We Have a Patio!

Yep, that is right. 10 months after moving into our home, we finally have an outdoor living space in the backyard. Right now, it is only stone and a hand-me-down grill from a neighbor...no furniture..but that will come. I am just super excited it is all finished and it happened SO quickly. Xteriors Pavers started yesterday at 10:00am and as of 7:00pm today, they were finished. Amazing!!! Now for some pictures...

I love that they made the wall behind the grill slightly higher than a normal sitting wall to give the grill an anchor.

We are most likely going to add a few lounge-y chairs with a fire pit, as well as a dining table to this space.

The chair may go live in the trashcan soon...

And now my favorite picture of the whole process....

Warren supervised the entire patio installation process from the various windows downstairs. He is Lord Protector of the House.

Spring Break Recap

This past week, the county I teach in was on spring break and trust me when I say that teachers love spring break just as much as students do. David was on a work trip, so I was home with the kitty all week. Originally, I had big plans to lesson plan for the fourth quarter (lame, I know), but that did not happen until Sunday night. Oops. Instead, I did some things around the house...and read. Here is a run down:

Organized the Kitchen
We have a pretty good amount of cabinet space in our kitchen, but we did not have any organization with our pots and pans. They were all awkwardly stacked and it was always super noisy to move them around when cooking. David's parents have a pot rack that hangs over their kitchen island and we really like how accessible everything is, but with our kitchen floor plan, that would not work. However, I found a pot rack from Amazon that we both really liked, so my parents got it for me for my birthday. After hanging it, I have decided I love it.

Our pans are all in one place and so easy to grab (without making a ton of noise). I plan on ordering some more hooks, so we can add some of our smaller pots to the rack. I really like that there is a small bookshelf on top. Originally, I was planning on putting my cookbooks there, but the shelf is not deep enough. However, it is perfect for a basket of tea towels (all from Belle & Union via Southern Weddings--I have an obsession and they are so useful!) and my recipe box (from Rifle Paper Co.). 

With the pans hanging on the wall, I bought an adjustable tray and lid organizer. Once it is delivered, I am going to install it in one of our lower cabinets to continue the trend of an organized kitchen.

Planted Some Things
I really want a raised garden bed so I can plant veggies and herbs in my backyard; however, I have difficulty keeping things alive. I guess I have a black thumb. So, rather than invest the money in a larger bed with tons of plants that might not live, I decided to make this spring/summer my trial run with smaller containers. If things go well, I will do the raised bed next spring. What started with just a few pots and containers sort of exploded though... 

strawberries, cherry tomatoes, zucchini squash, bell peppers (seed pod and plant), patio/container tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, basil (seed pod and plant)

I originally only planted a strawberry plant, but then the "Easter Bunny" gave me Miracle-Gro Gro-ables seed pods in my Easter basket for basil and bell peppers. I wanted to compare which would grow better, the seed pod or a seedling, so I planted the seed pods, as well as a seedling of both. With that, I thought I was done, but then I stumbled across tomato and zucchini plants on a run--a neighbor had over purchased and was giving away her extra plants in her driveway. My five pots then turned into nine. Oh well. Fingers crossed everything grows, and lives...

Updated the Porch
Our front porch is currently our only outdoor space and while we have some rocking chairs out there, it is pretty blah. So, I added some pillows to the chairs and a small table, which brightened things up a bit. I also added from potted flowers and changed out the garden flag in honor of Opening Day--Go Red Sox! 

My favorite update on the porch, though, is our door wreath. It is springy and cheery without being overly bright and in-your-face. While it potentially needs to be a little bigger, I think it works well for the time being. A how-to for the wreath will be on the blog later this week. :)

Read 
I am teaching The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald to my 11th graders this quarter, so I re-read that (and watched the movie). But in addition to my "school" reading, I read some books for fun:

1. The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic by Hazel Gaynor (post here)
2. The Secrets of Midwives by Sally Hepworth (post here)
3. The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

My 9th graders think it is weird that I read so much, so they asked me to keep track of how many books I read in the week we were off. Not sure if they will be impressed or sickened.

Overall, it was pretty enjoyable spring break. :)

New Bedroom Furniture!

The husband and I have been talking about possibly buying bedroom furniture for awhile, but with other things on our to-do list, it was only talk. However, recently, we were finding that having just a bed frame was not very helpful in keeping the blankets on the bed through the night. Every night, the blankets would start where they were supposed to, but by morning, they were on the floor, having fallen off the foot of the bed. We knew we needed a bed with a foot board, but we were not 100% sure what we specifically wanted.

Two weekends ago, we popped into a few furniture stores to just look around and get a feel for what we liked in terms of color, style, etc. Thankfully, David and I are pretty similar in terms of likes and dislikes when it comes to home things (it made building a house so much easier than what it could have been!), so it did not take long for us to find a bedroom set we both liked. Dark cherry wood, modified sleigh bed, drawers with dovetail slide-y things so they are quiet, lots of storage. However, we were not sure we wanted to commit yet. Plus, we kind of wanted to wait until Haynes was running one of their big sales.

Fast forward one week and while we were out running errands, we heard a commercial for that one weekend, Haynes would be having their lowest prices of the year. We still were not planning on buying, but we figured there would be no harm in looking at the price. Well, not only was the furniture less expensive than the week prior, but for the weekend, Haynes was running a deal for 24 months of interest-free financing. It was fate. We bought the furniture and it was delivered the next day.

Who can spot the kitty?

We have only had the furniture for 24 hours, but we love it. Yes, the bed is much higher than we were anticipating (we probably need a low-profile box spring instead of the standard height) and I sort of feel like I need a step stool to get in and out of it, but that definitely is not a deal breaker. 

Little kitten investigating the new furniture

Since we currently have a lot of grey and white in the room, I would like to add pops of color with accent pieces and throw pillows/blankets to bring out the blues, greens, and pinks in the print by The First Snow we have hanging by the bathroom door and the canvas our wedding photographer, Tori Watson, gave us. Our bedroom is not nearly close to being finished, but with "grown up" furniture, it is starting to get there. Here is what we have left to complete before out bedroom is "done":

• Paint the walls (currently leaning towards a light to medium blue with grey undertones)
• Acquire a chair and lamp to create a reading corner
• Add some pretty throw pillows to the bed
• Maybe add a bench to the foot of the bed (still not sure about that though)
• Hang something over the bed (either a piece of art or a mirror)

Cork Board Makeover

Ever since we moved into our house, and especially since the school year started in September, my husband has been suggesting that I get a desk and create an office space of my own in one of the guest rooms. Without a desk to work at, I inevitably end up grading or lesson planning at the coffee table in the family room, at the dining room table, at the kitchen table, or at the counter...pretty much wherever there is an empty flat surface to work at. Well, I finally bit the bullet and bought a desk. It is not supposed to arrive until later in the week, so in the mean time, I figured I would makeover an old cork board.

Rather than buying a new cork board, I went over to my parents' house and got the old one out of my old bedroom. It was pretty faded and icky looking, but with it being 12+ years old, I expected no less.

After bringing the cork board back to the house, I assembled all of my materials and got to work.

one yard of fabric, adhesive spray, glue gun, 300 thumbtacks

I started by ironing the fabric because no one likes creases in their fabric-covered cork board.

Then, I sprayed the cork board with adhesive spray before laying the fabric on top. I smoothed out the fabric with my hands to make sure there were no bubbles or awkward layering. Notice that I left 3-4 inches of excess fabric around the edges of the cork board.

Next, I started to push in the thumbtacks.

My thumbtacks were not perfectly straight. In fact, some overlapped. However, it does not bother me too much. If I had really wanted to take the extra step, I could have used a straightedge to make sure everything was lined up. After all 275 thumbtacks were in place and my fingers felt like they were going to fall off, I hot glued the excess material onto the backside of the cork board. I then used the remaining 25 thumbtacks as additional support on the back.

All the while, my kitty assistant was keeping a close eye on things.

And that is it! The whole thing cost me roughly $15 for the fabric and thumbtacks, as I already had the glue gun and the adhesive spray.

Once the cork board is hung on the wall, I will add other things to it, but for now, I just pinned a pink bow (I LOVE pink) and and the charm from my wedding bouquet, which was a one sided locket with a picture of my kitten in it.  

So Much Storage!

We love our house and have ever since we walked through the designer model in January of last year. The problem, though, was that we had no easily accessible storage space. Yes, we have closets, but beyond that, not much else. The model had a bunch of built-ins to add additional storage, but with the outrageous prices they were charging, my husband and I decided to just make do without them.

Fast forward to now and we have two beautiful built-in units and they provide us with a TON of extra storage!  A friend of mine from high school is a contractor, who has a side business as a custom woodcraftsman. I contacted him to just get a quote, thinking it would be something we could do somewhere down the line. Well, down the line turned into now!

The first unit he did for us was in our loft. In our floor plan, we could have chosen to close off the loft space and use it as a bedroom, but we knew we did not need a five bedroom house and, instead, wanted to keep it open and use it as a second family room. Since it could be a bedroom though, we had an awkward opening where you would put a closet. That is where we had the built-in installed. 

It has eight adjustable shelves that we are using to house all our DVDs and Blu-rays and an enclosed cabinet space on the bottom. Currently, the cabinet is mostly empty minus a few games (Cards Against Humanity, anyone?), but we figured that in the future when we have kids, their toys can live in there. Previously, we had a bookcase in this space and it worked fine for what we needed, but it just looked messy and out of sorts. Now...beautiful organization.

It did not take long to have this piece made/installed either. My friend came out and did some measurements and then built everything in his shop. When he brought it out to install, he only had to do a few cuts and adjustments, but nothing major and had it installed in an hour. We (and by we, I mean mainly my husband) primed and painted it and then it was all done!

The second unit my friend made for us was actually a Christmas gift from my parents and is in our mudroom. The designer model had a nice bench/hook area in the space and we knew we wanted something similar. What we got was even better than we could have hoped for.

Shoe cubbies, storage cubbies, hooks, and a bench! I am completely obsessed. My husband likes to leave his shoes and jackets around the house, but now, they have a designated place to go, as do all the winter wear we currently need because of the freezing temperatures outside. 

I LOVE the beadboard backing and the crown molding at the top. Those two touches just make it seem more elegant. I added the upholstered seat, which was pretty easy and adds a fun pop of color to an otherwise white space. And, again, my husband did most of the painting.

If you live in the Richmond area and are interested in having any custom pieces made for your home/office, I highly recommend Chad Howard Custom Woodworking. He is fantastic!

A Gallery of Pretty

The husband and I moved into a new house this past July, shortly after we got married and relocated to Richmond. Since then, we have been slooowly making the house into our home. Our to-do list just seems to get longer, regardless of what we complete and check off.

Immediately after moving in, we bought furniture for the family room. Once it was delivered and arranged in the way we wanted it, I realized the empty wall over the sofa was the perfect place for a gallery wall. I love pictures of the wonderful people in my life, but the husband prefers to not have a thousand pictures of us all over the walls of our house. I respect this and while I do have pictures of us strewn about the house, I try to limit them to smaller, framed pictures on side tables and the fireplace mantel. For that reason, I decided to only include meaningful prints in the gallery wall. It took me awhile to collect prints that were important and worthwhile, but, finally, it is finished! 

(sorry for the glare and light reflections--taking pictures at night is not a good idea)

Both my husband and I really love how it turned out, though I may be a little more enthusiastic about it than he is. And now for the breakdown of the included prints, clockwise from the upper left corner:

1. The cat is a photocopy of a sketch one of my former students made last year. While it is not a sketch of our fur-baby, I do not think it really matters, as it shows how important our cat is to us...he (or really his species) made the wall!

2. Since getting married, I have fully embraced my new last name and new monogram. There are Js all over our house, so the gallery wall was not to be overlooked. I stumbled across this amazing woman on Etsy who specializes in original, hand drawn works of art, StephMicheleArtworks. She worked with me to create this lovely, custom piece.

3. It is a little hard to see, but it reads, "The best is yet to come." Everyone kept saying that our wedding day would be the happiest day of our lives, but I feel like that is not entirely the truth. While our wedding day was amazing, I think that everyday we spend together builds on the one before, making tomorrow more amazing than today, which was better than yesterday...if that makes sense... This print is from paperandpalette, an Etsy shop based out of Richmond.

4. My husband went to college in Arizona (ASU...Go Sun Devils!!!) and in June 2013, he took me out to the Tempe/Phoenix area to visit and see the greatness that he loves. On our first full day there, we got up really early to go for a hike up A Mountain in Tempe, near the ASU football stadium. When we reached the top, David got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. Needless to say, Arizona now holds a special spot in my heart. Steph from StephMicheleArtworks created this print for us.

5. We got married this past summer, 366 days after we got engaged, on June 21, 2014. This is a reminder of our anniversary, and thus, our wedding day. I liked that the Roman numerals made the dates a little more intriguing than your normal numbers.

6. I LOVE fairy tales and while my life is nowhere near perfect, being able to spend it with my husband and kitty is pretty darn close. I get to live my happily ever after every day. This print is also from paperandpalette.

7. I try to stay positive and because of that mentality, I kind of fell in love with this print from Islay's Terrace. It says, "Think Happy Thoughts" and the happy, bright colors work so well with the sentiment (and our family room). I also liked that it brings some color to the blacks and whites of the other prints.

8. Oh, Virginia... This print is a companion to the Arizona state print. David and I met in Northern Virginia and spent the past three years living there. Now, we are living in Richmond and making a life here. Even if we do not stay in Virginia forever, it will always be our home and this print is a lovely reminder of that.

Now that the gallery wall is finished, I cannot help but smile whenever I walk by it. It is just a very "us" wall since every piece holds a special meaning to me and David.

One final picture.....