Home Improvement

I'm back.  And better than ever.  Hahaha.  No really and truly, I am.  Listening to conference a couple of weekends ago really inspired me and helped me to come away with a fresh outlook and a much-improved attitude over my {crappy} frame of mind with regards to "The Move."  This move has not been an easy one for any of us, but I feel like I've been the one really hanging to the back here when everyone else in the family has largely moved on and started to settle in.  I'm happy to say that I am now fully accepting of our life changes and have finally begun to settle in, too.  It's a GOOD feeling.

Along with my attitude adjustment, there have been quite a few adjustments being made around these parts, too.  You know me -- I love a project.  Even if the timing and scope of said project seems impractical to all around me.  Hahaha.  Our major makeover target of the last month or so has been tackling our exterior.  After doing some weeding and taming of shrubs and bushes gone astray, I invested in some bright and happy colored mums and decided that it was finally time to start painting on the outside. 

{Happy was the day when Scott turned his lawn-mowing duties over to Ethan.  And as an added bonus, Ethan LOVES mowing the lawn.  He is constantly asking me if he can cut it again -- even when it's only been a few days since the last trim.}

Believe it or not, there are about 500 different shades of white {and black} to choose from, and it actually took quite a bit of hemming and hawing and worrying about choosing the "wrong shade" before I finally settled on Dover White and Tricorn Black {both Sherwin Williams colors}. I was a little nervous at first, when only the front door and sidelights were painted, that the colors were so stark and bold that they stood out too much from the brick.  Once the shutters and other trim was painted, however, I was much happier with the result and relieved to not have to tackle painting things all over again.

Close-up of the Front.  Please admire my lovely flowers and hard work.  Hahaha.  {You can see what color the shutters (and door) used to be on the top story}.  I bought new coach lights to replace the existing brass ones, but haven't figured out how to do it myself yet.  I'll guess they'll just have to wait.

From afar.

My hero.  Scott graciously offered to paint the top shutters for me after our neighbor offered the use of their extension ladder.  I was worried I'd fall and break my neck.  Thankfully he didn't.  After tackling a couple of windows, though, the daylight was completely gone and the weather has not been cooperative since then to finish things up.  :(  Hopefully, this weekend we will FINALLY have a brand-new look for the exterior.

Once the front door was slapped with a fresh, clean coat of new black paint, it was just BEGGING for the addition of our St. Louis acorn wreath.  I made this wreath our first fall in St. Louis with some of the millions of acorns that fell in our back yard.  I followed a tutorial at Dana Made It and it was super easy if not slightly dangerous.  Hot glue burns.  Just so you know.  For the past three years, I've been spray-painting it different colors to go with the different seasons.  Here below you will see it's transformation from "Leather Brown" {a Krylon color} to "Pumpkin Orange" {another Krylon color}.

After finding a super cute Halloween-y printed ribbon at Michael's, I threw a bow on this puppy and ran to hang it on the front door.  Poor little pumpkin wreath.  It didn't last the night.  That hook it's hanging from fell off around 8 o'clock that night, banging up the wreath and scattering acorns everywhere.  Jane and Alex helped me salvage them the next day, and after hot gluing them back on and re-spray-painting the whole thing we tried it again!  With the same results.  Doh!  Lesson learned.  I went to Wal-mart the next day and bought one of those over-the-door wreath hanger hook thingies and everything has gone swimmingly since.  :)

Happy Halloween!

Another fun project of the last week or so has been nursing Grace along through her "broken toe" epidemic.  Somehow, in a tussle between Ethan and Grace, Grace lost.  And her toe was the pawn.  I have no doubt that her toe was in serious pain...at first.  But you should have SEEN how conveniently it would go in and out of preventing her from doing things.  Chores?  It hurt too much -- she needed to go lay down and rest it.  Running around the back woods looking for rocks for school?  Not a problem.  All in all, it was just so Grace.  Thankfully, though, it seems to be all better.  She told me so herself this morning so I'm going to hold her to it!

Poor little pinky toe.

Aside from the exterior paint colors, there was only one other area of the house that REALLY drove me nuts.  The dining room.  There was just way too much going on.  Aside from the fact that it was carpeted when we bought it {a major pet peeve of mine -- as if my kids could EVER keep a carpet clean when food is involved}, there were just so many colors and other things going on that I couldn't wait to tackle it and make it ours.  

The Befores:

 

Carpet, multi-toned colors and moldings -- it was just way too much.

Another view.

The After:

{The room is not totally finished yet -- I haven't completely committed to anything hanging on the walls as of right now.}

Change number one was to replace the carpet with wood floors to match the rest of the house.  We accomplished this feat after we first moved here when I hit the road with the kids for a week and half so the floors could get done before our moving trucks were here.  After the floors, the next thing I did was to rip off all the embellishments in the middle of the moldings and spackle and repair the walls.  Then -- using Simply White {a Benjamin Moore color} -- I painted the entire lower half of the wall to make it look like real wainscoting.  It's actually only a chair rail with picture frame moldings underneath, but once everything was painted in a semi-gloss, you can't really tell that its a regular wall under it all.  Once I finally got the lower half done, I knocked out the top half in our ever-popular Antique Bone by Ralph Lauren.  The end result is 1000% better than it was when we bought the house.  And that makes me happy.  :)

One more before and after I'll post is of Jane and Sophie's room.  The walls have been painted for a while, but I finally got around to hanging some stuff on the walls and finishing up a night stand that has been sitting in the garage for 3 months now waiting for some paint and new knobs.

Before:

After:

Ignore the lighting in all these -- its terrible.  I just snapped the pictures with my phone, so they're not the best quality, but you get the gist.  Right???  Hahaha.

And finally, just to wrap things up, here are some superfluous shots of my boys that I took the other day in back of our house.  Alex -- in case you were wondering -- is a bit obsessed with Spiderman.  And Ethan still likes throwing rocks in the river.

In closing, I'll leave you with a shot of us actually USING our newly revamped dining room!  Scott is the ward mission leader and meets with the missionaries each week.  This past Saturday, after their meeting was over, we invited them to stay and eat with us for dinner.  I'd love to say that our children are the perfect hosts and hostesses for having company over, but we all know I would be lying.  Hahahaha.  Oh well.  Life would be boring if it weren't a little crazy.  Right?  Right???  Hahaha.  Until next time -- peace out!