Spring has sprung!

The trees and flowers are all abloom and the pollen has been raining for weeks!  There have been plenty of front porch evenings enjoying the milder yet still warmer days of spring. 

I am so excited that Memorial Day is just around the corner.  I know that means summer is knocking on the door but more importantly for the owner of an older home, it means it is time for patriotic bunting to go up!  YAY!

The ladies in my neighborhood and I have been discussing patriotic bunting and how long it should stay up.  Thankfully, we all agree it is a beautiful thing to keep up from Memorial Day up until Labor Day.  It covers all the holidays and who doesn't love being patriotic?

I was going to put ours up this weekend but the rain has been horrific and I have a little nest of baby House Finches in the corner of my porch pillars.  I don't want to disturb them too much.  They are newly hatched and mama and daddy are very protective.  We'll see how the week goes with growth. We also have a nest of Wrens in our bird house on our picket fence that are too cute for words. You can definitely tell it is spring when the sun begins to rise in the mornings due to all the chirping going on!

The husband and I have been kicking around new renovation projects to tackle.  We've both been so busy with life in general that routine upkeep of the house is all we have been able to handle.  I think the main project we'd like to have done is a new drive way.  The current drive way is simply dirt and with the amount of rain we've had in Georgia over the past year, it is totally washing away.  I've started a Pintrest board focused on styles of driveways that we like for an older home.  We need to get quotes and all that wonderful stuff so we have some idea of what we are getting ourselves into!

Happy 2013, y'all!

It is amazing to me how fast a year goes by now that I am older. Remember the anticipation of 2000?  Thirteen years later, here we are moving right along.

As I look back over 2012, my assement is that we had a great year with many blessings.  Probably the biggest was to finally sell our former home that we had been renting out since we moved to the dream house.  Since that chapter has closed, it finally seems appropriate to put more touches on our forever home.

Maybe I had a subconcious fear that we would lose the dream house.  I'm not really sure but once the former home sold I felt a new boost of energy to work on making the home in Marietta even more "ours" both inside and out.

I apologize for the poor pictures but I took them with my camera phone.  Despite the quality, you can see the progress.  More to come on this topic in 2013! May yours be abundantly blessed!

This is the faux wall that seperates our kitchen from our kitchen dining area.  I love Glory Haus and have found a fondness for their beautiful crosses.  Hopefully they'll create more that I can add to either side as the years go by.

Thanks to the invention of the commander strip, it is easy to put pictures on a plaster wall.  We plan to get more pictures framed and have our family story told as you travel up the stairs. 

Finally...pictures

Well, it goes without saying that I am a terrible blogger.  My last post was in JULY! I cannot keep up with this page to save my life.  When I do come here to post, I know it is purely for me because how in the world can anyone keep up with a blog that no new information is ever posted to?

My laptop with my pictures on it has been sick and I was finally able to retrieve some photos when I came across these beauties.  We had a photo shoot in our home at the end of September for a local magazine.  The kitchen had to be cleaned and decorated for Christmas since the issue hits the stands in December.  By competing this post, at least it will allow anyone who is lurking to see pictures of our refaced cabinets to actually do so.  They are simply beautiful and make me so happy to be in my kitchen.

Beautiful new framing for the fridge 

We finally got the wine rack back up and it looks awesome 

The cooking area is so light and airy

Love the desk area.  We need to figure out a new piece under the two middle
cabinets but we'll get it finished eventually.  No rush!

What a cool contest!

Have you ever seen one of these? I have and I SO want one.  I doubt I will win but maybe someone will pitch in to get me one for my birthday. :)

Check out the Idea Room's Blog for all the details: http://www.theidearoom.net/2012/07/silhouette-cameo-giveaway-2.html#comment-89750

I have to take some pictures but I'll be back to blogging next week.  We've got a rocker, a porch swing and some chairs to introduce you to!  Have a great weekend.

A present for me!

My husband's birthday was Thursday, so imagine my surprise when I saw this sitting on my kitchen floor when I got home from work.

As you can see, my kitties had already attempted to open the wrapped box for me.  A line from "Beauty and the Beast" ran through my head upon seeing this (you know, when Belle returns and the clock and candlestick are amazed? Yes, I am a mom to a five year-old.): "Could it be? Is it she?"

With a grin on my face, I started to tear away the newspaper that was protecting my missing wine rack.
Ta da! It is she!

Of course, no new piece of furniture or anything can go unnoticed without Splotch the cat investigating as you can see in the picture above.  I am so happy!!! Finally, the wine rack be be installed and the kitchen can truly be finished.  As soon as this pieces goes in, there is a large piece of crown molding that will go on top of this section of the cabinets.  The items that are being stored on our dining room and kitchen tables can go back into the cabinets for storage!  More organization can occur.  Wahoo! Can't wait to see how the installation goes! 

Butterflies!

Since I do not have any restoration stories to post at the moment, I thought I would switch over to some of the activities going on inside our dream home. With a child in the house, that means there is always something going on!

It is summertime in the south which means mama has to try hard to keep a very active five year-old occupied.  Last year, I purchased a butterfly kit and stashed it away for warm weather use. The little one found the box and reminded me, we needed to order our larvae!

The tiny larvae were shipped live to us in a cup with pasty food at the bottom. Not long after they arrived, they started to eat...and eat...and eat, which made the grow! Soon, the larvae attached themselves to the lid inside their individual chrysalis. We transferred the larvae lid to the pop-up butterfly cage. While the larvae started to turn into butterflies, we read about what was going on in the book I had ordered at the same time I bought the butterfly kit.

Finally, the butterflies began to hatch, one-by-one. While the butterflies gained wing strength, we made a flower garden for them in the bottom of the butterfly keeper.  With a dropper, we placed sugar water in the dish and along the flowers.  They knew exactly what to do!

Today, we released the butterflies.  One will stay with us until she passes on.  Unfortunately before I knew the butterflies had hatched, the kitties knocked the butterfly house to the ground and hurt the wing of one of the painted ladies. Thankfully, she is eating from the flowers we have dotted with sugar water and seems happy.  She just couldn't fly away with her sisters.  

My little girl seems to understand what is going on with our special butterfly. She put the butterfly house back in her room and said she would be a good vet to the little injured one. We will definitely order more larvae so we can enjoy the butterflies again soon! 

Happiness is...

For me, nothing says "happy" like red, white and blue.  My friend said that I am the most patriotic person she knows.  I am not sure about that but I must say, I do love Memorial Day and July 4th and I truly love Americana decorations.  I finally found stars and stripes bunting for the house locally so that I did not have to order it through the Internet.  Another perk?  It was all made here in the good ol' USA.  Just in time for Memorial Day, I was able to put up patriotic bunting along with my patriotic Glory Haus burlee.  I love this time of the year as many of the home owners in our neighborhood start putting up various styles of red, white and blue decorations.  Here is our front porch all decked out in our happy place!

Nothing says patriotic like huge bunting!

I love my Glory Haus Burlee.  It says, "Land that I love" and I
promise to take a better picture so you can actually see it!

Since this picture was taken, I have added small American flags to the planters
out front.  Goes really well with the princess pool on the porch, don't you think? :)