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.

On the street where you live...

$10 bucks to those who know what this lyric is from. It is a great song!

Anyway,I realized you all have never seen the front of the house so I thought I would show you!We have plans to update the landscaping, update the paint color and possibly paint the brick to update the whole house. Oh yes, we also want to change the mailbox and the garage doors. My goodness we have a lot of plans.

The big trees are a huge reason I love our house. They make me happy.

Parker is already planning what our Halloween and Christmas lighting is going to look like!

Welcome from Alaska

About a year ago, my mom and dad sent me this cute sign from Alaska. We held on to it this whole time konwing that we could hang it up at our new house one day.

Well one day is finally here!

We hung it out by the fron door on the post leading into the entryway. What do you think? We like it!

Things are beginning cooling off

Last week we had our handyman come and install our beautiful new ceiling fan in our living room. This was not a tast for us beginer homeowners to try and tackle. It turns out it was hard for the professionals too!

He got to the house right at 9am and did not leave until almost 430. He also fixed several other small things around the house that we found on the inspection but for the most part all of that work was on the fan.

As you can see we have valuted celings in the room so there was no room for us to eaily feed the wiring in the attic. So he had to remove a can light that was awkwardly places above the fireplace and feed that wiring up to the fan. Once he did that we were left with three large holes in the drywal.

Here his is just getting started. He was cutting into the ceiling at this point. I tried to stay out of his way. Below you can see the other holes in the ceiling behind him where he removed the can light and cut a feeder hole.

Here is the fan up close. You can see the fixtured and the light bowl are both very light and bright. Can you see a theme here with our desgin elements!?

So after the 9 hours or fiddling around with the light we flipped the switch! Here is what is looks like all finished and installed:

Here are the two most handsome men in the world enjoying the new lighting in our living room. Can you tell how much brighter it is in here!?

An Austin Tradition

This Wednesday night was the first Blues on the Green of the year. For those of you don't know, Blues on the Green is a free concert series in Austin every Wednesday night during the summer months.

We packed up yummy snacks using our picnic backpack given to us by my mom and dad and headed to Zilker Park with Harry. We met up with our friends and drank some beers while listening to Charlie Mars. Here is a picture of the sunset. It was a beautiful night in Austin.

After we got home Harry was tuckered out. He passed out in our bed and would not move for hours! Haha! Awe Harry!