Bon Voyage, Blue Carpets!

Our home is rid of blue carpet and the hard wood floors await installation on Monday! Now if we can just finish getting the trim painted...

And the Paint Goes On

House progress is coming along slowly. The kitchen wallpaper stripping and painting and office painting wore us out, so we've been putting off further projects. But it's time to get back to the home improving.

My parents kindly came in one weekend and we were able to get the living room, dining room and guest room painted Olympic's Quaking Grass. 

Before you think I've completely lost all sense of taste, please know that the hardwood floors will be installed in a couple weeks (Good riddance, blue carpet!) and I've picked out some neutral slipcovers.

And then one Saturday I got the pantry painted, shelves relined and organized. It looks so much crisper and cleaner now.

Next on the agenda: painting the trim white so it will be ready for the quarter-round once the new floors are in. Exciting!

Dinner for 7

The site of a recent family dinner.

I think we need a bigger dining room table. Although this setup is kind of ghetto fabulous.

Shiny New Dishwasher!!

After much indecision on my part (Surprise!), we have a new dishwasher! (It's this Kenmore from Sears and so far, so good.)

It's so shiny! And it doesn't leak! And it isn't a fire hazard!

In other news, the ice maker is now in the business of making one gigantic hunk of ice...

Lately

+ Our big housewarming party was a success. Having 40 of our friends and funny running the house was overwhelming, but it's always nice to have so many of the people you love in one spot. Especially if there's beer and corn hole.

+ September 6 was our second wedding anniversary. Sadly, our dinner and a movie plans were disrupted by a plumbing situation (We spent the next four days living by a "If it's yellow let it mellow" policy. Boo. But now we have a plumber that we like so call me if you need one in the Louisville area.) so we opted for Arby's and Netflix instead. Tomorrow night is the fourth anniversary of our first date so something nicer than Arby's might be in order.

+ In addition to the plumbing meltdown, our dishwasher is a fire hazard and no longer in use. The fire hazard was located while someone was trying to fix the dishwasher's leak for the fourth time. Fortunately (and unlike the plumbing situation), this is covered by our home warranty. Now if I can only decide on a new dishwasher.

+ Despite the past two items, we've reached our savings goal to get rid of the blue carpet in the living room and dining room and get some hardwood floors. Now to specifically pick the floors.

+ Lee's sister is engaged! *happy dance*

+ In two months and two days my cell phone contract will be up and when I renew I'm getting an iPhone 4 to replace my boring, not-cool, normal phone. I'm ridiculously excited. Please send app suggestions. Specifically I'll need a good Twitter app and a good note-taking app and perhaps a separate grocery list app.

+ It's college football season, the sport world's tasty appetizer before the main course arrives. The main course being college basketball of course. Go Cats!

+ I've been playing with my blog layout (again!) so if you're reading this in a reader and you haven't actually visited lately you may want to.

+ I just discovered this last night and kind of love it.

Floral Update

Last week I mentioned that despite minimal attempts to help out our flowers, one stem on one rose bush has grown to twice the size of the bush. Or anything else nearby. The beautiful bloom on top minimizes the freakish nature of the stem.

Now there are two blooms. Well, one new bloom and one dying bloom.

And they're still ridiculously tall.

Garden Growth

I haven't really figured out the gardening yet. Of course I haven't tried that hard. That's on the list for next year. But one of our rose bushes has a very ambitious branch. 

What is up with that? It kind of weirds me out, but I've enjoyed watching it bloom.

This was one day.

And this was the next. 

In other good plant news, I have a couple tomato plants in a container and they're blooming! Fingers crossed they'll be real tomatoes soon. 

And the Kitchen

Before

We are anti-wallpaper. 

During

Taking down the wallpaper didn't make us love it anymore.

Check out the crack I patched all by myself! Father-in-law said I did an excellent job! I'm the Spackle Queen. (In addition to other various regal titles.)

Under the wallpaper we found some special retro backsplash madness that was falling apart in one area (the dark brown). Lee's re-mudding that.

After

It's amazing what some Olympic Premium Turquoise Mist can do!

A Lighter Office

BeforeThe office was a nice color, but in an 8' by 9' office with three desks, one of which is very large (I contend that Lee's desk is too large for the room. Lee contends that he has the most wonderful desk in all of mankind. I need to make him watch that episode of The Office with the superdesk. Except that might just give him ideas. ;) ), the color is too dark.


After
Thank you Olympic Premium Kiwi Splash for making our office feel light and fluffy happy. :)

See how huge Lee's desk is?!?!

At least I still have room for my precious little sewing table.

Painting Round 1 Is Complete!

I spent the majority of my waking hours over the 3-day weekend with a paint brush in hand, and last night at 10 p.m., it was finished. The house is wallpaper free and the kitchen and office are two lovely shades of blue.

Pictures will follow later this week, but as for the home color scheme, I decided to go with a Grandeur-inspired one. After trying to go the Martha route and select the just-right shade of coral for the dining room resulted in the indecision below, I decided to stick with wall colors I could easily feel confident with.

The kitchen is now Turquoise Mist and the office is Kiwi Splash, which isn't pictured but is one step below Kiwi Splash.

I love it. And Lee says that as long as I don't want to paint again for another five years he loves it too.

My First Craigslist Purchase

Since our house has an eat-in kitchen and dining room, I knew I'd be using the eat-in kitchen space for more cooking and storage space. Luckily I found the perfect island on Craigslist for $90. (It was listed at $100, so not too bad for my first "haggling" experience I guess.)

There's enough space for sitting, cooking and storing!

The Benefits of a Clean Desk

There's nothing quite so peaceful as having a clean desk. 

Even if 2 inches away the rest of the desk mess lives, at least my desk is clean. 

P.S. Isn't that a lovely wall color? Sadly it's a small room and the office is so full of desks that I think the color is a little too dark for the situation. I need a lighter color to open up the room. Right? Right. 

Week in Review: 6/18

For those of you keeping tally at home, this is my 300th post. Crazy.


Only in the past month or so have I jumped on the Hyperbole and a Half bandwagon and I'm so glad I did.

I love font jokes and hate Comic Sans.

I wouldn't say I hate soccer, but yeah, I don't get it.

I like this idea of hanging bags for my office maybe.

I'm thinking about some stenciling for the house. Maybe the entry hall? Will I hate myself for taking this on?

Could you be my new favorite song? Likely.

(And really YouTube, why can't I embed something at 500 pixels wide anymore? I don't want to redo my blog layout just because of your weirdness.)

Have a happy weekend! I'll be unpacking but at least my little sister will be here to join me and Lee in our labors! And she's better at heavy lifting than I am!

Zoey Has a Yard!

Today Zoey's yard is complete! It is now fully fenced in, and the picket fence has been adjusted so she can't wiggle free. (No worries, when she escaped she just ran to the front door!)

Whew

I had every intention of not disappearing last week, but somehow it happened. Between unpacking, a busy week at work, a few social commitments, the Glee finale, and two hours driving around town looking for the right desk organizers, I fell off the face of the earth.

My fingers are crossed that this week will be a bit more chill, organized, and healthy (I've been eating crap and not running since a week before the move. Oops!).

Of course, I do get distracted easily and between the unpacking and the distractions...

Our First Change

So technically this isn't our first change to the house. The first change was the new water heater. Then there was the radon removal pipes and fans, and the new electrical switch for the air conditioner. But this is the first change worth blogging about. (Although we went with a 50 gallon water heater, which is pretty sweet, but doesn't photograph well.)

We had a ceiling fan/light installed in the living room!

Ooh! Ahh!

Not terribly exciting, but it's nice to be able to install overhead lamps where you want them and this was the only room missing one. And fortunately we had an old ceiling fan sitting around and I love me some ceiling fan. (Although we'll probably look into a new one soonish because some sort of something was missing so he couldn't hang it close the ceiling; it has to drop down a bit. Our tall friends and family will have to be careful not to bang their head on the lights, but they'll be spared a beheading by the fan blades.)

Of course the beauty of the ceiling fan is slightly marred by the continued chaos in the living room, and the whole house really. But it's slowly coming together.

A Million Thanks

As with all things in life, I approached purchasing and moving into a house with a variety of fears and concerns. Closing the Friday before a three-day weekend, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get the TV and Internet hooked up or the water heater fixed before our Saturday move. When mom called me a week before the move date asking who was helping us (other than them) and I replied we hadn't asked anyone yet, we both started to freak out that we wouldn't have any help. I had no idea what we would eat all \weekend because I didn't want to cook and I didn't want to live on frozen pizza and canned soup for more than a day. As of Saturday morning, I knew we wouldn't finish packing everything and Lee and I would have to come back later in the week to finish up.

And as with all things in life, I worried and lived to see my fears come to nothing.

The sellers were wonderful people to spend an hour signing documents with at closing. After disagreeing with someone over how much money you should spend on their house, I thought it might be awkward, but they were delightful.

We managed to get a cable guy, a fence guy, an electrician and a plumber all in the house between the hours of 4 to 6 p.m. on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. (And the fence estimate came back within what we had to spend so that will be going in as soon as he can! Yay!)

Three of our neighbors came over to introduce themselves and one brought brownies. It's like Wisteria Lane without the drama.

In addition to Lee and I, we had 10 friends and family, with 2 pickup trucks and 1 minivan to help us move. (And Friday night Lee's parents came over to help us pre-clean.)

Friday night the in-laws brought over hamburgers, hot dogs, and spaghetti casserole. Saturday my parents brought Owensboro barbecue, baked beans, potato salad and tons of potato chips. Lee and I are still working our way through the leftovers.

What wasn't packed, our ten beautiful, wonderful, kind helpers threw in bags and hauled out for us. Saturday, the only thing left in the apartment was Kevin. With the chaos in the house I couldn't deal with having to move a fish and rinse out his bowl. We brought him home last night.

In other miscellaneous good news of the weekend, we learned that Lowe's gives 10% to military members year-round. Plus a 10% coupon we had, we got 20% off our lawn mover, weed eater and other random house needs. And after months of trying to find nice and affordable jeans, LOFT had 40% off your entire purchase this weekend so problem solved!

I'm exhausted, but it was the best Memorial Day weekend ever. A very special thanks to the many, many people who helped us along the way. :)

Last Supper

It's CSA season again and I got my first round of veggies yesterday. Yummy! :)

And with some Owensboro barbecue waiting in the freezer, and knowing that moving is about to kick into high gear, we capitalized on our last change to have a fancy meal together in the place we've called home for the past two years. We even pulled out the china.

The plastic cup adds a classy touch.

For the next two weeks it will probably be frozen pizza, cold sandwiches, beer and boxes, but I couldn't be more excited!

Flower Concerns

I've declared that next year will be the Year of the Landscaping at the house. That could change depending on how the interior progresses this year, but next year I would like to evaluate the landscaping.

The main goals of this landscaping evaluation are:
1. To start a vegetable and herb garden.
2. To make sense of the random bushes/small trees strewn about the yard.
3. To remove floral items from outdoor sitting areas.

Why move around the flowers, you ask? They're pretty!

But I don't like bees. Or anything that stings. Or really anything that qualifies as a pest: moths, "critters" (I inherited these phobias from my mom, who hates starts-with-"sp"-and-rhymes-with-"riders" to the point of insisting we just call them "critters".), june bugs, mosquitoes, flies, etc. My general attitude toward nature is best summarized by this:

As I've lamented how to enjoy flowers and outdoor areas, while avoiding bees as much as possible, I've decided to move all the blooming things away from the deck and patio. Which means that the rose bushes can stay since they run along the side of the house, but the lilac bush, right up against the desk, is going to have to move. Possibly to the fence. And I've already been pricing organic pest control.

Color Conundrum

I have begun the exciting process of picking out paint colors for the new house. And as with all Katie decisions, this has:
A. Been blown out of proportion from the start
B. Already been changed five times
C. Taken over 80% of my thoughts

So here is the current color conundrum. I like color, but I fear color. I fear things won't really match and I want there to be a consistency throughout the house. I like lighter colors because I think they have more possible colors to coordinate with. I want a vibrant wall color, but would rather bring in interest with changeable accessories (curtains, flowers, pillows) than an over-the-top wall color.

Now that those somewhat-conflicting desires are out on the table, here's some of the color palettes up for consideration.

Olympic's Grandeur Collection: I like the teal a lot and this palette combines some brighter colors with some lighter colors. I feel a little stuck on what color would best go in the dining room because our everyday dishes are a teal that does not match these teals.


Olympic's Welcome Collection: No bright colors, but could easily match with anything. I could bring in reds, yellows, purples, or fun patterns to make things more interesting. Same issue with a dining room color.


Martha's Natural Palette: Sweet, sweet colors! More than blues and greens! I want a coral dining room! Can you guess which is my current favorite?! This one!


Lee's favorite is Grandeur, but he gets to pick the lawn mower and the grill, so clearly that gives me free reign on everything else, right? Actually his current attitude is, "I don't care right now because you're going to change your mind 8 more times before we actually go to paint anything."

He knows me well.

UPDATE: Lee wants me to add that he could "dig Martha's paint", but I had only shown him the first two, and of those he preferred Grandeur. My bad. ;)