A growing to do list

We hope you had an amazing holiday weekend packed with fun and friends! We had our first official gathering on 4th O' July. Friends and family came from afar to celebrate, eat, and play. Much of our time over the past few weeks was dedicated to preparation of said event. Now that most of our guests have departed, reality is setting in. We are knee deep in furnishing a chair, building a bed, redoing the front yard, slight clean up on the floors Joey just laid down in the kitch, figuring out the drive way, and so much more. Before we exhaust you with new project how to's - lets take a moment together and relax. Here is a simple project we completed and no longer have to make decisions about.

We simply painted the door with primer, and outdoor friendly black spray paint. We got the planters at Home Depot, and redid the mailbox with the same paint ad the screen door and we just revamped our old one. When we moved the screen was glass, but we found the screen in the basement and replaced it. The black doormat is a Target score.

We went with black for a few reason. Number one; is we wanted to bring attention to the original windows downstairs. They are so unique! They are black lead laced in a diamond pattern. We will also be painting the house soon (meep!) a creamy white and bringing the wood design to a natrual wood state. Black just seemed to be the right accent. We want to let mother nature be take all the credit for color.

we are.....pooped

This weekend was the Mother of all weekends. We are so over the top exhausted. As I type this Joey is still in the kitchen laying down flooring (it's 11:10pm on Sunday night). We spent the weekend, with the help of our dear friend Duane, prepping for our Big 4th of July Bash and moving forward with some much needed updates.

 old kitchen floors

Joey finishing up the *new* kitch floors

We over did it this weekend, even for us. Duane and I conquered a rather large guest room. The icky blue in the guest room is now a crisp semi gloss white (Frost to be exact). This room has plans, but for this week, at least, it will remain white. Lucky for Joey and I, our favorite artist, happens to be one of our favorite friends, and he had agreed to do something amazing for us. Duane has has happily volunteered to paint our children's room. Two years before we even plan on having a child. Best part is, he doesn't think we are nuts for planning so far in advance! He will be doing a 360 degree mural in his delicate and detailed style. To say the least; we are stoked.

Here is a lil peek...more to come!

We re-mulched the front yard, potted some plants, cleaned, cleaned, cleaned, did some 4th of July shopping, ordered our patio furniture, worked on building the bed, planned some our London trip, ate and rested a little, and will be sleeping like babies for the rest of the week. Let's just say we have a lot of how-to's (and how not to's) coming up!

And, I am happy to report - our final touches on the entry way are now final-final.

Thanks to everyone for their input and suggestions - you really helped us decide!

The kitchen floors are from Ikea and called Tundra. The paint is from Home Depot and called Frost in semi-glass. We also will be working on our outdoor rooms floors this week, which is next to the kitchen. Super high gloss white panels from Ikea as well. More detailed posts coming very soon about all mentioned. Also, we didn't forget the video tour of upstairs - we just wanted to finish some updates first! We hope you had a productive weekend too!

So we really like another $200 pillow....

...and we want a few of them. This time we did a little recreation for, get this, less than two bucks!

Here is what you will need:

• .49 dish towels from Ikea (yes, 49 cents) - you will need two per pillow.
• black tea - any kind!
• a big 'ol bowl
• hot water
• sewing machine or thread and needle

So what you need to do is super simple. Put the dish clothes in the HOT "tea" you prepped in the bowl. The more tea you use, the darker your tea stain will be. Let it sit over night. The next morning ring out the excess water and pop those babies in the dryer. We used a bunch of dryer sheets to make sure they were extra soft. Next, sew the two long sides, and one short side. And there you go! Super simple and we LOVE them!