Happy New Year's...

Hope your New Year's Eve is full of feisty excitement...

and followed by a restful, relaxing New Year's Day!

On Vases...

One thing I've been somewhat lacking for a while is a nice, simple vase. Until now, I've never had one. It's not a huge need by any means, but anytime Jesse would bring home flowers, I always ended up placing them in random other things... a pitcher... a drinking glass... an old paintbrush holder covered in paint... or even the occasional pitiful 99 cent vase from the grocery store.

For our anniversary this year, my mom gave us these 2 Vera Wang Duchesse tall crystal vases and the simple striped VW one on the right. Aren't they lovely? They look so sweet catching light in the garden window & I finally have something suitable for flowers- whether from Jesse or my own garden.

Vases are certainly not 'necessities' by any means... but a simple, classic design is certainly a staple in decorating any style or season!

Two of my favorite things...

Upon a journey to the Swatch store in Baltimore to fetch Jesse's Christmas present (a new watch from me), I happened on something so adorable...

Isn't it cute? It's called "Extra Long" and even Jesse thought I should get one for me and each of my sisters (early birthday presents). Swatch and dachshunds... who would have thought?

Have a Blessed, Merry Christmas!

Hope your Christmas is full of peace, goodwill, cookies, and plenty of trolling the ancient yuletide carols... and of course the love, grace, and forgiveness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Christmas at the Cave... Part 2

Hope you all have a fun-filled, blessed, and peaceful Christmas eve!

Christmas at the Cave... Part 1

A few pictures of our place, all decked out for the holidays :) Hope your own homes are all full of good food, family, warmth, and cheer!

2 Wonderful Years...

Happy Anniversary to my amazing, loving, and so wonderful husband Jesse! You are absolutely perfect, and I thank God for you every day! :P

(This was a Christmas card reject- silly booman!)

A Hard Day's Night...

Here's the final 'I live in a warehouse' solution to the trashed bedroom floors. Of course, we're still planning on refinishing them all come Spring, but for now, this helps 'roughen up' the room to help incorporate the floors.

As said before, the inspiration was directly from this house tour - it was the perfect short term solution! It's just plywood, stickers used as stencils, and spray paint. :)

This morning...

The Pepper dog did decidedly well for her first big snow!

Come for a visit?

I thought I'd post a few pics of my new, little, temporary guest room. We're going to use this as an office, but as there isn't any office furniture in it yet (we sold the giant desk), we made a small bed out of sleeping bags and mattress pads so as to make another guest sleeping area for the holidays. It's on the floor, so of course Pepper assumes we went to all this trouble for her to have her own person-sized bed. It's super stark & simple, but I like it so much, I'm tempted to keep the room empty for longer than the holidays! If you come visit us while others are here, you might just end up here (furry little bed mate not included).

(this last one doesn't really add anything,

but I included it because I think Pepper's 'fake smile' is hilarious)

DIY Pom Pom Wreath...

Check out my latest DIY project... a nifty little pom pom wreath!

The inspiration was this (far cuter and more colorful) one made by Pickles and found via Black White Yellow.

Theirs uses felt balls, but since those were scarce (and considerably more expensive), pom poms had to do for now. And I picked a color scheme more to go with the living room than be Christmas specific. :) It's just a ton of little pom poms carefully hot glued onto a wreath frame. Took maybe a little over an hour...

Adventures in Flooring... the "I live in a warehouse" look

So in the last post, I unveiled the master bedroom floor in all its glory. Here's a reminder:

Yup... gorgeous. Come summer it'll be refinished (and that orange wood is getting painted white!), but for now, it's ours to enjoy. Since we're going to be sporting the 'I live in a warehouse' look, we started brainstorming how to mesh the more sleek, trim bedroom look with... that. For starters, my mom is gracious enough to be giving me some old rugs my grandmother made that she's not using anymore- and I actually think they'll work quite well! More on those when they get here.

In the short term, we're swapping out our Rebel Without a Cause poster above the bed with something a little more... rough. Here's the inspiration (which everyone has probably already drooled over at Apartment Therapy).

I love it! So fun, a little rough, a little rock'n'roll, and... so cheap to make! It's just some plywood, spray paint, and big letter stickers! We think it will serve quite well as a temporary faux-headboard & might help blend with the floor (as much as could be expected anyway). What do yall think? I'm super excited about it- we had a ton of ideas- here are our favorites:

WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO GO

HEY! YOU! GET OFF OF MY CLOUD

IT IS THE DISTANT FUTURE. THE YEAR 2000...

ONE MORNING I SHOT AN ELEPHANT IN MY PAJAMAS

HOW HE GOT IN MY PAJAMAS I DON'T KNOW

THIS CONVERSATION CAN SERVE NO PURPOSE ANYMORE.

GOODBYE.

we considered these (along with many more Simon & Garfunkel, Rolling Stones, and Beatles lyrics), but the winner was....

IT'S BEEN A HARD DAY'S NIGHT

I SHOULD BE SLEEPING LIKE A LOG

:D YAY! so excited- can't wait to see how it comes out!

Adventures in Flooring... Part 2

So after much time spent sitting on the ground, many bruised, sore hands, and much general frustration, we're actually pretty happy with the landing and 2 bedroom floors! I was able to (very gently) scrape off most of the paint & my touch up wood stain pen managed to do surprisingly well on the few deep scratches!

It's amazing what a little elbow grease will accomplish! There was only one broken board- close to a wall- that will need eventual repair. There's still some paint smears and that weird stain pattern in the guest bedroom- but they're not too bad. The huge life saver was in finding the Bona floor products. The cleaner and polish worked wonders- literally. If you're ever stressing over what to use on wood floors, I can't recommend them enough! We found them at our local Rollier's Hardware, but Bed Bath & Beyond carries them too.

The floors still need to be refinished- we're planning on a full refinish job come early summer or so. The quarter-round needs to be installed too, but we're waiting until after we finish the floors for good until we bother with that.

All was going very well... until we pulled up the carpet in the bedroom and found this:

No, the floor doesn't need to be swept. None of that is loose- it's the floor in all it's beauty. *gag* I almost keeled over when I pulled it up- it's like night & day compared to the rest of the upstairs. There's tons of paint, black spots, spots where the finish came up- it's just a mess. Easily fixed with a full refinishing, but we have to live with it for now- and I'm not even gonna waste my time trying to scrape paint. (For those who are curious, no I don't regret pulling the carpet- it had stains on it). I did my best to clean it and put quite a few coats of the Bona polish & refresher on it. Luckily, my mom is bringing up some old rugs when the visit in a week. I do have a plan on how to 'deal' with it until the floor gets an overhaul though- and for the sake of post length- I'll start that plan in another post now!

Peaceful and Magical...

It's cold and rainy here & our weekend has been full of carpet pulling and floor retouching (not a full refinish job). Regardless, it's been messy and chaotic. Hope your weekend was more peaceful & magical!! :)

Maybe the cutest serving tray I've seen...

Check out this adorable Marimekko Kanteleen Kutsu serving tray. Isn't it precious?? I saw it from afar at Apartment Therapy's post here & zoomed right in. A little pricey, but definitely too cute!

Adventures in Flooring... Part 1

So, in a spur of excitement after we sold Jesse's giant corner desk, I decided I'd already had enough of the old carpet in the upstairs bedrooms. It wasn't really nasty, but it was old and had lived through the previous owner's 3 small kids. As expected, once it came up, there were plenty of nasty stains on the back (boy I don't like carpet!). The floors actually looked better than I expected! They're lighter than the downstairs floor and the trim/doors, but they go very well with the original woodwork and the medium toned built-ins in the guest bedroom (they blend pretty well with it all, actually).

No I did not paint that turquoise. It's getting painted a nice, modern Frost white as soon as possible. That (and continuous flooring) should make the room feel bigger.

As expected (per previous owner's warning), there is paint on the floor. It's not too bad though- most of it scrapes off somewhat. The floor is pretty beat up; it needs to be refinished. Frankly though, it's not too bad- I've definitely seen worse! We were going to just lightly buff sand and re-coat it, but I'm too afraid I'll want to stain it (and there's no time for that before the holidays!). So now, our plan is to clean it up and polish as best as possible & see how it looks.

So far, I've been spending all my time pulling carpet, staples, nails, and tackboards!

We're planning on refinishing it sometime in the next year, but I'm going to try to make it look as good as I can for the meantime. If anything- I'll sport the 'distressed' look. Isn't that in right now? :)

Keep an eye out for "part 2" once I get going...

Apartment Therapy Unplggd Tech Tour!

Yay! Here's a little something to brighten my gloomy, windy, rainy day- our basement was featured in a Tech Tour today on Apartment Therapy Unplggd- check it out here! :)

Just a little dusting...

A few days back, we had our first Pittsburgh snow! It was just a light dusting, but for us Texans it was quite fun! :P Our pumpkins (which were moved to the backyard) looked mighty cute indeed with a little dusting of it- I'm sure there's much more to come in the next few months!

Yay! An improvement...

New black paint, another set of grundtal shelves, and some re-arranged accessories! A fun, worthwhile improvement... :)

I actually had to work to fill up both shelves for this picture (they looked weird being empty). They're more likely to be mostly empty the majority of the time- all those dog towels and toys are usually strewn throughout the house. And although it's more of an 'in person' thing, the black really helps the area recede back & feels much bigger and nicer- plus it complements the black tv nook at the other end of the room nicely! It also covers the plethora of scuffs and marks (invisible in photos) that used to grace the white wall.

I also found the perfect spot for Jesse's mom's painting! It never dawned on me- it even says "cleaners" on it!! So perfect! And the colors really pop!

(here was the before- I miss the dachshund painting, but the extra shelves are more practical- they can be used as drying racks for wet paintings! Plus the white wall looked much dingier in person)

On the difficulties of picture taking...

It's not easy taking pictures (or doing anything productive) in my house when things like this are going on...

But I had another disturbance when I was trying to snap our holiday mantle. Here's what I was taking a picture of...

...and here's what showed up randomly as I was trying to take the shot...

so much ridiculousness!!