Fall

Yesterday we went for a hike up Kennesaw Mountain.  We have been there a few times before, but it was so pretty with the leaves changing colors.  It was perfect weather for a hike!

There is a house in Buckhead that we saw last year that goes OVERBOARD with the Halloween blow-ups.  This year they did the same thing, so I stopped and took pictures on my phone.  These pictures do not do the amount of decorations they have justice.  They do the same thing for Christmas.



Work to be Done

Our formal living, which we plan to make the office, is finally painted.  David had a few days off work and painted it.  We chose a gray, but it turned out more blue. 

We also got some quotes this past week on plantation shutters, wood floors and painted trim.  Everything was actually reasonably priced.   The carpet isn't in bad shape, but we prefer wood floors.  The trim is beige, way too dark for us.  We could paint the trim ourselves, but because there is dental molding in the living room, dining room and foyer, that would be a LOT of work.

We decided we are going to get the hardwood floors, trim and plantation shutters done in living room, dining room, and foyer first.  After that we will move to the back of the house.  We will also be getting plantation shutters in the laundry room since that window is in the front of the house.  Our goal is to have all this done by Christmas!

Ghost

Today was perfect!!  The weather was so nice that we spent the afternoon doing things outside in the yard.  If you are facing our house from the street, on the right side are massive azalea bushes.  They take up so much space, and are so big that we had difficulty trimming them this summer because we couldn't get to the middle of them.  We knew we wanted to get rid of them, but every time we started working on it this summer it was too hot to get much done.  Today we started hacking away.  David worked for about an hour and a half and got most of the bushes that were against our house taken down.  However, he probably only removed 1/5 of the bushes.  Our plan is to work a little bit on them each weekend. 

While David worked on getting rid of the bushes, I decorated for Halloween.  Can you find the ghost in my picture?  (Ignore the dead bushes on the right hand side, that is part of the ones we removed today.)

Step by Step

So the progress is...not much.  The good news is the bathroom is painted, oh and the mirror is painted, but the bathroom is not 100% complete just yet.  But let's revisit some old pictures..by old I mean pictures of the house when it was on the market, this was not our furniture.

The family room with the previous owner's things

Now onto our room:

The color change makes such a difference!  We still obviously need to get the wires from the TV taken care of and moved.  We also need to hang some stuff up on the walls. 

Here are some before and after pictures of the mirror in the bathroom.  Here is what I started with, a gold oval mirror.  The color did not match the fixtures, instead of buying a brand new mirror, I brought spray paint.  The longest part of the process was covering the mirror with newspaper.

Here is the final product, I realize it is hard to tell what it looks like with the paper on it, but it looks good.  AND, it was only a $5 makeover!  When I post pictures of the completely re-done bathroom, the changes with the mirror will be more obvious.

Fingers crossed that my next post will have my new bathroom reveal!





'Cause It's Friday, Friday....

I am exhausted.  We have only been in school three weeks and I feel like waking up at 5:45 in the morning is getting harder everyday, shouldn't it be getting easier?!?!  But, the good news is that it's a three day weekend.  But, the bad news is that David has to work.all.weekend.

My goal, or should I say goals, this weekend is to get some stuff done around the house.  Priority #1 is to finish the bathroom on our main floor.  I need to finish the walls, hopefully I will have it done and get some good after pictures.  Then, I plan on painting the living room.  We didn't have a "formal living" room in our old house, so right now it is a dumping ground for things we have yet to unpack or hang up.  After I paint it, we plan on using it as an office. In the long term, we want to get a big desk and two chairs to face the desk.  Eventually we want to get plantation shutters on all the front windows of our house.  I can only imagine the expense.  We have two bay windows and a small window on the main floor to cover, then upstairs we have three windows in our bedroom, two in the guest room, and then one in the room above the garage....and that's only the front of the house!  Let's just say it will be a major expense.  Check out these lovely curtains that were left with the house.

Wow, those curtains!!  They need to GO.  I tried to sell them on craigslist, but no one was interested, I can't figure out why I didn't get any responses;)

Here is a picture from the formal living room, you can see the dining room beyond the stairs.  The dining room is another project within itself.

I have decided that next time people come visit us, they will be put to work:)

'Cause It's New York!!!!!!

I am finally getting around to posting!  I just finished my first week with my kids and it went really well.  So here's a recap of our trip to New York!

When we arrived, we check in at the Marriott Marquis (one of the perks of David travelling so much is free hotel points!) and headed to Carnegie's Deli.  It was ok.  Just ok.  We shared a Reuben which was HUGE, but we were herded in the restaurant and then herded out.  Then, we went for a walk through Central Park, FAO Schwartz and Tiffany's.  Afterward, we headed back to the hotel to the concierge lounge (again, another perk of David travelling so much) where we got snacks and drinks.



We visited all the normal sites, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Ground Zero, Times Square and Rockefeller Center. 

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We saw two shows while we were there.  "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" on Broadway, and "Perfect Crime" off Broadway.  



While we were there we also went to Carlo's Bakery in Hoboken, NJ from the show Cake Boss.  We waited in line for about 45 minutes, but it was fun to see the bakery from the show.  We got a ton of good things, and it was very reasonably priced.

Neither of us had ever walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, so we did that as well.  It was hot, but good exercise.  I couldn't believe how crowded it was!

And the food...we didn't do well on food in NYC.  We went to a lot of places and weren't impressed.  The best place we ate was Peking Duck, and we got.........Peking Duck.  We went to Bar American, a Bobby Flay restaurant, and were not impressed.  The food was ok, nothing spectacular and definitely not worth the money.  Then, we of course ate in Times Square at a tourist trap where the waiters and waitresses perform, but it was still a fun night.



We had a great trip, but my feet have never been so sore! 

Covering Up

Our dining room table is a hand-me-down, hand-me-down.  My sister got the table and chairs about 15 years ago from my dad's friend who had it for who knows how long.  So, it has been put to good use.  The style is more contemporary than everything else in our house, but for a free table and chairs, it's great!  My sister said when it was in her house, people commented that it looks like it was from Crate and Barrel.  The worst part of the table and chairs are the cushions on the chairs.  They are black vinyl, and while they might go with almost anything, they remind me of the cushions on bar stools in a 70's bar. 

I decided that I wanted to cover the cushions when we moved into our new house.  But, I wanted to wait until I decided what color we were going to paint the walls.  We decided on a light gray, but have yet to paint it.  Last week when I was in Hobby Lobby I was looking for fabric for my bulletin boards in my classroom.  I came across a fabric on clearance, $5/foot.  The color is a perfect blend of grays and browns.  I came home and started covering.  The seat cushions came off fairly easily.  I stretched the fabric over the black vinyl (the new fabric is thick enough you can't see the old beneath it) and used the glue gun to glue the fabric.   The hardest part is screwing the cushion back on the chair. 

I am happy with the result and can't wait to finish the entire room!  The new fabric gives the chairs a much more updated look.