Our First Christmas

We had a great First Christmas in our new house. Lindsay and Jenny came Christmas Eve. And Andy's family came down Christmas day. Just a couple photos of our Christmas decorations.



It seems like the Christmas gifts took over the area. Just wait for years to come!



We hung stockings for Andy and I. And also, for Lindsay and Jenny.

The Dining Room Saga

Well, let's say that the Dining Room has evolved over the past few months. We started with the "oh so familar" pink walls & pink carpet.



We, of course, wanted to remove ALL pink as soon as possible. So, we ripped up the carpet and primed the walls ASAP.


We decided to do a chair rail in the dining room and continue the tan color from the living room into the dinning room.



Out first color choice for the bottom.... A greenish blue color. We wanted a green and were trying to choose something that would work well with the blue in the living room.






The results? I liked the color, it looked nice standing in the living room towards the dining room. Andy thought that when you were in the room, it looked to teal.



So, we decided to live with it for awhile and see if it grew on us.



But Andy decided we needed to change it.



So, we declared a Do-Over!



The new color on the bottom? A deep deep blue color. We decided to go with an over saturated version of what we picked for the living room.



Inspired by the painters tape comercial where a very nice looking couple, who also looked remarkable neat after painting, had painted stripes on the walls. After seeing the comercial a thousand times, we decided to try it out on our room.



It probably took us more time to measure out and make sure our stripes would be evenly spaced and tape it all off than, it did to actually paint the stripes!



Also, in tying in the living room to the dining room, we decided to make the stripes the gold color we used on the beam and accents on the steps.





The first big reveal, if our stripes were going to be straight. I was really worried that the paint was going to sneak under the tape or when we pulled the tape off that it would take some of the paint with it. But fortantly, neither of those things happened!



We still need to hang the actual chair rail, and get some nice curtains. But it is getting there!





Our Finished room, as of now. Who know what we will decide to do next!

Guest Bedroom

It has been our goal for the last 2 weekends to paint the guest room. Let's just say we have gotten good at finding other things to do instead!



We are taped and ready to go. Barely motivated to paint primer, that almost looks the same as the pale blue walls.



The ever so exciting "Trading Spaces" moment! Brown that Andy says looks like Mister Softee Chocoate! Or I said, Teddy Bear Brown. But the can called is Woodacres.






Half way there. Keep going. Andy took a nap between coats! I would not of wanted to get up and paint more after napping, but Andy did.



The finished product.



We wanted the brown to go with the quilt that Andy's mom had made us when we were living in the Condo. I plan on painting my old dresser and side table a high gloss white to go with the room.

New Patio Set

So Saturday, we went to Home Depot to get more painting supplies. We wonder by the gardening section (we tend to wonder EVERY time we go to Home Depot or Lowes) We found a great Patio set for half off!



It's great, the chairs swivels and rocks, came with cushions and the table top has stone on top (VERY HEAVY).

4 trips later we were proud owners of a new patio set.
One to get the Honda,
One to bring home the extra large box that contained the chairs,
Another to get the top
And a final trip back after one of the chairs arms was broken.



Only to be followed by a good hour and a half putting the table together in the 90 degree humidity in the afternoon. Not to be missed...... A Mister Softee Ice Cream Cone. Although Andy did not give the guy his stamp of approval on the his twist method!

But it was all worth it, it is such a great set and we were lucky that they had a whole set left. Hopefully we will get to use it as the weather cools down.

My Garden Update.

Andy and I are pretty much eating tomatoes everyday!



One last picture of the green tomatoes. They have grown quite large.



The plants are literally out of control! You can't see the fence that Lindsay and I put up and the cherry tomato plant has grown through the fence and even has tomatoes on the other side!



My cherry tomatoes seem to be yellow ones. The first one I picked, I wasn't sure if they were ripe yet, but they are nice a juicy inside. I made yellow tomato sauce last night.



I had to transplant my herbs since the tomato plants took over. The herbs seem to have decided to stay. Welcom back, Parsley, Thyme, Mint & Chives! RIP to cilantro.



The same tomatoes, only red now!



My first crop of Tomatoes.

A Ground Hog Sighting!!!

So, it seems like our ground hog has gotten more and more brave as to exploring our yard. We caught him the other day wondering the backyard. But our picture taking might have scared him, we haven't seen him since.



This is him right by the patio!



And this is him poking his head out, after he ran back into his hole. He had the nerve to poke his head out and check out what I was doing!

The Garden Keeps Growing!!

Hi,

So the tomato plants are out of control! I can't even keep up with the photos. And I know this might not be exciting to some, but for me, who has killed many indoor plants. This is VERY exciting!



My one cherry tomato plant has gotten so big, I had to go buy sticks to help it stay upright.



You can see the green tomato. I am waiting for red juicy ones!!





Next time I will hopefully have a side garden to add!

The Office

We have had a little break in the amount of projects we were doing around the house. But the office was screaming to get done. We really needed to organize all of our paperwork (which is still to be finished) and have at least one finished room. We bought paint for the office when we bought all the other paint, so we thought it was about time!

What we started with! It was kind of mint green but neon. That was only enhanced when we painted the blue in the hallway.




The color of choice? Rockport Gray. But it had been so long since we bought the paint that both of us had forgotten what shade of gray it was. It was a very trading spaces moment.




Well, the neon mint green paint was harder to get rid of than we thought it would be. Andy ended up re-taping the ceiling and a couple spots on the walls to get rid of the paint that was hiding under the painters tape. Not what you want to do after painting all day.



We some how used a whole gallon of gray paint in this little room!



We call the office, our "Grown-Up Office". It is, also, the first room to have something hung on the wall. Sad, we know. But it looks great!

My Garden!

Hello All!

So, hopefully this will be the first of a new string of new posts!

Over Memorial Day Weekend, my friend Nicole gave me two tomato plants, two cherry tomato plants, some basil, dill and chives. Sadly, we left them sitting outside in their planters over nighht and our neighbohood groundhog (who has been living under our shed lately) ate the poor tomatos down to the stick! But my mom and I planted them anyway, hoping for the best.






I went to Lowes with my sister Lindsay to find way to repell the groundhog, bunnies and other critters that we have running around here. We left Lowes with the double threat of some REALLY bad smelling spray, a little white wire fence. Add me yelling at any animal that comes near my garden, and the combination seems to have done the trick. (I like to think it is my yelling that keeps them away, but I really think it is the spray.)



Well, the garden is loving the heat wave we are having at the moment. And as you can see, the plants are doing well. I'm excitied for possibly having real fruit. I added two bell pepper plants to the garden along with cilantro and mint.

Bye-bye, Pink walls!

When we moved into our house on March 30, the entire first floor was covered with pink carpets and pink walls. Everywhere we looked, we saw pink.

Over the next two weeks, we ripped out the carpet (and everything that lived underneath it) and had our hardwood floors refinished. On the weekend of April 14-15, it was finally time to say goodbye to the pink walls.



We spent almost three hours covering every inch of our new floors with plastic, and pasting the walls with two coats of primer.



Finally, it was time for what Ariella calls the "Trading Spaces" moment: revealing the new color.



We chose a color called "Stillwater" for the main wall in the living room, as well as the back wall of the staircase, and the hallway upstairs. It's an antique-looking blue with a lot of gray in it.





We thought that this particular shade of blue is the type of color you would see on a Victorian like ours back in 1908, when our house was the new houses on the street. The color let us be respectful of the Victorian architecture and style, but also let us decorate our home in a way that still has a contemporay spin.





Thanks to some clever ladder-work, we were able to paint the entire stairwell easily. (For the record, no overly-nervous mothers -- who shall remain nameless -- were consulted before this process took place.)



For the rest of walls in the living room and dining room, we chose a neutral tan color called "Oakwood Manor". I have no idea where "Oakwood Manor" got its name, but I'm guessing the people who live there have tan walls too.

For the beam that separates the living room from the "parlor" (as well as a couple of other nooks around the house), we chose a color called "Twilight Gold" that's a subtle shade different from Oakwood Manor. The combination of the two colors gives the room a complementary color technique like you would see on some of the old "Painted Lady" Victorians.









With the new paint and new floors, we feel like we've put a lot of "Victorian" back in our old Victorian, while still giving ourselves a space that feels like home.

We've still got a lot of work to do on the house (we haven't done anything on the acre of land OUTSIDE the house yet). But we're finally ready to go to Boston to get our furniture and settle in.