The Power in a Beautiful Day

For 2 days in a row we have had glorious weather. Yesterday it got up into the 60's and today it was at least 70. It is great to be able to take the kids for a walk in WARM weather! Even better I did 5 loads of laundry between yesterday and today and was able to hang them out to dry. When we bought the house they were nice enough to leave the washer and dryer. However most times things have to be run through the dryer twice to get them dry. I am hoping to see a decrease in our electric bill before it goes up does to overly hot temperatures. Yay for nice weather!!

Keeping The Progress Moving

So I was able to finish the dresser for the guest room. The one I talked about before?

Only problem is that I forgot to take pictures of it before it went into the current "blackout" room and so I guess we will have to wait for the after pictures until we can get some natural light in there. Finishing that dresser kicked a different piece of furniture out of that room. I was so excited to show you the before and after because, believe me, they are pretty dramatic. But the before pictures seem to have gone missing. Grrr. I found it on Craigslist before we moved for $15. It sat in the garage for a few months until we moved. I guess you will have imagine it with peeling varnish, cracked wood and stickers and thumbtack holes all over it. Now I am proud to say that it looks like this.

It's new home is in the foyer replacing the drysink from my grandparents house that had been there. Here is another view.

I wanted to try the 2 tone finish and the top went much easier than the painting. It also made it take a little longer because you have to stain and coat the top before you paint which means waiting for everything to dry between coats. I can't stress enough how important it is to read labels for drying times! I also thought I would try my hand at distressing the painted portion. I mean let's be honest my kids are going to beat on anything we own. I might as well beat them to the punch and that way it won't matter when it happens by accident! Overall I was pretty pleased with the way it turned out. I was also able to give the dry sink a  new home in the dining room.

It is going to be my plant table which will ensure they get some sun and don't get dried out from sitting on top of the radiator. It is the perfect height to fit in the window. I was pretty excited and Matthew even thought it looked nice!

Now that all the furniture painting and refinishing is complete, I can get out the sewing machine. I didn't want to be getting it it out and putting it away a whole bunch. Now I can get it out and leave it out because I have a whole lot of sewing projects waiting in the wings. The chairs still need to be slip covered, I have curtains to make for the kitchen, pillow covers to make for the living and some other secret projects I will post about later. Never a dull moment, hmm?

Hopefully we'll talk soon!!
~Rosemary

Aleena is 3!

It's hard to believe that our baby girl turned 3 this weekend! I feel like this might have been just last week:

But she is looking quite grown up these days.

We took her to Red Robin for her big day. Not only did she get TWO balloons but they also sang to her(total deer in headlights look through the whole song) and gave her a free sundae. She ate the WHOLE thing. We had her birthday dinner with Grandma and  Grandpa. Grandma got her a super cute (and yummy!!) Clifford cake from Distelfink Bakery in Lansdale.

I do wish we could just bring that bakery with us wherever we live because it is just that good. So we had a fun birthday weekend and here is to celebrating another year with out baby girl!

Just a little bit of progress and meeting the neighbors

So I am proud to say that the "new" medicine cabinet is painted and hung!!

The doors are a little off but my darling hubby stayed up extra late to help me get it hung and I wasn't going to be too picky about the doors when he was so tired! I am so glad it's finished. Everything the girls aren't supposed to get into is well out of their reach. Yay!!

Part of the reason it took me a little longer than I was expecting was this:

Which is a $40 dresser we purchased off craigslist for our guest room. It looks like someone tried to stain it but didn't sand it first or something. Poor dresser. Right now it looks like this.

and this

Which, while is not finished is still leaps and bounds better than it was. The tricky part of this dresser is that it was all veneer. And it was thin or broken in a lot of places. I sanded it down as best I could while trying to be aware of how thick the veneer was but despite my best effort the stain still did not take as evenly as I was hoping for. It looks like reclaimed wood and like I did it on purpose so I guess we can pretend like I did :) The top was loose in a few spots and we got out the wood glue and the clamps this morning. I am hoping that in the next 2 days (since it's supposed to be really nice!!) I can get the top coat on it and then it can move to it's home upstairs.

The dresser that is up there now is another project waiting for my attention but I am going to play musical furniture (the best part of settling into a new house) so we knew it wasn't going to go back upstairs and why we bought the other one. You will hear about that one more as I get to it!

We got new neighbors about 3 weeks ago. The house that is the mirror image of ours, on the outside at least, finally sold. We like our new neighbors. It also made me realize we hadn't really met any of the neighbors we already had. It's cold and no one really hangs out outside in the winter unless they are shoveling. And we haven't had snow, so... no neighbors. Yesterday I tried a new cookie recipe. I guess I didn't really read the recipe because it made 7 dozen cookies. What do we need 7 dozen cookies for?! So I bagged the majority of them up and started knocking on doors and playing cookie delivery lady. I found out that we have a lot of really nice neighbors. I also found out a lot of good info on the neighborhood. Apparently this was the Italian neighborhood back in the day and there are still a few older Italian couples that live here.
One of the houses that borders our back yard is adorable. It's on the small side for the neighborhood but has lots of character and charm. The couple that lives there, has lived there for 45 years. With as much moving as we have done in the last 5 years, I can't even imagine. That same lovely couple also had put this out at the curb.

Apparently they owned the chair as long as they've lived in the house. She had gotten a quote to have it redone and at $700 she decided she would rather get rid of it. It can be my learn-how-to-upholster practice chair. I am pretty excited. I love the wood detail. Best meeting the neighbors trip I've ever had!

It is nice to know a little more about where we are living and the people who live here. It really does seem like a nice neighborhood. I wanted to share one picture of Aleena from the other day. Her hair is getting so long and her Daddy requested either a ponytail or some pigtails since I don't usually try to put it up.

Doesn't get much cuter than that!!

See you soon!
~R

And the list grows...

I am finally sitting at my dining room table with room to eat, or type a blog, or maybe finally pull out my sewing machine!?! It's crazy talk I know!!! We had our first visitors yesterday. My Best Friend Tricia and her mom.. and baby Eli (the twins boyfriend) drove up to see us. Which was a wonderful visit and gave me the push I needed to finally make the dining room not look like a storage area. There are still boxes but you can actually see the table which is a huge improvement.

The added bonus to this is there is room to work on projects. I have more going at one time than I should so my goal this week is to get at least one finished.  When we had originally looked at the house Aleena's room had no light fixture- just wires dangling from the ceiling. We were fortunate enough that the owners put a brand new ceiling fan in her room before we had settlement. It's white and fairly generic but will most definitely work for the time being. The babies room is another story. They have this.

It is an ugly, green blade-less fan. Only 3 of the lights work. It just drives me nuts. (on an unrelated note you can see at the bottom of the picture we have yet to finish painting their room.) Today we took a little family drive to our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I was looking for a pantry cabinet for the kitchen. No luck with that but we did find this.

 A very cute ceiling fan for 2 little girls and it was only $30. The one I had been looking at that I thought we might get for in there was $60 and was more grown up. I am thrilled to have found something that saved us some money and fits them for the next however many years. I tried to see if I could find this fan at Lowes or Home Depot so I could see exactly how much we saved and I didn't see it online. However at Lowes the other fans that were more geared towards kids rooms started at $80. I will admit installing the fan will be more of a Matthew project, than something I can do but I can at least cross buying a ceiling fan off my list! I also got the curtains hung in the babies room. I know We haven't finished painting but I was tired of looking at them in the packages when they could look like this.

The flowered curtains I got from Ikea but they are discontinuing them and I got the last ones in Conshohocken. And the pink panels are corduroy and are from Pottery Barn Kids but I got them at the thrift store for $3 for the pair. Good Deal! It really lightens up the room since we haven't finished painting over the blue yet.

Another project I have going on right now are these beauties. (Please note the sarcasm.)

Hey look you can see our pretty wood floor! Back to the chairs. There are 2 of them and in their original state I did not find them attractive. I picked them because they are light weight and I could carry them but they are also smallish. Our foyer is fairly large but I didn't want to take up the whole space with 2 chairs. I already have them painted and the fabric I picked is draped over them but no sewing action has happened. Now that I have my dining room table open I think I might be able to start making some more progress. Once they are finished I will take pictures of the whole foyer for you.

The other project that I want to get finished before I take anything else on is this.

And this would be our old spice cabinet, already disassembled to paint, that is turning into a medicine cabinet for our powder room.

There is so much more on the list. Like these:

That is the door leading to our basement from the kitchen and the side window off the kitchen. They are primed but the kitchen is on hold for now. But I also want to take down the wall paper in there as well as the wall paper in the guest room. And, like I said, I still have to finish painting the babies room. So my list is getting longer by the day it seems but I will try to keep you posted as I actually accomplish my projects. Time is flying by. We have been living here almost 2 month already and Aleena is going to be 3 in a couple weeks. It's hard to believe. Hope you all are doing well and hopefully I will have more to share soon!!

Happy Belated Christmas and New Years.. and oh yeah we moved!

SOOOO much has happened since I last had a chance to write a post. We have officially moved.... and had Christmas and New Years. Oops. I am a little behind in the blog area but we are getting rid of more boxes everyday so there has been progress on the important areas!  I would love to say we are done unpacking by now but with 3 munchkins that take up the a major portion of my time it's a fact that we are not.

I owe you a picture of the floors but they are covered in toys and kids so when I get them picked up a bit I will post a picture. Right now our main focuses have been unpacking and the kitchen.

Now it is a fact that our kitchen is not exactly user friendly. 

We found the blueprints for this Big Blue Monster when we moved in and they were dated 1942.  Maybe it was state of the art in 1942 but now.... not so much. Besides being dishwasher-less there is a radiator under the sink which means no under the sink storage and 2 blind corner cabinets that are VERY hard to get stuff into. So we had a contractor out and just to redo the bottom cabinets was way beyond out budget. Sigh. A lot of that has to do with the fact that more basic things need to be done before something cosmetic (like replacing corroding pipe) so we are going back to the basics it seems. Being able to use water in more than one area at a time is a luxury I had always taken for granted. You literally cannot have water going in more than 1 place at a time. Someone flushes a toilet but you are trying to wash dishes? You get a trickle out of the sink. So we are looking at replacing a lot of pipe but also we think we figured out a way to get the dishwasher in without losing too much of what very little storage we have. There will be a lot of painting in our future. I can live with a poorly designed kitchen but the blue hurts my eyes.  So we will keep you updated. Mostly we are trying to finish unpacking and then the kitchen is going to be my focus. Lucky for me the great people at this blog Just finished painting their cabinets and did their homework so I don't have to. So I will try to post more and now that we have fewer boxes it should be happening a little more often. We are looking forward to having visitors soon... almost done unpacking promise and then we would love for everyone to come visit!!!

It's Official

We are HOME OWNERS! This has been an exhausting couple of months but I am proud to say we did it! Now we are going to have a different kind of stress but for some reason this kind doesn't bother me as much. So anyway here is our house....

We like so many things about this house. It has a lot of character- old houses are like that. It's not perfect. I look around and see projects. I have to remember we can only take it one step at a time! Our first project that we decided to tackle was removing the carpet from the downstairs. Having the opportunity of no furniture to worry about really doesn't happen after you move in so now is the time! The rug is not a color we would choose and more importantly was really gross (trust me on this one!)- so it had to go!! We knew that there were hardwood floors underneath but had no idea what kind of shape they were in. Here is a before picture.

and the same corner after the carpet was removed....

I feel like there should be sounds effects here. Something not good. Because the original carpet padding, from who knows when, is stuck to the floor. Looks like it melted. Which means it's not coming up in our time frame or budget which means we are putting carpet back in. I have to say I am bummed! The other disappointing thing is that is also stuck to the original fireplace hearth so we can't use that either. Bummer again. The good news?  The foyer- ('scuse the vacuum cleaner handle)

 

...was not as bad as the living room and dining room! 

So I may get some hardwood after all!! While this would be a project that I would love to tackle, it's one of the ones that having 3 small kids and not a lot of time doesn't really allow me to do so we are waiting on estimates so see what the plan is.  So that is where we stand right now. We have only owned the house for almost 2 days so I think we are making progress at least. It's exciting :)

I did want to share a cute kid story with you since I am already typing. As you already know Aleena is stinkin' adorable and smart. But she learns so much everyday it's fantastic. Last week she started to pretend she is a puppy. She pants and barks and it's adorable. Today out of the blue she came over and licked my face. I was a little freaked out I mean really??? Why is my kid licking my face?! Until I realized she was being a puppy and she was just doing what all cute puppies do when they love you. See?? adorable and smart. Love that girl!