Meet Oakley

It has been over a month since I have posted but life has been crazy! We got a puppy. 

Hi. I'm Oakley.

Oakley is a Westie Poo puppy who just turned 3 months old. He does a lot of sleeping but when he is awake he LOVES to play with Gauge (our yellow lab). 

Oakley and Gauge.

His sharp new coat.

My co-pilot.

More sleeping. In a crazy position.

 Hopefully blog posts will be a little more frequent now that he is getting settled and house trained.

What we're up to

We are still here! And still plugging away at projects around the house. The holidays were very busy so I have gotten a little behind on posting.

Here is a quick look at SOME of the projects we are currently working on.

1. Curtains.

This is a curtain that I made for above the sink. I'm so glad this fabric didn't work out for my cousin because I think the yellow adds a pop of color to this room. I am currently sewing a curtain for the half bath and plan to alter a panel we purchased for the living room.

2. Cleaning the basement. No pictures of this yet. But it has been quite the project. We vacuumed the entire basement, rearranged everything, and Jason hung wood on one wall for a dart board. It is still a work in progress.

3. Gallery wall. I have been saving a large wall in the living room so I could create a gallery wall and we have started it! It is not a "true" gallery wall but more like staggered floating shelves with a lot of pictures on them.

This is our rough template for where the shelves will go. No they are not anywhere close to exact or level but we wanted to get a general idea so we could figure out how much wood we needed. One thing we have learned so far: the outside walls in this house are impossible to find studs in! More on that later.

Happy New Year and I hope to be caught up with posting soon!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

 We hope everyone enjoyed their day with family and friends.

Love,
Cortney & Jason

Christmas!

We are all ready for Christmas here at our house. We got the lights put up outside...

Our first Christmas tree trip turned into quite the adventure... we went to Jason's family's land to cut down our own tree and ended up with a 10 foot tree that we planned on cutting down to fit in our house. It ended up being a 5 foot tall Christmas bush that looked like this.

It was pretty bad. So we headed to the mall parking lot and picked up one that fit perfectly in our living room, no cutting required.

I put this bucket together because I needed something tall for the fireplace. It came together pretty nicely for only $15 (plus scraps from our Christmas bush).

Sorry for the blurry iPhone photo.

Merry Christmas!

Pinterest Projects

I was brave enough to attempt two decorating ideas from Pinterest for Christmas this year: the ruffled tree skirt and felted trees.

The first is a ruffled tree skirt, here is the link to the idea from Done Over Decor.  I forgot to take pictures along the way but I used some red felt I had to make a tree skirt template Then I cut and hot glued strips of red fabric and burlap around the felt circle.

The other Pinterest project I attempted was felt pine trees from The Crafted Sparrow (link). These were pretty time consuming but something I could mindlessly do while watching TV.

In Progress

 Here is the final product (I apologize for the blurry cell phone picture).

We are all decorated for Christmas here, I can't wait to show everyone!

Furniture

We now have furniture in all the bedrooms, living room, and dining room. We also have some window treatments up and are hanging pictures one by one. Some things have changed since these pictures so I need to go through and get some new ones taken.

Here is the living room. The big pieces of furniture are all the same but all of the small things (vases, pillows, pictures, etc.) have been moved multiple times.

The small bedroom.

Grey bedroom.

Master bedroom. 

Dining room.

Small sitting area in the back of the dining room.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We hosted a dinner here on Friday night for about 10 family members. We are extremely thankful for all our family and friends who have helped us so much with the house. We really couldn't have done it without you.

Yard work!

So we have been doing a lot of work out in the yard before winter hits and it gets freezing cold here in New York.

If you remember when we moved in the front sidewalk looked like this...

The bushes were talking over the sidewalk and the garden was pretty out of control.

Then, I gave the garden a haircut...

The final step (for now) was cutting back those bushes. Jason spent a whole day working on this and it looks great! It looks a little bare because all the leaves have fallen off the trees.

 Here is a picture of the front of the house before...

And after!