Christmas Eve

It seems that 3 years ago when we were here, everyone disappeared for the holidays. It's funny what a few deployments will do to everyone's need to travel over the holidays. A few of our close friends in Virginia stuck around for the holidays. We invited them over for football and dinner on Christmas eve. What a wonderful evening it was! And what a good excuse it was to get the house put together quickly!

 Glenn made a yummy roast beast for dinner. I think it might be a new Christmas Eve tradition!

I had fun decorating the table and getting to use all of my china that I only bust out 2 or 3 times a year. Still glad I registered for it though!

From L to R: Isabel and Marcy, Chris, Me, Glenn, Zach, Ben, Bridget and Amy (and baby Ella to be). And Marcy's mom Donna is taking the picture.

What a wonderful day to spend the holiday with our Navy "family".

Happy Birthday Laura!

Today is my sister-in-law's birthday! I hope you have a wonderful day with no puking kids! ;)

  

Hanging Things

We are continuing the hanging theme around here and putting more holes in the walls! This time, for a few towels. The house came sans towel bars, hooks, racks or anything to hang a wet towel/toilet paper from. Thanks to a few Home Depot gift cards from the family (Thanks!) we installed a few in both bathrooms the day after Christmas. Sadly, they weren't on sale like all the Christmas things.

The master bathroom still needs a few hooks, but I'm working on a small project for that. I'll post that later this week.

 Good work, Glenn.

No more 3M hooks in the bathroom!

Tuesday 10: From the Eyes of a 5 Year Old

 These pictures were all from the weekend of Grandma's memorial service. I miss that lady. I can still hear her voice in my head. I hope that never goes away.

 

 This one of grandpa has to be one of my favorite pictures ever. :)

 

Merry Christmas!

Photo Gallery

We have tall ceilings in this house which means we have big walls. The big white walls have been staring at me with their blankness so I finally got the urge to hang a few things up. I started with the long wall in the dining room because it can be see. From most of the first floor. There is another big wall in the living room, but I'm waiting til we get a new couch before I decide what goes there.

Since the plaster walls are a little fragile, I knew moving the pictures around several times was not an option. I used a little trick I saw on Young House Love and started with newspaper templates.

Once I was happy with that arrangement we got the drill, hammer and screwdrivers out. We did a little research and it seems that unless the nail is being used with a picture hanger (aka going in at an angle) the best thing to use is a screw that has been predrilled.

Of course we still had to move a few around because my measuring skills aren't always superb or one time when the screw randomly broke in two mid way in to the wall.

I love how it turned out! Now I just need to update a few pictures in the frames. I think that will have to wait til after the holidays!

The table that never dies

The black table is actually two tables. The legs come from a table that I pulled out of the trash at my first apartment in Wisconsin. The table top comes from a table I bought just after graduation, at a garage sale in Ames, Iowa. With my dad's help, I frankensteined the two together and refinished them in an ebony stain to match my IKEA chairs.

The table moved to Japan and was in our dining room for awhile, but once my giant table from Bali arrived, I took it apart and moved it to the storage room.

It did get used one more time in Japan, for a 12 person dinner party where I needed a second table. You had to sit on a few pillows on the couch, but it worked!

When we got to this house, it seemed sad to send it to the basement to die, but it was a little awkward in the kitchen. Glenn busted out the circular saw and cut off about a foot of one side and it works! Maybe it will get another makeover someday.

Also, my impulsive Pottery Barn Cubby Organizer purchase (it went on sale!) before we even left Japan works perfectly! I was hoping it would have a home in our future kitchen after watching a Sarah Richardson show on HGTV. She was renovating a family lake house and each person had a cubby spot labeled with their name for their coffee cup. I saw it over a year ago, but it always stuck in my head and even though there are only two of us and we usually use the same 3-4 coffee mugs. Now I'm just mad at myself for not collecting the Starbucks mugs in Japan and Asia. They had one for Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto and all the fun cities that we visited abroad.

 

Oh well, it appears we have enough mugs already! Although, if you happen to go through the Twin Cities airport Starbucks (Adam...), I'd love the Twin Cities/Minnesota mug!

Thanksgiving

We finally have the computer hooked up and internet so I can post a few of the pictures that were on my camera. We spent Thanksgiving with our dear friends, the Butalas. We were SO excited to come back to Norfolk and spend the next several years with them, but alas, the Navy had different plans. A few weeks after we got back to VA, they received orders to San Diego. We are soaking up our last few months with our friends!

 

Amy made a delicious meal! I love our Navy family, but I'm not looking forward to saying goodbye so soon after saying Hello again!

 

A little privacy

Our front door is more like a window in to the entire house. The windows were huge and every time I laid on the couch, I felt like the entire neighborhood could see me. I'm sure that wasn't the case, but during our second night in the house, a neighbor stopped by and said, "Sarah said you didn't have a baby, but I saw a baby and had to come and see if I was right so I could rub it in her face." "Well, that is our friends' baby, not ours." And she saw that while walking her dog, so.... a solution was needed.

First I bought some tiny cafe curtain rods that I was going to put up, but I couldn't decide what kind of fabric. Then I realized that the handle to the door would be in the way of the bottom cafe rod. Then I saw this post on Bower Power. Perfect!

First I traced the pattern on a piece of paper so that I could figure out how far from the top, bottom and sides to start the pattern. Martha must know the size of my windows because it worked out to be 1/2 inch from each side and 3/4" from the top and the bottom. My brain can handle easy numbers like that.

Next, I taped off the edges of the window so that I could tell if I was going generally straight with the stencil. Having never stenciled anything before, I practiced once on a piece of paper and then headed straight to the window. I figured I could just take a razor blade to it if it was terrible.

I started in the corner and worked my way over and up. I realized quickly that I would have to let each section dry before I could continue since the stencil overlaps slightly in order to line up the pattern. 

So while I was waiting for the sides to dry, I decided that the middle window was going to take too long to stencil and I wanted a little more privacy than the just the pattern, so I just took my sponge brush straight to the window and went to town and painted the entire thing minus a 1" border around the edge. This had been my original plan for all the windows, but the safety smart guy that Glenn is recommended that being able to see who is at the door and whether or not you want to unlock it, is probably a good idea. Very true.

So here she is after the tape has been removed! Once we get a few more blinds on the side of the house, pants won't always be required when running down to get the clean laundry from the basement!

Living Room Updates

For awhile the TV was sitting in front of the fireplace, but then I couldn't see the stockings! The living room isn't very big either so it kind of felt like you were inside the TV. So, up on the wall it went! It is a little high, but the only place for the giant TV. We bought a mounting bracket for the TV and Glenn worked his handy man skills. I was really only helpful when lifting the TV and that was marginal I think.

I bought the wooden Japanese window shutter without any clue what I was going to do with it, but it works pretty well as a fireplace screen...well, until we get a gas insert for the fireplace, but that will probably be awhile since we would like to upgrade the stove to gas at the same time.

Here is a true BEFORE from when we were house hunting:

And AFTER:

We've since moved the cabinet on the left over to the right of the fire place to cover up all the ugly cords. Once Glenn gets a longer cable of some sort, we can move the PS3 and cable box off of the mantle too.

Only a couple more boxes to get rid of and we will be cardboard box free!