Chair makeover

Remember this chair I found this past summer at a garage sale?

Well it's finally done. My parents pretty much did most of the work (I did put one coat of paint on it lol) since upholstery is sort of their thang, and I LOVE the way it turned out!

I'm going for a gray/yellow combo in our "lounge" so this will be perfect in there! Now we just need to get an area rug, some curtains, etc...

Unexpected Shopping Trip

So today I met up with my friend Brittani. We had lunch at Bar Louie and then decided to peruse some of the stores at the outdoor mall. I figured we'd do a little walking around, but I really wasn't planning on buying anything. Pshhh, yeah right. Surprisingly, there weren't too many people out and about so it was nice to shop without massive crowds. She mentioned wanting to stop by Forever 21 and that made me so happy since sometimes when I'm with other people, a stop at Forever 21 is torture for them. So I'm happy to say that I was finally able to walk through the store without feeling rushed and actually bought a few things.

This sequin tank

This shirt, which I actually saw in Nuestra Vida Dulce's blog. I thought it was super cute, never intended on buying it (since I never go to Forever 21), and came across the only one on the rack at the store. Sold!

I couldn't find this next shirt on the website, but it's cute with leggings or skinny jeans.

I also got this little cardigan

Next up were accessories.

I found this headband

And this one

And I couldn't pass up this adorable owl necklace

I did pick up a short-sleeve purple sweater and necklace at Love Culture (a store I've never been in but is very similar to Forever 21), but I couldn't find either of those items on their website.

So all in all, it was a pretty successful, unexpected shopping trip.

More House Updates

So during the month of October we were still truckin' along on the house. You saw the updates in the living room, aka lounge, and that room pretty much looks the same. Still no baseboards. but this past Friday I had the piano moved from my parents house to my house. And I'm super excited about that!

Onto the dining room. You can sort of see it in this picture here, but the ceiling had this brown border painted around it and I hated that color.

I ended up finding some paint in the basement that was a match to the cream color on the ceiling, so I painted over the brown. We got our dining room table delivered and we painted the walls Behr Boston Fern. I wasn't totally ecstatic about the color when we picked it, but we were sort of on a time crunch and I just wanted SOMETHING on those walls. I was going out of town for work so it was up to Jim to finish this room up before a party I was having the following weekend. Well it all worked out and the color is finally starting to grow on me.

The pendant light is from Bellacor and the barstools are from Bed Bath & Beyond.

And for some reason I LOVE the way our hallway turned out. New sconces, new paint, new closet doors and painted white trim. Looks so much better! It is sort of hard to tell, but the ceiling is just flat white and walls are Behr Reflecting Pool.

The sconces are from Bellacor and the new hall light is from Lighting Direct.

So we still need to work on those baseboards and then I think our next project might be the laundry room.

R.I.P Cheeto

Last Thursday we had to say goodbye to our Cheeto. He had a slew of medical problems throughout the six years of his life and I feel we gave him the best life we could.

His biggest problem was his spinal cord issue. It was diagnosed awhile back that it was too short and he would never walk normal. Well over the past month his walking got really bad. He was pretty much just dragging himself around and essentially became incontinent. We took him to the vet to see if there was anything else we could do, and when the prednisone didn't help, we knew it was time.

It was one of the hardest decisions we've ever had to make, but you could tell Cheeto just wasn't himself anymore either. Jim took him to the vet and he said it was like Cheeto knew. Usually he's really hard to get into the cage, but I guess he didn't give Jim any trouble. He didn't cry on the way to the vet or in the waiting room like he usually does either. We decided to keep his ashes so I'll be picking them up at the vet today. It's just so weird that he's not here anymore. That little squeaky meow, the way he would essentially body hug your leg, how he loved to lick the sweat off a cold can or bottle. He will definitely be missed...

New boots!

So, for my birthday back in June, I received some gift cards to DSW. I decided not to spend them and save them for some boots this fall.

Last year I bought the Steve Madden Cybul boots in brown,

So this year I decided to get some black boots. I got the Zigi Soho Mixer boots in black.

I bought me some new Gap skinny jeans and the boots look awesome with them. Bring on fall! I'm ready!

New paint and other updates

Ok, ok. So it's been awhile since I last updated. Life has been crazy busy. With going back to school, work picking up, and trying to do a bunch of crap on the house, there's just not enough time to blog!

I mentioned in my last post that we had picked some color options for our front living room. Well we decided to go with Behr Antique Tin and I absolutely LOVE the way it turned out...plus you can see our pretty new floors.

The room still needs baseboards, the front door replaced and the trim, and some finishing touches on the floor, but I had to share the transformation.

Just to refresh your memory, here's what it looked like before.

We also bought a new dining room table. We didn't look at it in person, but after searching for one online for what seemed like forever, this one I really liked. What's nice about it is that the leaf allows it to expand into a square as opposed to a longer rectangle. The square works better for the space we have. The table is through JCP and should be delivered on Tuesday.

I need to take a picture of our hallway because its amazing what some paint and new sconces can do for a hallway. But I'll wait until we get the new closet doors on so I can show the finished product.

As for school, well, it's school. I hated school with every fiber of my being before, so I'm pretty shocked that I actually decided to go back. I am going for my Master's in Engineering Management but had to take an undergrad class in probability and statistics first (since my undergrad is in Chemistry and not Engineering) to be fully accepted into the Master's program. I'm also taking an online class (Managing the Engineering Function) toward my Master's degree which I am allowed to do since the prob and stats class is not required for this class. So yeah, homework sucks but I gotta do what I gotta do.

Living Room Paint Colors

So Jim FINALLY got the last bit of linoleum up off the sub floor. It took quite a long time and with the few hours we have available to work on it after work, it took a lot longer than we had originally planned lol. Isn't that always how it is?

Anywho...our hardwood is supposed to be installed this Tues-Wed. We went to pick up the last few trim pieces this weekend, but for some strange reason, they didn't have three of the pieces we needed. Very confusing since our order has already been fully paid for. So who knows if those pieces will get here before the install is finished. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Next up is painting our "lounge" (aka formal living room). I picked up six samples this weekend and will be painting them on poster board to hang up on the walls to see which one, if any, we decide to go with. On the computer screen there doesn't seem to be much difference between them, but the samples have a little more color to them.

This weekend was pretty busy. Besides spending two hours of our day to drive out to the flooring place to not pick up the rest of our order, I put another coat of white on the trim on the bay window in the "lounge", primed all the trim and door jambs in the hallway and added a coat of white, did some homework, got in a run on the treadmill, took our bottle returns back (~$80 thank you very much lol), made a trip to Home Depot for the paint samples and some plywood to replace some of the sub floor, cleaned my car, and cut in the hallway with primer.

Once we figure out a color for the living room, next up is the hallway and the dining area.

Farewell flooring!

So this past weekend Jim and I decided it was time to start our flooring demolition. He had to work on Saturday and I had other family things to attend to on Saturday morning, so we didn't really start rolling until about 2:00 on Saturday afternoon. I must say though, I'm pretty happy with what we accomplished in about a day and a half.

We are planning on putting down new hardwood floors in our front (formal) living room, hallway, closets and dining area. All of those areas had carpet down. So Jim started with the dining area, ripping up the carpet. Now, we could tell there were some other layers under there but yikes! Three layers of linoleum! The only before shot I have of the dining area is the first day we saw the house...

...so you see it had carpet in that area.

Under the carpet was the first layer of linoleum which is like what we have in our kitchen now, and what you can sort of see in the picture above.

Under that was this beautiful stuff...

Nice, huh? And then Jim had to go through and pull up TONS of staples from this layer.

Then under that layer was this...

...with even more staples to pull up.

In the meantime, while Jim was having a grand old time pulling up staples, I was hard at work tearing up the carpet/padding/tack strips in the hallway.

At first I thought I was going to have to go through and pull up each staple by hand. I'm pretty sure I'd still be pulling staples had I not thought about the scraper Jim bought to remove the linoleum. We ran that over the staples and most of them came out. I had to go through and remove some by hand, but some was better than all.

Then it was time to move on to the living room.

Here's a before shot...

And after everything was removed...

In the midst of our flooring party, I suggested to Jim that we might as well throw a layer of Kilz on the wall before the new flooring goes in. See, I realize it makes more sense to paint before the hardwood goes in but I have no idea what color I want and I want to see the room with the flooring in it before I make a paint decision. Slapping up a layer of primer was doable though.

So we decided to Kilz the room...

...and there's all our flooring, acclimating to room temperature :o)

So next was to tackle the closets. Remove the doors, tracks, stupid molding, carpet, no big deal right? Wrong. I pulled up the carpet in the closet only to find hardwood under it. What? Was there hardwood in the whole house at one point? Seriously, I don't know what the deal is.

And unfortunately I couldn't quite muster the strength yesterday to remove that hardwood so I just worked on removing the doors, tracks and molding and tried to be on clean-up duty since Jim was busy painting.

Oh and here's Pants helping...

So here's where we stand today. I'm not sure if Jim plans on tackling the linoleum or the hardwood in the closets when he gets home from work, but the other closet needs to be emptied as well.

Oh and I don't know if you can tell in the picture below, but if you can see that white patch where the dining area meets the hallway, yeah, that's a mortar ramp so that the original sub floor could meet up nicely with the 5 layers of flooring that were added in the dining area. Sweet!

Office makeover

So finally some more house update photos.

I pretty much have the office how I want it to be so I figured it was finally time to snap some pics. I think it could use a new office chair (something fun), something to hang over the desk, and maybe once the garage sale find chair I found is refinished, that can go in there too. But for now it's pretty much done.

The office was originally covered in painted paneling. We knew we wanted to take it down and once we did, we discovered that a) the walls were completely destroyed from removing it and b) there was a giant gap in the drywall where the walls met the ceiling - which I was told is not quite up to fire code. Awesome.

Jim and I thought we'd be able to salvage the walls, but my dad took one look at it and said no way, new drywall for sure. He offered to help put it up and do the mudding so of course we said heck yes!

Here's the lovely wallpaper we found beneath the paneling...

And a during shot...

And the finished product...

The color is Behr's Deep Smoke Signal.

The desk was originally a cherry wood color so I painted it white along with the old dresser we had. I also decided to use curtains instead of closet doors. I knew I wanted a black and white damask curtain, but these have a fun chandelier print on them and I couldn't pass them up. Especially since I was hanging a chandelier in there.

I found this mirror at Home Goods (it was pink) and painted it white. I also attempted a little DIY with the bird art and put it in the Ikea frames.

These white curtains are also from Ikea.

I'm sure there's things I'll be adding here and there, but for now, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Bags, bags and bags

So remember when I said I went to a Gigi Hill bag party and bought some stuff? Well here it is.

The first bag I got was actually a special offer. I could get it at a discounted rate if my total order was over a certain dollar amount. So with a combination of my order, my mom's order and a friend of mine's order who couldn't make it to the party, it put me over that mark. And of course I couldn't pass up a deal like that!

This is the Sophia with the English Chocolate fabric choice

18"L x 6"W x 12-3/4"H

Strap drop: 10"

The interior fabric is called Dynasty Celery and I love it! I think it's so fun! There's plenty of interior pockets to keep everything nice and organized too. I'm thinking this bag will come in quite handy for when I start school up again.

The next thing I got was the Lana business card holder.

4"L x 1/2"W x 3"H

I chose the Dove fabric for this one

It's pretty cool how the cards sort of lift up on a metal plate type thing when you open the holder.

I also got the Small Scarlet for little items.

8-1/2"L x 5-1/4"H

I chose the Pink Pearls fabric option for this one.

So that covers the Gigi Hill items. Onto a few more little bags.

A friend of mine used to sell Bag Daddy but it has since gone out of business. Of course right when I was planning on having a party so I could get a few items. Well she had these little bags that I always loved so I was bummed I couldn't get them anymore. Of course I started checking eBay because I figured everyone would probably be trying to sell their stuff off. Well I finally found them and was pretty happy about that.

The larger one is is 6-3/4" x 8-3/4" and the smaller one is 6-1/2" x 7-1/2".

Aren't they fun?

Someone (::ahem, Jill::) convinced me to have my own Gigi Hill party so I'll be doing that in October. I'm hoping that maybe some new items and new fabrics will have come out by then. For now though, I should probably steer clear of buying anymore bags.