Tidbits

Well, we are getting ready to leave for a family road trip to South Padre for Labor Day weekend! I wanted to share a few pictures before we leave because otherwise they will be stuck in the computer never to be seen again! Here is our family plate all glazed and ready to go! I LOVE it! Next week will be one year...what an unbelievable year at that!

Jeff got me these beautiful flowers the other day! They have made my day every day since!
We decorated our master bedroom months ago. We painted, got new furniture (really just had a bed frame and mattress before), and got a new comforter set and curtains. I love it and it is so relaxing...and just the other day we got new carpet! The boys love it because it is much softer than the old Berber. We may have had our first big fight 4 years ago over my desire to NOT purchase Berber. Oh well....you live and learn
This is my favorite room in the house now....especially when there is peace and quiet, like after 8 pm.

House Over Haul

We have been living in our house for 3 years and have made very few of the many improvements that we swore we would do when we moved in. Improvements might be the wrong word. I guess what I mean is making it our own. I think I have PTSD in regards to wall paper. I'm sure they have come a long way in styles and colors since our house was built, but the ones chosen by the previous owners are definitely not our style. We previously painted our bedroom and the kids' bathroom and have seen the huge difference this relatively inexpensive home improvement can make. We wanted to do more rooms but we always wore out after one room. Finally we decided to hire this sweet guy that did some work for my parents to finish up the painting and tile our master bathroom. Whoever thought carpet in a bathroom was a good idea? Well, I'm sure they had their reasons, I just have no idea what they are. Here is a tour of our home post update with a few before pictures as well.

When you walk in you used to look to the left and see this in the dining room/kids' playroom.

Now....it is a soothing neutral, our favorite and now primary color in our home, Gobi Desert. Though it looks much more subdued than most people's taste for a play room, it is perfect for our boys who are very easily over stimulated!

Straight ahead is our entry way and art niches. This was already a neutral color, but needed a fresh coat so we went with the Gobi. We also added a family photo wall on either side of the hallway leading into the living room. I got the frames on sale 1/2 off at Michael's and they are part of a very user friendly system called Hang Your Own Gallery. You use templates so you don't have to worry about figuring out spacing, configuration, and using a level to get them straight! LOVE it!
The art niches also got an update to more of a maroon than the brown they had before.

Our kitchen before was not very appetizing to say the least. The stripes were a bit much. During the process we noticed that the previous color of the living room had much more pink tones than we realized. You can't really tell in the picture but there was a major difference between it and the Gobi.

The after is much more of a clean slate and your eyes can focus more on the details of the curtains and other decorative touches.

Here is the living room after

The kitchen and our master bathroom made the most dramatic changes. Our bathroom was a different pattern of wallpaper than the kitchen, but the same colors and business was present. I don't think I have a before, but here is the after....

The tile makes it so much nicer...
Overall, we are very impressed with Mr. Mario's (the kids called him, Super Mario) work and the improvement to our home. It feels much more "ours" now!

Home Sweet Home Study

In preparation for our up coming home study in a few weeks (hence the clever title), we have been making some changes to our home decor. I have been looking for curtains for our living room for several months now. I finally found an idea for curtain pairings at JC Penny and then recreated the look by purchasing the accent panels as a splurge at JC Penny and ordering the rest from Walmart.com. But after I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy the accent curtains at JC Penny, they put them on sale for half the price! YAY! I got a great deal and love the way the curtains transform the room!
Our bedroom furniture for our lil' guy was delivered Saturday. We arranged it just the way we wanted and Jeff did a great job putting together the book shelf for his toys! I helped by handing him tools and reading the directions. It will have those canvas drawers in it once lil' man picks out his bedding and tells us his favorite colors. The room is definitely coming together! Jeff and I need to put together the other bookshelf and my sister offered to make the letters for the scripture on the wall. After that we will have done all we can before we meet our little guy!
What do ya'll think!? I just can't wait to see him in there making the room his own!

In other news, we are scheduled for our fire inspection for Monday, May 18th. That is just one day before our 2nd Wedding anniversary! When the inspector called to schedule yesterday, I was so excited I nearly squealed!

Bye Bye Blue

While on vacation from work, we undertook another home decorating project that I have been looking forward to for a while. We painted one of our guest bedrooms. After closer examination it appears that the previous owners not only let their kid pick the color, but the painting looks like it was done by a child too! This is what the room looked like before. Now that is a lot of bright Tiffany Blue for one room!

We decided to paint three of the walls a lighter color and make the wall with the window on it an accent wall. I choose Gobi desert as the lighter color and Wild Manzanita for the accent wall. We really enjoyed saying "Bye Bye" to the blue.

Here is the final product. I personally think the room looks bigger. What do ya'll think? I am quite sure the gobi desert will be the primary color of our home when it is time to repaint the hall ways, etc. I love that it is dark enough to add warmth, but not so dark that it makes the space appear smaller than it is.

First Home Improvement Project is a success!

This blog post is dedicated first to my husband, who is my other half and the best partner I could ask for. My weaknesses are his strengths and vice versa. It's the perfect combination! The post is also dedicated to Wendy and Jonathan, the master home improvement team that inspired us to try for ourselves.

Okay, we have been married for a year now and we bought the house a year and a half ago, so I'm sure you are thinking...what took them so long?! First of all, after planning the wedding and adjusting to married life, our jobs got crazy. Things are starting to settle down and when we got back from our anniversary trip, Jeff told me he wanted to start by painting our guest bathroom. Those of you who know Jeff, know that when Jeff says he's ready to do something, he means he's ready right now. We got home from our trip on a Friday night and Saturday we went to Home Depot to get supplies. Wendy gave us a time frame, one week, to complete the project. We did it!

First of all, this room was awful! I don't know what they were thinking when they picked the wall paper and they put it directly on the drywall. Therefore, we couldn't remove it without incurring a lot of expense and needless effort. So, we used a couple of coats of oil based primer to cover the paper, after Jeff had spackled and sanded nail wholes and glued down pieces of the paper that had peeled up. Taping and doing that took a whole day! The next day we primed one coat, then waited 24 hours before priming again.

After four days of 5-6 hours per day of work, we finished and it looks great! Wendy is a interior designer and when she came over on Sunday, she raved about the job we did! It was Jeff's very first time painting and if I recall I did a really poor job last time I tried and was demoted to the taping girl. Jeff did most of the work, I have to confess. I handed him paint brushes with paint on them while he reached for the high places from the ladder. He cleaned brushes and worked until he was sore. I worked on the low spots and again was the "taping girl." He let me pretend we were putting in an equal amount of work, but really it was all him! You can tell because he has sweat pouring from his shower cap (my idea after he got a reverse skunk stripe in his hair the first day of painting primer).

After all of this, we celebrated by defrosting the top of our wedding cake and sharing some surprisingly delicious long awaited cake! Cheers to TEAM ALBUS!