Trick-Or-Treat

Abby in the school parade:

Abby 4th Grade Halloween Parade

Catherine & Bobby just before Catherine's first school dance:

These girls have been friends since kindergarten, here they are ready to leave for their first middle school dance:



We normally have trick-or-treat night on the Thursday before Halloween, but our area postponed it until Monday.

 

Catherine & Abby Trick-or-Treat Night

October 31, 2011

Abby is a {punk} Pixie (there are two rods with wing like things behind her)

Catherine is a bag of Skittles

Even Cookie dressed up for Halloween. She stayed home with me to hand out candy. At first she barked seeing so many strange looking kids approaching...then she realized this was fun, and would just give me a little alert that I needed to go to the door to let her play with some new friends. ((Hey, I never said she was a good guard dog!))



This was the first year that I stayed home to pass out candy and Bobby took the girls around the neighborhood. Normally we get a whole gang pulled together and go around the neighborhood as a group, but it just didn't work out this year. I just wasn't excited for it this year and didn't put a lot of effort into it. [Abby's school carnival is this weekend, so a lot of work is going into it to get ready.]

Abby is eyeing up her loot!

Catherine's stash of candy.

I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween this year. Sadly in our area, we were all affected in one way or another by an unfortunate accident. Two boys were struck by a car, one sustained a lot of injuries and one boy didn't survive. Our hearts go out to Skyler Wenger and his family.

Kitchen Inspiration

There are a lot of improvements that I want to do in our kitchen.

I have painted my kitchen countertops a bombay black granite. Which I will share in details on another post. The next project is to paint my cabinets.

I painted the kitchen cabinets in our townhouse (not the best picture, but you can see the white base cabinets. I plan to upload pictures of our townhouse when we had it ready to put on the market in 2009). They were white, which showed every speck of dirt. Bobby requested that I not paint these white. With my love for grey, that is the next best choice.

I want to paint the base cabinets a dark charcoal grey. Then I want to paint the top cabinets either white or a light shade of grey. I love the look of a two-toned kitchen. Grey's are a tough color to get right, so I'm struggling to find the "perfect" grey for the upper cabinets. The backsplash we currently have is cream/off white 4x4 ceramic tiles. I don't want to replace the backsplash until we replace the countertops. I want soapstone or black granite counters that fit flush to the wall, then have the backsplash reach from the countertop up to the base of the cabinets.

Here are some kitchen eye candy photos that give me lots of great inspiration!

This grey color is gorgeous, the glaze is perfect and the moldings are to die fore. I also love the 12x12 mirror set on the diagonal (so Candice Olsen).

Grey & White Kitchen w/dark floor =love

For me, this grey is off. It's to muddy & blue. It would have "sung" if it had a glaze over it. But, I like it because it shows the med grey with a black counter. I want a darker grey with my black counters. I also want the uppers to be white. However, I love how they just placed beefy moldings on the soffit to make them just blend in and look custom.

 My base cabinets may be this dark....these appear to be more of a matte black (not quiet jet black) but it's close to what I want. I just don't want black on black. Again, I love the chandeliers in the kitchen! I want two mini pendants above my island.

Above Photos found here

I love checkerboard floors (especially when they're painted on old hardwoods - so charming)

What I love about this photo:

1) grey floor paired with white cabinetry (lots of molding too)

2) open shelves are nice too

3) you don't notice it right away, but that gorgeous counter to ceiling subway tile on the stove wall is gorgeous!

Here you can see the next corner of the room and I love that little surprise pop of color on the inside of the hutch-like cabinetry. Gorgeous!!!! It's my color too! The island looks brown in the photo above, which I didn't like, but I do like how it looks like it's black in the photo below. I know it's just the lighting on the dark wood grain, but I would paint that baby black!

Above photos found here

Again, the two-toned kitchen is haawt!!!! I love glass front cabinets & open shelves, this is a new little twist that I haven't seen before. I like the color on the base cabinet (& oven wall) but I don't know if I could commit that long to a color on the cabinets...it's more work than just repainting a wall!

Photo

Now, you know I love the Robins Egg color. It's the accent for my kitchen since my living room and dining room have this color. The main floor has to flow! I love the chairs below. I'm thinking I'm going to paint the island saddle stools the robins egg blue/green. This color will also be painted on the inside of my cabinets, especially the ones that we change to be glass fronts, or remove the doors on entirely.

I'm a sucker for a shabby chic...and boy does this have it!

Above photos found here

Okay, that was still pretty wordy with it just being an inspiration post! :) What can I say, I love looking at other beautiful interiors! I look until I can find things that are close to what I envision, that way I can show others, what I "see".

College Football

I never thought I'd say this, but I LOVE watching College Football. A few years ago I started watching the Bama games with Bobby, and I'd watch some Penn State games with Catherine (most of her teachers are HUGE fans). Last year I started really learning about it, which makes watching the game so much more interesting.

 

This year, has been a real exciting season for Alabama. At this point they've won every game they've played. I'm nervous for the LSU game on Nov 5th. For now, I'm enjoying watching my favorite players: McCarron (10), Richardson (3), Maze (4), Lacy (42) & Hightower (30).

We haven't had a real direction for Bobby's man cave in the basement. So I now have inspiration of painting the walls crimson red, he can build his bar in a nice dark wood, I want to get some prints framed and I want to accent with some touches of houndstooth print (made famous by Bear Bryant). Which I love the classic print anyways.

Here is a little inspiration that I've found online:

I like how in this room they used the houndstooth as a border.

 

Everybody loves a barstool with a back on it, so I'll be searching for ones like theses. If I can't find them, I can certainly ulphoster some to make them look chic like these guys;

Of course our littke Cookie would look adorable sporting a cute little houndstooth jacket to help cheer on the team!



Spooktacular decorations

Okay, so I didn't go all out this fall for decorations. I still don't think I'm over the Radio Flyer incident. Here is what I did do this year:

I took a simple wooden decoration from Joanne's and painted the tree black, then I hung cute little Halloween charms from it (not the ones that came with the tree)

I added the crow...well, because they make everything look spooky.

I love white pumpkins. I love mini pumpkins. When I came across mini white pumpkins I knew I had to get them. So I got 3 of them. I pulled out my black paint and added some chic charm to them. I plopped them onto my mini cake stand and added the cloche dome (okay, it was a Salvation Army find - an ugly wooden cheese board & dome for $3...so I tossed the wooden board and kept the dome).

Abby gets credit for finding this little gem. It's a metalic hand (which is a pretty handy back scratcher). We found it at Target and it didn't have a tag on it, so I'm not sure how much it was...it was mixed in with the purchases for the rest of our costumes for this year.



 

I've had this cute little wire frame pumpkin, which I have my fall beaded candle wreath, but I need to  pick up a new candle.

Years ago, my Mom got me this cute little fall village. I've never seen more, so I can't add to it, so it makes a cute little set up on a small round table in the corner of the dining room.

Years ago Bobby & I found these hurricane glasses, but the stems were too tall to actually use, so they found a new home as candle holders. These candles smell amazing. Wish you could smell them. I've added faux fall leaves & stringy black yarn.

And our favorite Mrs. Bones! Years ago I found her at Michael's. I used my black Zig pen and added "stitch" marks around each bone, added frosted glass beads for her eyes, added a platinum colored gem for her nose and drew on her lips. I found a cute fuzzy for her hair accessory and a little pink glittery heart! She is adorable!

Bath & Body Works pumpkin jar resting on a candlestick holder.

Our Fall Wreath on our front door.

New this year...our house landed on the wicked witch!  $5 black & white long socks & $6 Salvation Army glittery hot pink shoes. Yeah, she's a hip witch, with so much style, it's a shame we flattened her!

The girls are sporting their "haunted trail" outfits.= (aka. not their costume for the year, since they may get snagged on branches out in the woods). Abby is a little witch and Catherine was scared half to death at a slumber party.

Okay....this isn't Halloween stuff....but these cute hats are so freakn' adorable!

Bathroom remodel

January 2011 ~ Powder Room
So during the New Years weekend this January (yes, we redid the half bath in our townhouse during a New Years weekend once before) we decided to rip out the outdated bathroom that's on the main floor of our house. It had 80's particle-board sink and carpet...need I say more? We decided to lay a slate colored ceramic tile in the bathroom. We didn't just stop there, we pulled up the existing grey 6x6 tile that was the walkway from the kitchen to the garage door, that runs in front of the bathroom.

This was our first tiling project but we felt confident that we could do it. Bobby researched the tile saws and made the purchase to make the job easier (we figure that with the other 2 bathrooms and the tile from the front door running towards the kitchen that needs to be upgraded at some point - we will more than get our $'s worth out of the purchase. At this point we've even loaned it out to different 2 friends to complete a kitchen & bathroom project).

Here is what we started with, the bathroom as it was when we bought the house.

Here's a shot of the walkway from kitchen, step down into family room. The garage door straight ahead, the first door on left is the bathroom and the next door is the laundry room.  It had a 6x6 commercial grade (at least it looked it) tile floor in the walkway, the bathroom had blue carpet. [yuck]

So the demo begins:

Next we scraped the floor clear of any debris, then we sealed it with an incredibly stinky pink primer sealer. Then started laying the tile down.

We laid 12x12 tiles down, so I used a sheet of 12x12 scrapbook cardstock and cut even thin strips of 1/4" thick all the way up the paper stopping about an inch from the top to use as a template to figure out cuts. I would just lay it down like the tile would be, then bent the little strips back until it would fit perfectly. I'd then trace the template shape onto the tile. Bobby would then cut the tile out in the garage.

I don't have pictures of us back buttering the tiles with mortar because as we started that step, I got smacked with a horrible case of the stomach flu and was incapacitated. Bobby had to complete that part of the process by himself, so he was up until the wee hours of the morning. So it was my job to grout the tile the next morning. It was a grey color, which it doesn't look it in this picture here.

Bobby repaired the walls (evidence of drywall dust in the photo below) and painted them Anonymous (780F-5) by Behr.

We lost the medicine cabinet going with a traditional mirror, so I asked Bobby to create a cabinet that would fit between the studs & be hidden behind the door. This provides extra storage while keeping the bathroom nice and sleek. First he cut the opening between the studs.

He actually created the cabinet like a little box in the garage, brought it in and slid it into it's designated spot and nailed it into place. He used his router to create the door for my new cabinet. Talk about custom cabinetry! You can see it to the left of the (primed) door.

The bathroom is 90% complete at this point. We installed all new fixtures. The pedestal sink visually opens the room. The sink top extends out the same amount of the previous sink, but you would never know it! We had planned on keeping the existing toilet, but decided to replace it with a Kohler that has great flushing capabilities but still not a water hog. We picked up a simple light fixture that has 3 sconces in the matching oil rubbed bronze (ORB) finish.

I love my new large framed mirror with beveled edges. The ORB finish on the towel ring, faucet, paper holder, light switch, electric face looks so sharp, we even upgraded the handle on toilet.

I love the ease of this holder. Now there is no excuses for any family member to not replace the toilet paper! :)

We have to add the crown molding, touch up wall paint and trim out the edge of the wall cabinet, but this looks so much better than what we started out with! Oh, we have installed a curtain, but it's not pictured here.