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The Roof! The Roof!

Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, May 25, 2013. Filed under:
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...wasn't on fire, thank goodness.

Last week, we had some severe thunderstorms power their way through my little corner of Wisconsin.  The town just to our west (like, less than five miles to our West) had wind gusts that measured 68 miles per hour!  The grill blew around the patio like crazy and the house next door, which earlier that day had just installed a new wooden swing set for their kids, had to watch that swing set blow over on to its side.  I went outside after the winds subsided to look for damage and fortunately I didn't see anything.

And then, about a week later, when I was coming in from getting the mail, I just happened to look up.  And I saw this:


Granted, I've been a home owner for less than two years, but even I'm intelligent enough to realize that it surely wasn't supposed to look like that.  And of course, it was raining that day.  And the next day.  And the day after that.  Anyone that knows me will gladly inform you that I'm not the most graceful of individuals.  At any given moment, I probably have at least a half a dozen bruises and/or scratches on me - majority of which I have no clue how they got there.  The last thing my family needs is me climbing up on a ladder on to a wet roof.  But - the last thing my roof needed was to have a chunk of it blown backwards.


Sometimes, telephoto lenses just make things look that much worse!  I didn't know what that part of my roof was, so I sent picture messages to Stepdad to figure out what I was supposed to do.  Did I need to call a roofer?  Did I need to curl up under my desk in the fetal position and cry?  Should I just sit in the driveway and look at my roof and laugh, since it took me a week to notice the damage in the first place?

And then the skies parted and angels sang and I got the world's greatest response.


What what?  Stepdad can fix it!  Woohoo!!  The next day, it rained in the morning but Stepdad was awesome enough to come out after he was done with work (when it was no longer raining) and he climbed up on to the wet, second-floor roof and hammered the roof vent back in to place and nailed it in.  As he was on his way down, the skies opened back up and the rain came back down.  Talk about perfect timing.

So now, the roof is fixed again.  I need to keep an eye on our attic, which luckily is useless - it can't be used for storage or anything.  I need to crawl up there and see if any water got in, and if so, make sure I do everything I can so no mold gets in.  

So that's what I've been up to lately.  I haven't been working on any projects lately because of my whole house deep cleaning spree.  Most people spend their Memorial Day weekends on fun vacations and stuff - not me!!  I clean.  And man, does it feel good.

And for your daily dose of awwww, here's a great shot I got of my older dog Squirt the other day.  I'm in love with this picture.





Decorating the Bedroom: Part 2

Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, May 15, 2013. Filed under: ,
2 Comments



After writing this post about trying to pick a paint color for my bedroom, I headed over to my local Sherwin Williams store to grab some paint chips to hang on my bedroom wall to try to pick a paint color.  Husband loves the paint color "Anonymous", and I'm a big fan of "Dovetail" and "Keystone Gray".  I also stopped by my local Menard's, and picked out the Dutch Boy colors "Dried Plain" and "Lake Cottage".  Husband really likes "Lake Cottage", too. 


I really like all of these colors, and was having problems narrowing them down, so I figured maybe I was going about this the wrong way.  Maybe I needed to find some new bedding that I loved, and pink the paint color to match the bedding!  Stroke of genius, right?  So I headed to Target.  I recently re-discovered Target as an amazing store for home decor, after going years with only buying from Kohl's, Crate & Barrel, and Bed, Bath & Beyond for any home decor I needed.  I took Husband to Target with me, figuring that it was his bedroom, too, so his input was important.

This was probably a combination of the worst two ideas I've had in quite some time.

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I'm in love with this comforter set, and thought it would look fabulous with the darker Anonymous-colored walls that Husband loved...but Husband vetoed this comforter set right away.  No hesitation.  I was devastated.

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Husband is a big fan of this comforter.  It's a darker teal than it looks like in this photo.  I'm not 100% sold on it...to me, the pinched pleats just look wrinkly.  

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This is a quilt option that we both liked.  I love the gingham look and how easy it would be to dress up with accessories, but with the wall colors we're considering I worry that it would be too much gray in our bedroom.

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We both agree on this one, too, but again with the overwhelming gray.  The nice thing about this one that you can't really see in this photo is that it has a bit of a metallic shimmer to it that I think is really pretty.

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Husband and I both like this set...it comes in a quilt option and a comforter set.  The comforter felt scratchy, but the quilt was nice and soft.  The quilt would be a nice option for summer, too.  We have a memory foam mattress and our bed gets really warm, so I like the idea of a quilt.

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I'm loving the deep teal of this duvet cover, as well.  I like having duvet covers, because they're so easy to pop in the washer when they get dirty.  With two dogs in the house, it's a requirement to have a bedding set that we can wash in our washing machine - I don't like to have laundry that I have to take to the laundromat in order to get it clean.

So, after my bright idea, now I have 5 paint colors that I really like AND 6 different bedding sets.  I'm thinking I should probably put the bedroom redecorating project on the back burner and tackle some pending projects that I have like refinishing a dining set that I got from ReStore and building a console table for the TV in our master bedroom.  Maybe some time simmering will tell me what I want to do...

Has anyone else ever experienced design block?  Or an overwhelming number of ideas and problems narrowing them down??

Linked up here...




Help Me Decorate My Bedroom! Please!!

Posted by Anonymous on Friday, April 26, 2013. Filed under: ,
5 Comments



When Husband and I bought our house, I was overwhelmed by the blandness of it.  Our house was a new construction build.  It had been used as a model home, but it was still builder beige everywhere you looked.  All of the walls were the same color, and the cabinets in the kitchen were the same as the cabinets in the bathrooms.  The linoleum in the kitchen also matches the linoleum in the bathrooms.  When we were preparing to move in, I made a trip to Home Depot and stocked up on about a dozen gallons of paint, and three pretty light fixtures for our two full bathrooms and one half bathroom to upgrade from the builder basics.  Now that we've been settled in to our home for awhile, I'm finding myself dissatisfied with the color choices I made in that desperate weekend of painting.

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Our bedroom is currently painted Whitened Sage, by Behr.  It's an incredibly soft green.  So soft, that when my husband came home that night after I busted my bum after painting all day, his response was, "Didn't you paint this room?"  I'm pretty sure I growled at him.  I wanted a really nice neutral for this room, because I'm one of those people that change out my bedding with the seasons.  For fall and winter, I have the Sakura bedding from Crate and Barrel on our bed:

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And in the spring and summer, we have Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...Calvin Klein's Maldives Collection Bedding on our bed:

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I'm not even going to show you pictures of our bedroom now, because I'm that ashamed of it.  I will, however, show you photos of how I want it to be :-)

Husband and I are electronics addicts, so nightstands are a must for both of us.  I want to build these, lovelies, courtesy of the uber-talented Ana White.

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I love how this poster painted the bottom nice and bright but stained the top.  Totally stealing that idea.  I'll find some cute knobs for this project from Hobby Lobby.  I have to drive about 45 minutes to get to the nearest Hobby Lobby, but it's worth every mile!

I also want to build the Farmhouse King Bed as featured on Ana White's blog.

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For the furniture, I'm thinking that I want to just paint it a nice antique white color and distress it a bit, and stain the distressed edges the same color I want to stain the tops of the nightstands.  I'm also wanting to get a seating area in here, with two little arm chairs and a small round table.  I think the room is large enough to support it; I'll put it where I now have a huge, dark, over-sized dresser that I can't wait to sell on Craigslist and wait to wave bye-bye to.

Here's where I NEED your help!!!

I have NO CLUE what color to paint the walls of my bedroom!!  I still want something neutral that will go well with both of the bedding choices that we use in the bedroom.  These are the color choices that Husband and I have been considering.  (I know that it totally depends on how they look in the room and we need to try out samples, but I'd appreciate opinions of what colors y'all would lean towards!)


Tapestry Beige by Benjamin Moore

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Palladian Blue by Benjamin Moore

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Copley Grey by Benjamin Moore

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Creekside Green by Benjamin Moore

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Sea Salt by Sherwin Williams (I know it's everywhere, but I love how chameleon-like this color is!)


Right now, my favorite three are Perfect Greige, Creekside Green, and Tapestry Beige - in that order.

What do you think??




Living Room Dreams

Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, April 21, 2013. Filed under: ,
1 Comment

My living room right now is very beige. I mean very. Beige carpet, beige walls, beige sofa. The dark wood furniture and window treatments just add to the overall brown scheme. I try to incorporate color through throw pillows and blankets, but that's just a tiny spot of color in all of the beige. Take a look:

The view of the living room from the dining room.

The view of my living room from the front door - and our older dog, Squirt
And the view from the den and coming down the stairs - and more of Squirt.
The gate between the living room and the dining room is for the dogs for when Husband and/or I have to leave them home alone.  We close the gate and they have free reign of the kitchen and dining room.  It makes it easier to clean up any puppy messes that may occur.

The decor in this room is fairly bland, as well.  I hate the entertainment center.  It's a pain in the butt to keep clean, and the shelf for the DVD player is all the way at the bottom, which messes with the function of the remote.

Please excuse the mess; I was too lazy to pick up, lol

I'm also less than enamored with this table.  I picked it because it fit so well in the opening of the sofa (if you can't tell, it's a sectional with a chaise on the left and a love seat section on the right).  What I didn't plan on was Husband using this as his dinner table every night, so what inevitably ends up happening is crumbs get stuck in the grooves and we have to vacuum them out.  It's nasty!


We've got two of these leaning bookshelves - one on each side of the entertainment center.  Around Christmas, we move both bookshelves to the right of the entertainment center, then we put the tree to the left of the TV by the window.  These bookshelves encourage me to fill them with stuff, but I don't have a lot of cute stuff in them, and I don't think everyone that comes to visit needs to see every single TV show that Husband and I own - which is kind of a lot.  And I want to get Criminal Minds, too - love that show!

Anyway, I'm less than in love with the torchiere lamps, as well.  They're so bland!!


I like our bamboo window treatments, but I'd like to put some nice valances or cornice boards or something above the windows for more decoration and a classier look.  The picture frames are family photos and pictures from our engagement photo shoot, so they haven't been updated since April 2010.  I feel like this wall could be used for cuter decorations.  The one thing I do like is at Christmas I use Command hooks and stick them up there, and our 4 stockings (mine, Husband's, and one for each dog) fit perfectly in the "empty" spaces.


We also have this random little crooked wall in between our foyer and Husband's Game Room (AKA the den) and I feel like it's screaming for a cute little secretary desk.


As random as it seems, this clock is the thing I love about my living room.  I got it from a home decor store here in southeastern Wisconsin called Kirkland's.  I love the blue color, and the distressed look.  It hangs above our TV, but I need to bring it down a little from the ceiling.  It's a little too high right now.

We also have a large sectional that is that faux suede material.  I stained part of the couch with the dye from some of my super dark jeans - I find that dark Old Navy jeans have dye that rub off on everything, no matter how frequently they are washed!  I think the sectional is too big for the space, and it closes the living room off.

I've been daydreaming lately about what I want my living room to look like, and I thought I'd share some of what I've come up with.


I want to replace the sectional with a sofa, then get two chairs and put them to the right of the sofa, over by the wall of windows.  I don't want to push the chairs right up against the wall, but rather have them "float" out a foot or two from the wall.  This combination is one of the options I've been thinking about.  It's the Ektorp sofa from Ikea in Abyn blue, and two Ektorp armchairs in Svvenby grey.


Another combination I've been thinking about is the Ektorp sofa in Svenby grey and two of the Ektorp Jennylund chairs in Sagmyra grey/check.  I'm ridiculously in love with these chairs.  They make me happy.  :)


I want to build the Becca trunk from Shanty2Chic and use it as a coffee table, and use it to store blankets to keep them off of the couch.  On the wall between the windows, I want to put up two of these glass bottle jar wall vases, also from Shanty2Chic.  (What can I say, I love those ladies' style!)  Between the chairs, I want to build that cute little end table, which is from the fabulous Ana White.  I also want to refinish a dresser or a buffet, and replace our entertainment center with that.

My goal now is to start figuring out what colors I want, other than the grey and blue - accent colors, and the color for the paint and stain for the building projects.  I also need to keep an eye out for some alternative lighting solutions.  There is no built-in light in this room other than what we get from the windows, so I need to have lamps...I just want ones that are much bigger.

I'd love to paint the walls later down the road, but I want to hire a professional or something for that, because due to the open concept layout of our house this color covers the entire bottom floor (except the den and the half bath) then continues up the stairs and throughout the upstairs hallway.  That's a lot of paint!  

We're also planning on ripping out the carpet and installing hardwood floors but that project is a couple of years down the road. 

Even without changing the painting and flooring, redecorating the entire room is still a pretty big undertaking.  It's going to take me some time, but I'm hoping it will look completely different - and elegant and stylish!

Thoughts, ideas, comments, suggestions?  I'd love to hear them!!






Kitchen Inspiration with Picasa

Posted by Anonymous on Monday, October 22, 2012. Filed under: ,
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One of the last rooms I plan on decorating is my kitchen, but it is one of the rooms I'm most excited to do.  I've got an entire makeover in mind for that room - re-painting the cabinets and the counter tops, all new color scheme, and some new furniture and wall art to give it a homier, cozier feel.  I was playing around online today - home sick due to vicious migraine, thanks giant thunderstorm - and I discovered the awesome ability of the Collage Maker function of Picasa due to the lovely Anna over at Ask Anna.  Oh my goodness, if you've got some time to spare, head over there.  She's a wealth of information when it comes to cleaning and organizational tips, and she has some amazing decorating inspiration as well.  I totally added her to my reader.  So, thanks Anna!!

Anyway, I've been collecting all of these pictures on Pinterest, but I wanted somewhere that they were saved all nice and pretty.  Enter Picasa.  I downloaded it, and created a folder on my desktop with the photos I have saved for inspiration for my kitchen.  Then, you select the folder with your pictures in it over on the left, click "Create" then "Picture Collage", like so:


The nice thing about Picasa is not only that it will automatically create the collage for you, but it also gives you different styles of collages to choose from.  There's an option for "picture pile", which just looks like a scatter of pictures on a page, for those who like a little whimsy.  Or if you're a little more Type A like yours truly, you can choose a mosaic option that will arrange the photos in a grid.  There's a frame mosaic, too, which puts a large photo in the middle and scatters the others all around.  I'm thinking I'm going to try that one for the master bedroom.  You can also play around with the size settings, and optimize for a standard or a widescreen monitor.


I actually like how this collage turned out a little more than the final product that I saved did, haha!!  I went to go save it, but then my silly computer froze.  Oh well, at least I have this screen shot.  Anyway, I saved my collage and opened it up in Photoshop so I could add some text to remind myself what the different pictures were.  Here's my final product:


I can't wait to get my hands on that kitchen.  I can already see it so clearly in my head and I want to complete it!!

The Newly Organized Kitchen Cabinets

Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, October 17, 2012. Filed under: ,
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Who's been holding their breath in suspense for the revel of my newly organized kitchen??

No one?

That's okay, I wasn't either.  But I'm still pretty proud of it, so I'm going to show it off anyway.  This post is going to be pretty photo-heavy and pretty text-lite.



I had to return that food processor - totally didn't work.  Still debating about getting a new one.

I made all new homemade cleaners too; I'll blog about that in a week or two.





The only thing that really changed about this cabinet was I threw away all of the tea since it was expired - oops.





For Christmas, I'm asking for spice racks that mount to the inside of the cabinet doors, so I'm hoping to combine this cabinet and the dry goods cabinet.  We'll see how well that works out in a couple of months.




And there you have my newly organized kitchen cabinets.  And let me tell you, after the time and personal injury that went in to this project (yeah, I fell off of the counter when I was cleaning the insides of the cabinets) these cabinets better stay this way for a good long while.  I still need to figure out how to better organize the drawers and the cabinet that has all of my serving dishes, but I have an idea for that which involved Craigslist, a sideboard/buffet, some sandpaper, and paint, so stay tuned. :-)

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