Incredible Craftsmanship

The island is complete!...well all except the paint. Here is a preview of Aaron's beautiful craftsmanship.

 

Christmas Cottage

Eek I said it...Christmas! Aaron's parents stopped by for a visit today and Deb gave me the Christmas Cottage Magazine for a little inspiration. After I looked at it I almost forgot Thanksgiving hasn't happened yet. I was ready to drag out my red and green decorations and take down the fall leaves strung around the house.

I think my first decorative project will be a Christmas card holder, we don't get a lot of cards, at least we haven't to this point since we've moved so much but there are a couple of ideas I've seen that I have to try.

 

We don't have a lot, any actually, art work on the walls. Aaron seems pretty particular so I'm trying to be quite selective when it comes to decor. Anything Pretty gave me some inspiration with her Italy memory wall and I have quite a few walls I could do something similar with. I just need to figure out what theme I want for the frames...I did find some inspiration from surprise surprise :) the PB.

What Happened to October?

Where did October go? Can you believe it's already November! and it definitely feels like November now. It's time for me to post some of the changes that have taken place in the kitchen and the dining rooms. First I would like to note, Aaron is much more dissatified then me when it comes to finishing projects. He has way more finesse then I do so it's a good thing he is doing the most majority of these projects, I can except the imperfections, he can not ;) so it's taking a little longer but the quality is great!!

The Dining Room - Before:

 

The Dining Room - After:

 We used Sherwin Williams Antique Bronze on the walls, we are still going to put crown molding around the top and I am on the hunt for a curtain rod over 10' long for the window so I can get our drapes hung. You can even catch a little glimpse of my table runner I created with the same fabric as the tie backs used on the kitchen curtains :)

Now...previously we showed pictures of us working on those dreadful kitchen cabinets for months. Well we finally finished them, we repainted all of the hardware to a bronze color and began hanging the doors. Well you may remember me mentioning that Aaron has a tough time excepting imperfections. Well on that note, we took all of the hardware back off and took all of the doors and cabinets back out! He decided antique white would look bettter than brown so all of the cabinets are not repainted to antique white (Thank G they are hung and staying right where they are!)

Originial Cabinets (*flashback):

The intended brown color without the doors on...

                                                   Aaron's new antique white choice:

I'm not sure if this will work but I took a Panoramic View of the kitchen. We still need counterops and a backsplash as you can see and Aaron is in the garage working on the built in trash cans for the island as I type :) We're having an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party in December so we have to have the kitchen finished in the next couple of weeks, this will be the first time people outside of family will see the house haha.

Fall Curtain Tiebacks

As I mentioned before I was making new curtains with the wonderful fabric I purchases at JoAnn Fabrics for about $3/yd. Well the curtains are finished and I decided to make some autumn inspired tiebacks and leaf-clips to carry fall into our kitchen.

I bought some bow clips (8 pack) from Michael's for $.99 along with a pack of fabric leaves also $.99

I hot glued the leaves to the clips, wrapped the newly sewed ties around the newly sewed curtains and clipped them on, Ta-da!

Celebrations & Creations

I would like to start out my congratulating my lovely friend Jen on her recent engagement to her Fiance Ryan! I am so excited for the two of them and very pleased to share my Maid of Honor roles with another great friend Brandi! I wish nothing but the best for the both of them and can not wait to begin the traditional wedding festivities :-)

Just a little inspiration from theknot.com based on Jen's color choices...just getting the ball rolling :D

On the home front Aaron and I actually spent the weekend at home and it was quite pleasant I must say! Aaron did some more work on the island and I finished my kitchen curtain project. These are the fabrics that I picked up at JoAnn Fabrics for my curtains, table runners, and the PB wall decor I will be replicating with my own spin!

The brown and white fabric is for the curtains. The orange and green fabrics are for curtain tie backs and table runners. The Asian inspired fabrics are for the wall art work.

I think these curtains turned out pretty well for my first attempt at making them. The curtain rods I purchases off of EBay a while back. The total cost of the curtain's and rods is $30.

Aaron and I also went to Heebie's this weekend, a surplus store for home construction materials. We looked at back splashes, counter-tops, and cabinet hardware. We decided to stick with the hinges we already had on the cabinets but just spray paint them a worn silver/gray look that we liked on some of the handle pulls we had seen in the store. It's hard to get a good feel from the images but you can see the beautiful possibly art deco look of the hardware previously.

The doors are about 1/3 finished. The spray gun worked so much easier than painting them by hand, Aaron says it's a bit messy to keep all everything clean. The doors however look great and I can't wait to get the rest of them painted and the painted hardware back on the cabinets! 

Island Colors

Aaron spent a good part of last night working on our island and he's doing such a great job! We aren't sure what color to make the island though. We can just paint it the same color as the cabinets or we can branch out, maybe stain it a dark stain color, or paint it a completely different color. I've been looking at pictures online to get some inspiration and I love what Thrifty Decor Chick did with her kitchen island.

The idea is the same with the beadboard and even the countertop color looks about right for what we are going for in our kitchen. The only difference it our island is more like a peninsula, situated under the kitchen window.

Aaron has also decided, and I agree, that we don't like the normal run of the mill window shutters. We are missing a couple in the front of the house and I'd just like to replace them all. Right now the one's that are on there are just black vinyl, normal looking shutters but I think I've decided that I like the Board and Batten shutters. They're wooden and I also think instead of buying them for about $40 a piece we could make all of them for almost that much. They would look similar to the one I found below, we would likely paint them a different color though, maybe some sort of slate blue since that is what Aaron is thinking for the siding.

Well I think I'm back in the swing of blog updating so I hope everyone has a wonderful Labor Day Weekend and fingers crossed Hurricane Earl doesn't ruin out plans. We're shipping up to Boston to do some exploring so I'll let you know next week if the rain and wind threw a wrench in our plans!

Autumn Aroma

I walked into the grocery store today to pick up a few things at lunch and as soon as I walked through the door the aroma of cinnamon pine cones filled the entrance way. I almost stood there for a few minutes to smell the air but didn't have time to waste so I took a huge gulp of air and savored it :) The calendar says 24 days until Fall...I say it's wrong, so it's still 90 degrees outside, September means Autumn therefore it begins in 2 days in my world.

We went a little overboard on purchases last week, it all started with a Craigslist find. A couple was selling their Crate and Barrel Havana Table and Chairs and we were in definite need of a better table for our oversized dining room. The table is beautiful and has the plank look on top.

We also saw an 'antique' hutch on craigslist but discovered after visiting the seller the hutch was intended to be a tv cabinet. I did however love her decorating style full of very bold colors and odd but strangely intriguing color combinations. So the trip wasn't a total fail b/c now I have a ton of ideas floating around my head for what to do with the walls in our house.

My birthday was this weekend, and in the words of an old friend, high five to two-five, it's time to get serious at my age (no more hand me down furniture) haha. Aaron took me to Home Goods and we picked out a few needed items as well as a rug which we found a Furniture4Less.

The colors look a lot brighter in person but I'm working with an iPhone camera. This is under the table and chairs in the dining room in the picture above. Aaron tried for the more traditional looking rug but I think I won that decision. He is working diligently on our island with the time we do have right now so he is commended for that <3

Here she is so far, we bought the beadboard to go around it as well so that is getting put on today. Once this island is finished or at least the outer shell we can get countertops!

Happy August!

So it appears I failed at being a blogger in July. I can't even say it's because I was completely swamped with home renovations (I wish that were the case) it's more of us stalling out and summer taking hold. In the beginning of July we took a little vacation down to the Outer Banks with family and friends, it was much needed beach time. However, I think that beach mentality stuck, at least on me, not so much Aaron. He accomplished more than me this month with beginning to build our kitchen island, working on both the jeeps, and beginning the physical therapy on his knee. I had a lot of attempts but not to many successes...

The track was taken off from around the dining room entryway where the "folding closet doors" use to be. They didn't really fit in between the living room and the dining room. So I sanded the doorway and put two new coats of paint on it...doesn't look the best but the sander broke on me so part of it was sanded by hand. My second attempt was removing the paint off the big outside dining room window. The window has paint peeling all over it because too many layers have been painted on it. We've tried scraping it, striping it, and using a hot air gun (which was a fail since I cracked the window). I got some of the paint off but it's just a really tough job...so now it's sitting there partially paint removed :(

Hopefully August shows more progress, even though each and every weekend this month is booked with outside the house activities. The government should be sending the credit soon so my hands in the mailbox waiting, 14 weeks and counting. They weren't kidding when they said it would take up to 16 weeks. We ended up buying all of the kitchen appliances right off the bat since the refrigerator decided to die with the move. Now we just need countertops, backsplash, and molding :) oh yeah and we still haven't finished painting the cabinets. We did however buy a spray gun for the compressor so hopefully we'll test that out and get the doors painted so we can put them back up and hide all those dishes..

So don't look too closely, but under the cabinets still needs finished, the doors are clearly missing since they still need painted and yes those are plywood counter-tops, and no backsplash. It's a functioning kitchen though so at least we can cook in there.