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Monday, February 28, 2011

Super Simple Update

One of the first things we changed in our house was all the door handles.  When we moved in, they looked like this:


Totally not our style, nor were they even in good shape.

So after saving up a little cash...door hardware gets pretty pricey when you buy it all at once,  we bought some more modern brushed nickel handles that we liked much better.  We both agreed that they completely changed the look of the doors.  Here's what they look like now:


It's amazing how changing something so small can have such a big impact.  It's definitely something to consider when updating your house.

Oh, and in other news, we found out on Friday that we're joining the Pink Team this time around.  Yep, that's right, we're expecting a Baby Girl!!!!!!!!!!  We couldn't be more thrilled!!  I can't wait to get started on the nursery.  I'll definitely be making lots of changes to that room and plan on diying most of the things, so I'll have tons to post about in the near future!

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Friday, February 25, 2011

Happy Friday!

I'm so happy it's Friday!  We finally get to find out if we're having a boy or a girl...after waiting an extra four weeks!!  This baby better be ready to flash the "goods" today!  And not only are we finding out what we're having today, but tomorrow we get to take our little man to the circus!  I don't know who'll be more excited, me or the little man!!

At the circus last year

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Here is where I'm linking up today:

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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Kitchen Floor Makeover

Waaaaayyyy back in February of 2008, a long time before I even thought about starting a blog, we gave our kitchen floor a makeover.  We didn't have a lot of extra money back then because we had just bought the house that summer and got married a month later, but the floor was AWFUL.  The tile was hideous, the grout hadn't been sealed properly and was breaking out and it was horribly stained.  No matter how much I cleaned it, it always felt dirty and looked dirty.  Anyway, I digress, I finally convinced my hubby that we could make it look and feel a whole lot better, even if we just bought some cheap linoleum tiles.  We shopped around and found some we liked at Menard's (that happened to be on sale!) and bought them.  My parents made the trip down to O-town to help us pull it all off.

As it turns out, which we already kinda figured, whoever put the tile in had absolutely NO idea what they were doing, so we had a much bigger project on our hands than we originally thought.  So, we called in more help and my father-in-law came over with some more tools and an extra pair of hands.

Here is what the kitchen looked like the weekend we moved in; hate the color, hate the light fixture, really hate the floor and who puts a tv on a wall stand these days other than cheap motels??

Here are my handy dad and handy hubby tearing out the subflooring which had about a million nails holding it in place.  It was cement board and the wrong material to use under the tile.  It made the kitchen floor about 1/2 inch higher than the rest of the floors.

 Here is my father-in-law measuring out the plywood to be used as the new subflooring.

 Here is a shot of all the trash that we ended up with, and that sat on our deck covered by a tarp until the weather got nice.  Actually, I think we ended up with more bags than are shown in the picture.

 We added our names and the date to the floor boards as a personal touch!

Here is a really flattering picture of me laying down the new linoleum tiles.

 And here is a picture of what the floor looks like now.  It's not what I would've chosen if we could've afforded something better, but it works for this house.  But one thing that doesn't work is that disgusting light fixture!!  It's still there and I still hate it, but I'm not so sure what I want there, so it stays for now.


I wish I had better pictures of the entire process, but like I said, I wasn't blogging at the time and never really intended to, so these were just taken for us to document our accomplishment of installing a new floor.

There is still a lot that we need to do in that kitchen, so hopefully I'll be getting around to more projects soon!

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Monday, February 21, 2011

A Blue Room

Since we have a new baby on the way in a few months, we're finally starting to finish some projects around the house that we've been putting off for months.  One of those projects is painting our son's room  and slowly converting it into more of a "big boy" room.  We knew we wanted to paint it a color in the aqua category, but hadn't settled on one yet.  Here are the samples that we liked the best:

The first one on the left is Lagoon by Martha Stewart.  The next one is Embellished Blue by Behr, and the last one is Atta Boy Blue by Disney.

And the winner is...Lagoon by Martha Stewart! 

We decided that Embellished Blue was a little too light and baby blueish and we thought that Atta Boy Blue would probably be a little too dark once it was on the wall.

Our goal is to have a light, bright, fun room for our growing little boy, and hopefully a color that can stay for a while.  I'm thinking we should have it all painted by the end of the week, so I'll be sure to post some before and after pics!

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Monday, February 14, 2011

Show & Tell: Trunk Love

I've been wanting this trunk for over a year and now I finally have it!  It was an early birthday gift from my parents.  I wanted it last year for my birthday, but refused to let my mom buy unless it was on sale.  I mentioned it 2 months before my birthday, thinking it would go on sale beforehand, but it never did.  It actually didn't go on sale one time until the end of the summer, so needless to say, I didn't get it.  About 3 weeks ago, to my surprise, I spotted it on sale in the Target ad for $20 off, and my birthday is just around the corner (in March)!!  Oh happy day!  Not only do I need the storage, but I love the way it looks.  Here is my beautiful new birthday trunk in action!!

See that gorgeous bedding in the background?  We bought it a couple months ago.  I was inspired by my favorite home improvement blog, Young House Love.  More on that later!


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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Another Party Idea

First, I somehow messed up my blog header this morning and need the hubby to fix it when he gets home tonight, so it will look like this the rest of the day.  Bummer.

Anyway,  here is another idea for Hudson's 2nd birthday party.  He is really in to Mickey Mouse at the moment, so I thought maybe a Mickey party would be fun for him.  I found these cute ticket style invitations at Fun Invites on Etsy.com.  If I got these, I would make the rest of the decorations myself.


I'm stilll leaning toward the space party idea, but I'm trying to explore all my options.
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Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Birthday Party Planning

Even though Hudson's 2nd birthday isn't until April, I've already been thinking about party themes and decorations.  Today The Celebration Shoppe unveiled a new "space" design that I think is absolutely adorable!  I'm definitely adding this to my options!  Check it out!

She has so many great designs!!

I plan to share all the possible themes I find along the way, and if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them!

Here is where I'm linking up today:

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Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Nesting Already?

Currently our nursery for the new baby is still the guest bedroom...or I should say the catch-all room.  I always had high hopes for it to become a cozy, inviting guest bedroom.  That never happened, and now it never will.  So, I've started slowly prepping it to become the nursery. 

The first thing that needed to be done was to clean out and organize all of our closets in order to make room for most of the items from the guest closet.  I started with my closet, then moved on to the coat closet and finally started arranging the guest nursery closet. (My husband cleaned out his own closet a couple of months ago)

Unfortunately, I didn't take before pictures of any of the closets, so these after pictures won't be as impressive, but trust me, the closets were horrible!  They had been neglected for months and months, if not years!
Hall Coat Closet


 My Closet
(I still need to get a shoe rack)

 Hubby's Closet
(didn't my hubby do a good job organizing it?)

 Nursery Closet
(a work in progress, but already sooo much better than what it was)

I love how good it feels to open an organized closet.  I'm huge on organization, so this is a great project for me to tackle in the winter.  Anyone else stuck inside getting things done?

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