Dreams vs. Plans

Welcome to the front half of my house that has been so very neglected over the past two years. Isn't it crazy that it has been almost two years since we've moved in? Crazy indeed. Well, let me tell you a little something, moving from a 900 square foot condo into a 3300 square foot house means that you don't have nearly enough furniture to fill it. And on top of that, you might hate 80-85% of the furniture that you already have. Which means that a good deal of your house will remain quite empty for quite some time. Enter: my front room.

Please pay no attention to the furniture that is in there or the location of it, they were literally plopped there without thought and haven't been moved since the original plop.

 

  

 

 

And then the adjoining dining room:

 

 

And this is what you see from our front entry/front door:

So that's that. It needs work. And furniture. And paint. And Erica. So back in May we paid off another student loan, and we thought that we would take a few months and take the money that we would normally pay toward that loan and spend it instead on home improvements that we've been putting off since we moved in. So I started making plans.

First things first: wainscoting and crown molding. This speaks volumes to my aesthetic. I want it so badly that it hurts. I had originally thought about putting it just in the living room, but decided that the dining room could use a little too. And shoot, while we're at it, the entry way would look just so plain without it, so I wanted to do it in all three areas.

 

 

So obviously, the wainscoting would be white, which begs the question, what color on top? I was thinking navy. Which sounds weird and dreary, but it will look amazing. And then, I was trying to figure out how to make this front area of my house mesh with the back areas that have already been decorated, without it looking too matchy matchy. And then, lo and behold, this was in Better Homes and Gardens, and it was EXACTLY what I needed!

Then on the following page it had a little dream room, which in turn gave me ideas for my little dream room. Obviously, the colors need to be switched around, but it is perfection.

So here's the plan: in the living room, blue walls with white wainscoting. In the dining room, since it is a little darker, I wanted to do something lighter. I love my gray kitchen, but once again, don't want things to be too matchy, so I decided on a gray that is a shade lighter than our kitchen, and continue that into the entry way. Then back to the living room, I started e-shopping for the details. 

I came across these two couches and I love them both. This first is actually gray velvet though, which couldn't be less practical, but I LOVE it. And the nail head trim is bonkers.

And of course the tufting on this one is great, but is tufting going to be out? Or is it already out? Or is this amazing? I love it. I kind of think everything about it is amazing.

I also need a chair or two to sit across from the future couch, but have yet to decide on anything, and the lay out of the room is tricky, so I thought that after I get the couch I would push it around the room for a while and decide where things go, figure out the flow of the room and whatnot.

Then I found this painting, which is kind of like the one Erica found for my family room, and I love the depth of colors in it. It also brings in the berry colors that Better Homes and Gardens told me to accent with. :)

Okay, so remember the clock on You've Got Mail in Joe's apartment? I might have been in love with it since the first time I saw it when I was 14. But guess what, it doesn't exist anywhere on the internet other than where I found this one picture. I want to buy it immediately, but I can't find it.

So after googling all sorts of tag lines that I thought would produce Joe Fox's clock, I found this one, and I actually like it. Not exactly what I want, but I like that it is a "grandfather clock" without actually looking like my grandfather would own it. And for some reason, a small part of me likes the formality of a big clock in the living room, which is kind of the more formal room, you know?

Truthfully, beyond that, I don't have much else planned. However, we've decided that in the future we might remodel and get rid of our dining room and use that space to expand the kitchen. If we do that in the future, we want to put a built-in bookshelf on that separating wall, similar to the one below.

Or if we decide to keep a dining room, wouldn't pillars and molding like this between the two rooms be lovely? I like it so much. However, we all know that giant structural changes wouldn't happen for at least 10-15 years, but a girl can dream, right?

And that's pretty much all I have for the front room and area. The next thing on our list of things to do was getting rid of this railing. And also adding railing down our 4 stairs down into the family room.

I thought something like this would be perfect.

Another thing on our list was redoing the mantle of the fireplace. We currently have that unfortunate drywall mantle with an arch over it. Ugh. We got an estimate to redo the mantle and remove the drywall arch, as well as convert it to a gas fireplace. In doing so, we found some ideas for what we want. Oh, be still my heart.

We also want to put french doors in where the sliding door is next to the fireplace, which will look as dreamy as this, I'm sure of it.

And a pretty mantle with Christmas stuff? Nothing is better. Nothing.

And lastly, our diving board broke last summer. We had big plans to get a new one this summer. Did you know that they are expensive? And that everything to do with pools is expensive? It's dumb.

So on our way back from Newport Beach in July, we were talking about the things we were going to do and where to start. And then we started talking about finances and futures and whatnot. And since everyone knows we wanted kids like yesterday, (or last year, whatev) we started talking about budgets that include me cutting back working and providing for a baby or four. Then we thought about if we were to have a baby 9 months from that day, (which clearly isn't going to happen at this point) would we be financially prepared? We still have more student loans that need to be paid off, and even though we likely can't get them all paid off before we have kids, we need to keep making progress. And it was decided. Dreamy front half of the house and upgrades to the family room will have to wait, and aren't as important as becoming debt free. Soooo, these plans, that were so so fun to make, will instead remain dreams. Farewell wainscoting and velvet couch, I'll see you...um, soon-ish? Or not. We'll see.

Yard work is hard work.

It is no secret to my family and neighbors that I am in charge of the yard work. Truthfully, I enjoy it. And if I had the choice of doing yard work or folding the whites, you better believe I'll choose the yard every time. 

Consequently, as I was perusing the pictures on my phone, there are a great deal that are of my yard and whatnot. Because what else would a 27 year old girl be taking pictures of? Anyway, I'm posting a few just to show that there really is never ending yard work, and it means there is no end to the satisfaction I get from cutting everything back and making it look great.

This first picture is to remind me to NEVER EVER EVER again let my lawn go un-mowed for 3-4 weeks during the spring. I think this is when we got back from Hawaii, and since we were gone two weekends in a row and I think I worked the one before we left, it had seriously been ages. Why is it worse in the spring? Because I still had thick rye, mixed with the clovers. It was terrible. I had to empty the grass catcher after every row, and then the mower would need to rest and stopped working after every 3ish rows. It seriously took me like 6 hours that day. 

We have this big lavender (?) bush in our back yard that was getting impossible to trim easily because it was becoming massive, and then when we would trim it, it would look bad because it would just show all the old dead stuff underneath, you know? So one Thursday afternoon, I stopped by Home Depot and spent the best $34 ever on a trusty pair of loppers. And then I came home and went nuts with them. Behold, the lavender bush.

There is almost nothing that brings me more joy than cutting things back to nubs and then seeing how well they grow back in just a few weeks!

It's pretty safe to say that I was rather pleased with myself. And on a side note, I found about 30 tennis balls and a soccer ball wedged in the heart of the bush. Fun finds, huh?

 

And look how well it grew back and can be trimmed up so nicely now!

 

And that same day, because I had so much fun in the back yard, I took the loppers to the hedges in the front also. They were also becoming too tall, so poor things got chopped big time. I took about a foot off the top and then thinned the inside of all the dead stuff, so they looked really bad for a while, but I'm happy to report that they are filling in nicely.

And did I ever mention that my awesome parents gave us a hedge trimmer for Christmas? Happy happy day! So I use that one for the hedges on the side yard, but only when I start before Philip goes to work so he can get the trimmer started for me. Because despite what you may see in the picture below, I don't have a ton of upper body strength, and therefore, have a hard time starting power tools.

I must also mention that that is my yard work shirt. The reason for it is that I once was wearing an over sized t-shirt with my dude shorts and when Philip was driving up to our house he saw me in the driveway and thought, "What guy is doing my yard?" It was me. I was the guy. So now I wear a shirt where you can see my waistline so my husband can tell I'm a girl. :)
 

One time I loaded my dad's extension ladder in the back of Philip's truck with tie downs and a towel all by my self. And then I went to Sara's and got the lawnmower and loaded that too. I was pretty dang impressed with myself that day.

And sometimes when you have girl muscles and have to do manly work, you have to get resourceful. Hence me skateboarding around with the citrus fertilizer, because it's too dang heavy to carry to all the trees.

My green thumb hard at work. Fail.

Did I mention that we have a lot of hedges? That was actually one of the things that I loved about our house when we were looking at it, was the mature trees and landscape and the beautifully manicured yard. Little did I know at the time, or even think to ask, previous owners had a yard crew. I'm too cheap for a yard crew. Therefore, at least one group of hedges is overgrown at any given time.

But when I cut them back, I CUT THEM BACK.

And these are from just yesterday. These bad boys needed hair cuts.

 

 

And boy did they get them. And while I am always so proud of my lantanas for thriving, they always look so much better when they get a buzz.

And all the palm trees got little mohawks too.

And last but certainly not least, I am so excited for the weather to get a little cooler so I can plant pretty flowers again! The past two springs I have been so happy with my Gerbers and Impatients, but have yet to find a flower to thrive in this weird little spot in the fall. Aren't flowers just so happy? I love them.

Unfortunately, this is what they looked like 3 months later. Poor things, didn't stand a chance in 115 degrees.

Hooray for plants! I'm especially excited to get our citrus trees trimmed back this fall and to have all the dead cut out of them and then repaint the trunks, and to plant rye grass again and use waaaay more seed this time so it is super thick and pretty. In the mean time though, I'll continue to hack away at everything else in hopes that I don't kill it or damage it permanently. :)