On the Road (Blog) Again!

Yes, I am alive, if any of you were wondering. No, we actually didn't stop doing home improvements, but we combined them with so many other things that I haven't had a chance to write a cohesive thought lately! :)

The house is actually coming along quite well and starting to really feel like our house --- finally! I believe that is a combination of (finally) moving into all of our rooms, (finally) unpacking (almost) every box, and (finally) hanging some things on the walls. Not to worry, for those of you who are thinking - it's been almost a year! - this is actually quicker than what it took me to hang curtains and fully decorate my 2-bedroom apartment!

So, for those of you who haven't been to our house lately (which is pretty much everyone, thanks to our crazy weekday and weekend schedule), here's a bit about what we've been up to in our living room:

The newest edition to our living room is this rusty red sectional. Since we both enjoy to spread out and relax after the day's work, this was just perfect to fit both of us comfortably in the reclining position :)

For awhile (until we finished the family room) we had this sectional in the living room - in addition to the other furniture (a couch, coffee table, 2 end tables and a large rocking great chair). But eventually the family room was finished and so the old furniture got moved down there.

Now we definitely still have some space to fill since the room is so big, but we're still deciding on what should accompany the sectional, and where to find it. In the meantime, the room looks big and open again - much like it did when we first moved in. But not to worry, it's high on both our lists to get it finished soon!

Next step for this room is also some curtains! My hubby has been desperately wanting them for a looooong while, so as soon as we pick the rest of the colors for the room/furniture, that's my next task!

Pictures on the wall!

I believe I have mentioned this before, but it takes me quite some time to figure out what room I want pictures to be hung, and then where! Well, today I decided it was time to stop thinking and start doing! (I tend to over think these things when really I can change them whenever with a little work - probably less work than it's been taking to put them up in the first place!)

Well, a couple weeks ago I took a survey of where I should hang pictures in our kitchen, and today we finally managed to get them hung. So here's the finished product! (Looks a lot better without us standing in the way of the pictures hehe.)

 

The vertical votes won, and I agreed - it just went better with the rest of the kitchen layout.

Not today, but we also hung some pictures in our dining room that we had for several months and were just waiting to find a hutch to match our oak table. Well, thanks to craigs list, we did indeed find one that was reasonably priced, matched, and just the right size for what we needed!

After we got it put back together (hutch separates from buffet) and got our dishes in there, we decided to complete the room with these fun pictures from Kohls! You can't exactly tell in this picture, but the grays in the paintings matched perfectly with the dining and kitchen gray colors. Woohoo! Definitely better than boxes and college wire stackable cabinets! ;)

Now if only I could get the other rooms in order! Hopefully we'll be having some trim work done in our family room soon so then we can move all the furniture in, and finally get "fully" settled into our rooms. Happy Saturday!

Snowmaggeddon...again!

In light of our little burst of Snowmageddon last week, and despite the fact that today is the 1st day of March :), I thought it was appropriate to revisit the craziness of 2010's snowstorm. I might add that if the burst of snow we had last week had continued for as long as it did last year, we would have had even more snow than we did last year!

Thankfully I was not working in Cranberry that day last week, for many people waited over 2 hours just to get out of the parking lot, and some never made it home that night!

The back of our apartment complex, after the snow hit.

"After" the snow plow came through ;)

Trying to dig our truck out of the snow...

...Still trying...

...Then, trying to find the car!

 I'm still amazed by how much snow we had, and now that we have a house, really really glad we have a 2 car garage and a short driveway - plus a Robbie-sized shovel!  :)

Hope your first day of March looked nothing like this!

Beating the Winter Blues...with Color!

Last week was pretty lovely. Most of the snow melted, the sun came out, the sky was blue, and things were looking up.

This morning was pretty dreary. The sun was gone, the warmth was gone, and in its place was cold and rain. This afternoon the snow started. Thankfully I made it home safely through the frozen ice pellets, freezing rain, and finally snow - despite the treacherous roadways that looked suspiciously unsalted!

Now, after about 4 hours of snow, here is what is staring at me out the window (besides the snow plow that barrells through every hour or so):

So peaceful, so quiet...yet so threatening! So colorless, too! So despite the work it takes to keep my plants alive, they are just a little source of happiness as I water them everyday (or as much as I remember!) ...

This is the longest surviving plant I currently have - a Christmas Cactus. After I presumed it dead last year and was going to throw it out, my mom nursed it back to health and it has been blooming several times this Christmas!

Silly as it may sound, I've actually wanted a legit cactus for a long time. One of Robbie's students gave him this as a present this year, so now I have at least one thing I really can't kill!

We didn't buy a poinsettia this year because we were out of town for the holidays (even though we did put up a tree!), but after Christmas my grandparents brought it over to keep while they headed south for the winter!

Another strong plant, this one was killed once after it bloomed in the summer, but is making a nice mid-winter comeback in my front window where it gets lots of sun!

And finally, the newest edition to the plants in my house, this primrose is very particular. One day I came in to find all the flowers drooping like they were dead, but with a little water and a couple hours, they were back up and back to normal (as long as I remember to water daily) !

Feeling the winter blues? Find yourself a little piece of life and color to perk up those blah winter days!

You know you're bored when... :-)

I really have no reason to be bored...I really have no time to be bored! It's not like I'm sitting here, doing nothing, but at the moment I do not have a focused task that has to be completed tonight, and I'm pretty drained from an intense day of teaching, but silly me still needs to feel productive, so in between laundry loads, what's a girl to do?

(Those of you who are wondering, why not just relax on the couch? need to realize that in my messed up head, being productive around the house is relaxing --- to a certain extent. I definitely take a break on Friday nights and crash on the couch with a movie if I can, but hey - it's only Tuesday!)

So the clue to me that I'm really bored (or just plain procrastinating on everything else!) is that I think it's a good time to pull out the cross-stitch.   ..."Cross-stitch!?" you say, "What's that?" You know, that thing most all women used to do 'a hundred years ago' in their spare time, that involves a creative type of sewing for fun.

This project was actually supposed to be in a plant (the pieces should be wired together and stuck on a plant stake - not sure why I or anyone else thought that would be a good idea!)

This activity is just perfect for the high-strung person like me who needs to feel productive while sitting still. Usually it comes out on long car rides or when I know I'm going somewhere there isn't internet (hmm...that doesn't happen anymore for us Blackberry people!). This also may be why I have actually finished very few projects ;-) .

One of Four napkin rings (this is the only one that got started!)

All the projects have been abandoned (for the most part) since before I was able to drive. However, one project in particular I have been working on off and on since then. It is also the largest project I undertook, consisting of the cartoon character Tigger jumping on Winnie the Pooh. You can see where I am right now below!

The way I see it, I'll be very lucky to have this project completed by the time we have kids to appreciate it! Haha - I guess that's a step better than my mom, who finally gave my sister her cross-stitched birth announcement when she graduated from high school! (The thing to understand here is that my sister really thought she was getting second fiddle because I had one and she didn't...)

So, now that I've shared my own little boredom idiosyncrasy(!), I want to know what yours is! What do you do when you're really bored? How do you know you've reached the ultimate in boredness? ;-)
Can't wait to find out!

A Nicer Light to the Outside World - Windows!

Some of you may have noticed from the initial pictures of our house, or perhaps if you have visited our house, that the windows (like everything else) were original to the house, and some of them in quite a state of disrepair (i.e. picture below).

This one was my (least) favorite. Both bedrooms were equipped with window air conditioners permanently, such that there was no window pane to put back in the window if you took them out. This one was not even sealed very well, so soon after moving into the house we decided to make the best of it by duct taping all around the window and A/C unit in hopes to reduce the amount of air escaping or coming in. Still, the rooms didn't cool or heat very well, and we knew we needed to replace them soon.

So we decided to take the plunge and replace a few really bad windows this fall, and wait on the rest until spring. Well, with the kitchen taking so long and us not entirely having our act together, we didn't get the windows ordered until November. It shouldn't have been a problem to get them installed before the end of the year, as we usually have fairly good weather through December, but not this year!

We were hoping to take advantage of the little we had left to claim on the energy rebates / tax credits, but when we left for Ireland on Christmas day, we had little hope that it would happen. BUT, thanks to a last minute heat wave and our SUPER window installer, we were able to get them in on Dec. 30 & 31! Whew - that was close!  :)

This window lives in our family room on the first floor, which is still "under construction"

 So now we have 5 nice new beautiful windows, and it really is funny how much a difference it makes (to me) looking outside! They are a lot cleaner than the old ones obviously, but I also like the crisp white instead of the dull aluminum gray.

This window resides in the "purple room" or my office :)

Now we can't wait to get the rest of the windows done, especially since we have only one new window on the front of the house (looks a little silly, but oh well - it will hopefully be fixed in a few months).

Starting to Decorate - Finally!

So I have a confession to make - I'm a little bit obsessive when it comes to order (this is probably no surprise to those that know me well). We have been in the house for about six months now, and I just had Robbie hang up the first pictures on a wall last week. I guess it had something to do with the fact that I didn't want a bunch of holes in my walls if they weren't going to stay there for awhile, but this can also lead to (a LOT) of indecision about where to hang things.

Another aspect to the lack of permanent decorations is that we're still planning to completely move the living room furniture into the family room after it's done, so we're really not sure where everything's going to end up. I should probably just acknowledge the fact that pretty much anything can be fixed with putty and paint, but that would be too easy...  ;)

So I was finally going to jump into it for Christmas decorations and put some stuff on the walls, but I then decided that this year I'd just utilize the nails in the doors and hang stuff there until I really decided what to do with everything.

In light of all that, you'll now understand why I need your help on this very big, important decision  ;)  - Which way should I hang these pictures?!

Technically, they can be hung either way - there is no "right" or "wrong" way as far as the pattern goes. But I'm not quite sure which way looks better with the rest of the kitchen & bar area. For example, if they are hung horizontally (above), will they clash or come too close to the bar light fixtures (also red)?

But if they are hung vertically, does it seem unbalanced on the wall, being so much on the right and not anything on the left?

So you see my dilemma :) - now please help! Leave me a comment and let me know what you think is the best way, if it doesn't matter, or if you think I'm crazy! Thanks!