Little By Little- House Progress

I'm closing in on the end of the school year and I couldn't be more excited! We spent this weekend in Grand Haven, one of my favorite places on the planet, and then out on a friend's boat yesterday. It's been a lovely weekend!

I'm looking forward to being home this summer to hang out with my favorite little munchkin and also to getting our house organized and decorated!

We haven't done tons lately and to be honest, I don't know that we will do any huge projects in this home since it probably will not be our "forever home".

But just painting and doing little things here and there has made a world of difference. We've put a little work into the dining room and I think it's the first room in the house that we can call finished.

We had the wallpaper taken down, painted, put up curtains and a little art and called it a day. Gil also took down the terrible light fixture and switched it out with one I love!

Here are some photos from when the previous owner was still occupying the house:

Here are photos of the dining room in its current state:

The pictures are a bit dark, but the wall color is navy and I love it with the touches of red. There are also splashes of navy in the adjoining rooms. Can't wait to work on some more projects in the coming months!

Look How Lovely

If you recall, we had a huge limb fall and almost hit my car. We called the city about having the tree removed since we'd prefer not to have our roof smashed in by a gigantic falling branch in the future.

They said they would remove the tree but they were going to wait until winter. So I was quite surprised to come home from school today and find this beauty in our front yard:

I'm really hoping that the city is planning to finish up tomorrow because that is not cute! I'm excited to have a new, non-monstrous tree planted next spring.

Take that, house!

The past couple of days I have been busy around the house. I decided to take on some of the projects that have been hanging over my head like a dark cloud...namely the treadmill room and the laundry room. These two areas were getting pretty outta control. I can't believe how much storage space we actually do have, now that we're using it well. So glad we whipped those spaces into shape...(I just tried to write a whip sound...but couldn't figure out how to spell it...think about it)!

First up, we have some before and afters of the treadmill room, otherwise known as my arch nemesis. The problem with this room is that I couldn't figure out what we needed it for. The desk isn't in there anymore, so it's not an office. It basically has the treadmill, our computer printer and shelves. To start, I sat down and thought about how we wanted the room to function.

Before:

After:

Before: The shelves were just holding unorganized stuff.

After: Organized! Boxes with labels in the middle. There are actually empty shelves left over. Yay.

Before: The computer printer + some grocery bags?

After: I added a space for mail that needs to be shredded or filed. Before, our shredder was across the room and not in a space that it could be plugged in all the time so we rarely used it. Now I'm hoping that easy access means we'll use it!

Before: Gil likes technology. There were boxes with tons of random cords that I didn't want to get rid of, but I also had no idea what to do with!

After: I found this cord organization idea on realsimple.com. Love that website!

I can't believe how bare the room looks now!

Next up...basement closet (that I never go in because I'm scared there are spiders in it).

Before: Stuff thrown in the bottom of the closet.

After: Floor space looks much better! I added shelves for more room on the side.

I put all our winter gear in tubs and found cute scrapbook paper to make labels. Not a huge difference, but makes me happy!

And last up, the laundry room.

Before: Where to start??

After: I bought a bunch of tubs from Target to corral all our stuff!

Before: Shelves were crammed...

After: Labeled containers make it easy to find everything!

It's amazing how much better I feel now that I've tackled those spaces! Thank you summer for time to do all of this!

Operation Organize Our House Has Begun!

Today I've been busy going through junk. Wow, we've held on to some things for no good reason. I actually found a grocery bag with unopened mail in it from the week we moved (in 2009, yikes). Good thing there wasn't anything important in there! I'm really going to choose to believe that we would've put things away like normal people had our basement not erupted a week after we moved into the house. Instead, we ended up shoving things into closets since we had to move all the basement furniture up to various rooms on the main floor.

However, as I've said in the past that excuse is no good now that I have a good chunk of time (ah, lovely summer) to actually organize/get rid of/donate our stuff.Today I found my wedding planner binder that my sister got for me (thanks sis!). I found various "inspiration" photos that I used to gather ideas. It was funny to see that I gathered a lot of photos with natural elements in them- our wedding turned out nothing like that.

Maybe I'll use this for a 10th anniversary wedding party??

I also found a folder with wedding receipts, contracts, and a calendar to keep it all straight. Take a look at the last week. So funny..."Married Life Begins"...if you can't make it out...that's an arrow pointing to "Eternity". That's right, Gil is not getting out of this one! I was so excited to get married (and still am so excited that we are married)!!

...I wonder, what other fun things I will find in our closets this week?

Home Goods Find...

We have been looking for a piece of furniture to add to our dining room to fill a little space and to create more storage room for a while now. I had been eyeing this piece for a little while from Crate & Barrel.

But we already have a lot of dark wood tones in that room so I was a bit hesitant. I was thinking it might be fun to have a piece of furniture that was a color to liven things up.

Yesterday I was at Home Goods and came across this piece. I liked it right off the bat, but didn't know how it would look in the dining room. Nor had I measured the space, so I didn't know if it was the right size. It seemed to be, but I am usually pretty horrible at estimating and spatial reasoning.

I didn't have time to buy it yesterday because I was running late to get somewhere across town, so I decided to go back and pick it up today. I'm glad I did because when I got home, I decided I love it in our house! We didn't want anything big and bulky because it's a small space and we also didn't want that air vent blocked. And it's the right size...victory! I'm excited to decorate the wall space above it. What do you think?

So glad I went with something other than dark wood!

Now I'm off to go clean the house because it looks like a tornado whipped through every floor. A messy house stresses me out. Byeeeee!

Two Years With Our Little Bungalow...

Today is the 2 year anniversary of us becoming homeowners. While this is really awesome, it also makes me realize that there is no excuse for the amount of projects I have never gotten around to. At first the excuse was all of the basement issues and how that made it hard to properly move in. But two years later, I think it may be time to move on! Or get a new excuse. Just kidding. So I know I've said this already, but I am really going to use this summer to get our house organized and decorated. There are way too many rooms that I've bought wall decor for but just haven't put up. Like the living room, two of the bathrooms, the hallway leading to our bedroom, the guest bedroom, and a few other places. Seriously, we've neglected our walls! There's nothing like wall art and curtains to make a house feel finished, so that's what I'm going to do.

Here are some frames that I picked up at Pier 1 and Home Goods.

Is it weird that I love this "To the Beach" sign? Clearly, we do not have a beach near us, but it reminds me of summers spent in Grand Haven. Plus, it's just a fun sign.

My original thought for getting these frames was to do a wall in this fashion, but on a much smaller scale. However, since the space is not huge I don't know how/if I want to use all these frames together. I have to figure out what all I want in that space. I also want to add some unique objects that are not framed pictures or considered typical wall decor.

What are some fun things that you have used for art on your walls at home that have sentimental value or are not typically considered art?

Bed Bath & Beyond Fail

Day 1 of summer vacation means the start of operation get organized in our house! I have an ongoing Google doc of projects around the house that I want to work on. To get started, I headed over to Bed Bath & Beyond with a list of things that I needed.

One of the first items that I wanted to grab was a "Catch-All Valet"- a place for Gil to stick his wallet and odds and ends from his pockets. On clearance- awesome! Zero left- fail.

I did find this cute charging station for our phones which was only $2.99. Much needed. We currently charge our phones on top of the scale in our bathroom. True story.

Next I looked for shelf dividers to keep our closets organized. Couldn't find any- fail.

Then I picked out these super cute sheer panels for our living room. I was so sure they were the right length. Got them home and they're about an inch too short- measuring fail.

I was also pretty excited about this hair dryer holder for under the sink (doesn't take a lot to amuse me evidently) and it didn't fit under any of the cabinets- fail.

To round out that less than successful B B & B trip, I totally forgot to buy any kind of containers for the "mail station" that I want to make- fail. Yes, mail is one of the number one messes in our house.

By the way, did you know that there is a store called "The Container Store"? Unfortunately there aren't any in Michigan. I would love it there! I heard about that store on one of my new fave blogs "I Heart Organizing". If your heart races for new organization projects like mine does, you should check it out!

Summer is Right Around the Corner!!

Technically, I have to work until June 22 but it feels like summer & freedom is right around the corner. No summer school for this girl. Woot.

I'll be taking a class this summer, but it is online so it won't be too inconvenient. Besides that, I have a list of projects that I want to work on around the house.

House To Dos:

• Organize "Treadmill" Room- (bookshelves, closet)

• Gather pictures and hang frames on upstairs landing- Something similar to this, but smaller scale

• Style bookshelves on either side of fireplace

• Reorganize laundry room

• Organize old pictures into photograph boxes

• Put up two floating shelves in master bath

• Hang pictures in basement bath

• Hang pictures in master bath

• Hang pictures in guest room & organize guest closet

• Organize closets in master bedroom

• Organize space behind wet bar in basement

• Install cabinets in basement for tv area (I will not be tackling this one)

• Paint main floor? (Gil is not convinced on this one haha)

• Paint or find fabric to accent cutouts:

Lots to do...can't wait to tackle our house!

On another note, Laila is passed out and snoring at my feet. She had a play date with her boyfriend, Wrigley, yesterday. She was pretty happy about that. Of course they stopped playing when I whipped out the iPhone.

Last summer when they played, she was so little! And I forgot to mention at the beginning of May, Laila turned one! This has been great in our household because she hasn't been chewing as much so we've been able to leave her out of her crate for short periods of time when we leave the house. I think she likes her newfound freedom. Hopefully it won't be too long until we can always leave her out. She still has slip-ups every now and then, like this:

Dang it, Laila!

...Now I'm off to go enjoy this sunny, 80 degree day. Three cheers for long weekends!

To paint or not to paint?

I feel like I've posted about this before, but I can't remember. Our living room is really dark and one way that I want to lighten it up is by introducing pops of color with turquoise and red and painting the walls another color (yet to be determined).

But the darkest part of our room is the fact that all the trim is dark wood, as is the floor, and blinds. Add in the dark red brick & it's one dark room. Not to mention, this room does not get tons of light.

I've mentioned to Gil in the past that I think it would look great to paint the trim and the fireplace. He was not a fan of this idea because these are original features of the room (as far as I know). I totally get that. But...I don't particularly love these features as they currently stand. It's just a whole lotta' brown.

Other rooms on the same floor, like our kitchen, already had the trim painted white before we moved in and I like how it looks much better.

My biggest concern would be to paint the brick fireplace. Here's an example of how it can change the look of a room from younghouselove.com:

Before:

After:

They have similarly colored floors and the light-colored fireplace looks tons better in contrast.

To paint or not to paint?