1 year on Dogwood...

We have been so busy this summer...I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record.  I am going to try to do better with all of my blog postings.  

In about a week, we will be celebrating our first year of home ownership.  It has been a rough year for us figuring out what being a "home owner actually meant".

When we purchased our home, I fell in love with the quaint neighborhood, the plush grass, shady streets, & our gorgeous landscaping!

When we first moved in, we made ourselves a list of all the things we wanted to buy, work on, & add to our home, but we never thought about that little word called maintenance.

First there was fall...

Our gorgeous summer grass turned into......

THIS!

Our front & backyard-COVERED in leaves.

What we thought would be a 2 hour project on a Saturday morning of raking what seemed to be 10 BILLION leaves...

 

Turned into an 18 leaf bag MESS! And as a result, we spent our whole Saturday racking the front yard. We were exhausted & realized that next fall, we are hiring two strong, young boys for cheap labor to do this hard work. It is totally worth buying them a new XBOX game not to have to do this ourselves.

Then, in January, our A/C & Heating unit went out...

Insert new Unit....discard my plan of getting my dream Stainless french door fridge :(

BUT.....

Overall we have made a lot of progress with things. I'm still slowly but surely working on my decorating/painting.  I have yet to fully complete a room, so I have decided to start my focus on one room, finish it, & blog about it, then I'll do a full tour!

At the beginning of the summer, I made a list of a few Home improvements that I wanted done.  

 Needless to say, I've only gotten one thing marked off, which was one of the biggies-the kitchen.

When we first moved in, I wasn't so sure about the yellow walls.  But, I didn't have the energy to paint ALL of the yellow throughout the house.  After we first moved in, the yellow sort of "grew" on me & almost felt like a neutral....but then before long that "it's okay" feeling left and I decided the yellow had to go! 

You can see all of the yellow here

That leads us to Project #1

So we are slowly phasing it out.  A few weeks back, we woke up one Saturday with nothing to do & decided to paint the kitchen.  

Jason insisted that I wouldn't like what we were about to do because I was always indecisive & am always looking for a new way to do a room.

This lead to a bunch of Problems.....

Problem #1: I knew in my head what color I wanted... neutral "greige" ...But not grey. 

Problem #2: Jason had no idea what "greige" meant & insisted that we would wind up with yet another "prison grey wall".

Problem #3: I didn't actually have the brand/color name, but I knew when we got to the paint store, I'd know it when I saw it!

Problem #4: I didn't listen to the paint specialist & thought I wanted "Cocoa Beach", which looked just like gorgeous sand at the beach. She tried to tell me it would look pink on my walls (which I didn't think was true & demanded it would look tan)

Problem #5: After talking it out with the lady in the paint department for 10 minutes, the hubby was getting very antsy and was done with the paint picking out

Problem #6: We went with Cocoa Beach.

Problem #7: the Paint Color was too light 

Problem #8: The whole time we painted, Jason sang Folsom prison blues.

Even though it didn't look pink at all (Score! Points for me! I was right :) ...the color almost looked white beside the cabinets! It was not a good look.

So we tested out a few swatches around the room and on the wall.

Please excuse our messy work area, we had stuff everywhere! My kitchen does NOT usually look like this.

I broke down and went back to the paint store & had her darken it.  So then I renamed it Coco Beach "remix"-An original Britta Clark design.

After the paint got on the wall...I really did not want to admit that.....

I didn't like it, but I would never tell Jason that, especially since he knows me all too well and predicted my reaction! :(

But I was so exhausted (and did NOT want to admit I was wrong & J was right) it was just going to have to stay.  Over the weekend, I decided that the reason why I didn't like it is because I was expecting yellow when I entered the room & still wasn't used to the new color.

Now I LOVE IT!

Pics to come once I get the whole room put together.

Project #2

Another project is re-doing an old antique bed that I had in college. I had painted it black with one of my friends one weekend and like any two 19 year old girls, we did NOT do this properly

 No sanding....

No Priming...

I think I even used latex paint that bubbled up in the sun?

Needless to say after moving from Monticello to Gurdon, then from Gurdon to Stamps, & then from Stamps to Magnolia, this bed has had it!

I had intended on doing this right after we moved in last year, but we had just redone the old dresser & painted it blue & it was sweltering heat even early in the morning so I put it off until this year since it was only going in the guest bedroom.

Here is what it looked like out of the shed (see the bubbled up paint hole right in the middle?) 

I really needed pinterest when I was in college to teach me how to paint old furniture.

I painted it so poorly, I ripped most of the paint of with my bare hands!

We began to strip the paint with a paint thinner & after a few burns on my skin from being careless & being too hot outside, we decided to sand & repaint another day.  It is still under the car port, but I'm hoping maybe next weekend we can get around to finishing it and I will post pics of the finished (re-done) product. 

I would really like to paint it a pop of color like salmon, but the paint is such a mess, we will probably have to do black again.

So yet another rain check on final pics!

Project #3

A few months back I saw this painting on Pinterest & feel in love with it! I love all of the watercolor/tribal inspired decorating stuff out there, especially when it's mixed with my decorating go-to, Chevy love....

But I did not love the price ($850!!!) ouch!

I thought to myself, wow that looks so easy I could so do that myself. 

 I had an old canvas in the craft closet & lots of paint that were those exact colors so I decided to go after it.

This was another random, not-well-thought-out plan of mine.

Even though it looked so easy....

I completely forgot that I cannot paint letters, pictures, or anything but circles & stripes.

Here is the B version....

As you can see towards the bottom, I got bored with it and didn't even finish. I was very disappointed to realize I my painting skills were not what I thought they were.

This masterpiece is free to a good home 

Project #4

Via Pinterest-Saw this neat idea & it has worked wonderful! Silverware holder turned flat iron/hair dryer station.  The original one I pinned was bigger and had an extra spot for hair spray & your brush, but as you can see, my counter space by my outlet is very narrow, so one any bigger than this wouldn't fit.  

I only have 1 outlet in our bathroom which is horrible to work with.

I ran across this neat silverware basket at TJ for $4.99 & it was perfect. My only concern was that the wicker could possibly catch on fire if I left it in there too long, so I try to only put it in there after it's cooled down.

Project #5

Yet another Pinterest inspired project, dry-erase menu.  This was super easy to make. I designed my own template via Word & my own monogram.

I still need to get a black marker because I'm not crazy about the blue & it's hard to write with because it's a fat one.  Last weeks menu was completely full & I stuck to our schedule. This week's is still a work in progress & I plan on filling up the rest tonight once I figure out our meals for the week. (I need to fill in with something besides chicken! lol)

 I don't know if you are like me, but I hate going to the grocery store every week, so I try to make a big trip every other week, and just pick up a few necessities in between like fresh vegis & milk.  Within this 14 day period, I sometimes forget what all recipes I had planned on cooking, so this keeps me on track and reminds me what night is which meal. Plus Jason knows what to plan on for dinner every night.  

It was worked good for us, as long as I can keep hubby from writing in his own requests ;) 

And yet again, this is another incredibly long post, but I'm trying to get back in the swing of blogging and just thought I'd keep you up with all of our "projects".  Hopefully I will have the bed completed by next week!