Color Me Happy

Our Color Palette

Let me just say that I LOVE COLOR! As much as I can appreciate and admire a fully neutral palette, I just have to have color in my own home.  I just picked up our color selections from the designer at Benjamin Moore.  Let me tell you, she was worth every bit of the $50 we paid to have her drive out to the house and spend 2 hours helping me figure this color business out.  I know how bad color selection can go and we don't have room in our budget for error.  I'm sure the colors are a bit "off" here from my photo, but you get the idea.

Since I can't have Zeke & Camille's house from Parenthood (the show that has recently been helping me get through cleaning the kitchen at the end of the day), I can steal some inspiration from them.  I am LOVING blue walls.  When I pinned a magazine photo up in our new living room next to some blue paint chips, let's just say Peter wasn't feeling the same positive emotions that I felt.  But the designer caught the vision and helped me picked a blue that even Peter is excited about.  We actually picked Annapolis Green (the top of the two blue colors), but I think we're changing it now to Seacliff Heights (bottom left corner) because it matches some throw pillows I already have.  I also just realized it matches our bedroom quilt, which makes it easier to spread my new favorite color throughout the house.

Looking at these colors makes me happy, both because I like them and because I've waited for SO LONG to be able to paint our own home! I know there is more we could do with color in the house, particularly in the bedrooms, but right now we're trying to cut the cost of paint by buying a couple of 5 gallon buckets of Carrington Beige.  The one thing I'm not 100% sure of is the designer's opinion that the fireplace should be painted beige.  Should it be white? I like the beige, but I like the look of white brick, too.  But our trim is white.  See my dilemma?

So this is what we're working with right now.  I might add an accent wall in the boys' room and paint our bathroom blue or green instead of the Lennox Tan.  Peter isn't fully confident in our decision to paint the lower kitchen cabinets Chopped Dill and the upper cabinets Lewiville Green.  But this is the basic idea.  If any of my creative artsy friends out there have anything to say about this, changes we should make, fun ideas, etc., now is the time to speak! :)

Project Country Cottage: Day 1

Home, Sweet Home

There you have it, our first home.  It's kinda cute, isn't it? Only a month ago we drove by it "just for fun." Now we have the keys, our names are on the title AND the mortgage.  Our mortgage payments are about $200/month less than our rent has been for the past year and we were able to secure the lowest interest rate the woman at the title company had ever seen! So we are definitely counting our blessings and receiving all of this as the gift that it is.  Our Daddy takes good care of us.  :) And there's nothing my hubby loves more than a good project!

Speaking of Hubby, he just headed over to the house to begin scraping popcorn off of the bedroom ceilings (fun for him).  In fact, if any other hubbies out there are bored...feel free to pay him a visit! I'm sure he'd enjoy the company.  This week the plan is to re-texture the walls and, hopefully, paint! I am so excited to see the house begin to transform with the colors we picked out.  Our goal is to move in by the 22nd and host Thanksgiving at our house this year, but that might be wishful thinking.  We'll see!

As for me, I have some serious short-timer syndrome going on as far as our current home is concerned.  It's difficult to muster up any motivation to clean it knowing that we'll be moving out and doing a full-on detail in a few weeks.  Not to mention the fact that I'm EXHAUSTED from kids waking me up in the night.  It's really time for that to stop.  Really.

Here are a few of our "before" photos... 

Living Room

 The front door is behind that brick wall, which is sort of awkward.  Especially since you walk into a cinder block wall as soon as you open the door.  We'll be covering that with sheetrock to soften it up a bit.  This room is going to be Benjamin Moore Annapolis Green #687.  :) (So thankful for the designer who helped me pick colors! I was overwhelmed.) I personally would have called the color a shade of blue, but it does have a lot of green in it.  I think it's going to be beautiful.  The brick is getting a makeover with some beige paint and the trim will remain white.  White Dove, to be exact.  That brass insert will be camoflaged, as well.

70s Kitchen

This house was built in 1971.  Not that you can tell, right? As much as wish we could gut this room and start over from scratch, the budget just won't allow it yet.  So we will be slapping on some paint and making do for now.  Solid birch flooring will be going in the kitchen, so that will help a lot.  The bottom cabinets will be painted a dark olive while the top will be a lighter shade.  Some of the upper cabinets will be left open (i.e., no doors) which, I think, will help it feel less boxy.  This room has a great skylight, so there's really no need to turn the lights on during the day.  And that green paint will be traded in for beige, as well.

Family Room/Play Room

I'm excited about this room.  We don't really have much to put in it yet because I had to sell our family room furniture when we moved here from Hawaii.  Which is unfortunate because that 5-piece leather set we had would have been perfect in here.  Oh well, it's just "stuff." This room will remain two-tone beige with white trim, however it will be a warmer beige than this current gray tone.  The wood flooring will also be installed here, so that is going to look amazing.  In that window seat there are three doors where we can stash all the kids' toys.  I just need someone (ahem, Mom) to help me sew some cute seat cushions for that area.  This is where we will hopefully be hosting Thanksgiving dinner.  Wouldn't it be pretty with tables set up in here? It's perfect since we don't have furniture for it yet, anyway.  To the left is a closet that I will be converting into my office nook.  I have some fun ideas for it, but I'll show that part another time.  The deck that extends outside of this room is a bi-level 600 sq. ft. deck covered by a massive tree on one side.  We LOVE it and can't wait to host our first BBQ! And below that the kids will have their swing set and a trampoline (just picking that up today, thank you Craigslist).

It's just the beginning, as you can see, but we know it's going to be great and just a few weeks from now it will look so much better!

New Season, New Blog

Having felt the insatiable NEED to have a blog again lately, I decided to jump in.  I've been held back by my own paralyzing perfectionism too many times.  So here I am with my latest blog, unpolished and imperfect thought it may be.  It is so unlike me to publish something without having it just right.  Details are my thing and I like to maintain appearances, you know? Well, I don't know a thing about blog design or anything at all about blogging (besides how to enter a post).  I spent my evening trying different templates and I finally just gave up.  So here it is, In Raw Form.

Go ahead, now.  It's ok to laugh.  I know.

So why Raw? Well, to me "raw" means a lot of things.  Honest.  Pure.  Unrefined.  Natural.  True.  Not only is that the way I like my food, but it's the way I try to live my life! I enjoy having an outlet where I can be as "raw" as I feel the need to be about whatever subject is on my brain at the moment.  Seeing as how we just bought our first home last week, it feels like the beginning of a new season for our family.  And with every new season, for me, comes a new blog.  :)

I'm sure much of this blog will be about our process as we transform our home from "faded fixer" to "country cottage." Not only have we never remodeled a home before, but we've never planted a garden, tended to farm animals, or even owned a lawnmower.  (Since our home sits on an acre of fast-growing grass, I'm thinkin' a lawnmower is in our very near future.)

My scattered thoughts will, I'm sure, visit subjects such as health, food, homeschooling, parenting, pioneering, our journey with raising our adopted (and now adult) son, random life stories and--my latest interest--whether or not to let my true (hair) colors shine.  (I use parentheses a lot, in case you didn't notice.)

This is a huge time of transition for us.  Besides buying our first home this week, we also celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary! My husband just completed his first album after 18 looooong months of production (yeah, Baby!).  His album is being previewed at a local Unearthed Arts Event next Friday.  And if I was really cool I'd know how to set this up so you could click on "Unearthed Arts Event" and it would take you to our event page.  But no...I am not that cool.  Anyway, I'm about to turn 37 and, before ya know it, we'll be entering 2012.  All of this and more have contributed to my need to WRITE!

So, you're welcome to come along and follow me as we step out into this uncharted territory.  See? I'm already rhyming.  You just never know what's gonna happen around here.