Kitchen Make-over

Before we moved into our house the Land-lord (that sounds weird calling them that because we go to church together and they are our friends…) asked me if I wanted the inside of the house painted any specific colors. Since they had to paint anyways it might as well be something I liked, right? Well I chose a Butter Yellow with White trim for most of the house. This picture was taken soon after we moved in so please excuse the poor quality :/

I also chose a specific color for the kitchen…. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I picked it but I did and it was bright…

Be forewarned!

HELLO! YELLOW!

Like I said… its bright! :) After about a month of the bright yellow it was time for something different (Sorry this is a really old project but one I thought you all might like to see)

Much calmer don’t you think? Oh, and we also got a new fridge, the old one died :( The plan now is to put some white open shelves on this wall for plates, cups, canisters and a few pretty things. That’s a project I’m hoping to have done before my parents come for a visit! {that was my subtle hint for Kenny, in case he’s reading this}

Don’t you think this is a better color choice? It is just so peaceful and relaxing (compared to the above) and it looks great with the butter yellow and white that goes through the rest of the home. This is the same green that was used in the guest bathroom and, believe it or not, only one(1) gallon of paint was used for both rooms and there is still some for touch-ups later!

I am completely enjoying all the newness of decorating the house and turning it into Our Home! Can’t wait to show what’s next!

~Bex

New Cleaning Schedule

I realize that I’ve been away for a while… but that’s a post for another time. Right now, and over the next couple days I’d like to share some of the things I’ve been working on and what has been occupying {some} of my time. BTW I can promise that I will actually post things every couple of days because the posts are already written out and scheduled to appear an the appointed time! (Oh the cleverness of me!)

I have been working on finding my “nitch” since we moved to Florida, I’m no longer working outside of our home so “our home” has really become my focus. Since a big part of my new focus revolves around cleaning La Godby Casa, and because I’m a nerd when it comes to having a handy dandy list/schedule, I found this list at my friend Danielle's blog Snippets of Inspiration.

I absolutely {Love} her take on a cleaning schedule. She has a Morning and Evening routine and a weekly routine that covers the entire house! I did a little tweaking to make it a list that would work for my house and my schedule and here is the end result.

So there it is, my weekly schedule! You might say “1 load of laundry a day?” yep its kind of like “an apple a day…” 1 load of laundry every day keeps me from spending all day Saturday doing a weeks worth of laundry. Obviously, since there are only two of us, and the dog, I don’t do a load of clothes every.single.day, if my laundry hampers {yes, hamper(s) you read that right, I have three: Darks, Lights and Colors, cuts out the sorting step as long as we each get our clothes in the right hamper.) are not full I may wash the small rugs or bath mats instead.

Another question you might have “You vacuum every day too!” Yeppers! We have a Sheltie (A.K.A walking fur ball) if I don’t vacuum at least every other day my house turns into a really bad western movie with Bella fur balls rolling in the wind like tumbleweed!

As for my weekly schedule, the line up really is nice, for me anyways! I chose Monday to be a “fun” day because Sunday can be a really long day for us with Kenny’s responsibilities at the church. Don’t feel sorry for me though, we completely and totally {Love} what we’re doing! Still, its nice to be able to plan an “off” day to get done just what I want to do and nothing else!

One of the things that I love about this list is the “Swing Day.”  (Danielle is the master-mind behind this idea) Because of the Swing Day I can deep clean my house a little bit at a time, just once a week, it really is great! For those of you who know me, don’t look too closely at my yard… I’m planning on integrating that into my schedule soon!

The rest is pretty self explanatory, as you can see this is a fairly easy list to follow mostly because if something does not get done on the day its planned it gets taken care of the next time around! I hope you liked my Cleaning Schedule, please feel free to use this or share it with someone else. Also, take time and see where my inspiration came from at Snippets of Inspiration she has tons of great idea’s, useful tips, recipe’s, the works!

Hasta Luego

Home Improvements – Paint!

I knew when we moved in that I wanted to paint both bathrooms, they both have white or cream tile with silver fixtures and looked very nice that way, we definitely could have left them alone and they would have been just fine.
Here is the before picture, of the guest bathroom, from the night we moved in.
And this is what it looks like right now.

Doesn’t it look awesome! I love it! (except for the fact that my hand towels are uneven :/ oops!) I was able to purchase the shower curtain at Kohl's for $5.00 and everything else I had on hand from our first house. I am planning on making a sign for over the toilet but you’ll have to come back to see that – its going to be cute! The only thing left to do in here is find a bath mat/rug and a few more decorations to finish it off. So how about a quick side-by-side for examination purposes.

It almost looks like a different bathroom!

Hope you enjoyed checking out my guest bath come back again to see what other painting we’ve been doing.

Linking to A Living Sacrifice Home Improvement Party - Check it out!

Our House – Guest Bedroom & Outside

I’m skipping over the office and the garage right now because they are still in disarray :( We are still waiting for Kenny’s office at the church to be ready for us to move his boxes of books and filing cabinet into and the garage needs some rearranging before I show that to anyone! I’m also skipping the guest bath for now because its the same as before (I haven’t even bought a shower curtain for it yet) So the only other room to show you is the guest bedroom and the outside.

Nothing very exciting just a place to sleep for any of our teens or friends who want to come visit. I do plan on putting a lamp and clock in here along with a picture or two on the walls.

  This room also has a nice big closet which we are using to store jackets and blankets (for which I was made fun of for bringing to Florida!) In my experience with teenagers…. if you have a sleepover someone always forgets to bring their pillow or something to sleep on. Sooner or later these blankets will come in handy!

Next is the outside (my personal fave!) We were really blessed to get this house not only for its size and affordability but also…

   …because this is my backyard!

We have a nice little patio right outside the sliding glass door in our living room, and the door you see on the right is a little storage room for garden hoses, ladder, we probably could keep the grill in there (I don’t really know because I’ve never actually looked in there)

Here is the front of the house (again, sorry this picture is from when we moved in). The Penske truck is blocking the garage door but that is our driveway and you walk to the right around the front of our house to get to the front door (weird set up, I know).

 

And here is the rest of the walkway up to our front door. I’d like to put something our front with our house number on it I really like these ideas I saw on pinterest for the front door/walkway area.

I also have a little strip of “garden” area along the front of the house. Don’t know for sure if I could do this or if its too big of a goal for me but I really like something like this around that front window. I’d probably do something low maintenance like morning glories – if they can even grow here :/

…or maybe just start with a window box or two and go from there!

Anyways, that’s our house. I hope to have the office ready sometime this week to give you a picture of, as for the garage I think that might be a weekend project. Once I have all the house pictures for you I’ll start taking photos of the church so you all can see what we do!

Hope you’ve enjoyed our house tour. Come back to see the projects and decorations I choose for all those “blank” places!

Our House - Kitchen, Living & Dining Rooms

Sorry about not posting anything yesterday – I know your all just dying to see the rest of our house, right? We’ll start this morning with the Living Room. Keep in mind I still have a loooong way to go :/

We plan on getting a couch somewhere in the near future because the one that was given to us didn’t quite fit on the truck… Anyways that will go underneath the collage and the chairs will move to either side or depending on the size of the couch Kenny says the plaid chair will have to go… But I thought, if that was the case, I could move the chair into our bedroom where the tall mirror is… I don’t know we’ll just have to wait and see :) To finish the collage off I’m planning on using my Cricuit to make “~est. 2011~” to fill the gap between the pictures and the chair.

This is a little closet, on the way to our room, that houses games, extra kitchen stuff (crockpot, whirly-pop, etc) and my dust mop and vacuum. Opposite this wall… again no picture (epic fail) I’m thinking of doing another collage but with more sayings and less pictures like this one on Pinterest.

Turning on around I, again have a blank space above the TV that I’m not sure what to do with or if I even should do something with it :/ On the wall next to the door I like this kind of wall organizer but in white.

Moving on to the dining room, another blank canvas (I would normally have cleared off the table but its kind of become the home office until we get the office/craft room set up – it still has boxes everywhere for Kenny’s office at the church, working on that) On the short wall to the left of the picture I would like to find a small side board, or something similar, for my extra dishes or a small bench with a hide-a-way for shoes maybe something like this. On the far wall I was looking at a sign or lettering something like this, also from pinterest.

Next up is the Kitchen, (hold on because I have a lot of pinterest idea’s for this room!) as you can see I have a nice little window looking into the dining room also the closet door is my little pantry. I’ve had to brush up on my organizing techniques to be able to get everything in here – and I’m still working on that too! On the far wall, behind the ceiling lamp I have plans for some open shelving like this.

I feel like I have a lot of “stuff” sitting around right now, some of the things on top of the cabinets will go on the shelves I’m wanting to build but that still doesn’t free up the counter space for me. My other plan is to try and find a bakers rack type thing to move my toaster, coffee pot and cook books to, that will move quite a bit off the counters for me. Then to decorate I like something like this but using more colors.

Three more rooms down and a lot of more ideas to go… Hope your having a wonder Valentines Day!

Our House – Master Bed & Bath

 

I plan on buying some lamps for the end tables and I feel like we need something over our bed but I’m at a loss as to what… Any idea’s would be appreciated! Anyways, this is the set up right now but it is subject to change.

Here’s a shot from the other direction. I really didn’t like covering up that window with the dresser but I don’t feel like I have a lot of options as to where to put things – working on that -

I included this shot to show where our closets are. they both have nice big mirrors so I might end up moving the long mirror (in the previous shot) into another room where it could be of more use.

As you can see, I’ve started taping off stuff in the bathroom so I can paint. I haven’t picked out the exact color yet but it will be red like our bed spread and bath towels. Also, I’m not painting the entire bathroom. just what you see pictured here, around the mirror and countertop and above the tile in the shower. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the counter in here so you might not understand what I’m talking about. I have a cabinet underneath the sink on one side but then just an open space on the other (closest to the wall in this picture) Kenny and I have talked about putting an open shelf in for our towels to sit on and then adding some matching baskets or bins underneath it for my hair supplies and extra bathroom supplies to go.

This area, behind the door, will stay white and I’ll try to find something to hang on the wall – or do a stencil in a high-gloss white paint, its kind of the “style” right now… La-tee-daa! I also want to replace or paint the handles on this cabinet, because all of the other fixtures in here are silver – I have thrown around the idea of painting the cabinet but I don’t know what color yet, if I did.

That’s 2 rooms down and a couple more to go. I can’t wait to get started on some of the projects whirling around in my mind :)

Any suggestions for something on the wall behind the head board? how about the wall next to the toilet in our bathroom? I’d love to hear what you think.

Moving Photos!

We finally got our internet working so I can share our adventure photos with you all. Hang with me because this will be a looong post but hopefully you’ll enjoy it!

It snowed the week before our move and stayed cold so nothing melted off but we had no trouble getting the truck in and out of our driveway. Here is Bella, a couple days before the move playing outside.

The beginning of the packing process. Kenny had actually flown to Colorado to pick up some furniture his parents gave us and drove back with his Dad making a stop over in Oklahoma to see Grams.

Several people came to help us move (sorry I didn’t get a picture of all of them together) This is Kenny with Pastor Brad from Faith Baptist Church – His wife, Sarah, also came to help and their dog Cookie but I didn’t get a picture of them somehow

This is Allison, also from Faith. She didn’t want me to take her picture :)

The guy in white is Soren, he came a brought the whole family to help and you guessed it, I didn’t get a picture of them either :(  His wife, Sabrina, my coffee buddy, brought their coffee pot from home so I could have some java and still pack my pot up, they also brought hotdogs for lunch. I really feel like I was in a fog all day, I had been preparing for this day for almost a month but I just felt to scattered as all my “life” was being loaded into a 16ft truck…

I’m still not certain as to how they got everything packed into that truck but my Father-in-law, (the guy in the black sweatshirt with the shorts on…) having been in the military, is an expert packer.

We said our goodbyes after the truck was loaded and headed down to my parents house to spend the night before hitting the long road to Florida early the next morning.

  Our View My riding partner

Wally’s riding partner!

We made it to the house about 6:30pm making our total trip in just over 13 hours. Kenny and Wally started unloading some stuff as Bella and I started to check out the house. People from the church came over after the service was finished to help us unload. I think they had everything off the truck and set in the different rooms of the house in about 15 minutes!

After they finished Pastor Brown (the only one in a jacket) had a word of prayer for us, our new ministry together, and our new house. They all left and us weary travelers headed to bed after grabbing a bite to eat in town.

Now for the pictures your all wanting to see… except these are the ones I took right after we moved in, you’ll have to wait til tomorrow to see what I’ve done with the place ;)

This is the front of the house from across the street, as you can see we live in a long row of houses that are connected together.

The walk way leading to the front door.

  Our Living Room is the first room you walk into (which faces the back yard) and if you walk through the door you see here…

…you go into the Master Bedroom. Take a right and that leads you into…

Our closet space (which is not pictured) and the Master bath. Now coming out of our room you go back into the Living Room to see…

…the dining room (your facing the street in case you’ve gotten turned around)

The kitchen is just to the right of the dining room if your looking at the picture above this one. Down the hall we go…

Into, what looks like a man cave right now but will become the craft room and home office. Across the hall…

…is the door to the Garage/Laundry room. Back inside and heading further down the hall (going toward the street)

is the spare bathroom which is right next to…

… the spare bedroom and the end of the hall.

Come back tomorrow to see how I’ve set stuff up and some of the plans I have for decorating.