More excitement!

As you can see from the pictures of our home, we have a lot of windows - TALL windows.  Currently on the downstairs windows that can be seen from the front of the house, we have 96" panel curtains on them.  We get a lot of direct sunlight and although the curtains are not my favorite, they have served a purpose.  They help keep the rooms cool from the blaring sun and it keeps the furniture from fading also.  Thankfully, the previous home owner brought them back after closing and we were able to save ourselves a ton of money by putting them back up throughout the house.  Curtain panels are not cheap, especially the 96" ones!

However, I have never been in love with curtains.  I think they are pretty but I see them as dust magnets.  Thankfully my husband has a vacuum attachment that is safe for curtains and he tries to get rid of the weekly dust but if I had my way, we would have shutters on every window.  I grew up in a home that had shutters and I absolutely love them.  Not the big plantation shutters but the old style, colonial shutters that are double stacked and can open on the top and bottom as well as the individual shutters themselves.  You can let us much light in as you want, when you want with them.  You can also peep out one shutter without moving the entire panel in case you need to see who is knocking on your door on a lazy weekend morning.

Since we are sinking a ton of resources into our new furniture, we made the decision to go ahead and spend just a bit more to get what I have always wanted for the house - real.wood.colonial.shutters. YESSSSSSS!!!

If you aren't really sure what I mean when I say colonial shutters vs. plantation shutters, here is a picture from the company we are using:

I swear I just get giddy looking at this picture!  These too will take about six weeks to receive as they are custom made.  It will be well worth the wait, I can already tell!

Changes a coming....

So we've been in the house for three years, give or take, and life is wonderful.  We totally love it here and cannot imagine ever leaving.  That being said, we've designated it as our forever home.  I don't think we ever doubted that we would not stay but it feels good to announce it with passion. With this title comes the desire to make changes that will last a lifetime. Even though the house has been renovated, there are plenty of projects to keep us busy for years and years and years to come.

The hardest part is trying to decide what to do first and how to prioritize our project list. Where do you start? Do you attempt to work in the yard? Or do you try to redo the inside? At this point, we've started doing a little bit of both.

Over the past few weeks, we've been doing the never ending purge of the inside of the house.  We took two trips to the dump, which in our County is a bargain - only $7 a load up to 400 pounds.  We hauled off all of our living room furniture - the sofa, loveseat and arm chair.  When pieces were out in the sunlight I was embarrassed to think I had let people sit on those darn things.   I purchased them for my first apartment after college in 1997 and we've been using them ever since.  Three moves, one baby, two puppies and five kitties total have lived on them. Now that they are gone, we moved two chairs and a rug I purchased last year into the room.  Originally, the plan was to start using them in Jan. 2013.  When I rescued a German Short-haired Pointer pup, that plan changed.  If we had not decided to move her to a plantation, we probably would have kept the old furniture.  With Dixie gone, the plan was back on track to get some new furniture for both a formal living room and a viewing room.

Of course, lots of plans have gone through our heads but neither I nor my husband are interior decorators.  We enlisted the help of Jerri at Ethan Allen and are thankful for her guidance.  She came over to our house and listened to our dreams for the house.  She measured windows, walls and doors.  She took pictures and sketched in her note pad. Then, she brought us to her office to see the project board for our two rooms that we've decided to work on first.  We could not be more pleased.  As you can see below, she staged the rooms for us with the furniture we liked.  She pulled colors for us to consider.  Within a few hours, we ordered custom sofas and chairs for our house!  Within two months, it will all be delivered.  Cannot.wait.to.see.it!