Monday, October 27, 2008

A Beautiful Fall Weekend




It was a beautiful fall weekend here in the Pacific Northwest. The trees are so pretty right now. According to the news we are in the peak of our beautiful fall. Above is a picture of the neighbors huge beautiful oak tree. It's my lame attempt to post lovely fall pictures like some of the other creative ladies who's blog I enjoy looking at. Coastal Nest, Tammy, Stephanie just to name a few. They all had pretty pictures posted on their blogs of fall happening out their windows and pretty Halloween stuff. So, I thought I would try it. Crappy pictures yet again. Oh well.............you get the idea.
The Hubs and I did some much needed grocery shopping this weekend. This was a huge mistake the week before Halloween. We came home with all kinds of candy and crap. The thought was that it would be for the Trick or Treaters that came. Guess what??????? Last year we had ONE and this year we aren't even going to be home. We are such suckers! So I put them in pretty bowls and dishes and tried to set them out of the way so there would be some left if we did happen to get a couple kids on Friday.

The Hubs favorite. Peanut Butter M&M's., 100 Grands and Snickers bars. I'm not much of a candy eater. I'm the cookie, cake, bread, muffin, scone, doughnut eater. I can stay out of the candy, I can't stay out of the baked goods.


This weekend The Hubs and I were busy. First, we went to visit my folks and help them start moving furniture back in to their house. They have been in the middle of a TOTAL house remodel since the first part of July. They gutted their house (built in 1973) and redid everything. New bathrooms, new rooms, new closets, new hardwood floors, new doors, new tile, new brick work, new everything. It's beautiful! Before we went home we did a little shopping in their left overs pile for our remodeling we are going to start this week.

First find................This new door. They put these all through their house and it looks great. They had one left over and we're going to try and use it for the door that goes in to our laundry room. The downstairs room (that I have been posting ugly pictures of for months) that we are remodeling is so dark an dingy that I think it will help with making the room lighter and more open. It's all glass but has a built in blind in it. Above, the new door we salvaged from the left overs at my folks house.
Below is the ugly door it's going to replace. The new door is much bigger and it will be FABULOUS because this is the door that also goes out to the garage and is the door we use to bring stuff (furniture and appliances) in and out all the time. It's ALWAYS too small and moving stuff is a big chore. This will make things a lot easier. I know your saying "well how much stuff do you move?" "do you really need a new door just for that?" YES! I change furniture like socks! We are always moving stuff in and out. It will just make The Hubs life a lot easier and.........it will look much better!

Here is some tile that I salvaged also. Enough to do a space under our gas stove. These are my two tile choices.....................
I have the darker beige tile and it almost matches the carpet exactly. I picked out this tumbled rock in lighter colors but the same beige tones that I thought I might use as a border or accent in the tile design. I can't decide. The gas stove is dark chocolate brown and my furnitue is light beige. I painted the wall Martha Stewart Cake Plate Blue, which is a really light blue.

This is the lighter choices I have. I'm leaning toward the dark because..........I have white carpet through out the whole house and it's a BITCH! The white carpet looked darker in the store when it was ordered. Then when it was laid in the house it was white. I don't want to make the same mistake. This room gets ALL the traffic from outside. The carpet in there now is light and it looks horrible. The tile in the photo above is LIGHT and it's beautiful and if we don't use it downstairs there is enough to redo my entry way. Where I think it will be lovely against the white carpet and hardwood floors.
Have I shown you my entry way before? This is it. It's got some ugly ass faux brick tile, two ugly doors, and a lot of funky walls.

The rugs (that I love) are from Home Decorators. I recommend them for your rug needs. I haven't ordered anything else from them but I'm thinking of ordering some furniture.
The faux brick just lifts right off. I hit it with a hammer one day to see what would happen and to loosen it all up. Then when The Hubs started walking on it, it would just start falling apart. That way a redo would be his BRILLIANT idea and it would get on the list of things to do. Since I "fixed it" sometimes when you walk across it, it just starts falling off the sub floor. It's totally embarrassing when it happens to a guest. But the plan worked. Now The Hubs is talking about redoing it sooner then he had planned. Isn't it lovely?

The contractor called this morning and said he would be here on Wednesday to start on our downstairs. We are having tile laid, wainscoting put up, walls textured, stairs and rails done, carpet laid, and a new door put in. I'm so excited! This is a room we spend a lot of time in, basically it's where we live and it's UGLY, dirty with someone else's dirt, cold, and just not what we had in mind.We have been sitting here every Saturday and Sunday talking about what to do with it for almost 3 years. The day has finally come! This last Saturday and Sunday was weird sitting here having coffee and tea in the mornings, watching HGTV and not discussing the brick.
This week is going to be busy with guys here working. It's going to totally put a cramp in my blogging!
Let me know what you think about the tile and carpet choices. After the white carpet choice I made I don't trust my decisions.
Here is something else I have been working on for the last month or so that isn't going so well. It's a learning process that I'm not doing so well with it.
This is the Pfaff 4 D Suite of machine embroidery digitizing. About 3 or 4 months ago Tommie who does my embroidery for me said "I hate doing all this digitizing you want, you need to learn how to do it!" So I thought "OK!" That would be great. Then I could do whatever I wanted, create whatever I want. So I talked The Hubs in to letting me purchase this $2500 set up to learn how to digitize and create machine embroidery patterns. I took a class this weekend and learned nothing. Now I'm just spending all my time clicking around, reading manuals, and trying to figure it out on my own. I have another class to go to in November. This week I'm suppose to go over to Tommie's so we can mess around with it and actually do some of the embroidery patterns I have made to see how they work. This is going to go one or two ways.............1. I unload it from my computer and sell the program on eBay. 2. Take more time to learn it, talk The Hubs in to buying a big fancy embroidery machine, and make this my new profession. 3. It gets tossed in the "project" pile that The Hubs will ride my ass about every time he has to trip over it. I'll keep you posted.
Hey remember the trailer of old brick from last weekend?
It's gone! The brick that we have been wanting gone for years is GONE! The Hubs and I took it recycling this weekend and unloaded it brick by brick. Normally I would have put a picture of the brick on craigslist and let someone come get if they needed it. Craigslist is a wonderful way of getting rid of stuff!
I was sick and didn't feel like dealing with it so I did a little calling around. It was WAAAAAAAAAAAY less expensive to take to recycling then the dump. Recycling charges by the yard, the dump charges by the pound. Just a little something I learned.
If you are wondering how out of shape you are...........unload a trailer full of brick! Advil my new BFF!
Ok, I'm off to get something done.
Have a wonderful day!

4 comments:

sheila from life @ #17 said...

well, your Crappy Photo Karma is balanced out by your Happy Brick Recycling Karma :)

us Crappy Photo Bloggers have to stick together...

the said...

You are so nice to comment me in such a sweet way!! I love your blog, I always look forward to reading it, infact when you dont post daily- I get a little bummed! lol!!!
Im so glad our remodel is DONE! So, I dont envy you for starting yours. Its so much work thats worth it in the end, but getting to the end is the hard part!
I wish we didnt live so far apart, it would be fun to shop and have lunch! But I am serious about having a Bloggers Get Together... soon !!!
Have a great evening and thanks again for the kind words :)
Stephanie

the said...

BOO!!! You have been "BOO-ed"! Please stop by my blog to pick up your treat :)
Happy Halloween ,
Stephanie

Karol said...

Hi there, I loved reading about your remodeling adventures, we're in the middle of a torn up bathroom right now (I need to put pics up!).... and my husband is a huge DUCKS fan (though my daughter just got accepted to OSU!)