New House to Home

Our first big purchase - a new refrigerator. Kind of a necessity... 

We had it delivered a couple days after we closed on our home. Boy that was fun, dry goods and dishes at the new house, cold and frozen foods at the rental. Meals were a little bit of a challenge, ha!

One of the first things we did to make our new house our home was take down the shelves in Isla and Adiee's bedroom. They spanned the entire length of a wall and it dictated where I was able to put their furniture, and I just don't do well with being told what I can and can't do... ;-) Haha! So that was project numero uno.

Case in point - Isla's four poster bed couldn't fit anywhere besides under the shelf without the posts... The dresser and mirror was too tall as well, so something had to be done about that pesky shelf.

These are the during shots taken in Adiee's bedroom. The shelves have been there since the house was built. There was bare drywall under these bad boys.

Kasey filled all the nooks and crannies, then sanded it all down and sprayed texture to match the rest of the wall.

Impressive! This is the 'after' shot (obviously), you would never be able to tell there was ever a shelf there... Besides the high plug ins, I will have to figure something out to hide those ugly things that now look like they are just floating in the middle of the walls. Isla's room has that problem too. There is still a similar shelf in the playroom - until I have an alternative way to organize their toys that is!

I spent a day painting Isla's room this sweet shade of purple right after Kasey was done with the shelf project, it's been that way for a couple months now and actually THIS weekend he is taping stripes as an accent wall. I can't wait! I actually started doing it myself but he kinda took over with absolutely no objection from me, haha! Getting them perfectly straight is quite hard with the limited resources I was trying to work with, HA! But that was all part of my master plan anyway, right?! ;)

I have a shoe cabinet that I got from IKEA a couple years ago and I LOVE it. It corrals all of the kids shoes so we don't normally have trouble finding our shoes in the morning - one less hassle we have to deal with. There wasn't any place for it that made sense in the new house except right behind the front door. Trouble was:

It didn't fit. Just a little too long - Ugh! But my handy dandy husband flawlessly executed his first IKEA hack. He took the top off, trimmed all the excess off the one side and drilled new holes so that the nice, neat, lacquered edge still showed on the one side you could see. He also had to trim the legs so it would fit flush against the wall, but with that he also had to notch the trim.

And here it is in the perfect place behind the front door. 

Now I just need to decorate! What a guy!

Just a quick little project that was on my to do list: paint the barstools. I have NEVER painted a piece of furniture before... until now! I was a little intimidated by all the steps, but they turned out so pretty! To this day, there are a few dings that could use a touch up but overall they still look great! 

Kasey installed a surround sound system in our family room last weekend. The next best thing to going to the theater! :) And on September 5th, we are having a new couch and loveseat delivered. It is gorgeous - 100% leather recliners. We originally bought a set from another furniture store and we were going to get them delivered the next day, but I had to call and cancel because they were power recliners, and the way I want my furniture to go in my living room the cord to the loveseat would have been a tripping hazard not to mention unsightly. We found a set that looked almost identical except it is a little more comfortable and not power so NO cords! PERFECT! They also threw in a leather kit and a 5 year warranty for free! Done. Deal. Just wish I didn't have to wait 3 weeks. Moving that stupid couch (with a hide-a-bed) and loveseat upstairs from the family room was ridiculous, glad that's over with... But at least my "bike riding room" aka front living room isn't empty anymore! Haha!! I would post a picture of that room now but it is lacking some serious personality, it's all a work in progress. Slowly but surely.

Kasey and I had no idea that our house had an infestation of ANTS! The girls are normally only allowed to eat in the kitchen and outside except as an occasional special treat such as popcorn or dinner and a movie night. They have to go through the living room to get to the back yard, and one of them dropped a goldfish on the carpet. I didn't notice it right away and within minutes, the little orange cracker was engulfed with swarms of little black ants. You could see the carpet moving in about a 2 feet radius, and that is no exaggeration. YUCK!! Grossed out, I grabbed the vacuum and sucked them all up. A couple days later, I was vacuuming the stairs and dusting the banisters. I caught a glimpse of a few ants walking towards Pete's dog food bowl. Thoroughly disgusted I tried to suck those up too. When I removed the top layer of food and ants, the whole bowl was crawling. It was awful! I grabbed the whole bowl and threw all the contents of the bowl in the outside dumpster, washed his bowl, and moved it away from the main levels of our home. We bought some ant poison from home depot, but they completely ignored them. We kept seeing them and finally got fed up so we hired Moxie Pest Control to come out and take care of those nasty pesky bugs. Within a few days, I was cleaning up ant corpses and couldn't have been more happy about it! We have had 2 applications to our house and yard and are happy to announce we are ant free! Haha :-)

What do ya think? Bold choice, Eh? I wanted a serious pop of color. It was between this and a buttercream yellow. Can you believe that he let me go with the "pink" as he likes to call it. He must really LOVE me!! Haha ;) There is a hint of pink in the brick of the exterior of our house and I think it really brings it all together... I have whined about how I wasn't too fond of that color of brick since we saw the house in the daylight. But now, I love it. I also chose not to cut a window out of the new door and add a black door knocker. We had that exact door handle but in silver on the old door, but I thought black would really look sharp not to mention match the porch lights and bistro set on our front porch. It was a little hard to fork over almost $200 for the exact same door knob (and a couple other things) just so I could have a different color, but I think we made the right decision.

Other than the door, this is my next favorite addition to the exterior of our home - a beautiful welcome sign I got from Hobby Lobby. More black to go with the door's hardware...

L.O.V.E.

I bought these 2 pillows to go on our bistro chairs because: A) They brought in coordinating color to our porch and B) Metal chairs aren't the most comfortable seating in the world.

Kasey trimmed a tree in our front yard to make it look less like a giant bush! Haha :) He has also done tons of work to the sprinkler system. Noteworthy but not really pictureworthy... He has had to replace valves, sprinkler heads, troubleshooting, dig out a sprinkler box, etc... It's been quite a chore but Kasey's awesome at everything he does!

Another thing I'm proud to show off is my garden. I have never been a gardener, I've even killed a couple cactus (as in more than one) in my day. Sad but true. Turns out, I absolutely love spending time working on my garden. I have way too many at the moment to keep up on all of them, but I did get a handle on the ones in the front yard that everyone can see!

This is what I started with... I almost forgot a 'before' picture! That is full-on lawn turf inside my flower beds. Now that is tough to get rid of, no joke! I spent many full days and weekends out there pulling, digging, and sweating only to stop to feed the family every once in a while until it was done. It took a LONG time!!

I love the way the dark, freshly cultivated dirt looks! My hard work has finally paid off! 

GORGEOUS!!

I pruned that rose bush like crazy, came out with some serious battle wounds, but it was so worth it when it flourished the way it did. I bought some perennial peonies, bleeding heart plants, and a lily of the valley to plant for us to enjoy next spring/summer too. I love my garden!

How's that for curb appeal?!