! Once we got everything else cleaned, the fun could begin!

The first step in making our home "us" was to freshen up the kitchen! I started with buying new appliances. I was SO excited to be getting these! I went with black cause I felt like it was modern but less expensive that stainless. My reasoning is that next time I need to replace one, I can replace it with stainless and it will still "go."

I decided to paint the cabinets since they were in fine shape, just really ugly. I went with "colonial cream" for the cupboards and the woodwork. We LOVE it! The biggest mistake I made was getting rid of the knobs they had. They were a really neat, but very filthy aged copper. I did keep the hinges, after a LOT of cleaning. They turned out really pretty, but the knobs had already been thrown out. 

There is SO much more to do, but it feels so good to have gotten this far. Next I will be trying a painting technique I have come up with my using a few different tips from other blogs! I am SO excited!

Better, eh? And we have a tv in the kitchen, my husband LOVES to cook along to cooking shows, I am SO lucky with that!!! he is the best cook and comes up with the most delicious recipes, I bet I can get him to share! Maybe a recipe's by Jeff segment on here? 


Thanks for reading!!!


Lindsey