Christmas is in TWO days!!!

I have decided that 2011 is the year of days going by way too fast to even fathom.  After Thanksgiving, I had a business trip to San Diego and then a wonderful family vacation to Disney World.  To say the last two weeks have been nuts is a complete understatement. Evenings filled with Christmas gatherings and weekends packed with ballet recitals, birthdays and celebrations is enough to put the most organized person behind. I think I am getting the last of our Christmas cards out today and hopefully doing some Christmas shopping tonight (if the recovery from my minor sinus procedure cooperates!). At least all things from Santa have been handled!!!

My husband and I have started working on next home project that will kick off in January 2012, so I know I'll have something interesting to share then!

Until that time, I wish you and your family a blessed Christmas season.  Thank you, Lord, for the birth of your Son!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Happy Thanksgiving and Lazy Black Friday

Yesterday was a beautiful day for Thanksgiving.  The air was chilled just enough and the sun was shining brightly.  The food and company were excellent.  I usually do not brag on my cooking but I will say that I will never buy a frozen turkey again.  This year we splurged and purchased an organic, free-range, never frozen, fresh turkey from Harry's Farmers Market.  OMG it was SO good.  Yes, you can tell a difference!

19 lbs. of pure yumminess! 

Hanging with dad!

Cheesing with mama.

Princess approved dinner!

Even the little one ate all of her turkey this year, which was a big improvement over the 1+ hour show down we had last year with her and her dinner plate.

As for today, the infamous Black Friday, it is nothing but the great chill out for us.  I thought about heading to Target for their midnight opening but fell asleep during the 11 o'clock news at some point. Dear husband did have to work a few hours this morning since he is in retail but the afternoon and evening will be spent relaxing and snacking on leftovers.  To me, it sounds like another absolutely perfect day.

Hammer and a nail

I did it! I put some holes in the wall and I wasn't even tearing down sheet rock!  The first set of tiny little holes went into my kitchen ceiling.  I collect friendship balls or witch balls as they are called in some areas of the country.  Mine come from a variety of locations - some are hand blown from artisans in Savannah, Georgia while others come from New England.  The witch ball is a hollow sphere of colored glass hung in the window of a house to protect it against witchcraft. The webs of blown glass inside the ball are there to catch the bad spirits. As best as I can tell, they originated in the 18th century.  Friendship balls do not have the webs and have been around since the 20th century.  I love them as they are each unique and are mesmerizing.

I was agonizing over where to put them and finally went with a corner of the kitchen eating area.  I was hoping for a place with more light but this is remotely familiar as it is about the same location I had them in our former home.  I still have a few more to put up and I am not sure where I'll put them but I must say it is nice to see them again.

So Thankful...

It is hard to imagine that Thanksgiving is this week and it will be our second family celebration of this holiday in our home.  Last year, we moved in most of the first floor just in time for the big dinner.  As I sat on my front porch this afternoon, soaking up the beautiful fall sunshine and mild weather, I still feel like I need to pinch myself.  We live here now. This is our home.  Funny how a year can go by and it still feels like we are living in a dream.

Maybe it is because we still own our other home. Maybe it is because we still have boxes in storage. Or maybe it is because we are still trying to figure out who gets to put a nail in the wall first (or to attempt to use the picture railing and frame hooks that we have!).  Who knows why it feels like we are living in a dream.  I really don't care because I know that I don't and won't ever wake up from it!  

This evening, I was browsing through some old photo files and found pictures from our first Thanksgiving in our 1910 dream home.  Can't you smell the turkey? I hope you and yours have a blessed week of many thanks! 

Paul and I stayed up late the night before Thanksgiving, hanging curtains and rods.

First bird in the new house! I think it was about 18 lbs.

Cooked!

Table dressed and ready to go.

Sweet treats are icing on the cake!

Life in Scaryetta

We had so much fun with Halloween this year.  Here are a few pictures of our haunted house.  Can't wait to see what the child wants to do with it all next year.  She picked out the spiders herself (eek!).

Take this rug and shove it....

I don't want you any more!!!  Well, that is an exaggeration to some extent.  Remember when I posted about that beautiful runner we finally found for our stairs?  We had it installed and we have been miserable ever since. Not because the rug is ugly or poorly made but rather due to the install.  I knew the day the flooring guys arrived at the house and I spoke to my husband on the phone that he was not a happy camper.  You see, at the top of our very old, narrow stairs is a very unique shape called pie stairs.  We happen to have three of them.  When the consultant came out for the first inspection and measure, he was very confident that the installers would be able to accommodate our pies.  Ha! Not so much...

So we now know we love having carpet on the stairs as it makes it much easier for all of us (animals included) to get up and down the stairs with ease.  However, the pies are an eye sore since the carpet pattern is all out of whack.  Thankfully, The Home Depot is a great company that stands by its word and they have refunded our money completely.  We have now located a carpet company that is more than confident that they can do the job.  They have shown us examples of pies they have done which has raised our comfort level. Unfortunately, we are back to the drawing board on what pattern to pick.  We attempted to look at samples this past weekend at the showroom but every pattern I seemed to touch belonged to the wool family which runs about $68 a square foot.  Yep, you read that correctly...SIXTY EIGHT DOLLARS.  We are going to try and get back there later in the week to search through the many, many books of samples to see if we can find a match.

Halloween is just around the corner!

My husband and I have this huge "to do" list to complete before Thanksgiving.  Sure, we could have been doing a little along the way but we are true procrastinators.  We will tackle it all in little over a month!!! (Or so we hope!)

But wait! Halloween falls in between now and then.  We've had so much fun this year decorating the outside of our house with our four year-old.  She is really into the spirit this year and it shows. Thanks to some wonderful friends who drink way more milk than we ever would, my daughter and I worked on a DIY Halloween project last night - Ghost Lanterns made out of milk jugs.  They are turning out to be oh-so-cute.  I wish I could say it was a product of some designing brainstorm I had late one night but alas, I found it on my new Web addiction, Pinterest.  Here are the steps if you want to make a set for your yard.  Below is a picture of the first step, drawing on the boo-tastic faces.

Once upon a time...

There was a girl who found the home of her dreams.  It was in the neighborhood in which she had been raised and it was where she wanted her daughter to grow up.  She and her husband took a risk, put in an offer and sat back while the banks did their business.  Five months later, she closed on the short sale and called the 1910 lady all hers.  Then, she decided she would blog about her adventures and all the things that she and her family would do to put their fingerprints on the home that they never thought they would have.  


Then reality hit!

Thankfully, I can say the above story is mostly true.  Indeed, my husband and I thankfully own the home of our dreams.  Our now four-year-old LOVES her home complete with her pink and purple room that we have decorated for her.  Alas, the blog...it has not been well kept as I would have liked.  It all started with the pesky home computer problems and uploading of pictures.  Part of me feels like you cannot blog if you do not have pictures to show along with the words that you find interesting.  So I am slack.  Some would say I am over extended.  I have one girlfriend who questions if I ever sleep! Yes, I am a busy body.  I love to volunteer and do things...getting out and about is awesome!  Part of my itch to do something was this blog. I am going to do my best yet again to get back to it.  I will post pictures...I owe the World Wide Web something for starting up this domain, don't I?

So if you stumble upon this blog or you have bookmarked it because you are my friend, continue to peep in from time to time.  I promise, I will start to write again and see where this dream continues to go!

Paint progress report...

After much debate, days of scanning countless color wheels, and having multiple color samples painted on the house, we finally bit the bullet and allowed the painters to move forward with changing the colors of our home.  My, oh my, how color can change the way your house looks! I think a girlfriend of mine summed it up best when she said, "Love it! Make it your own, girl." It finally feels like we are making this house "ours" for real, especially now that our touches can be seen not only on the inside but now on the outside as well.  I'll post "after" pictures once the painting is finally complete!

PS: I am tying to figure out why people can't post to my blog entries.  For those of you who tried and emailed me your thoughts on the paint, thank you!

Taking a poll: What do you think?

Well, ladies and gentlemen! The first set of color samples were painted today.  Below is a picture of the first set of colors. Would love to know what you think! I am not going to tell you how I feel because I want some unbiased opinions!!!

Could we have a match???

The sands of the hourglass have slipped to a low and the time has come to make a decision on paint colors.  The painters have been scrapping and sanding the house for almost five days and today, they started priming the wood.  Our lead painter is going to pick up the samples this evening and will paint the window, accent and wall with the colors we are leaning toward choosing.  I have placed a link to the green we like from a historical paint collection.  Beneath the green is the cream color I have asked the painter to get and then, we have picked a red/brown to go inside the window as an accent color.  After he paints a sample tomorrow, I will post a picture to see what you all think :)

House colors

Something old, something new...

...Or really, just something old that is new to us! We purchased our "first" piece of antique furniture for the house last week.  I took leave from work to teach VBS in the mornings and then to do absolutely whatever I wanted the rest of the day.  A true "staycation" of sorts.  Unfortunately due to lingering bronchitis/mild pneumonia, the afternoons were more nap filled than accomplishment filled but if you aren't healthy you cannot have fun, right?

Since VBS was only for four days, a girlfriend and I did some shopping along the many antique stores that dot Church Street heading into the Marietta Square on my full freebie Friday.  As we wandered, we found one particular store that was having a 50 percent off all furniture sale.  Can't beat that, right?  We poked around and my eye kept returning to a beautiful, mahogany corner cabinet from the early 1940s.  It was in beautiful condition and coincidentally, was calling my name.  After making mental notes, we continued along our tour and found a similar cabinet in another establishment.  The piece was the same original price as the other, and the gent running the place is willing to come down about 30 percent.  My heart still longs for the other piece more than this one. Price had something to do with it but the detail of the first cabinet was much more unique than the second one.

After lunch and a few hours later, I found myself back in the first store putting the cabinet on hold.  I was petrified someone would come and snatch it before I could show it to my husband.   I know I want the piece but you have to be certain everyone is in agreement with such a "forever" type of purchase!

By dusk, the sale was made and we will bring it home at the end of the week! We are so excited.  Here is a snap shot from my cell phone.  I love that it has two drawers above the base cabinet.  The top shelf has pie dividers to place goodies in safely.  I can't wait to bring it home.

Another thing we are looking forward to having in the house is a carpet runner for the stairs.  After my horrific fall and too many close calls by not only me (again), my daughter, husband and our poor, black lab, we decided we needed to install the runner before moving onto other projects.  The carpet is on order and we are hoping to have it in place within the next two weeks or so. Since I am still having laptop problems, I have very few original pictures to post.  Here is a shot from the vendor Web site. This is the runner we picked as well as the stair rods.  We chose the antique brass rods with pineapples after seeing similar runners with this option in several of the period homes off the square. Cannot wait to see it in ours!

Looking for the perfect shade of Haint Blue

We've decided that we want to change the color of our home.  That was the easy part.  The hard part is trying to decide what color to paint it.  Everyone seems to have white with black shutters or some sort of brown or green.  We are tired of the grey-blue that is on the home currently.  About the only thing I do know what I want is a Haint Blue for the porch ceiling.

What is Haint Blue exactly? There are various shades depending on the region in which you live.  I found a really good Web site that has researched the history of Haint Blue and its progression.  Basically, a Haint is a restless spirit and the blue color is said to keep it away from the inside of your home.  A spirit pool perhaps is a good description.  Some of the homes in our area have them and all the shades are different.  I think I like the Haint Blues from Savannah, Georgia the best so far.

As for the rest of the house, well....maybe we'll figure that out sooner or later!

May day! May day!

Wow...where in the world does time go?  Thanks to my job, which is completely brutal for the first three to four months out of the year, my spare time becomes extremely rare and things like blogging go completely by the wayside.  I am going to try and catch up.  Now that spring has arrived, there are things I can blog about regarding the home and what we have going on here.

My daughter turned four in April and we all pitched in to get her a new play set.  Long gone are the aluminum swing sets of days gone by. We have a play fort, slide, rock wall, rope wall, tire swing, regular swings, monkey bars and a trapeze bar.  Should make for years of fun, we hope.  My husband marked off the perimeter and PlayNation came and built the set.  After it was complete, the perimeter was blocked off by timbers and will soon be filled in with mulch. 

As the warmer weather arrived, we began to learn what our yard contained.  We have many Camilla bushes that boast fat, pink and white blooms.  I found a cluster of Lenten Roses as well as other beautiful blooms that we are still trying to identify.  There are several white azalea bushes and clusters of daffodils.  The side yard is still wild but by watching things come into bloom, we know where to trim and where we should wait and see what else is waiting to pop up as the temperatures begin to rise.

We bought a dining set for our patio and a large umbrella to sit under.  The next thing we need to do is to hire an electrician to come in and fix the lighting on the back porch.  There are light but of course, there is no light switch to be found that belong to them. 

Now that work has settled down and I have found the USB cords to both cameras, I should be able to get back in the blogging saddle and share some more of our dream with you.

Snow! Snow! Snow!

As 2011 came cruising in, so did the cold weather.  In the south, we usually drop into some cold temperatures but rarely get snow until this year!

Snow jam 2011 came to Georgia on Sunday, January 9 around 8:30 p.m. I have never seen snow come down so much, so quickly and I have lived here for 37 years. I went for a night time walk to take some pictures of the historic district in which we are so blessed to live in.  Here are some pictures for you to enjoy (yes! pictures! I used my SLR camera which has its USB cord!):

This is the home across the street from us.  I think their home is from the 1860s.

Our neighbors next door have a home that is similar in age to ours.  We think it is from 1905.

I am so glad I got these pictures at night.  I have some good ones from the next day but once the kids starting playing the untouched magic of new snow was gone in an instant!

This is a photograph of the home my grandmother and aunt live in down the street from us.  I'll have to find out from them the age.  I really should know this considering I grew up in it!

We are headed for a third day of iced over snow and school closings.  To break up cabin fever on day two, we were invited to a play date then we checked out the roads in our Explorer.  There is still plenty of thick ice on the back roads and in the subdivisions.  It has been dropping into the low 20s at night so anything that melts is turning right back into ice.  The last thing we accomplished today before sunset (we finally saw a bit of the sun today) was to make this "snow chick" on the back deck.  Enjoy!

A surprise present for the house!

Imagine my surprise when the mail arrived today and these little beauties were waiting for me!  I am still trying to figure out who sent them as there was no card with the box but I think I have narrowed it down to two people.  I am so happy to finally have some real picture hangers!  The first thing that I am going to put up is my convex mirror in the dining room!  What a great way to start off the new year!  Thank you, mystery giver!!!

Happy New Year!

It is hard to imagine that it is 2011.  Wasn't it just yesterday that we were preparing for the millennium and Y2K?  Our children will laugh at us when they are older and read about our paranoia and fears!

We've started to take down the Christmas decorations much to my three year-old's dismay.  It has been a great Christmas with her.  She is so inquisitive and we have had to explain why we do everything for the holiday to her.  She soaks it up like a sponge.  Today we discussed why some people still had their Christmas decorations up and others did not.  We discussed the 12 days of Christmas, the Epiphany and the Wise Men.  Let's see what sticks after that conversation!

On one of my message boards, a friend asked, "Do you have any resolutions for the New Year?"  I can't help but think about this new house and all the things we want to do to it in the days, weeks, months and years ahead.  I want to be more organized.  My husband and I both want to horde less.  We both want to find unique furniture pieces to go in the home as well as antiques to decorate it with.  As for my daughter, just trying to get her to donate some of her many toys that she no longer plays with will be a resolution challenge in itself! 

When spring arrives, I want to start to work on the back yard and side gardens.  There is so much debris and I know there is a magical place just waiting to be discovered.  My husband wants to get our daughter a sturdy swing set to last her for many years to come. 

I can't wait for spring and summer so we can have relaxing times on the front porch.  I cannot think of a better place to spend time catching up with friends or just simply reading a book as the sun begins to set.

We need to find a good patio set so we can make another living area on our back deck.  The grill is there and it will be a great place to sit and enjoy meals with family and friends.

It is going to be a great yet challenging year I can tell.  I have a list of resolutions and "to dos" ready to be tackled.  We are certainly up for the task!  I wish you and yours a happy and prosperous new year!