Why Not?

Got a boring, flat door hanging in your house? Why not give it a little texture, a little spice?! That's what we did with these two doors leading into our ever important storage room...

I sat down and drew up a few ideas of how to break the plain, flatness up...

Then we decided on a pattern and went to town cutting trim...

A little bit of wood glue and a few air nails later our doors now look like this...

Nothing too amazing, but hey, why not?

Strip and Stain

Gotta love a good Craig's List find my latest was a dresser set. They came in a kind of a honey, reddish color stain close to this color (why did I not remember to take a true before shot)...

The color wasn't terrible, but it wasn't my favorite either. Thanks to quite a few rough spots, including a soda spill down the front of one dresser, I decided it would be best to strip them down with good'ol citristrip...

Then I did a color test with the left over stain cans we had from the hardwood floors. The winner was Minwax Jacobean on the right...

One coat of Jacobean stain (applied with an old tshirt) and two coats of polyurethane later, the dressers were finally finished...

Sorry, I really need to break out my camera instead of the cell.
This picture shows the color a bit better. It's a nice, rich brown, yet still allows the wood grain to show through...

I really love the clean lines, height off the ground (gotta sweep out dog hair from under things around this house), and lovely wood drawer pulls...

To top it off, I even added a little drawer liner in those bad boys! Now if I could just get around to moving all our clothes in.

A Bedroom Story

No, not that kind of bedroom story (although, I am sure I could think of few good ones).
THIS STORY involves our master bedroom ceiling. Apparently the previous owner did not prime before applying the ceiling texture. Thus, a few months after moving in our bedroom ceiling started peeling. It was subtle at first, but eventually the peeling got worse. So we got out the scraper out and went to town. Then, when we got tired of scraping, we bought some tongue-and-groove boards to cover the lovely half-textured ceiling up.

This is the ceiling after scraping and marking out the studs with blue chalk lines...

a tonload of tongue-and-groove boards after a couple coats of primer...

an awkwardly side wise picture of Brandon painting the new ceiling with a final coat of white paint...

the crown molding getting their own coat of white paint...

a before picture of the ceiling before crown molding...

and finally, the oh la la after...

Definitely gives the master bedroom and little cottage cabin vibe...time to get all warm and cozy ; )

What Comes After Christmas

It's our family New Years celebration. Our annual peel-and-eat boiled shrimp New Years dinner.

It consists of packing in a bunch of family into someones house (in this case my parents)...

We even allow a few non family members (yet) to join us...aka "boyfriends." Isn't my sister and her boyfriend Adam cute?!

That being said, these four together are cuter!

And finally, we worked off the shrimp with a little dance dance wii action...

Gotta love a man who can dance ; )

Christmas in March

That's right, my Christmas post is just now coming in March. I'm a firm believer in better late than never, perhaps because I'm so good at being late. Either way, here are a few memories I don't want to forget from December...

We went over to my parents and they were putting up the Christmas tree...in matching outfits. Unplanned, yet adorable.

We set up our Christmas tree downstairs this year. I hope to get better at decorating it. I got a tree topper after Christmas when they were marked down 75% off. Maybe next year it will be better.

(I swear this picture is saved upright, but the computer is having a mind of its own today)

This is my favorite Christmas present. It came in the mail all the way from Texas. It's two pieces of caramel candy with nuts packaged with festive red paper and masking tape. It's so precious.

It came from these people, my winter Texan grandparents. If you could zoom in you could see they are both wearing those ever fashionable sunglasses that fit over your regular glasses. They love them; I know this because they told me how great they are.

And finally, a picture of the sea of presents over on the Leslie side. They go all out for Christmas...presents everywhere. It's pretty exciting for me, so imagine being my niece Emarea and realizing half of the presents were for her!

That's Christmas in a nutshell. I'm sure there were tons more memories, but my mind is a tad bit foggy three months later...

Attic Insulation

Our house is old, which means our insulation is old and THIN. Not quite the R-39 attic insulation depth recommended for our region. With Home Depot's free insulation blower with 20 bag green insulation purchase, we decided it was the perfect time to purchase some more before winter hits. We needed 40 bags, or $215 worth of Green Fiber insulation (the recycled, none glass kind). It took all of 3 trips to the hardware store (one for the insulation and a second/third trip to pick up/drop off the machine) and about 6 hours worth of time to get the job done. You need one person to be outside feeding the blocks of insulation into the machine...

And a second person up in the attic, with a mask and eye protection, spraying the insulation to the desired depth...

To top it off, we qualify for a small energy tax credit since we didn't quite max out the tax credit from our windows!

Hopefully we will see a difference in our electricity bills this winter.

Camp Ground Cemetary

Not far from our house is a small civil war cemetery. It's so close we can walk to it. It is one of my favorite places to walk Cove too, especially in the fall when the leaves are changing...

It is so old most of the headstones are too weathered to read and falling over...

There is also a huge fallen tree that no one has cared to get rid of...

For some reason that cemetery feels really peaceful.

On the way home we made Cove take a picture by a fire hydrant that matched her scarf...

I guess not all dogs like fire hydrants, because she sure doesn't look happy ; )