Stove Luck.... Yep

I finally have a working stove in my home. Can you guys believe it? I can now cook. Not that I do a lot of cooking in the first place but even the little things can be done now. Breakfast at my house....( Now maybe I can stop eating out).
This means that my microwave can get some rest... whew!

So I do have a a long list of projects left:
1. find artwork for the living room and bedrooms
2. paint the furniture in the guestroom
3. make curtains for the dining room
4. purchase remaining fabric for living room curtains (kinda pricey for me but gorgeous)
5. find a demilune sideboard for the dining room
6. repaint dining room table ( was distressed by previous owner, not quite my style)
 and this list goes on and on I'm just highlighting the biggies

Now to start collecting recipes!

Guess What I Found!!!

I have had an obscene fascination with cut flowers. After calling around trying to find tulips I discovered most florist shops charge anywhere from $4 to $6 for each stem.... Yikes!!!
Don't they know I just purchased a house. I can't be splurging on flowers that cost the much. Heck the power company just decided to increase their rates. I'm poor dontcha know.....

Well  I guess you are wondering where I am going with this right. I went to Winn Dixie, a local grocery store chain, today to return my redbox rental and a sign caught my eye. They were selling bouquets of roses for 9.99. Now this isn't uncommon in most grocery stores and in some drug stores locally, but this reminded me that Winn Dixie actually has a florist section. Now I went right before closing so there wasn't anyone actually in this area but there were bins and buckets of grab and go flowers located on the counter and floor.

I was in Flower Heaven.

 So I approached the bin on the counter to get a better look at the bundles and instantly fell in love with several of the bouquets.

These beautiful flowers were $2.00 a bundle.... can you believe that!!!!! Only 2 bucks!

But I really wanted some yellow flowers and I got a bundle for $1.00!  Yes... Just a measly buck! Take that expensive florist!

Will edit later with the pictures from my diningroom. Right now blogger wont let me upload them... boo

Paying the Piper

Ok who said that Family isn't the greatest. I think I might have mentioned that my Aunt the amazing seamstress has been working on all of the sewing projects in my house. This includes the curtains, the upholstery on the living room chairs and anything else that I can think up and imagine. And so far everything has been great.

There is only one dark cloud to this story. Of course my aunt was making all these amazing items for free for me. So in exchange I promised to whip up some business cards and take some photos on all the different projects and create a portfolio for her prospective clients to flip through.

Enter the side-eye.... OK so I hadn't started on any of these projects and she has almost completed all of mine. I am officially the worst niece ever. So tonight I came in from work... "cough" took a nap... and then set out to make the greatest business cards ever.
So I can say mission " Business Cards" is now complete and I need to work on mission Portfolio but there is less of a rush for this one because I haven't finished painting the frames for my sofa because the weather has been really intermittent here and I am kinda afraid of dragging the chair outside and it getting caught in a random drive by shower. But I saw an awesome blog post today that has me itching to do some indoor spray painting. I think I'm going to tent off my den and turn it into a temp painting studio so I can get this one last chair out of the way.

Ok so I am definitely sitting in the better niece category I just need to deliver the cards so the rest of the world knows this to.

Laundry Room Wet Dreams!

Yes you heard that right I had a wet dream about my laundry room. One where creamy white cabinets top matching front loader washer and dryer and under cabinet lighting. Is it wrong that instead of dreaming of a some hot guy ( I am single remember) I am dreaming of laundry detergent in pretty jars and clean, warm clothes.
That is absolutely horrible of me.

Just thought I should share!!   lol

Being drawn into the Blogosphere!

I feel like I need to document all of my projects because of the awesome posts that I see on other peoples blogs.
But is so easy to be distracted especially when you can't use you laptop without it dying on you.....

ohh well, back to unpacking. I am turning this into a sport... hahaha.

Awesome Sunday!!!

So today I awoke to my phone ringing... and you will never guess what happened!!!

My cousin came over and power washed the front of my house, so now my front porch is super clean and so are my windows. Now I own a power washer that I have never used but after watching my cousin work today I think I will pull my little power washer out and give it a try on the rest of the windows around the house and on the brick that has mildew on them from the large oak trees that I have in my yard. I love having a brick house because I will never have to worry about having the whole house painted. A little trim paint every couple of years  and everything will look like new again.

There are little rocks mixed into my cement steps.... they are quite adorable and I didn't even know they were there. Now I just need to scrape and paint the railings. I am waffling between black or white. As you can see they were previously white but the shutters on the windows are black, thus the dilemma.

In other news today I also did some work. I started painting furniture today. After several months of surfing the internet looking at blogs of other peoples furniture redos I decided to try my hand at it.

The Before:

And a Peek at the after:

So that was how productive my Sunday has been, and I throughly enjoyed spending time with my mother and with my cousin. Some times I think I have the best family in the world!!

Time Away

Between finishing the floors, moving my things, and working on my mini projects I haven't had time to update here on the blog. But I will be back with pictures and updates once my Internet is installed on the 28th. So not too far away but just enough for some anticipation.

Refinishing the Floors

Over the long Easter weekend, me and my parents decided to under take the task of refinishing the hardwood floors in my house. My Father did the sanding, my mother performed the clean up and mopping and I took care of staining and polyurethane the floors. So far I have only added one coat of poly because it takes 4 hours to dry and I started at 8:00 tonight. So here are some before, during, and after shots.

Before:

The Living Room

The Gray Room

During:

The gray room

The hallway

The Living room

The hallway

the Living room

The dining room

First coat of poly:

The Living room

The dining room

The Dining room

The hallway

The hallway

Living Room

As you can see or DIY floor refinishing did not remove all of the black spots from years of ground in dirt and carpet powder. But I believe that there is a rustic quality to the floors and that makes them ok by me.

Going to put another coat of poly on the living room, dining room, gray room, and hallway tomorrow. I'm supposed to sand between coats but not sure if I'm going to be able to. Might just give them a general scuffing with the orbital sander and the fine grit paper.

OK.. enough for tonight. I'm headed to bed I have work in the morning.

Hope you enjoyed your Easter weekend.

Redoing the Hardwood Floors

So there are hardwood floors under that atrocious blue carpet that we pulled out a week after I closed on the house ( had to wait on Trash day, I couldn't afford a dumpster ;-) ). But the floors were seriously cruddy from dirt and carpet powder seeping through the carpet pad for the last oh 20-30 years.
Seriously people, if you are going to have carpet in your home do not use carpet powder. When you steam clean the carpet that powder gets wet and flows right through the carpet pad to the floor, making things harder for people like myself with allergies and sinusitis who come along after you and pull all that nasty carpet out.
So yesterday my father came over to the house with his little tools to see if he could do the floors. Of course this was an overly inadequate solution but we were able to see the potential so today I am off to rent a commercial sander and begin the process of sanding down my floors so they can be refinished.
Sorry this post doesn't have before pictures I am at work, so no uploading for me. Will try to add some later.

Hoarders

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you.... do not report me to Hoarders! I'm just in the process of getting my new home together and I have been neglecting my current room. This mountain of clothes has been growing and I thought I should take a picture of it before I began tackling the pile. So yes the pile is now gone and I am still working at getting to a point where I can began to move some of these clothes into my new home.

So again... I am not a hoarder... I just haven't been cleaning here because I have been cleaning and painting at my new house. Definitely not a perfect person.

I've Gone and Done It

I have done it. I have bought my first house and I can honestly say that it is the best thing I have ever done.

Unfortunately my house was a foreclosure, I say unfortunate because someone else lost their dream home in order for me to be able to purchase it. After my contract was accepted I looked online and found a site that still showed where the house was listed by the previous owners prior to the foreclosure. I really believe that the reason the house didn't sell was because of the general condition of the house. The home had not been updated since the 70's or prior. This showed in the picture posted in the MLS listing.

So this blog will be about my journey into decorating and living in my first home, with a little bit of my life

thrown in for spice.

Welcome along for the ride!