Let the Gold Fixture Tour Begin...

Er, I mean, "Let the House Tour Begin...."

Eric and I spent the whole weekend cleaning our house because a.) it needed it and b.) we have family coming to visit this week.  Let's just say that I'm pretty sure our house hasn't been this clean since we moved in this past November.  So we figured that if we were going to clean house, why not take pictures and start our house tour with you all? We will reveal one room at a time because we like to tease. ;)  Since a lot of our recent posts have been about our front entryway, we will introduce you to our "Powder Room" first, as it is right off of our front entry.

Here is a pretty little picture of our loo:

 

To the left of the above picture, you will find our pedestal sink.

 

Check out those gold light fixtures.  I bet you are so jealous. We think they look like sad droopy flowers.  And that sink. Oh, that sink.  Don't you love how you can see the pipe/plumbing coming out of the wall?  The walls in this room are painted with some sort of sponge paint (although it is kind of hard to tell from the two above pictures).  We hate it.  

Since we are giving the grand tour of this little powder room, let's give you an idea of where our heads are at for this space.

Powder Room To-Do List:

-Paint walls

-Put in tile backsplash behind sink

-Install a vanity to provide us with storage space for things like toilet paper, cleaning products, etc.

-Replace mirror or possibly frame in the one already there

-Replace light fixtures (we will more than likely put the fixture above the mirror instead of on the  

  side)

-Install oil rubbed bronze towel bar and toilet paper holder

-Replace all cream colored outlets with white ones

-Install oil rubbed bronze door handle and hinges

-Install new baseboard and crown molding to match the trim in the front hallway

-Do a tile wainscoting

-Put tile down (?)

-Artwork on the walls

 

So there you have it, folks.  This is bathroom number one of four in our house that needs work, but for now, we are enjoying its functionality.  We haven't done a whole lot to this space yet because our main concern has been the front entryway.  Who knows where we will start working next after the entryway is done.  Only time will tell, so stay tuned! :)

Are you looking to renovate a bathroom in your house?  What kind of things are on your to-do list?  We'd love to hear about your bathroom projects, or heck, why not shoot us a link to your bathroom reno? :)

I also want to throw it out there that there may not be a Tuesday or Wednesday post this week because we will be spending time with family that is visiting from out of state. We thank you in advance for your understanding. :)

Every Rose Bush Has It's Thorns

If you have a rose bush in your yard or have ever had experience with cutting one back, you know what I mean when I say, "OOOOOOUUUUCHHHHHH!"

Over a month ago, we had this massive thing growing in the corner of our backyard.

Ugly, right?  I'm sure once upon a time this rose bush was beautiful, but obviously it was never properly taken care of by the previous owners, which is how it ended up like this.  It was like a rose bush monster, waiting to eat prick whatever came near it. As you can see in the above picture, there were a lot of weeds entangled in this beast.  There was also a small tree growing inside of this thing. What?! Crazy, right?!  The weeds were easy to grab hold of and pull out.  The branches to the rose bush and the tree however, were not so easy to remove.  The first thing we did was clip the small/thin branches using a pair of garden pruners.  Here's just the first pile of branches that we clipped and pulled.

Once the little branches were out of the way, we started in on the thicker branches that were nearer the base of the plant. It didn't take us long to figure out that the thicker branches were not going to be cut so easily with the garden pruners.  Thankfully our dear neighbors had an electric saw that they let us borrow.  Here is a picture of our second pile of thorny branches:

It is kind of hard to see, but within this pile is a trellis.  Yes, behind that massive thorny beast there were two trellis' attached to the fence (or at least they used to be attached to the fence--I imagine they were once put there for the roses to climb).  After all was said and done, our rose bush looked like this:

Much better, except for the electrical boxes (I can still picture the first time the Time Warner guys came to hook up our internet/cable and they couldn't get to the boxes because of the rose bush---tragic).  You may also notice our green grimey fence back there.  I'm STILL working on that.

From the start of this project, we said that we were going to completely tear this bush out, but in the end, we decided to leave it (for now).  We have mulled over whether to completely take out the rose bush (they are just such a pain in the butt--figuratively and literally speaking) or to leave it and plant other flowers in that corner.  We've also talked about getting rid of the bush and putting sod over that whole area.  We will see what the future holds for this thorny creature.  

What we do know is that we are glad that this space is finally clear.  One of the main reasons we wanted to cut this down was because a.) it was awful to look at and b.) our dog, Buckeye decided it was a good idea to go under the rose bush and dig secret holes so that he could go play with the neighbor dogs.  Imagine our faces when our neighbor sent us this picture in a text:

Don't you love that he is smiling the whole time? Ha! What a naughty dog we have.  To put our minds at ease, we have since covered his holes (now that we can get to them!) with grass and wood chippings.   

This project took us about an hour or two to finish, but it was SO worth it to see a clear corner.  For all of you who have removed or cut back a rose bush, I think you will agree that the three words you would use to describe this project would be: Blood. Sweat. Tears.  Am I right?!

What are you getting into this weekend? We are in full cleaning mode for our guests that are coming next week.  Please remember that we do not post on weekends, since that is our time to complete projects (or clean the house) for you to view. We hope you have a wonderful weekend! :)

Holy Grime!

Yes, holy grime Batman! Here's a look at what we were facing at the start of last weekend:

Look at all that green! Yuck!  We are pretty sure that this poor fence has never been washed.  Eric and I had tossed ideas back and forth for awhile about what we wanted to do with this eye sore.  We talked about painting it (white? tan?), staining it, and/or replacing it. We decided that for now we would have to try and save the fence that is already here (replacing it would require some savings).  In order to do the next step (painting or staining), we would first have to power wash this puppy.  I was so excited when I remembered that my parents had a power washer.  This meant that we were about to take on an almost free (here's to hoping that our water bill won't skyrocket!) project!!  I was so anxious to get started.  Last weekend we had some pretty warm days, so out came the power washer.

We picked a random fence panel to start with and I think going into this our expectations were that a.) it wouldn't take that long to do the whole fence, and b.) the power washer would get the green grime off, but the fence would still have that gray look.  Well let me tell you that our expectations quickly changed.  Here's why:

Holy guacamole!  Look at the beautiful wood that was hidden behind that dull gray!  We couldn't believe our eyes!  Eric originally said that power washing was going to be MY job because I was literally jumping up and down at the idea, but once he got his hands on that power washer his motivation took a turn for the better.  He power washed various spots on the fence just to see if they would uncover the same beautiful wood that you see in the above picture. And guess what!

 

More beautiful wood!  It was like a magic show!  We couldn't wait to see what the whole panel would look like after we were done with it.  Here are a couple of snapshots of us working:

 Since this was our first time ever using a power washer, we had to test out how close we could get to the fence and how far away we could stand and still manage to get off the grime.  Here are some things we learned:

1.) We could stand a little further back to spray down the vertical boards.

2.) To get the green off of the vertical boards, we had to stand a little closer while doing a second pass.

3.) To get the green off of the horizontal boards, we had to hold the power washer gun at an angle.

4.) Power wash the bottom of the posts and the bottom boards first.  The water collects at the bottom of the fence, making it pretty muddy/marshy. So if you do these sections first, you don't have to worry as much about the mud splashing up on you or your clothes (I've had some pretty muddy legs and arms from making this mistake one too many times!)

5.) Make sure you wear old clothes and shoes!!

After about 45 minutes (some of this time was spent messing around with the proximity), the first panel was power washed.

 

Look at that beauty!  Just in case you were wondering, we purposely did not power wash the fence post on the left because we wanted to see the difference between this panel and the one next to it.  Here is a better before and after picture of the fence:

Consider our minds blown!  We never imagined that our fence was a hidden beauty.  Going back to our original idea of painting or staining it, we now have decided that we may just seal it.  I still wonder if we should get a stain and sealer in one, but we will see.  Right now we are just enjoying looking out our back door and seeing this gorgeousness.  We do know though that we need to decide fairly quickly on what our next step is going to be because we don't want the panels we've already washed to go back to what they previously looked like.  A lot of decisions need to be made, but Eric made one definite decision (after seeing how long it took us to do one panel!): It is back to being MY job to power wash the fence. The "pre-power washing me" would've said, "Alright!! I get to power wash the fence!," but the "post-power washing me" says, "Oh boy, I get to power wash a million more fence panels at 30 minutes a pop (Note my sarcasm)." Boo.  The one nice thing about power washing though is that it is instantly rewarding/gratifying. I do love seeing all of the grime coming off of the fence.  It is kind of sickening actually how much I love watching it fly off. Now that I have officially turned your stomach and let you in on one of my hidden obsessions, I will leave you with this picture:

Remember what I said about getting muddy?  My shoes didn't look so bad here, but they got worse after two more days of power washing.  I now have power washed four panels.  It is seriously going to take me like a month to finish the whole fence.  Sigh. Oh well, let's face it.  This fence is going to look like a million bucks when I'm done with it, and I may just get a good tan (maybe I should consider power washing in my bathing suit---or maybe that's going too far!)!  

What outdoor projects have you done?  Are they just as monotonous as power washing? Tell us about them! :)

Whip It Up Wednesday: Howlin' Good Treats

Happy Hump Day!  I think I'm going to start a new Wednesday series called: Whip It Up Wednesday.  Every Wednesday I will post a recipe that is tried and truly delicious.  Today's recipe is one that I found on Pinterest a couple of weeks ago for my dog's first birthday (you may also find it from its original source here). 

Peanut Butter Puppycakes:
Yield: 6 Puppycakes

You will need:

1/2 c. milk bone crumbs (I used around 8 medium sized ones & used my rolling pin to crush them)
1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 egg
1/4 c. peanut butter
1/4 c. apple sauce (I used cinnamon applesauce, but you can use regular as well)
2 Tbs. honey

For the Frosting:
1/2 c. peanut butter
Food Coloring (You may dye the peanut butter whatever color you'd like your frosting to be)


The How-To:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a medium sized bowl, combine the milk bone crumbs, flour, and baking soda.
3. Stir in the egg, peanut butter, apple sauce, and honey.
4. Place 6 cupcake liners in a muffin tin and divide the batter evenly.
5. Bake pupcakes for approximately 18 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
6. Cool the pupcakes for a few minutes before frosting (if you don't cool them first, the icing will melt
     all over the place and most likely slide off the top).
7. In a small bowl, combine the peanut butter with the color of dye you wish to use.
8. Using a knife, frost your pupcakes and add some sort of topper if you'd like (I used a single medium-
     sized milk bone on the top of mine).

Here is the end result:

Surprisingly, they looked and smelled like real "human" cupcakes, but were 100% dog safe!  We even made a special place for them on our snack table at his "party."

When it came time to sing, "Happy Birthday" and give Buckeye his birthday treat, he sure didn't waste any time scarfing it down!  Note: If you put quite a bit of peanut butter icing on the top of yours, make sure to have some water near by.  Your dog will thank you! The peanut butter on ours got stuck to the roof of Buckeye's mouth and the faces he made to try and get it off were pretty hysterical.  Giving him water really helped to get every last bit down! :)

Do you have a puppy treat recipe that your dog loves?  Share it with us and maybe we will feature it in one of our Whip It Up Wednesday specials. :)

I'll Toast to That!

WARNING: This post may get a little awkward at times and there may be a touch of sappiness here and there.

Over a month ago, I threw a Bridal Shower for my best friend, Jenna.  I spent months preparing for this shower, as I was her Matron of Honor (this was oh so exciting to me, as I'd never had such a big job before--I'd been a Bridesmaid in 2 other weddings previously, but never a MATRON OF HONOR). There were so many things to do to get ready for this shower.  Lots of ordering, planning, and creating went on behind the scenes.  Here is a picture of the "B" I painted for her in her wedding teal.

The morning of her shower was a crazy one, as I had stayed up the night before until 2:30 in the morning.  The shower was thrown at Jenna's mom's house.  I came with a vision in my head as to how I wanted the shower to look and play out. Thankfully, the shower looked exactly how I had envisioned.   Here are some pictures from the shower that show off the decor I put together.

  

The candy bar was one thing I couldn't wait to put together.  It consisted of Twizzlers, Tootsie Rolls, Jelly Beans, M & M's, Almond Hershey Kisses, Mike and Ike's, Reese Cups, Lollipops, Metallic Gumballs, and Raspberry French Macarons that I special ordered from Etsy.com (they were the bomb!).  It was so nice to hear some of the guests compliment this display.  Here are a couple of comments I distinctly remember hearing: "This looks like it is straight out of Pinterest!" and "I think Mary could open up a side business in party planning."

This little table consisted of some fun time filler activities. Guests were to write some good marriage advice on the wooden spoons, date night ideas on strips of paper, their tried and true recipes on recipe cards, and then they were to take a clothes pin in order to play the "Clothes Pin" game.

To finish off the decor, there were vases of flowers with gold glitter floating in the water and Mason Jars with different colored and patterned straws.

This shower exceeded my expectations. The guests were so much fun and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.  There was lots of drinking, laughter (laughter caused by drinking? haha), and games!  Who doesn't love games?  Here were a few we played:

Ever heard the phrase, "Keep it simple, stupid?" Well this game was stupid simple.  Jenna and I spent the night before drooling over looking up celebrities in tuxes.  Then we cropped her fiancé's (now husband's) head and put him in a tux.  Can you pick him out in this pool of sexiness  classiness?  I made an envelope that read "Who Has the Groom?" for every celebrity.  The guests at the shower picked out an envelope and all opened their envelopes at the same time to see who in fact received the Groom.  This person received a gift.  Pretty simple, eh?

The other games were fairly traditional (Wedding Mad Libs, What's in Your Purse?)

And then of course came the "Toilet Paper" game.  You may think you know how this one goes, but I bet you are wrong. :)  I put a spin on the traditional "wedding dress" game, and went a little dirtier.  I split guests up into two teams and gave each team two rolls of toilet paper and a roll of tape.  I told them that their mission was to make a piece of lingerie that Jenna would wear on her wedding night.  Here were the results:

Team One (on the left) went the chastity belt route and Team Two (on the right) went the naughty route.  The guests got quite a laugh out of Team Two's creativity.  They used candies from the candy bar to make tassels (from Reese Cups and Twizzlers).  They made a whip from Twizzlers and they made a toilet paper thong.  It does not get much better than that ladies and gentlemen.  

WARNING: Here comes the sappiness.  If you can't handle it, don't read any further. :)

A month later, Jenna got married.  It was a day that I will never forget.  It was so hard to hold back tears at certain moments, especially when waiting for her to come down the aisle.  As I was standing up at the altar patiently waiting for my best friend to be given away, I looked over at Justin (her now husband) and I hear him say to the Mayor (who officiated the wedding), "She looks so beautiful."  No words could describe how right he was. 

A part of me was sad to see my single friend get married off, but the other part of me was so excited for her to finally experience married life.  I'll be honest, I wouldn't take my single life back for anything!  It was fun while it lasted, but my husband is one of the best things that has ever happened to me.  I feel the same way about Jenna.  She is one of the best friends a girl could ever ask for.  She is like the sister I never had, literally. The moments we have shared are some of the best, especially this one (which if you were at Jenna's wedding, here is a picture to go with my toast about Jenna breaking the toilet at my bachelorette party--does that car in the toilet look familiar? ;) haha!):

  

Jenna and I have a special friendship.  She can make me laugh so hard that I cry and I can be extraordinarily stupid when I am around her.  There are not too many people that get to see that side of me.  However, I am learning that I need to let that side of me show more often because it's fun and makes life more meaningful.  

Thank you Jenna and Justin for letting Eric and I be a part of your lives and a part of your wedding.

You may never truly understand what your friendship means to us.  What I do hope you understand though is how blessed you both are to have found each other.  May you always love each other a little more each day, be the backbone for one another in tough times, rejoice in good times, and work as a married team.  Since you will celebrate a month of marriage a week from today, here is a picture to remember your big day.

I'll toast to that! :)

It's Gettin' Fancy Up In Here.

Imagine a mix between Nelly and Iggy Azalea.

We may or may not have danced to these songs while working on casing in one of our entryways this past weekend.  Last Friday, the entryway to our living room (the living room is off of our front entryway/hallway) looked like this:

We just recently put the ribbed casings around the entryway.  Before then, the sides of the entryway looked like the top portion that you see in the above picture.  Eric and I had many discussions about how we wanted this entryway to look.  It is the biggest entryway, besides our front door that is in this space, so we wanted it to look "fancy." On one of our many trips to Lowe's, we looked at this specific kind of door casing and fell in love with it right away. Here is an up close and personal look at the door casing we chose:

To go underneath of the casings, we bought two plinth blocks, which helped make a smooth transition between the casings and the baseboard.  You can see this transition (and a sneak peek of my future wall collage) in the picture below:

Looks pretty good, right? It's got us smiling! But just wait.  It gets better.  We went back to Lowe's and bought three boards to make our header for the entryway.  We started with a 5 1/2 inch base. First, Eric measured from the outside of one casing to the other.

He then made sure to add a half inch to the board when cutting it, so that there was a quarter inch hanging off on each side of the casings.  Here's what the base looked like after cutting it.

Once Eric set the base on top of the casings, we discovered that the drywall extended past the top board in the doorway, which created a nice sized gap.  Lucky for us, this gap could easily be filled with some caulk.

After nailing in the base, Eric measured for the base cap, which had to be the same length as the base. He cut each side of the base cap at a 45 degree angle.

Eric then nailed this piece in and started to work on cutting smaller pieces to finish off the sides of the base cap.

The next and final piece that Eric cut was the crown that sits on top of the base.  The ends of the crown were cut at a 45 degree angle, but doing this is tricky on a miter saw since when you cut the crown it's not in the same position as when you install it.  Speaking of installing the crown, here's Eric nailing it in with our nail gun.  I don't have a picture of it, but Eric also cut side pieces for the crown to give it a more finished look.

Obviously we are still working on our front hallway, but it makes us happy to know that we now have this entryway to the living room looking pretty spiffy.

 

Now all that's left for this entryway is to spackle over the nails and to paint it white.  Woohoo!  We are so happy with the way this entryway turned out.  Now we feel like we can walk through it like we are walking down a runway...errr maybe that's just me. :)

What fun did you get into this past weekend? Did you case in any entryways? Or maybe you worked on another house project that you've been dying to finish? Tell us all about it in the comment section below! :)

Sprucing Up the Garden Beds

When we first moved into this joint last November, the flower beds were pretty shot.  There were weeds everywhere, the bushes needed to be trimmed, the garden surrounding the walkway to the front door contained dead shrubbery, and all of the garden beds looked like they hadn't been mulched in years.  Needless to say, they needed some serious TLC.
I am not one who is particularly garden savvy.  Most people who know me, know that I have quite the black thumb.  Despite my black thumb, I HAD to do something with these garden beds because they were driving me loco and our curb appeal was zero to none.
In April, Eric and I planted some bulbs in hopes that we'd see some of them come up this year.  His mom had given us a whole bag full of "Naked Ladies" (Note: if you look these flowers up on Google, make sure you type in 'Flowers' behind the name.....I wasn't thinking the first time I typed it in and my search results were a little vulgar..haha!) that she had dug up from her garden.  We also bought some Calla Lilies and Dahlia Duets from the store.  Here is our dog Buckeye showcasing our flower packets:

Is he cute or what? :) We decided to save the seed packets for a later time/year.  We knew that we'd have enough bulbs to cover the amount of garden bed space we have in the front yard.  We placed the "Naked Ladies" and the Calla Lilies in the garden bed next to the walkway to the front door.  The Dahlia Duets were placed on the other side of our garage in the bed there.  Here's us hard at work in the garden beds back in April.

After de-weeding the gardens and placing the bulbs where we wanted them, the beds looked like this:

I should mention that we had some Daffodils unexpectedly pop up.  We are discovering that there have been so many plants planted in these gardens that whoever planted the second round of them didn't realize that they were planting some of the plants on top of other older ones.  We've since had to pull out some flowers that were entangled in shrubs.  After the Daffodils bloomed, we cut them way back so that they'd come up next year.  The grassy patches you see in our garden beds are some type of small purple flower that bloomed in early Spring.  We never quite figured out what they were, but we cut them back as well.  I can foresee us getting rid of them because they just aren't pretty.

We waited and waited for our flowers to bloom, but nothing happened.  Disappointment came over us, but after much rain and sunshine, we FINALLY saw some results!  All three of the Calla Lilies that we had planted came up, but only one has bloomed/opened up so far.

We also have a rose bush on the side of our house that we cut back some in April and it has now bloomed (we aren't sure what the small purple flowers underneath of it are, but they sure are pretty next to the bright pink from the rose bush!).

Although we were happy that these flowers had bloomed, our front garden beds still looked pretty dead.  We had one Calla Lily come up and then some purple flowers came up behind it, but that was it.  Bummer.  So this past weekend Eric and I decided that if the flowers we planted weren't going to come up, that we would cheat and get flowers from Lowe's that already looked beautiful.  We ended up getting a 6-pack of Begonias, a 6-pack of Petunias, one 3-Qt. Petunia, two 2.5-Qt. Petunias, and four bags of Premium Black Mulch. We planted a mixture of Begonias and Petunias in the garden bed next to the front walk, which brightened up the front of the house some and made it feel more welcoming. 

Next, we planted the bigger pots of Petunias in the garden bed on the other side of the garage.  Two of the pots contained flowers that were red and white, so to accent them, we planted plain white Petunias and red Begonias around them.

The last step was to mulch around all of the plants. Planting and mulching the beds took us about an hour and a half, but it was SO worth it to see how much it livened up our yard.  Here is a before and after of our house from a street view.

We love looking at that second picture.  It is like a breath of fresh air.  We still have A LOT of work to do to the outside of our house, but we love that the colorful flowers make it seem like people live here that care about the appearance of their house.  One definite perk of owning a house is being able to make it your own.  You can tell by looking at a house what type of people live in that house.  For us, we hope that our house says that we are enthusiastic and willing to bring life back into a 20 year old house.

This weekend we plan to work on some house projects that need to be completed before we have guests at the end of the month.  It is my intention to not blog on weekends, as that is the time Eric and I spend doing things around the house.  I hope to share some of these projects with you next week. :)

What are you getting into this weekend?  Do your garden beds need to be spruced up?  How do you make your home feel inviting to others? We'd love to hear your answers! :)