Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Antique bedroom

Yes, we refer to one of our spare bedrooms as the antique bedroom.  We call it that because of the beautiful antique bed and antique refinished furniture that is in the room.  In all reality, it is my craft room.  I use every inch of space in there to store all of the crap I acquire as I take up new hobbies.  I seriously spend more time in that closet than in the kitchen (at least for the past few months!)  Ha!  Also, basically everything in the room was a DIY project!  When we must, we use it as a guest room.  The bed is small, so it's not good for couples...or tall people:)

I made the  curtains out of a duvet I had in college.  The duvet was terrible and cheap, but it looks great on the windows!

The desk was a desk I got for $10 at a garage sale when I was in college.  I attempted to refinish it then and did an absolutely terrible job! It looked like it was growing green mold!  How does that even happen?  Then my husband showed me how it was supposed to be done, so we re-refinished it, and now it looks great!  So glad I didn't toss it!  I store a huge box of gift bags under the bed...it's peeping through.  Do you recycle gift bags?  I DO!  I DO!!!

Last winter Wes and I finished this dresser.  I think it was his great uncle's (or something like that!)  Anyway, it's really old, and now, after a bit of elbow grease, looks amazing!  Also, it is the PERFECT size for wrapping supplies.  I'm a ribbon and tissue paper junkie, so they both have individual drawers dedicated to them.  The bottom drawer is for rolls of wrapping paper:)   Notice the vase of twigs...they are from Missy's baby shower.  I kinda want to paint them a different color and actually use them.  Yay, free decor!


Another great reason to buy my house:  The shelves on the back wall are, adjustable!  We had a guy come in and add them because I felt there was tons of wasted space in our closets.  Now we use every inch!  These shelves can be easily taken out, and double hanging rods can be put in their place, adding over 4 feet of hanging space for someone using this room as a bedroom!  Or have half shelves/2 ft. of hanging.  So versatile!  Both of our spare bedrooms have closets like this...because my mother-in-law and I crammed all of our best solutions into one amazing idea!
Last, but not least, the most helpful organizational tool I own!  I found this, unused hunk of GOLD in the back of my in-law's office.  In the past, they used it for their plan books (they do construction).  You know, before everything was computerized.  When I saw it, I fell in love, and made my husband bring it home immediately (after asking permission from the bosses, of course ;))  I spray painted it and threw it in the closet!  It keeps all of my crafty and office things nice and organized, which is a difficult task!  I haven't labeled every drawer yet...but they are all used!!!

Hope you enjoyed the antique room!  I don't know when I'll get the other bathroom and bedroom up, as we currently have guests, and will for just a tad bit longer:)
Have a great day!

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Master Suite

If you haven't noticed, I have the worst camera ever!  Wes and I wanted a small one to take on our honeymoon, so we went to Walmart and bought the cheapest (yet highest megapixel)  camera they had.  I knew better, but I did it anyway.  Now, we are looking for a new one, and I can't quite decide if I want to get a tiny point and shoot, or one of those mega-zoom cameras.  If you have any knowledge on this topic, do share!  Until I get one, you will have to tolerate my crappy pics!  (Oh...and I never realized how hard it is to take a good photo of a room!  That's why people post so many "detail" pictures!

Anyway... on with the tour!

view from the hall

My husband's taste in furniture:)  Not to shabby!  I really love the dresser...a lot.


Bathroom!

Amazing shower/jetted tub.  I hated our last shower head, so we got a rain shower head, and a hand-held, multi-setting water-massage shower head thing.  It's awesome...makes taking showers sooo enjoyable.  Ha!

What beautiful lighting!  (bleh!!!)
Closet:)

my side...Wes's side is just the same:)
In conclusion, a completely un-related picture.  The kids at church LOVE my husband, as you can see from the picture.  They found him on our way out Sunday after the evening service.  It really is kind of cute.  I think they are afraid of me.  I don't blame them ;)
Thanks for reading!  Have a great day!

Monday, October 25, 2010

Welcome:)

I've been waiting to share pictures of our house on facebook, because I have never felt like any of the rooms were complete enough to share.  I feel the longer we stay in our house, the better it gets.  I guess I was waiting until it was PERFECTly complete.  (A near impossible feat, as I am always changing my mind!)  Now that we are putting our house on the market, I guess it is as complete as it's gonna get!
So, for all of my friends and family who haven't been to the humble Stewart abode, welcome!

It is a 1600sq. ft., 3 bedroom, two bath house (in the most amazing location, I might add)  Because I am a detail girl, I am going to spread this tour over a couple of posts.  Today's Post:  The living room and kitchen:)

Welcome! 

The view of our very large living room from the front door.  I feel the need to say that I take credit for all of the color in the entire house.  There weren't a lot of places that I could add color, as Wes had a lot of really nice brown things before I came along:)

View of the living room from the dining area.  Notice the greenery in the left corner.  It is a plant that my brother-in-law grew from a seed...from a lemon...from his lemonade.  (well, maybe not lemonade...but something made from lemons)  Ridiculous.

dining and kitchen

About as festive as can get for fall until I have more storage space...

I LOVE our kitchen.  It has tons of storage and is extremely functional.  We have been to open houses in our neighborhood (our competition), and none of the kitchen/living areas...or floorplans, for that matter, can touch ours.  booyah! 

Coat closet door, garage door, and desk area. 


You may be wondering why I am posting a picture of the inside of my pantry.  Well...there is one answer to that...because it's AMAZING!  :)  Not my organizing skills, but the actual pantry.  The wall on the right has 4 shelves that are a couple of feet deep (the depth of the refrigerator:) ).  That was all that was in there until this summer, when we added the shelves on the far wall and on the left.  It doubled our storage space (at least) and improved our capacity to be organized and efficient.  I'm in LOVE with it!!!

See our new shelves!  The shelves on the left will fit one row of cans, which makes it super easy to find things.  I also put dried goods such as rice and pasta, and baking supplies like baking soda and corn meal in labeled canning jars.  I included expiration dates and cooking instructions on the lids.  Love it!  Libby and I think the pantry will sell the house!  yeah!

The coat closet after a makeover.  This coat closet has removable shelves to store things like my disgusting amount of frivolous kitchen appliances, and my packed china.  It also has all of our cookbooks and kitchen items we buy in bulk.  There is room in front of the shelves for my mop and broom.  If you would prefer to actually use it as a coat closet (or have shelves AND hanging space), simply take out a few of the shelves, and put the rod in the pockets provided.  IT'S AWESOME!!  So adjustable, it's perfect for EVERY family!


A view of the hall.  First door on right: Antique/craft room.  Folding doors: Laundry, Far room:  Guest bedroom, door across from laundry:  Bathroom.  Master is the first door on the left.
So, as you can tell, I love this house.  Some things will be very hard to leave behind, but I also look forward to doing some things differently in our next house (De-manifying, "lightening" the decor).  I can't wait to break up all of the brown and spread it through a space that's twice as big:).

This concludes today's tour.  Check back soon to see the rest!  Oh, and if you want to buy the house, I'll sell it to ya!  haha!

Have a great day!

Saturday, October 23, 2010

HOLD IT!!!

So, it is official.  The purchasing of our new house has been put on hold.  The government has passed some new laws on foreclosures, so I guess the banks are trying to figure things out, so ALL foreclosures have been put on hold. As far as I understand it, the new laws don't pertain to the situation of this house.  I'm kind of sad, as I was really hoping to be in the house in March.  We are planning a high school reunion with some of my favorite people on the planet and was hoping to house them all at the new place!  Looks like that might not happen (but the reunion is still on!).

Today we were driving past the house on our way home from Lowes.  (we drive by it on our way home often!)  and there was a car in the driveway with the sale sign in the trunk.  We assumed it was the selling agent so we got out of the car to see if we could get any clarity on the situation.  She said they haven't disclosed a ton of information, but it is an indefinite hold, and she would let us know as soon as the hold is lifted.  (indefinite, meaning, the date given for foreclosures that the new laws pertain to is in March, so anytime between now and then...hopefully!)  When that happens, we will continue with our contract, as if no time had passed at all.  She also said that it is all part of God plan, and He might be trying to teach us something.  Then she chuckled and asked if we had learned any lessons about patience lately.  That seriously made my day!  I LOVE it when people speak boldly about God to perfect strangers!  We have talked about how it is all part of God's plan, but it was just really good to hear someone else say it.  As far as the lessons we are learning...I think mine is probably less of patience, and more of priorities:)  I have been getting awfully into planning for the new house, as you may have noticed from my last 2 posts.  I'm glad to have be put back on the right track!

We are not terribly concerned about it, as we know God is in control.  Wes also said it is fun to be part of history in the making! Haha!

So that's what's going on.  Some of you have asked about the situation because you have seen stuff on the news about foreclosures.  I don't watch the news, so, until this week, I was completely clueless as to what is going on.  I am probably still clueless, but I'm at least "aware" that something is happening.:)

Have a wonderful day!

song I'm listening to:  Jesus' Love Never Fails Me ~Hillsong:)

Thursday, October 21, 2010

FM STORE!!!!

2 Posts in one day...amazing!  I just thought I'd break it up a bit since the last post was ridiculously long.  Even I got bored reading it!!  Also, the FM Store is so great that it deserves it's own post.  For real.

If you are in the Springfield area and needing to decorate a room or get some inspiration, the FM Store is the perfect place!
Located at the Southwest corner of Sunshine and Fremont.
I drove past it a lot in college, and thought nothing of it.  The outside is rather shabby.  Then, one day, I was having trouble finding a fabric I could afford to make cornice boards for my living room.  My mother-in-law said I might have some luck at the FM Store.  She really talked it down on the phone.  I think she didn't want to get my hopes up.  I about fell over the first time I went in.  Affordable fabrics as far as the eye could see!!!
Sometimes you have to dig...

Sometimes you don't.  There are very few things that make me want to have babies RIGHT NOW!  This fabric is one of those things...lol.

If I remember correctly, most of the decorator fabrics run about $7 a yard.  That may seem pricey, but compared to Jo-Ann's and other fabric stores, it's not bad at all.  A few of the fabrics I remember liking at Jo-Ann's were $14-$80 a yard!  They also have other types of fabrics.  Lots of quilting fabrics and beautiful upholstery fabrics.  Here's a closer look at some things that caught my eye!
 



3 above pictures are choices from the 2.99-3.99 bin.  Could totally make something work if on a tight budget!

Kitchen/Laundry?  For:  curtains and pillows and seat cushion for window seat.  Looks lovely with the paint color:)

I have no place to put this, but I really really want to find a place!  Maybe I'll convince Shawnie to put it in their new office or something.  Apparently Eric loves purple...NOT!!!

Nursery/temporary craft room?  Not what I had originally planned, but it could look very nice!  (the walls will be similar to the blue in the fabric.

I would love to put these fabrics in the basement living area.  Maybe it won't be a man-cave after all...

I have vowed to use burlap SOMEWHERE in the new house.  It is so cheap and full of texture!  I also think it would be a fabulous and inexpensive table runner at a casual/creative wedding.  Have I ever mentioned that I want to be a wedding planner?  Well, "I do..."
My original plan was to have a set of Muslin curtains in all of the living areas as a jumping off point.  It's so clean and simple (an inexpensive!).  I wonder if I can hold myself back from all of the color available!
So there you have it!  A very small glimpse of my favorite store in Springfield!  (And a VERY small glimpse of the crazy ideas running through my brain!) Doesn't it just make you want to reupholster something...or make some drapes!?  I'm not going to lie, My plan was to go to a thrift store and pick up a crappy piece of furniture to refinish/recover.  I forced myself to come home and blog because I'm supposed to be in money-saving mode!  Someday...(sigh)

:)Have a happy day!

Paint

What a fun week it has been!  No plans in addition to the norm, so some of my time was spent dreaming about the new house, and visiting my absolute favorite store in Springfield! 

Like I have said before, the flow of my house is extremely important.  I hate walking into houses, and the paint colors in certain rooms just slap you in the face.  I want my house to be bright, colorful, and creative, without being offensive.  I settled on the color scheme I am about to share a couple of weeks ago, but I keep second guessing myself, as it is a little cooler and more neutral than I think I  want.  However, the husband loves it, and I am learning more and more that this kind of neutral can be a very good thing because it is still interesting.  Also, I was thinking that if my house was mostly neutral with colorful accessories, I can customize each room for seasons and parties, which is oh-so-important!!!  haha!  Another perk of the colors I chose for the walls and the accessories are very cohesive and the accessory colors can be mixed and matched in any room and still look great!  How's that for flow and function!?
And now I present....THE COLORS!!!  (the pictures I took were way off, so I found these color swatches online.  They do not seem perfectly accurate either, but you'll get the point.)

Valspar's Jekyll Grand Dining Sea Mist.  My swatch seems lighter than this version.  This color will be in the living room.  If you remember from the previous post, the living room has a stone fireplace and a wood ceiling.  I'm thinking a creamy/mustard yellow and an off white for the accents in this room.
Olympic's Classic Khaki.  this color will be for the entry, halls, master bedroom and bath, hall bathroom, and most of the basement bedrooms.  It is a soft khaki...your typical neutral paint color.  It's similar to what we have in our current house, and it works with the decor that we already have.  I wanted to go with a gray color, but 1.  I'm a chicken, and 2.  We can't redecorate every room in our house.  Yes, our bedrooms will probably look exactly the same in the next house:)
Valspar's Granite Dust.  All these colors look so dark!!!  This color is much much lighter and will be in the formal dining room:)  Wes is talking about adding wainscoting!  How exciting!!! 
Valspar's Stone Manor.  I was afraid to go this dark in any room because my goal is light and airy.  However, this is for the kitchen and laundry room where there are huge windows, white cabinets, and lots of light things to break up the space!
So, there you have it!  The main floor, minus the nursery.  (No, we are not pregnant, but the room is just so perfect for a future nursery that I can't call it anything else!)  The khaki and gray colors will also be in the basement, with the addition of a subtle, not striking medium blue.

These colors, on my computer are much darker than they look on my swatches.  I hope they look better in the rooms.  Here is an example of a room with the granite dust paint in it...
I think it looks lighter.

As far as accessory colors go, I'd like to incorporate orange, green, yellow and teal.  I'd also like to have several elements of glass, silver metals, nature-y things, and white ceramics in the house....
mmmmm...Isn't it lovely!!

Can't wait to get my hands dirty!!!!
:)

Monday, October 18, 2010

Long Time No Write

When I started this blog, I thought I had time in my life to keep up with it and keep the world updated on the happenings of my life. We just came off of an absolutely ridiculous, extended summer (super fun!) and I thought things were winding down. They did wind down for a couple of weeks, but I can assure you…my life is wound up once again! The last couple of weeks have been fabulously insane! I need some rest; therefore, I am dubbing this day, lazy/leisure cleaning, bible reading, recommendation letter writing, blog day! Most things can be done from the comfort of my bed! Yay!
“What has happened since I last wrote?” you ask. A WHOLE LOT!!! So much that I can’t update on everything, like I would like to (you know…with details and instructions…etc…) but I’ll hit the highlights…that I remember!

The most exciting new news is that WES AND I BOUGHT A HOUSE!!! No, we weren’t really in the market or in need of a house for ourselves, and we would be fine where we are at for several years, BUT we have a great desire to have ridiculous amounts of guests at our house (including the whole high school Sunday school class at Seminole at ONE TIME!). We always keep our eyes on the local real estate listings, and we are always discussing the houses we could potentially flip, rent, build, or whatever…just because it’s interesting and fun. When we came across the house we are in the process of buying, we fell in love. We prayed a ton about it, because when upgrading to a larger house, we wanted to keep ourselves in check and make sure we were still chasing God instead of the American dream. We feel God granted us peace about the decision, and also allowed several things to happen that we believe were just Him confirming this path for us! The night we got the news that they accepted our first offer (and offered to pay closing costs…weird!) Wes and I were completely humbled. I cried. Lol. It’s hard to reason why God would want to bless us in this way because we are so undeserving. We are thankful and will strive to use the house to bring Him glory in all ways that we can! And, as Libby says, this is a perfect example of how we live in God’s economy, not the worlds’.
I seriously didn't take a picture of the front of the house...so here's the living room:)
With that being said, my time following that decision was filled with lots of decluttering/staging /fixing of our current house, as well as choosing finishes for the new house so we can make a budget and priority list of what we can and can’t do in the new house. Because I am so anal about my entire house flowing together and looking cohesive, choosing paint colors alone was a very time consuming task. One of the biggest debates was whether or not to paint the kitchen cabinets, or just darken them with a tinted polyurethane. This was such a huge issue, I had to ask many for advice, including my entire BSF discussion group. Thanks for all of the input, ladies!!
Imagine....dark wood floors, cream cabinets, granite, and new stainless appliances!  Oh...and through that back door is the laundry room...Shawn thinks it's my favorite room in the house...she might be right!
In the end, we chose white. I think I really chose white in my head before the decision, but we have to keep wood floors (refinished, of course) in the kitchen, and I refuse that much wood in one room of my house! Thank goodness, because I really wanted to paint the cabinets in the laundry room, and for the house to be cohesive, the kitchen and the laundry room have to have similar finishes! Haha! Within the next several months, there will be tons of before and after pictures to share, I’m sure! How exciting!

This week had many non-house focused events! Here’s a list of a few of my favorite things that happened!

Monday, I got to go ugly sweater shopping with the Denny twins…whom I love!

Tuesday, I babysat for Tiffany’s MOPS leaders kids. It was interesting. There are about 5 kids who are 3 and under. They like to take each other’s toys. When that happens, no matter what the outcome was, I was left with a screaming child. I was fine with it, but I wondered if the parents below were worried to hear all of the screaming and crying (every kid had their own time in the limelight). Haha! They are cuties though. If anyone has any advice to help reduce this toy-taking business, do share! I have no children or experience with this, and I am scheduled to watch them every other week!

Wednesday-BSF, bible study party, and youth:)

Thursday- Party planning/shopping, lots of cleaning

Friday- Food/Shower prep, Slumber party prep, made cute cake! My SBU friends also came over for a slumber party! It was so good to have them all together and visit. We stayed up until 3-something just chatting and drinking sparkling grape juice. It was fabulous! I love them and hope we can do it more often before some leave the area :(!
I totally stole this picture from Brook's facebook!  I knew I could count on her to have a pic of the group!  These are the lovely ladies who graced me with their presence and helped me a ton:)
 Saturday- I was soooo blessed to have the girls help me a TON with the shower. God knows my needs…I would have been SOOOOOOO stressed and pressed for time without them! The shower went great! Not to brag, but it was really cute! After a little bit of clean-up (not all…still working on putting my house back together) Shawn, Eric, Wes, and I went to Marshfield to see Shawn and Eric’s future house! It was adorable! Perfect for them, with elegant archways and lots of big pretty windows! I can’t wait to see what they do to the place! It’s super fun that my sis and I are in the same process of buying houses at the same time! I love that in the evenings we can share all of our house ideas, and we both get to put them into action very soon!
Everything in this picture is cute as a button:)  Can't wait to meet baby Preslie!  Though I will miss rubbing Missy's tummy!  (I'm sure she won't!  ha!)

Sunday- was a complete blur…even after lots of coffee and an attempted nap. I was beat! I do remember having a nice conversation with the lovely Melissa Starrett, and going to dinner with Davit, our favorite Georgian.

And, that's about all I can think of, though I know there was a lot more that happened!  Thanks for reading the random!  I had fun writing it!
Have an excellent day!