The House on the Hill

There are so many things that need to be done before we actually start any work on the nursery (like oh I don’t know, finally finishing our bedroom) but we have decided on a theme and we’ve started to pick out/purchase a few nursery items. So first thing’s first, we found out at a recent elective ultrasound that we are having a girl! They’ll confirm in a few weeks at my next scan but we went at 16 weeks which should be accurate. I had no idea going into it but I am still kind of in shock. I grew up in a house full of boys and all of my cousins are boys and I’m just much better at dealing with boys so I feel like a boy would be more in my comfort zone but I am so freaking excited to be having a girl (and would have been either way)! We’re also pretty excited about our nursery theme: floral flamingo.

Flamingos are kind of a big thing with us and even though we debated several other nursery themes (fairytales, monsters, Harry Potter), I think the flamingo theme was also kind of a front runner. The plan is to mix in some floral patterns and maybe a pineapple or two for good measure.

Here’s my super low tech mood board:

flamingo prints/quilt/curtains/flamingo throw pillow/crib/glider

 

The former craft room/current guest room is going to be cleared out to make way for the nursery. We’re keeping the walls Hale Navy (that’s that blue dot above) and we’re planning on tearing out the carpet and replacing it with the same laminate we put downstairs. I need to find a rug but I can’t decide how bold I want to go with it. I also can’t decide if I want a gray glider or beige (pictured above). I’m thinking since the walls are so dark and some of the furniture is going to be dark/heavy I should go with beige but I also think gray might hide stains better. Meh. I have time to figure it out.

We were going to get a white dresser from IKEA to use as a changing table but then I saw this dresser at a local vintage furniture shop and fell in love. I want to change out the drawers pulls and stain it a little darker but it has a ton of storage (there are more drawers inside the cabinets!) and I love the lines.

The crib and changing tables will be on opposite walls with the glider in one corner and a little play/reading area in another corner. We also picked up this fun flamingo piece to hang on the wall somewhere:

I love how the pink and navy look together!

There are a lot of other rooms that need our attention first before any real work starts in here but I’m really excited to have a plan in place. We’ve already started cleaning out/rearranging other rooms in the house in preparation and I promise we have made progress in our bedroom, I just haven’t really shared it yet. The last big thing we need to do right now is paint the shiplap and the new doors which hopefully will get done this weekend!

It’s too hot to exist right now and I’m ready for Fall (yes, I’m one of those people). I’ve never been a huge summer person and I’m a baby about the heat. All I want to do right now is crank the air down real low and never leave my house but there’s that whole work thing I have to go to so I’ll have to settle for keeping my desktop fan turned all the way up and pointed directly at my face.

1 – In case you missed the announcement over on Instagram, Kyle and I are having a baby! Well, I guess I’m the one that’s having it but he’s pretty involved in the whole process, too. I just hit 15 weeks today and we’re do mid-January and we’re both very excited about the whole thing. I don’t know how much baby related stuff I’ll post on the blog outside of the nursery, but it probably won’t be much.

2 – Our garden is exploding and I love it. I’m nervous about losing some of the plants because it’s been so hot lately but we’ll see. Our jalapeno and tomato plants have been producing like crazy and I think our bell peppers might be ready; hopefully we haven’t missed them! It’s been a few days since we checked on them and they were close.

3 – I posted forever ago about a mirror I was in love with and although I thought we would never actually buy it because spending that much money on a mirror makes me want to hurl, it showed up at our house a few days ago. Yep, we actually pulled the trigger on it. West Elm was having a 25% off sale and Kyle’s parents very generously offered to gift us half (thanks again!!) so while it was still more money than I every thought I would spend on a piece of decor, I’m very happy with the purchase. We’re hanging it this weekend and until then it’s safely sitting in the former craft room/current guest room/future nursery.

4 – Kyle and I tried out a new diner downtown this morning and holy crap it was good. Seriously, if you are local you should check out Diner 24. I had heard mixed things but our service was pretty good and the food was delicious. The best part is it’s open 24/7 so if we ever find ourselves out partying downtown at 2am (hahahaha, yeah right) we can easily go throw down on some dinner plate sized pancakes.

5 – We still haven’t really worked on the bedroom (other than installing the new door frame/doors with help from Kyle’s dad) but Kyle and his dad knocked out part of the fence that still needed to be done and we got a new roof! We also moved our sectional and tv into the sitting room so now the other room is open to become the office/craft room. So the bedroom might not be done yet, there has been a little bit of progress going on around the house.

 

Holy crap I can’t believe June is almost over. I swear this year is going way too fast! I know I haven’t posted in a while but we honestly still haven’t done much of anything around the house. To be 100% honest the only reason I’m even posting is because I’ve never missed a month and today was kind of my last chance 🙂 I really have been wanting to get back into blogging so maybe July will be my month.

I figured since we’re halfway through the year I should check in on our goals. Spoiler alert: it’s not going well. We’re actually going to be changing our plans around a bit but I’ll get into all of that more next week.

1. Make over the study. We haven’t actually started this but some things have changed anyway. We finally decided to make this room the tv room but other than moving the tv in here, it probably won’t see many other changes this year. We decided that replacing the trim, adding built ins, and repairing the door frame will make more sense to do when we do the kitchen. We’re going to have to re-lay the flooring in here when we do the kitchen and it will be easier to do the other stuff after that happens, otherwise it will create a whole bucket of other issues. We’re thinking this will be on the 2018 list.
2. Redo the master bedroom. Still in progress! Kyle asked me what I wanted for my birthday this year (Hellooooooo, 29) and I couldn’t think of anything I actually wanted or needed so instead I asked him to finish the room because honestly I’m just kind of over it at this point and ready to move on. We’ve done a lot in the room already but still have a good bit to go. We’ll probably hold off on adding crown molding for a while but Kyle is planning on finishing up the rest of the projects (other than the dog crate) next month.
3. Finish demo in the master bathroom. Not done but we decided once we’re done with the bedroom we’re going to spend the $80 on a tool rental at Home Depot to finish off the floor removal and after that we can tear out the tub and fix the subfloor.
4. Tweak the linen closet. I still want to do this but decided to wait until we do the flooring in the hallway (so maybe later this year?). It’s not a big deal though so if it needs to be moved to 2018, that’s fine. It’s mostly functional right now other than one of the doors not being attached.
5. Finish the deck and fence. This was listed as a “maybe” item but I think we can do one of these this year and it will probably be the deck and it will happen mid-late Fall!

And because I hate posts with no pictures, enjoy this picture of Gatsby who just turned 7 yesterday:

I really don’t have much to talk about today (shocker, I know) but I couldn’t let May pass without a least one post so here I am.

1 – Still no bedroom progress. The burn out is real, folks. Our weekends have been filled with lots of couch time and errand running and I don’t see that changing this weekend. We still need to paint the shiplap, finish installing baseboards, spackle/caulk/paint the baseboards, order/install/paint the crown, build the dog crates and shelves for the closet nook, remove the old doors, and install/paint the new doors. So much to do but so little motivation.

2 – We finally got a quote for our new roof! We need to check over a couple of things before moving forward but hopefully they can get us on the schedule. Pretty much everyone in our neighborhood has gotten a new roof so it will be nice to join the club.

3 – I am failing hard on my reading goal this year. I have all of these new books and I have read a whopping 2.5. I definitely won’t be hitting 26 books this year but that’s okay. I really just haven’t been in the mood to read at all.

You guys, I really have nothing else. We’re pretty boring these days but if we actually want to check off our 2017 to-do list we’re going to have to find some motivation pretty soon and when we do, I’ll be sure to tell you all about whatever we do with that motivation.

 

You guys, we’re still not done with the bedroom. Every weekend we make plans to finish and every weekend we end up doing anything else (including nothing at all). Maybe this weekend we’ll finally make some progress but I’m not making any promises. I’m trying not to start any other interior projects until this one is done but I’ve definitely lost motivation to finish.

1 – Last weekend, we built a raised garden bed and planted some veggies. Eventually, our garden will be about 10ft x 20ft but we’re going to add on slowly. We may do one other box this year but I’m kind of leaving that up to Kyle. Here’s a picture before we installed chicken wire to keep out all of the cute but destructive animals that live in our yard. I’m lookin’ at you bunnies and groundhogs.

2 – A couple of weekends ago, we went up to Asheville with a group of friends and it was much needed. I’m planning on doing a full post later. I forgot how much I love Asheville. It’s only about an hour from our house to downtown but it had been years since we had last gone. Hoping to make it up there more often even if it’s just for a day trip.

3 – I cannot get motivated to eat well and work out consistently. Does anyone have any tips? I’ll get in a groove where I’ll go a few days eating well and working out but then I just lose all motivation. Something has got to give though because I just feel blah all the time and I know it’s my terrible diet and my lack of physical activity.

4 –  We’re getting a new roof! We had a crazy hail storm a few weeks ago and finally got the insurance adjuster out to see if we qualify. We haven’t hired anyone yet but hopefully within the next few weeks we’ll get it all done. We don’t think our roof is terribly old but it’s been patched a couple of times and it’ll be nice to have everything new and matching.

5 – Homes in our neighborhood keep selling for way above what we paid for ours (like $75-100k above) and it’s really making me want to finish out our current projects and put ours on the market. Of course then we’d have to find a new place to live and the market here is insane right now. If we rented we’d probably end up paying more than what we pay for our mortgage so as tempting as it is, it’s probably not going to happen. Plus, we really love our house and our lot and there’s still so much potential we want to see through. I’m just hoping that if we do end up selling in a few years we didn’t miss our window.

Fridaaaaaaaaaay! It was so tough to get out of bed this morning. It was rainy and gross out and the bed was just so freaking comfortable. I wanted to take the day off but Kyle had to be at work at 4:30 this morning for a news segment which meant I had to get up anyway to take care of the dogs plus I just took a mental health day a couple of weeks ago.

1 – We’ve officially been in our house for four years. In some ways it seems like it hasn’t been nearly that long and in others it seems like it’s been so much longer. I think my favorite project so far is the living room even though it’s not 100% finished and we might be changing the entire function of the room soon.

2 – Our first race of the year is tomorrow and I’m super unprepared. It’s a 10k so it’s shorter than our last race but I could probably count on two hands the number of times I’ve run between the half in September and now and the furthest of those was a 4 miler. I think I can make it the whole 6.2 but chances are I’ll be even slower than normal. At this point though I don’t care about my pace/time, I just want to finish and get my medal. I thought signing up for a race would push me to start running regularly again but it really hasn’t. Maybe I need to sign up for another half. Hmmmmmm. Here’s a photo from our last race.

3 – I was checking West Elm the other day to see if the mirror I want is on sale and I found they aren’t carrying it anymore which makes me SO sad. I mean, I wasn’t going to buy it any time soon because it was crazy expensive but it didn’t even go on clearance or anything. It was there one day at full price and then it was gone. Bye, mirror.

I think we’ll probably end up with this much cheaper IKEA mirror I found the other day although I need to measure the space again to make sure the scale is right.

4 – I finally bit the bullet and signed up for a recurring package at CycleBar. It’s more money than I thought I’d ever spend to sweat but I really like it and it’s the only workout I’ve been able to get myself to do consistently. I’m trying to go 3 times a week and I’m thinking about starting my long run Saturdays back up, too. Time to get back in shape for real.

5 – I’ve got the vacation itch BAD. We’re going up to Asheville for a weekend soon but I really want to go on another cruise or do a few days in Orlando and go back to Universal Studios. I really don’t even like traveling but a couple of days at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter would suit me just fine. Here’s a couple of pictures from our trip there last year.

I just realized I have yet to do a “2017 Goals Update” post but then again there’s not much to update; let’s hope the last 3 quarters of the year are more productive for both house and personal goals. Confession: I have only read two books so far this year which means I’m 4.5 books behind schedule. WHOOPS.

I know it’s been forever and a day since I posted but honestly, I just didn’t feel like blogging. I also didn’t feel like working on the house so I don’t really have much of an update but I finally had the urge to write and I didn’t want to ignore it. I don’t know if it’s burn out or what but all I’ve wanted to do for the last month and a half is sit on the couch and eat junk and watch whatever happens to be on tv. But, we just bought a new rug for our entry and it makes me really want to move on to working on that space and we need to finish the bedroom first so here we are!

Here’s the original list of what needed to get done in the bedroom:

1. Remove closet and patch wall/ceiling- We don’t use this closet and all it was doing was jutting out into the room and taking up space. We wanted to tear it out to open things up and give us more options for furniture placement.
2. Remove carpet
3. Install laminate
4. Replace baseboards
5. Paint walls
6. Build semi-built in dog crates that double as a console table
7. Add faux beams on the ceiling to match the ones in the living room
8. Buy new bedding
9. Buy a large rug to go under the bed
10. Install wall sconces on either side of bed
11. Replace window/door trim

If you’ve read my previous posts, you already know that we couldn’t actually do #1 because the closet opening supports our roof structure so we decided to turn it into a feature instead. We also added crown molding to our list and decided against the beams which made our list look more like this (I’ve crossed off the things that have been finished):

1. Install shiplap
2. Install trim around closet opening
3. Install corner boards on closet- started
4. Paint shiplap and trim
5. Remove carpet
6. Install laminate
7. Replace baseboards – old baseboards have been removed, new ones are here just need to be installed/caulked/painted
8. Paint walls
9. Build semi-built in dog crates that double as a console table
10. Buy new bedding
11. Buy a large rug to go under the bed
12. Install wall sconces on either side of bed
13. Replace window/door trim – window trim is done
14. Install crown molding

We started the corner boards yesterday before heading to the movies to see Kong: Skull Island. We still have a few pieces to install and then we’ll need to spackle, sand, and caulk everything. I don’t know how much we’ll be able to work on the room during the week if at all but I’m hoping this weekend we aren’t totally drained after our 10k so we can finish off the corner boards, install the baseboard, and get all of the trim work and shiplap prepped for paint (minus the crown molding which I’ve yet purchased and the door trim because we have to fix our door frame first from a failed DIY project).

And since I hate posts that don’t have pictures, here’s a poorly lit shot of our new entry rug! I’ve been wanting this rug for months and we finally pulled the trigger during one of RugsUSA’s huge sales. 10/10 would recommend.

• This week has been ROUGH. Kyle got really sick Sunday night and I ended up taking Monday off to take him to the doctor. He stayed home Tuesday to finish recovering and everything seemed back to normal by Wednesday. He thought maybe he had gotten sick from eating some raw brownie batter on Sunday but then I got really sick Wednesday night so we’re pretty sure it was norovirus. I’m actually writing this from my couch on sick day #2 for me but I didn’t get hit nearly as hard as he did and I’m feeling much better than yesterday so I think by tonight/tomorrow I’ll be back at 100%.
• We’re still working on the bedroom but it’s very slow. Our baseboards were delivered yesterday so the plan is to get those installed this weekend and I’m also planning on getting the faux shiplap finished up and painted. We still need to order the crown moulding and I’m undecided on the ceiling beams but we did move our small sectional and standing mirror in and Kyle hung the curtain sheers so we’re definitely getting there! Here is the sneakiest of peeks. 
• The mirror I want for our foyer is on sale right now with free shipping but I still don’t think I can pull the trigger. Never in my life have I ever even thought about spending $300+ on a mirror but this one is so perfect. If West Elm allowed stacked promo codes I could get another 15% off which would drop it well under $300 and I would probably go for it and just take it out of our small tax return.
• Of course it would probably be easier to splurge on a mirror if we hadn’t just bought tickets to see Tim McGraw and Faith Hill!! I’m so freaking excited! After missing out on seeing Garth Brooks a few months ago, I couldn’t pass this one up. The concert isn’t until September but it’ll be worth the wait.
• I still haven’t gotten back into a good running routine but I just signed up for 2 races so I’m hoping that motivates me! My first race is a 10k on April 1st and I’m nervous about it because I haven’t run 6 miles since  mid-September. The second race is a 5k in May and I’m not as worried about that one since my 10k training should get me ready for it.

Well I’m off to rest and watch the very limited channels we get with our digital antenna since Netflix won’t work for me. It’s days like today that I miss having cable.

Happy Friday!

1 – We moved back into our room this week! We still have a lot of work to do and haven’t purchased most of the materials we need to finish but our new bed was delivered so we went ahead and set it up. We tried it in a couple of different spots and just like I thought, the closet is in the way of where I really wanted it to go so it’s going to go right back where we had it before. On the bright side, the bed itself is super comfy and I’m really glad we went ahead and upgraded to a king bed. Of course, the dogs don’t care and still cling to us at night. Oh well. Here’s a teaser featuring Barley the mouse eater (don’t ask):

2 – We stopped at IKEA on our way home from visiting with our best friends in Charlotte last weekend to pick up bedding and do a little kitchen research. I think we have the kitchen pretty much figured out so now we just have to wait until we can make it work with our budget which will hopefully be next summer! They changed up some of their kitchen displays so it was fun to look at the new stuff. After we got home from Charlotte we ran some errands, picked the pups up from camp, and then got to watch the Falcons secure their place in the SUPER BOWL. I’m a huge Falcons fan and Kyle is from Massachusetts so of course he’s a Patriots fan which means February 5th will be a very tense day in our house.

3 – Yesterday I took most of the day off work and got a massage and it was seriously one of the best massages I’ve ever had. If you’re local and you like massages, check out River Falls Spa under M. Judson. Bonus: after you’re done it’s just a couple of flights of stairs up to the Chocolate Moose for cake pops.

4 – A new indoor cycling studio opened in Greenville recently and I am really digging it. They’ve been doing free rides for the last week or so and I’ve been to two classes so far with another one lined up for tomorrow. It’s pretty expensive but I think I might take advantage of one of their intro packages. If you’re interested, it’s called CycleBar. I’m not big into cycling but these classes are actually pretty fun and it’s a good work out.

5 – We’re starting to get grass in our backyard! After we had the fallen trees removed, Kyle dropped grass seed within the fenced in area and we’ve got a decent amount now. It’s definitely going to take a few seasons but it’s doing much better than the front yard. Looking at this picture is making me itch. I cannot wait to get rid of the rest of the lattice and finish off the handrails on the deck! I guess we also need to take a rake or a leaf blower to the rest of the yard.

Bonus: I’m trying out a new logo (if you’re in an RSS feed or something similar, you won’t be able to see it) and would love your feedback!