house tour....

I realized I haven't posted any pictures of what our house looks like lately...and since I cleaned up, I decided to take some pictures! Enjoy this little tour! :)

This is the view of the dining, kitchen & living room from the door to the garage...


Another view of the dining room *and Scout*


Breakfast nook *and Scout*


Standing at the kitchen bar, looking at our "guest hall" with the bathroom, laundry room, linen closet and 2 guest rooms...


The guest bath. I really want to paint the cabinet white.


The finished guest room (looks about the same as before)...



The former "junk room"... now the "empty room" or Queso's room...
Will someday be the nursery.



View from the breakfast nook...


Just bought these new kitchen rugs to spice things up.


View of the living room from the dining room.


I forgot to take pictures of our bedroom, but it looks exactly the same as before anyway :)
I WISH I took a picture of our garage because we TOTALLY cleaned it out! So much more space now!

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little tour... This will be good for when we do major work around the house, so we can look back and see how far we've come. We feel so blessed to have this home though. Sometimes I just stand around looking at it, and I feel so thankful.

wish list top 10.

We haven't done much to the house that's blogworthy, but we DO have a mighty-fine list of things to do and things on our wish list.

1. Blinds and drapes for the living room & dining room. I hate, repeat HATE, these bamboo panels. (I know they're expensive...I write them for a living!!!) But it's just the farthest thing from our taste. I can't wait to get them off of our windows and have nice blinds and some pretty curtains on either sides of these big windows.

boooo bamboo panels!

2. Bedroom furniture. I have resisted taking pictures of our bedroom because it is SUCH a sad room at the moment. We don't even have our nice comforter set on because it's been so hot. So basically our room has blank walls, mismatched dressers and night stands, just our bed without a frame, white sheets and down comforter, and that's about it. So sad! I'm really wanting furniture to make it feel more like home AND so I'll know where to hang pictures! I'd also like a sitting area (since our room is big enough) so I'll have a place to read my books and my Bible.

maybe this chaise for the sitting area?
can't you see a cozy little table & floor lamp for reading?

3. Guest bedroom furniture. I'd really like an upholstered headboard like this:

4. Umbrella for the patio. I built the patio table all by myself, so now all we need is a coordinating umbrella. Like this one?
5. Note: This is on RYAN'S wishlist... not my own. Just to clarify. He wants a bigger TV for our living room so that we can move the 40" one to our bedroom. I say we have a lot higher priorities at the moment.
6. Dining room table that seats more than 4. We haven't used this table once since we've been in the house. Most of our guests eat in the breakfast nook since it holds 6 people. I'd really like at least a 6-seater for our dining room furniture. And of course a matching buffet/hutch wouldn't hurt either.
7. Paint. I don't know what room to paint yet, but I know that I'm already bored of the off-white walls in every room. Maybe we could paint a guest room? Or our room/bathroom? We will see.

8. Garage organization. Right now our 2-car garage only holds my car and a bunch of junk. We'll need to organize it once the weather cools off so we can fit both of our cars in there...It'll be especially important when it gets into the freezing months so that Ryan's care won't ice over.
9. New hardware and fixtures. Everything is brass. So we may just get a new doorknob every month until our house is updated!
10. An area rug. Not sure if it would go in the dining room or the living room, but that "great room" definitely needs some color on the floor.And there our current wish list. It keeps growing and growing!

pictures around the house...

the vines on our arbor are blooming!

and so are the beautiful flowers by the fountain...

i bought some little fake apples at target for $1...
they add a little more color.

and some pears for $1, too.
they add that green color i was needing without buying fake plants :)

scoutie's enjoying the window.
i can't STAND those bamboo panels any longer!

the living room view from the dining room.
not a huge fan of the fan but it's expensive and very level...ah well.

the guest bathroom so far. my dream is to paint the cabinets white and add some pretty new hardware but we'll save that battle for later.

and there was your little mini tour! :)

color splash: green

The Inspired Room has done it again... I'm in LOVE with these green-accented rooms...especially the KITCHEN!!

accessorizing...

This is totally not my forte. I finally, after 2 weeks, started to unpack all the decorative stuff from the boxes in our guest rooms. This is what I've done so far...basically just thrown stuff on shelves. Feel FREE to comment and give me any constructive criticism of what you might do differently.

dining room before:
(i hate those bamboo panels, for the record.
they will be changed out for blinds & drapes.)

dining room after:the mantel. (we'll actually hang the picture)

the entry.

what would you do differently?

new light fixtures!

Well, I totally had a plan...and it totally went out the window when I saw all the amazing light fixtures at Lowes! The plan was to buy a new one for the dining room and then spray paint the existing fixtures to match it. Well, how can you turn down three MATCHING fixtures for the dining room, breakfast nook and kitchen? You can't... that's how.

Here's the dining room before and after:
before: (click to make larger)...this was her Japanese glass fixture that she took with her.

after: this is our new one from Lowes! (#3 on the lighting post)

here's the breakfast nook:
before: lovely brass.
after: rubbed bronze! much better.

and the kitchen pendant...
before: (click to make larger) brass
after: matchy matchy!

It's amazing how lighting can TOTALLY change the look & feel of a home!

dining room table

I really want this dining room table set from jcp. Really.