Bedroom Makeover

I have definitely been MIA for awhile, but I figured my whole house buying post might explain a lot of the absence. We've definitely been busy the past couple of weeks, but it's a good kind of busy. Casey and I really enjoy doing stuff around the house and we're getting more and more settled. As I complete rooms I'll post pictures and so far the first completed room is our bedroom.

A lot of these pictures were taken in awful lighting, but hopefully you can get the idea. These are the before pictures of the room. You can see the swatches on the wall. I've always wanted a dark gray room, but dark colors can be a slippery slope so we definitely took our time in the painting department and ironically enough didn't use any of those colors.

Another before picture facing the windows.

An after picture. We had no lighting at all upstairs so we had to get lighting/ceilling fans wired in all of the bedrooms. We ended up going with Benjamin Moore's Timberwolf for the wall color and we finally upgraded our falling apart full bedroom suit to this one.

This is facing the windows. We hung shelves up with a couple of black and white frames on the wall to the right and we ordered thermal white panels to go on the windows.

Facing the left wall. We hung an anniversary print to the left and to the right is a seaside print that I ordered from Etsy.

This is facing the back of the room. Our close is to the right and our bathroom is to the left.

I have before and afters of our closet as well. Apparently when this house was built boards were nailed to the drywall and these shelves were mounted to them and then painted over. We didn't feel like these shelves were utilizing the closet space very well so we ripped them out. Ripping out boards attached to the wall led to a bunch of holes in our wall, which led to a bunch of patching. Once we patched, we had to paint... When you give a mouse a cookie.

This is the closet painted and with the Rubbermaid shelving system that we installed.

This is the closet with our clothes and shoe racks inside.

We still are going to install a couple of shelves above the nook where our clothes hamper is to the left.

Thanks for looking :)

Spring Forward

Why didn't anyone tell me that the time changed this weekend? I woke up this morning (and obviously missed church) and could not figure out why my computer and cell phone had a different time than everything else. It was ironic that the weekend we spring forward, we have the most beautiful weather. It's more like Spring trickery, b/c I think it's calling for freezing rain next weekend. I have snow boots beside my flip flops at the front door. I'm so confused!

Either way I thoroughly enjoyed the warm weather while it was around. My old college roommate, Maggie, came down Friday night and it was really good to see her. I think it's been since last Fall that we've seen each other. We actually didn't meet in college, in fact I think we've known each other for about 10 years.

We met Kara at the park on Saturday and we took the dogs out to let them run, but I think they were in shock from the warm weather. It was actually really hot weather and they were both panting and not being very active so we didn't stay long. We went downtown for dinner and Maggie left after dinner to head back home. Casey and I just watched movies and I let myself fall asleep entirely too early.

In case you didn't know haha, a nickname for our town is "The Star City" and someone erected a ginormous star up on one of the mountains in the area in 1949. It's actually the world's largest freestanding man-made illuminated star. That's an interesting claim to fame right there. It's cool to see at night, but there's an outlook that makes it worth viewing during the day. It overviews our downtown area and we drove up there today with Tuck.

After that we rode over to PetSmart and let Tuck pick out a toy and I made him an appointment to get his haircut on Friday. We also drove by another house on the way home. I mentioned in a previous post about a home that we really liked and we listed the drive to and from work as a negative factor. We never put an offer in, but technically we still could if the bank is still holding the previous offer that was made by another couple. Let me list some pros and cons of the homes to give you an idea of what our concerns are.

First Home:

Pros: Good area and school system, low taxes, open floor plan, nice backyard, private area, big basement, big garage, nice parking area, low price (went into foreclosure)

Cons: Further from work, would use interstate A LOT to get to most places, would need a ton of cosmetic work (bathrooms, kitchen, appliances, floors, walls torn down)

Current Home (that we're going to see tomorrow):

Pros: Open floor plan, good area and school system, nice parking area, close to work and convenient area in general, very private wooded lot at the end of a cul-de-sac, nice deck, nice rec room on lower level, work needed would be minimal (flooring and bathrooms need updating), lower price (not as low as the first, but still a foreclosure)

Cons: On a steep hill, wooded lot doesn't allow for much yard even though there is over an acre of land, higher taxes than first home, smaller than the first home, kitchen and all bedrooms are on the upper-level

I know most of you don't care about our housing concerns, but it helps me to lay everything out. It doesn't really help to say this house has more pros than the other b/c some of those pros/cons are very important. We're not going to make an offer on the first home, but I compared the two b/c of all of the homes we've looked at, we've liked that one the most. We're really interested in foreclosures, nice areas, and homes that we can do some type of work to b/c I want good resale value. I don't know that we'll be in this home for 5-7 years, so I would prefer to be able to build some value into it so that if we did have to sell sooner, we would be in a good position.

So that's our situation right now. We're seriously looking, but being pretty picky. Work needing to be done to a home doesn't scare me at all (in fact I can't wait to make things the way I would want them), but we are picky about things related to the resale. I guess I think that's financially a smart way to be picky though. The reason there aren't tons of houses that we like is b/c we've narrowed down where we want to live to 2 or 3 really good areas so things don't pop up extremely often, but I know we'll find the home we're meant to.

Sorry about the house rambling, but it is a big part of our time and concentration right now so you'll probably be seeing a lot of it in my posts =

On another note, earlier today I was making pico de gallo, and listening to music with the deck door open and I could hear birds just singing their hearts out on the porch. It seems like everyone, even the birds, were just absolutely loving this weather today. Now I'm going to have a ridiculously hard time going to bed tonight with this time change and all of the sweet tea I've consumed. Ah well, it's worth it.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Interesting

I was reading Pioneer Woman's blog and I was looking at her cooking section earlier today. She actually had Southern Living over to the lodge at her ranch to feature some of her food and to photograph it for an article. You should really check out this post if you like food, photography, or have an interest in the way magazines operate.

I'm completely fascinated by the work of the 'food stylist'. Pioneer Woman says that would be her dream job and I just think I found mine too. You would get to go to different locations and style food and make it look pretty. I love making things look pretty. Also the food can't talk back to you when you style it, unlike other models.

I don't feel like I made any blogworthy meals last week (that haven't already been posted). I made another attempt at homemade pasta sauce with meatballs. Last time the meatballs were pretty good, but the sauce was not and this time the sauce was great but the meatballs were bland. I think if I just tweak the first meatball recipe a little bit and use the second sauce then I'll have a winner. Tonight I'm making this roast for dinner. In fact I turned the crockpot on when I left the house and all I have to do when I get home is add some vegetables. If you haven't made this roast I suggest you make it soon b/c it's goooood.

Our weekend was pretty standard. We had pizza night Friday, hung out with some friends and played games Saturday, and had a lazy day on Sunday. We actually looked at two houses on Friday night, but I forgot to post about that. We really really really love the first house that we looked at. It would need a lot of work, but we're looking past that at the potential. The only issue is location. It's actually in an awesome location, the re-sale would be great. It's just a bit further away from work than I would like and it would make going home at lunch really hard. Tuck is ok some days left alone, but I don't know that I would be willing to say that I would be ok with me never being able to go home at lunch 5 days a week, all year round. If the location was a little closer, we would hands down put down an offer and it actually just got foreclosed on so the price is dropping even lower, making it even more tempting...

I'll keep you updated. It probably didn't help to go get a bunch of kitchen design and home improvement magazines and look through them yesterday and decide how we wanted to re-do it :-\ It may just not be meant for us, but it's something we're definitely thinking about. This isn't unusual though, we've fallen in love with homes before but there's always been 'something' that holds us back. I don't know if we're being to picky or if we just haven't found the right home yet. A home is a big decision and we're not taking it lightly and that would probably explain why we've worked with our realtor for a year now (and 2 months). She's patient with us though and she never pressures us. I don't know how I went from college and having to make decisions about a class schedule to getting married and making huge choices like buying a home. Time has gone by rather quickly.

I hope everyone is havin a good Monday!

Monday, July 28, 2008

My Lull is Over

There has been this period of time after the wedding that I haven't had anything to do. All gifts are put away, payments are sent out, and honestly we just don't have any more wedding stuff to fill our time anymore (which is great). Now the pictures are back and we sent away for our thank you notes last night. So people, don't give up hope on us if you haven't received a thank you yet, they're on their way! We're also very close to getting a puppy which is exciting.

We went to meet another breeder on Sunday about an hour away from where we live. This was an interesting lady. She bred the puppies, first of all, to buy grass seed to put in her daughter's yard (which was a trailer that they had popped up in the backyard of their trailer). Then she proceeded to tell me that the dogs were really good and the only time one of them acted up she beat the dog and it never did it again. Ya think?!?! Poor dogs. I wish I could show you our faces after we were finished talking to her. She just kept repeating herself (if we heard the word Seminole one more time we probably would have pounded on her just a little bit). She also kept pushing us to put a deposit on these 2 week old puppies. By the time we left we were so turned off by her that we were getting to the point of being mad. Yes, the puppies were adorable, but when you buy from a breeder you have the lovely choice of seeing who you give your money to and who you could possibly be enabling to breed. Sorry lady, come up with another way to buy grass seed for your daughter's yard.

We have had a positive experience. There's a lady in NC that's approved by the American Shih Tzu Club and she has 2 males. She's been great to talk to so far, although Casey has done most of the talking. She has a friend coming to get one tomorrow and she's only getting one, so the other one is ours if we want it, and we do as long as everything else goes ok. We may not pick him up this weekend because it's my birthday and we might not be home a lot which probably isn't the best weekend to bring a puppy home. They will be 12 weeks old next Friday which would be a good age. Here's some pictures of the two boys that might possible be our new addition to our family:

They look a lot alike, but we'd love to have either one of them. This lady seems like she really cares about the dogs and raises them in a loving home. That's all I want! Anyway, Casey is supposed to call her tomorrow to see if everything is ok and to double check that her friend only took one puppy. As big of a process as this is, I can't imagine how it's going to be when I have a child.

We don't have a whole lot going on this week. It's budget season at work. Whoo. Which means that everyday is a busy day. I've recently put in for a job that really interests me and I hope to hear something about an interview. I put in for it late last week, so I'll see if anything comes of that in the next couple of weeks. Casey's job is going well. I think we're both settled and used to a normal job routine after a year out of college. We both have changed our work schedules to 7-3:30. It sucks having to get up, but I enjoy being there before everyone else gets there and it's sooo nice to leave early. We have more time to do stuff in the afternoon which is also really nice.

On our housing situation, we discussed this a lot last night and we decided to hold off on house hunting and sign another 6 month lease. We've been month to month since February and searching for a home with a realtor since January. We really want to be in a home, but we have some other things we would like to take care of before we take that jump. We really needed to make that decision because we're overpaying each month to go month to month. I'm definitely ok with the decision we made. We love our apartment and we're pretty settled here. A lot of our good friends live in this complex and it's very convenient to all of the things we need and the pool is not a bad bonus in the summer either...

I'll post a couple of wedding photos from our pro shots and our video should be here this week. That should be entertaining.

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