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!

Up to Our Ears... in Leaves!

Literally. Our yard was covered in them. And the pile we had at the end was just as tall as I am (see below). This weekend was so nice out that we spent most of it outside getting rid of all the leaves and branches in the yard. There was a layer of about 4-5 inches of leaves all throughout the backyard.

The yard before

The yard after.

The huge pile we took to the woods. This picture does not do it justice, it was 20x6x5 at least!

Jason also spent his Veteran's Day holiday cutting out bushes from the front. I will get a picture this week but it has been dark by the time I am getting home from work.

Kitchen Part 2

After much delay here is the second part of the kitchen post that I did a few days (or weeks? I can't remember) ago. We finally got all the doors and shelves put back up. There are still a few drawers missing but we have found a spot for most of our dishes so far and the kitchen is functioning!

A full shot of the kitchen with white cabinets and shiny new appliances.

New stove with over the range microwave. We love it so far

This is the microwave that we got super cheap because it was a floor model.

And the refrigerator. It has a shiny black finish. Hopefully it won't show fingerprints too bad (fingers crossed). 

The first of many new things. A new light over the sink that we got at the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

Another new light for over the table. And the table itself is new too!

I apologize that some of the pictures are blurry but the late night shots plus camera running out of battery made for a quick shoot! 

Kitchen Part 1

When we bought the house, we knew the kitchen was in need of A LOT of work. This is what it looked like the day we moved in..

The original list of things we wanted to do in the kitchen included: 
- Remove wallpaper
- Paint cabinets white
- Paint walls
- Paint ceiling
- Paint trim 
- Change light fixtures
- New cabinet hardware
- Install over the range microwave (we scored a display model at Best Buy for only $60!!) 
- Install garbage disposal
- Replace sink faucet

But we ran into some issues once we got working that added more HUGE items to the list:
- Replace refrigerator
- Replace stove (and convert from electric to gas since we both prefer gas)
- Install new counter tops

This kitchen is getting a pretty big makeover. Here is the progress so far.

First, we removed this moldy piece of wood from above the dishwasher (I think I mentioned this before).

 Then Jason got to work ripping out the old counter tops.

Cabinet doors off and ready to be primed and painted.

Shelves lined up with primer. Our basement worked really well for getting all of this spread out for painting.

 

Bedroom doors were also primed and painted white.

We ran into this about halfway through. We found half an inch of flood mud from 1972 behind one of the kitchen cabinets. Luckily, we were able to vacuum most of it up.

Hinges being spray painted satin black.

Counter tops awaiting installation in the garage. We got them in stock at Lowe's and are very happy with them.

And just like that.. COLOR! We love the way this color came out on the walls, it is just what we expected. The contrast between the white cabinets and darker, bright walls is exactly what we wanted when we were deciding on a color.

We started putting the cabinet doors back on tonight and it has made a big difference. Stay tuned for part 2!