On the flip side

On the other side of the living room I have updated the fireplace with these items.

I added a large map, and I plan on adding pins of where Parker and I have been. Then our thermometer and clock (also with a map on it) and succulents. I actually have quite a few of these around the house and change out which plants are up there as needed.

In addition, Parker and I found these pillow coves at crate and barrel. We bought them with leftover money from the wedding. I know, crazy 2 years later I am still spending it.

The blanket is from Homegoods, which if you don't know is one of my favorite stores in the world. I was $20! Woot!


What do you think? Up next we are finally hanging pictures in the bedroom, and possibly refinishing our kitchen table. I will post pictures soon!

Wall O Frames

This last week I decided to get on finishing up several lingering projects I have had around the house. One of them was re-hanging our gallery wall I made at the last house.

If you did not know, I had a lot of picture frames left over from our wedding. At the apartment I spray painted them all a cream/kaki color and hung them over our sofa. In this house the cream was not going as well, so I bought a can of white spray paint and went to town. The result is a fresh looking new gallery wall.

I love the idea of creating "free" art around the house so I hung several things in frames that mean a lot to Parker and I. The rest are pictures from the wedding and travels.

Wide shot to give you perspective.

Up close you can see some of the artwork.

The buffet is from Parker's Poppy and on it I have the bouquet from the wedding, and a bottle that I used as centerpieces at the wedding. I think the look came out really nice. I plan to let the wall evolve, hanging pictures as we take them and changing out frames as well. I like the idea of changing it with our family. There is even a big drawing of Harry in there for good measure!

Garage Sale!!!

Parker and I held our first garage sale this weekend. Not our first in this house but our first, ever. We had done some research about how to throw the proper garage sale event and we think the advice we found was super helpful. We thought we would tell you all about the sale and throw in some words of wisdom we learned from our experience.



First off, the whole thing was a huge success. We made a huge amount of money (but I am going to make you read this whole post before I tell you our final number)! We had several great stories from the day, and we met some of our neighbors which was super nice considering we had yet to even really see anyone outside of their houses. Thank goodness they are all super nice!



So here is the lowdown on how we had such a great garage sale experience:



The week before I advertised our garage sale on Craigslist.org 2 or 3 times. This was what I think was a huge factor in our success. We had people waiting for us as we were setting up our tables at 7am! We advertised starting at 8! By the time 7:45 rolled around we were already out of most of our electronics and "good stuff". I know no to get to garage sales early and act fast. We also advertised on the street with large bright readable signs so people would know where to head.



Here is a picture of parker an hour or so into it. Imagine about twice the amount of stuff out there to start off! You can see him waving at me if you squint!

We spread out. We used lots of tables and looked like we had a lot of stuff. We also kept putting new stuff out and arranging items to everything was easy to see and look at. I think this made us look "professional".



We did not set out trying to make money. The agreement was we were not there to make money, but to clean out all of our extra stuff and crate some space in our garage. This was our motto when people would negotiate us down. We figured 5 bucks was less than 10 but at least is was no ZERO!

We did not bring anything back into the house that we put out for sale. Not one thing we put out went back into the house. This was a huge feet for both of us but we really did feel great clearing out everything from our garage.



We did not take anything personally. We never got upset or concerned when someone did not want our stuff. The funny thing is stuff that Parker and I thought would go right away, never sold and all the weird odd and end stuff was gone right away!

At the end of the day this is all we were left with! Two tables full of little odd things and some old books. Oh and that bookcase sold to a former school teacher for $5!



Speaking of odd things we thought would sell, our sofa did not sell all day! We were so ticked by this! We thought that would be a big money maker for us and we had no takers. At 1:00 we were about to start packing up and a guy came by and asked if it was available. Parker jumped at the opportunity to not have to bring that sofa back into the garage and wait for Salvation Army to come by and get it and said we would sell it for $25! That guy got a STEAL!!!! Best part was right after the first guy offered to buy it these other guys pulled up in their burnt orange longhorn tuck. They wanted it too! We could have started a bidding war for it!



Guy number one was driving around in a BMW convertible and could not take the sofa right away. So he bartered with the buy in the truck and played him $25 to drive his sofa to his house! Not a bad deal for either of them. Here is Parker loading up the sofa:

I would also like to point out that I put out a few plates of my Chocolate Chip cookies and they sold like hotcakes! Hmmm maybe one day that could be my job!

BlogThis!

Keeping things fresh

We were given these beautful outdoor plates by my mom for a housewarming gift. They are from West Elm and best of all the were only $0.99! We have already made great use of them several times. We are so greatful for these thoughtfull gifts! It was perfect! Thanks Mom and Dad!

We then bought cute cups from Target for $1.99 for 4 cups! We thing they are super cute right!?

I have these plates on our home built "Young House Love" shelves. Here is the current status of the shelves. I have made several changes, and hope to keep them evolving. So far they are super functional and I love these shelves!

29 and Counting!

Last week I celebreated my 29th birthday. With all the stuff going on with the new house I have to say I was just not really into my birthday this year. I wanted to celebrate at home with my family and that is exactly what we did. Parker and all of our friends and family made it such a perfect low key birthday.

I woke up to my puppy snuggling me in the morning, went to lunch at Hillside Farmacy in east Austin (you totally need to go there if you have not already) and then came home to a fabulous dinner in my new house made by the best husband in the world. All in all I had a pretty perfect day. I am so lucky to have amazing people and friends in my life. Here is a picture breakdown for you all:

Harry might just be the cutest thing I have seen.

Sweet potato soup and a ham, goat cheese and olive pesto sandwich.

The table was set with our favorite red wine and prosecco. Look at the pretty flowers I got too!

Parker made me pork medallions, with caramelized onions in a fig sauce. YUMMMY!!!

Best of all, I got the Pippa bag all the way from London! It is the bag that Pippa Middleton wears all the time. I have been eying it up for a while and Parker was so sweet to get it for me. I am a spoiled wife!

Here is to my 29th year and all the fun to come. I can't wait to see what we have in store for this year!

Loaded...

After we got the shelves all painted and installed we went over the cracks that the brackets and the shelves themselves created between them with some paintable caulking. It was tedious and messy but totally worth it. I think that it really finished out the look of the shelves.

After that dried we went ahead and loaded up the shelves with what we had lying around the house. This is a first attempt and for sure not the way it will stay. But we are working on it.

Top shelf has already changed pretty drastically, and we are going to add more cookbooks to the bottom self.

Here you can wee more depth of the shelves. We have a munch more practical stuff we should be putting out there but for now we are sticking to pretty stuff.

Now we have these finished I am going to move around the kitchen and see if we can empty out some of the cabinets we want to empty out so we can knock out the WHOLE WALL we want to knock out! I know we are nuts. I am hopping it comes out pretty though! More on the wall removal as we get to it.

So what you do you think? I think it is coming along okay for now.

Shelf the issue

As Parker and I get settled into the new house we are trying to take note of all the pending progects we would like to do and how we want to go about them. Out first large project will be renovating the kitchen. We have had lots of thoughts about how to go about doing that but for now we are just going to work with what we have and try and prepare our space for the upcoming changes.

To get started on making those changes we decieded we wanted to add more function storage space to the kitchen and what better or easier) way to do this but than to build the very trendy open kitchen shelves we have seen all over the place. We started out with a bare wall in the dining area of our eat in kitchen. The walls are a light grey so we thought white white white shelves would really "pop".

And here is what we ended up with:

What do you think?

We used the plans we found very well documented on younghouselove.com. I have been following their blog for years and I finally get to try out some of their great projects! We started with bare wood and stock brakcets from Home Depot. Sanded them down three times, then primed and painted them with paint we already owned. It really helped that we had all the painting stuff already otherwise I think it would have been better to just buy these shelves.

We wanted wide, thick and usable shelves that we could really load up so that they would act like really substitutes for kitchen cabinets. They are attached to the walls in the studs and then anchored into the wall in the middle with 75 pound drywall anchors. I don't think this babies are going anywhere anytime soon.

Our dishes and lots of other good stuff fit on these shelves. We don't like the gap between the bracket and the shelf though. We will be fixing that soon.

The sanding was well worth it but as you can see here they are not perfect. But I think they still came out great for our first fully DIY project.