3 year House-iversary!

My house right before the sun came over the mountains this morning

3 years.

This is officially the longest we have spent in any one place since we've been married.  It's actually been kind of a strange feeling.  I can feel a little itch to move on to a new adventure.  But we are settled, so I need to seek for new adventures right here at home!  That's another story for another day, however, so back to the House-iversary!

We didn't get as much accomplished this year as I would have liked.  Let's just say I greatly underestimated the amount of crazy a third child would introduce into my life.  :)

In the last year, we:

Planted two shade trees and four fruit trees in our backyard (Autumn Blaze maples, a Granny Smith, a Honeycrisp, a Bing and a Rainier).

Built a big sandbox and the base of the rest of our play structure

Built a closet organizer in our closet

Cleaned out the spare bedroom that was acting as a storage room and made it into a guest room

And....that's it.  But let's not forget folks, I did have a new baby.  And I did lots of non-house related projects, including two weddings!!!  (B&H and A&B)

Hopefully this year will be better.  I have a mountain of goals, but in the hope of keeping them realistic, here is what I really want done this year:

Build wall cabinets for bathrooms

Build jewelry cabinet for my room

Take out part of one pantry and build a desk

Pantry organization

Finish building and installing upper cabinets in my craft room!!!

Install french door on my craft room (gotta keep my wily 13 month old out!)

Paint the basement

Paint the guest room

Build two headboards

Build two nightstands

Sew curtains for each bedroom

Add deck, playhouse and slide to the sandbox/play structure base

Plant peach trees

Plant lilac bushes

Rip out shrubs that I hate in the front yard

That is kind of a lot, huh.  Ah well, better to aim for the stars and miss than aim for a cow pie and hit it.  Wish me luck!!!!

And I'll be back later in the week with the baby shower I threw over the weekend, so y'all come on back, ya hear?  ;)

House-iversary!

Two years ago today, we closed on our house!  As I am fond of saying, you know those things in life that you've built up in your mind and then when they actually happen, you find out they are kind of overrated?

Being a homeowner is not one of those things!

We recently had some family visit for the first time, and we took them around our house.  My mom and grandma kept piping up to tell them all about the things we have done to our house, and I realized....wow, we have accomplished a lot!  So often, I just see everything I still want to do, rather than how far we've come.  Just for kicks, here is what we have done in the past two years:

 

- Painted the entire main floor

- Redid our kitchen cabinets....twice.  (Stripping and restaining, and then painting.)

- Tore out trees and shrubs in the front yard and planted grass seed to open up our yard

- Painted the front door red and the garage doors black

- Built shutters and a windowbox and installed them

- Scraped off the tacky adhesive house numbers in the window and put up custom metal numbers

- Tore out the huge weird garden in our backyard and planted grass seed

- Built raised garden boxes

- Painted and glazed 8 laminate bookcases

- Painted and reupholstered 2 living room chairs

- Built and installed gallery shelves and a gallery wall (post still coming)

 - Painted and stenciled bathroom, painted faucet and other hardware

- Created a super cool new room for my son (post still coming)

- Built a very cute daybed for my daughter (post still coming!)

- Installed flooring and finished off sheetrock in the cold storage room we are making into a craft room

- Built and installed lower cabinets, moved outlets up and installed countertops in the craft room

 

Now, of course, the things we still want to do:

 

- Finish building and install the upper cabinets for my craft room

- Build cabinet doors and drawer fronts

- Install new french door for my craft room

- Paint the basement

- Plant shade trees and fruit trees in our barren backyard

- Build a pergola and pour a patio

- Build the kids a play structure

- Plant lilac bushes and honeysuckle in the front yard

- Take out part of one of the pantries and build a desk

- Pantry organization (shelves, drawers, etc.)

- Build a wall cabinet for our bathroom

- Build a closet organizer for our room

- Build a headboard for our room

- Finish decorating my older daughter's new room

- Decorate my baby girl's room

- Build cabinets for toy storage the play area

- Build cabinets for electric fireplace and storage in the basement family room

- Build closet out of odd useless nook at the bottom of the stairs

- Build front porch furniture

- Replace the all flooring on the main floor

- Recover thrift store ottoman

 

The list could probably go on, but that will do for now!  :)  Stay tuned as I tackle as many of these projects as I can in the coming year!

 

 

One Year....

One year ago today, we closed on our house.
Our very first house.  Hard to believe it's been that long!

In that year we have:
- Ripped out shrubs, a tree, and a weird heart shaped strawberry patch from our front yard (and removed the original owners' attempt at xeriscaping...wheelbarrows full of ROCKS!!! and leveled the dirt mounds left behind)
- Ripped out a huge garden from our backyard
- Planted grass seed in everything we tore out
- Pruned back the trees
- Painted the front door red, and the garage doors black
- Put up board and batten shutters and a planter box we built ourselves
- Painted the entire main floor
- Stripped, sanded and restained our kitchen cabinets (and upstairs bathroom cabinets while we were at it...) and added hardware and crown molding
- Painted the banister and installed a gate
- Painted my big ole laminate bookshelves
- Built and hung gallery shelves for the living room (post will be forthcoming)
- Built and painted all kinds of things for a big gallery/collage wall for the family room (post will be forthcoming)
- Revamped the main bathroom
- Vented in heat to begin the transformation of mostly finished cold storage to completely finished craft room (post will be forthcoming)
- Finished off the last little bit of needed sheetrock in my craft room (post will be forthcoming)
- Painted my craft room (post will be forthcoming)
- Put down laminate wood flooring in my craft room (post will be forthcoming)

Along with lots of other smaller projects!  It's been a busy year...and I have still more grand plans for this house!
Next up: BUILDING CABINETS FOR MY CRAFT ROOM!!!!!
(I'm just a tad excited about it...)

Stay tuned!