Crazy Organizational Lady....

I finished my weekend project of creating a "second pantry" and organizing it - I'm so excited that I open the closet and stare at the organizational wonder of it all. I know I'm anal and weird. But I love it!

When we were building our house, I claimed the random hall closet as the future home for all of my entertaining stuff- platters, bowls, Christmas plates, cupcake carriers, etc. We already have a double closet in the mudroom for coats, so this closet (which is located right outside of the mudroom) really didn't have a purpose. Its really deep and really high, so lot's of room! And thank god for Brian, he knows I'm totally anal about organization so he let me have my fun with the closet and helped hang the shelving. Such a good sport.

The second pantry is located in the hallway leading to the mudroom and garage. It's the second door, the first is the powder room.

Here is what it looked like inside (sorry for the bad pictures, it was a tight space and hard to get a picture of the entire closet since I couldn't go back further)

Trying to show you how high the closet goes... it goes really high.

After painting the inside a fun blue color (leftover from the dining room) and two trips to the Container Store for elfa shelving here is what the closet looks like now:

So. Much. Room. I can't even get the entire closet in one picture. I had so much fun organizing everything and LOVE that I finally have room for all of my entertaining / kitchen stuff. In the old house, most of this lived in the garage on a shelf so its really nice to have everything in the house and so easy to get.   : )

Now I'm planning my next organization project.... kitchen drawer inserts, closet organizers, office organization.......... sigh. They all cost money, so gotta save and plan.

The stairs won't kill me anymore!!

Finally got the runner installed down the stairs, so I won't slip and fall down them anymore!

Here is what the stairs looked like before. Very pretty with the dark stain and white trim contrast, but also VERY slippery.

And here is what they look like today, with the carpet runner...

 Do you notice that the carpet isn't centered????  (Do you also notice the two freaky cats???) The carpet is off centered because there are three shorter stairs at the top before the stairwell curves, so we had to center the runner on those stairs. It doesn't look weird in person, but it is noticeable when you look at the bottom step. The things we are learning! And those freaky cats seem to enjoy the off centered carpet, as Tasha is dead set on walking up the stairs by only stepping on the hardwood part.

Here is a view from the side- so pretty. Love the contrast.

Three week update!

Its been about three weeks since we moved, so here is an update on what the house looks like. After two EXHAUSTING weekends of unpacking, organizing and running to Lowes multiple times we are finally over the hump! Most of the rooms are unpacked- yippee! This weekend hoping to tackle the basement and attic (organizing those rooms a little better) and finally unpacking our pictures to hang on the walls.

here is what the house looks like now:

 Outside the front yard gives the appearance that we are all unpacked and settled in. Ha!

The biggest disaster in the house- and its the first room you see when you come in the front door! The office.

Patiently waiting for the furniture to be delivered. We have a huge bookshelf for the back wall and a desk on its way. I will still have to paint them which will be a huge under taking but it was impossible to find solid wood office furniture in black without spending tons of money.

This room puts us in a bad mood because we can't find anything and all of our important paperwork is somewhere in these boxes. Like how I try to organize it by creating a ghetto desk out of one of our tailgating tables? It didn't work.

 Here is the dining room. The furniture looks great in this room, perfect fit for Brian's great Aunt's dining room set.

The bottom of the walls need to have the wood boxes added and then we need to paint it white (that's primer on the walls right now). On the hunt for some fabric to make really tall and wide curtains. I have in mind a bold print so I need to plan a trip to fabric row in Philly to see if I can find anything. Really need the curtains to warm up this space (and to hide the glass breaker alarm- that little white box on the left of the window). Still deciding what to do about blinds or shades for the actual window.

 Here is the kitchen table and the kitchen (plus Boris and Tasha eating). Its really bright and white in this space. Still working out colors for the walls and what to put on the doors to block the sun. We realized that when the sun sets we get a beautiful view but also we can't sit at the table or watch tv due to the glare.

 Right side of the kitchen. Looking a little plain right now. Need some color on the walls and some window treatments to add texture. And we still need to add the backsplash - maybe a summer/fall project.

Here is the left side of the kitchen - finally have a refrigerator! YEAH!!!!

 Sorry for the really dark picture. Still learning how to work the camera with the bright light outside... Anyway, a bad picture to show you the kitchen table and the living room. Tasha is at the window watching the golfers. The cats seem to like watching the golfers and their golf carts much more than watching the ground hogs.

Better picture of the living room. It looks small in this picture! The tv was missing in this picture, as we were waiting for the new one to be delivered. I'm sick of the red accents, so I'm thinking of adding blue accents in the future. Still need to hang pictures and the mirror above the fireplace and go to fabric row in search of fabric for the windows and pillows. Plus, we need to get actual blinds for the windows and throw away the temporary paper ones we are using now.

Here is a shot of the back of the house. Do you like our ghetto stairs and picnic table? After pricing out decks, it looks like Brian is seriously considering building our deck to save some $$. And we may have to wait until next spring as deck materials are expensive! Its hard to learn patience, especially when your neighbors are building their decks and we would love to have a deck now to sit out and enjoy our evenings - but you can't always keep up with the Jones, right?

Not very exciting, but here is a shot of the garage. We spent last Saturday putting together shelves and organizing it. Then we found 4 more boxes for the garage hidden in the basement (which we promptly decided to tackle next weekend) Can't wait to get rid of all of our moving boxes this weekend. I posted "free moving boxes" on craigslist and got 20 replies within ten minutes. Feel much better about giving them to someone else who needs them instead of just recycling them.

Our plan for the garage is next Memorial Day (2012) to paint the walls and floors in the garage after the concrete sits for a year.

 Upstairs - here is the laundry room at the top of the stairs. LOVE having the laundry room right by our bedrooms, makes doing laundry so much easier! I would love to paint this room a nice light green/gray and build better shelves for storage. Definitely not a priority though, although could be a fast weekend project.

 Here is the master bedroom and our new furniture. Love how huge this room is! On the hunt for some nice fabric for curtains and pillows in this room, plus maybe a bench w/ a fun fabric on it as well. And we need to get real blinds soon as the paper ones are driving me crazy!

 Another view of the master bedroom. The jewelry boxes on top of the dresser don't look great but they are temporary. We are hoping to organize the closets this fall and will have shelves for the jewelry boxes in the closets so we free up the top of the dressers.

And another view of the master bedroom, looking out into the hall.

 The very plain and boring guest room. This room needs some work to feel more cozy!

 Another view of the guest room--- boring!

And the second guest bedroom - also pretty boring!

May 23rd -- Moving Day!

Finally made it to moving day. After 8 months of construction and 1 month of painting and packing. Sad to leave Conshohocken and the townhouse we lived in for 4.5 years. We got married while living in that house! But excited to have new adventures and make our new house a home.

Our home for the past 4.5 years ~ Nathans Place

What our main floor used to look like

 Our empty main floor now : (

 So sad : (

Movers unpacking our stuff in Blue Bell. You don't realize how much crap you have until you see it loaded onto a truck!

Packing and Painting Fun!

So, we didn't pack until the last minute. And we thought we could also paint the new house before we moved in. Setting ourselves up for: packing Monday-Thursday and painting Friday -Sunday. Throw a garage sale in there as well, and we were exhausted by moving day.

Oh well, I'm not shocked we procrastinated - packing is horrible. It takes so much time, you never have enough boxes / tape / packing paper / etc. And we were only moving 15 minutes away but still had to pack everything like we were moving cross country.

here are some pictures of the packing:

Kitchen all packed up. We ate take out and pizza for 2 weeks, it was horrible. I was craving grilled chicken and steamed broccoli!

And of course the cats were all freaked out with the moving and took advantage of the relax "rules". Here are paw prints all over the coffee table. Our cats aren't allowed on furniture normally....


And some pictures of painting:

Master bedroom all prepped for painting. We painted this room a really pale blue. As we were painting though it looked more like "electric baby blue". And we realized the trim was painted a creamy yellow color, which looked very colonial with our paint colors. So, we called in painters to quickly paint all of the trim and doors in the house bright white. This helped tone down the baby blue lots! Saved us from having to repaint!

The family room all prepped. We are painting this room one shade darker than the hall color. The green from the golf course is screwing up the colors! Everything in the room gets a green glow to it.

Let the packing begin!

Ugh! How awful is packing your house? After putting it off for as long as possible, we have started packing the house. And kudos for Brian for actually starting this process (yep, I expected crazy anal me would have the house packed already). Hopefully, we'll have enough time to go through everything and decide what gets packed, what we can sell in the yard sale or donate and what can be thrown away. Really trying to pair down our stuff and get rid of things we don't use or need anymore. I hate the thought of moving stuff that will just sit in the attic.

That's the plan. We are both off tomorrow for Good Friday so hoping we make a serious dent in the packing this weekend - so after we close NEXT FRIDAY (Woo Hoo!), we can spend time at the new house painting instead of packing the old house.

And I'm really hoping to avoid that day before movers come "throw everything in a box quickly" rush. But I think that might be impossible.

Oh well, at least the cats are having fun with the packing. Any excuse to explore places they aren't suppose to be and attack each other.....

Window Shopping....

This is my new obsession. I LOVE this table and chairs for our future kitchen.

 Look at that gigantic pedestal base. And the wood is nice and distressed so it will hopefully hide future scratches. And when we are blessed with children, I can just picture a wood high chair stained to match. I am in love. It's from the Paula Deen furniture line (who knew that she had furniture??) and I love Paula Deen with her crazy enjoyment for anything fried, sweet or buttery. I think the color may be a nice in-between of our cabinets and floors, especially with a nice rug underneath. Can't you just picture it right here in the empty space? Sigh.

But of course, there are issues. First, I have no job and its more expensive than we were looking. Second, it may be a tad too big for the space. Trying to convince Brian to take a trip this weekend to a local furniture store so we can visit my new obession and see how big the table looks in person and what the cost will be. Until then, I will just stare at this picture.

UPDATE: So, sad news. In person this table was not worth the price. The chairs were not that comfortable which was so sad because they are really pretty. And the table top isn't solid wood (like the pedestal and chairs) so it scratched super easy. The pedestal is still stunning and I actually considered just buying the pedestal but then I would have to find chairs that matched and figure out a table top. To much of a hassle with everything else going on. After spending an entire day furniture shopping for a dark round pedestal table, we were really discouraged.

But then--- our original table came back to life. Originally we planned on purchasing this table (in black) from World Market:

But, since World Market hates us (they closed our only store and whenever we order from them, the item becomes discontinued and our order is cancelled weeks later) they discontinued the black finish before we could order the set.

That is until two days in April when they not only brought back the black finish but had a 50% off sale! Score! We ordered right away and then waited a week to get our confirmation that our order had been processed and was shipping. We weren't expecting to actually get the table set as right after we ordered it, the site changed the set to "out of stock" - we must have got the last (or only?) one. Score again! I am a little nervous that the table may be delivered banged up or something is wrong with it but time will tell. Now just have to wait until its delivered- on April 29th (the day we close, how perfect!)

The World Market table isn't as dramatic as the Paula Dean table - but its more comfortable and durable. Plus it cost us $600 w/ the 50% off sale compared to the $3,000 we would have spent on the Paula Dean table. So, its ok that its not as dramatic!