My Year in Review

January to April

Started this blog on January 7th

My first blog post was "Nautical Bedroom", it is hard to believe that it has been a whole year since I started this blog. I have learned so much since January.

February

Took a great trip to New Orleans during Mardi Gras with A, lots of fun!!

 March and April

For St. Patrick's Day and Easter I created beaded wreaths out of the beads from the Mardi Gras parades.

May to August

May was a bittersweet month, my great-aunt Louise passed away at 89 years old, we still miss her.

At the end of the month we learned that she had left her house to my parents. We decided to buy the house from my parents, our first house.

June

The big move! It took about a month to get completely moved into the house. By the end of the month we were thoroughly exhausted.

July

Not much happened in July; I worked on the blog, planned out our home improvement projects, and had fun in the sun.
We also started updating our bathroom

August

The month when we started many reno projects!

We finished the bathroom (to this date the only room that is officially finished in our house)

Before

After

We knocked down the wall between the dining room and living room.

Before

During

After

September to December

September

More home improvement!
Took out the old picture window and replaced it with two double hung energy star windows.

Before

After

October

October was another sad month for us at the end of the month our great dog Jax died suddenly from either a heart or brain problem. This put a hold on the reno projects. We still miss him, he was taken young at the age of 6, but he will live forever in our hearts.

November

Thanksgiving and family and friends, we learned how to live without Jax and started to have things get back to normal.

December

More fun with family and friends, Christmas and now New Years!!

2010

More reno projects to come!! Can't wait to see what 2010 will bring!

We miss you Jax. Here is a video of Jax. May he rest in peace.

The winner of the $25 Gift Card to Lowes is...

Tiffani!

I have emailed the winner.

I want to let all my readers why I have not been posting recently.

On Thursday morning my great dog Jax pass away suddenly from what we now believe may have been a brain tumor. He was only 6 years old and full of life. Aaron and I miss him so much it hurts, as do all the people who knew him well.

He loved playing catch me if you can, so agile that none of us people could catch him. He loved chasing squirrels along the fence in our back yard, even if he never catch them. He had a big bark but, would never hurt a fly. He was always the center of attention and always willing to break dance on the floor to entertain everyone. There are too many things that Jax loved about life and that we loved about him to list.

All I have to say is that we will always love him and miss him forever.

My 1st giveaway is ending soon. So I thought I would post a reminder for anyone would hasn't entered yet.

Click here to enter to win a $25 gift card to Lowes.

Today is the last day to enter.

Yesterday, I posted my first giveaway to celebrate 100 followers!!

If you haven't yet, head over and enter to win a $25 gift card to Lowes Home Improvement.

Thanks again for reading!!

This is a little off topic but, I thought I would let you all know that I entered my dog Jax in the Cutest Dog Competition hosted by Dog.com.


This is Jax, he is a 6 year old mixed breed lovable dog.

If you agree head over and vote for Jax to be the Cutest Dog.

Last weekend, we got a little bit further with the living room/dining room project we have been working on since the beginning of August.

On Saturday, we worked on the outside, putting up new shingles, trim and window sill. We got pretty far before the end of the day. Unfortunately, on Sunday it rained so we had to post pone finishing the outside shingle and painting.

On Sunday, while it rained we installed the insulation and drywall on for the entire window wall. The credit for this really has to go to my husband Aaron would accomplished this in one day by himself, while I went out and did the grocery shopping, errands, etc... to get us caught up.

This weekend we will be working on taping the drywall and patching other walls that need some work. As well as coming up with a final design concept for the all the finish materials.

"10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget"
by the writers of wise bread

This is a great resource for saving money. I took this out from the library a few weeks ago and found some very helpful tips about saving money. Usually when I take books like these out, I do not really learn anything because they are filled with the same old tips; create a budget, brown bag your lunch, etc... This book is different because it breaks everything down by specific categories and tips that you can follow to really save some money that you probably have not seen before.

Here are some of the categories they cover related to Home Design:

• Ways to create a gourmet kitchen for less
• Frugal party ideas
• Free gift wrapping ideas
• Great inexpensive gifts
• Going green inexpensively
  
• Lower heating costs
• etc...
  

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This weekend Aaron, his dad and my dad replaced an old picture window from the fifties with two new energy efficient double hung windows.

Here is what the old picture window looked like on Friday night.

There was a large amount of wood rotting around the window. It was becoming a safety hazard.

After removing the window they had to rebuild the frame because the new window was slightly bigger than the old one.
Ready for the window.

It fits!!


And this is how we left it on Saturday, when we removed the wall board to take the old window out we found that there is no insulation in the walls of the house. So, before we put new wall board up we will insulate the wall and later blow insulation into the rest of the walls of the house.

Since, I started taking classes a couple of weeks ago to get my Master of Teaching in the Fine Arts, I thought I would share with you a few pieces of my original artwork.

Surfers, Acrylic on Canvas

Rockwell, Acrylic on Canvas

Gossip, Oil on Canvas

Jax, Acrylic on Canvas

Baseball, Acrylic on Canvas

Two years ago today I said "I Do" to the man of my dreams.

We have already made so many memories and are going to make so many more in the years to come.

Today, I'm taking a break from the usual post to say Happy Birthday to my husband Aaron.



Have a great birthday.

Love you forever.

Over a month ago we started what was suppose to be a quick redesign of our bathroom. We were able to paint, change the faucet and add a medicine cabinet within a week of starting the project, but a few things kept us from finishing the project until just last night.

We could not find a light fixture that worked with our space, either the fixtures we found where to large or they did not work design wise. We finally found one online and it arrived last week, that was a big relief.


So, last night we put the finishing touches up including a photo that Aaron's Mom took off our hometown. Without further ado here are the before and after shots of your bathroom.

Before After


Before After

There was not much storage so we added a hook behind the door to hang robes.



We also use this tight space next to the shower to store some of our towels.

One project down, many more to come.

Last week I showed you how we started our living room/dining room/hall project by tearing down the wall in between the living room and dining room.

This weekend we continue the project with more demo by taking down the rest of the wallpaper in the living room and most of the wallpaper in the hall. This time it was only myself and Aaron so it was slow going but, we did make considerable progress.


By the end of Saturday we had one wall in the hallway done and started on the finishing the living room, (this weekend we did not start until 11am, we wanted to sleep in a little this weekend). We stopped at around 5pm.

Sunday, we started again, working from 11am to about 3pm. We finished the living room and most of the second wall in the hall. The hall that is adjacent to the living room/dining room had the same wallpaper as the living room, which had been painted over and plastered over in certain parts which made it harder to take down than regular wallpaper.

When we stopped at 3pm, we went on a cleaning rampage because the dust was driving me crazy.

Later this week I'll be able to finally show off the finished bathroom, stay tuned.