Curtains are Hemmed!

When we re-did the bedroom color scheme we got new curtains from Ikea. They were a great deal - a set of 2 curtains for $25. Most curtains I have found at places like Bed, Bath & Beyond, etc are $30 for one panel. The curtains from Ikea were 96" and you hem them according to how long you need them. 

I was lazy for a while and finally decided to hem them. I don't have a sewing machine, so I bought Stitch Witch and thought I'd see how that worked out. 

It worked great! I cut off about 14 inches from the bottom (I do a post later this week about what I'm going to do with the extra fabric!) and then folded it up about 2 more inches, and ironed the stitch witch on in the fold!

Lots of extra fabric at the bottom

Measuring out where to cut and fold

Ironing the stitch witch inside

Finished product!!

A productive weekend!

On Friday we had the granite put in and decided it was going to be a productive weekend! After the sink was installed and everything was glued down we couldn't use it for 24 hours but then after that Trey had to install the faucet, connect the plumbing and he actually had to re-do some plumbing because before the garbage disposal was on the left side of the sink, and now we wanted it on the right side (the smaller side). 

We spent all day Saturday getting things done around here, Trey was working on painting the shed while I cleaned and organized the house. Here is a preview of what the finished product looks like. I'll post a lot of pictures in a post later this week. 

Making progress!

Sunday morning, while he worked on all of the plumbing under the sink I hemmed our bedroom curtains and began a few other projects. I'm going to post about each of those later but here is a cute glimpse of what the dogs spent the day doing:

Granite in the Kitchen!!

We have been wanting to put granite in the kitchen since we moved in and the day has finally come! The people who lived here before us upgraded slightly and had put a granite slab on the center island but the rest of the counter-tops were lovely plain white tile. We got moving this winter on our to-do list and granite was #1. It makes the kitchen look so much nicer, and the new huge, deep sink is awesome too :)

Here are a few pictures of what the tile was like:

In the top one, Trey was testing out to see what it would be like to tear up the tile, if it wasn't included in the price... it came up easily! But we ended up not having to do it ourselves anyways :)

After (love it!!):

We got the faucet at Home Depot

Awesome new sink with grates that fit perfectly

I found this cute night light as a finishing touch at Bed, Bath & Beyond for $4!!

Tree Trimming!

Our neighbors had a tree cut down last week, it makes our front yard look so much more open! It is so weird to drive u in the cul de sac and not see it. While the tree guy was here we asked about getting a tree in our backyard trimmed. We have a huge tree near our fence in the backyard and it drops a lot of leaves, creates a lot of shade and some of the limbs were dead. They gave us a pretty good deal and we also asked about cutting down a maple on the other side of the yard. The maple was a very pretty tree, but Vegas peeled the bark off of it a while back and now it is dead :( 

They didn't finish with our neighbor's house until almost dark so they came back to do ours two days later. In the mean time Trey brought home a chainsaw from work and cut down the maple himself! Saved us $100!!

Here are some before and after pictures:

The dead maple

An up close shot of Vegas's artwork

My hard working hubby

Leftover little limbs from the maple

Only a stump left!

The tree before - lots of limbs

The tree now! Way less limbs to deal with

View of our yard now, you can see the tree stump in the middle on the far right - it was a huge tree before!

Gallery Wall

I posted before that I bought frames at Ikea to work on a gallery wall. I ordered pictures on Shutterfly and was so excited when they came in! I put them all in the frames and then had to figure out how I was going to hang them.

Here are a few pictures of them all laid out so I could try to organize. The desk was moved out of the office a while ago and hasn't made it anywhere else yet. It is very convient to stash things on in the hallway, though!


All of the pictures laid out




Us outside of the Preston Woodall House, Tyson & Vegas!



Eating cake, the ceremony & a close up of us



Honeymoon pictures!


Attempting to design the wall:


Figuring out where I want everything




Seeing what it would look like laid out in that order


Finished product:



My super sweet husband hung all of these for me while I was out Monday evening :)



Smores Cake

I found a recipe online for a s'mores cake that I decided to attempt to make for my best friend's birthday! You make a graham cracker cake for the crust, fudge brownies for the chocolate part and use marshmallow fluff. You are supposed to use a kitchen torch to "toast" the marshmallows and since I don't have one we decided to turn the oven on broil and it worked! It turns out everyone loved it, it was super rich but delicious! 

Cutting the edges off to make them the same size

Covered in marshmallow fluff

Toasting the fluff

Perfect!

A smore!!

Happy birthday!!

Random Picture Post

I have had some random pictures in my phone for a while that don't really fit under another post but thought I'd share them! So enjoy:


A homemade pizza one night :)



Somebody loves her daddy



Making smores in our new firepit!



Me & Marianna's adorable son, Mikey!



We found a ball in the creek and Tyson couldn't wait to get a hold of it!



My little snuggle babies



Loves him so much that she smothers him!

Our New Shed!!

Our new shed got installed on Tuesday! I am so excited to get all of these yard tools out of the garage and in to the shed!! It is awesome. We still need to paint it.... MAYBE that will happen this weekend. Then I'll update pictures!



A picture of the inside




Christmas presents moved to the shed!



The ceiling... no lights yet so all of my pictures are just using the flash on my camera

Around 6pm, the night it was complete!!



Vegas checking it all out



Side view

IKEA - my new favorite store!

I discovered IKEA on our way back from Delaware about a month ago. I had heard of it before, but never  been in the store. We decided to "stop by" the one at Potomac Mills mall. Well for those of you that have never been there before, there is no "stopping by" IKEA. We didn't have any clue how it is supposed to "work" and ended up going completely backwards. You are supposed to walk through all of the showrooms first to get an idea of layouts of different rooms and items, then proceed to the store part that reminds me of bed, bath and beyond THEN go on to the warehouse to get any bigger items. Well it was cold outside and we ran in the closest door and went completely BACKWARDS! Oops :) We found so many cool ideas and new things we might want but were slightly overwhelmed and weren't ready to make this many decisions about changing things at home so we ended up buying nothing on our first visit but decided to go back when we went to Charlotte in a few weeks.

The day after the bowl game we went to Ikea before we headed home, this time we were prepared with thoughts of things to change/do at home. Our old comforter had been torn and had a lovely iron on patch, plus it is mostly light blue which shows TONS of dirt, dog hair, etc. I had been wanting a new one for a while. We tried a brown down alternative blanket but that showed the mess just about as bad and was dry clean only... no thanks! We decided that a duvet cover was the best option, I can take it off and wash it as often as I want and we got a red color that actually doesn't show the dirt and hair as badly from far away. We also never liked the curtains in our room (they were left when we bought the house) but haven't changed them... until now! We got curtains to match the duvet cover and I got a blanket to fold at the foot of the bed for a variety of color. Ikea is so well priced that it's hard not to go overboard! The curtains are 96" and left for you to hem yourself, so I recently bought some stitch witch and hope to hem them this weekend. I am so excited about our new room design, but we were still able to keep the brown tone, so we don't HAVE to change the walls, although we probably will eventually and we kept the bathroom the same as it was before.

You can see the curtains a litle bit better in this one

We have also been frustrated with the lack of light in our kitchen. We have beautiful stained glass fixtures but they don't let much light through. We found under the cabinet lights and Trey installed them almost immediately! They really help add light. They are LED so that got us thinking, what if we got LED lights to go in the kitchen and brighten some things up... so we did! It is much brighter in there, even with the fixtures on so now we can actually see but also get to keep pretty light fixtures!


One of our new under the counter lights, turn all of them on with one switch!

We also got folding chairs to go with my new folding table, that Trey got me for Christmas! We want to have another table for whenever we have extra guests over for dinner that won't fit at our dining room table. Or if we ever decide to have a poker/game night, like we have talked about doing, and need more room. We got these white, pretty comfortable, folding chairs for $8 each!

Lastly, I have been wanting to create a "gallery wall" on one of the hallway walls upstairs that is currently blank. We don't have many of our wedding pictures displayed and I want something on this wall, it is boring me! I have been trying to find frames and can't decide what to do. When we went to Ikea we looked through their frames. I like variety but I also can't handle things being too different, so we got a lot of white frames, all different sizes and some shadow box type frames, some just plain normal frames and I think it should be a good balance. I haven't even really begun that project though... hopefully I can get started on it this weekend!

So yeah, I'm slightly obsessed with this store.