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!

Baby birds abound

Every morning, we wake to the music of the baby birds around us begging mama and daddy for breakfast.  I finally caught a few pictures of the nests and babes.

This first picture gives me the greatest joy.  I love watching birds and the wren is my absolute favorite.  They are so tiny yet so busy with life.  My grandfather made me these bird boxes ages ago and I brought them with me from our former house.  The only thing that enjoyed it there was a squirrel that made a larger hole.  However, now it has a nesting wren!  This photo was taken before Mother's Day and later I saw four tiny eggs in the box.  I think there is only one baby in the box now but since it is so close to the ground where predators might linger, I have tried my best to stay away.

This next set of photographs comes from the corner of our front porch.  I think most of the noise we are hearing in the morning is coming from this nest.  I think the Purple Finch (aka House Finch) family had at least five babies.  You can vaguely make out baby birds in the first picture and in the second photo, you can see one of the babies almost ready to leave the nest with lots of other tail feathers poking up from the nest.  Sadly, I think they left the next yesterday because it has been very quiet.  Time to clean up the mess then, I guess!

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!