My view

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am a Summer girl.

I like my days up around 80, 85 degrees.

I like to hang by the pool or at the beach with my toes in the sand.

I much rather prefer to wear shorts and tank tops over jeans and sweatshirts.

The only thing that I love about Fall is this....

This is the view from my breakfast area.  Pretty, right?  This is where I like to have my breakfast.

It helps me to realize the beauty of this world and gets my mind set for the day.

This is the view from my kitchen.

On warm days, I enjoy sitting on the deck and taking in this view.

This is from our family room.

This is upstairs in one of the top windows of the 2-story family room.

I even get a great view from my office.

Even though I love the hot weather, I always love when our leaves change colors.  All too soon, they will all fall off and I'll be left to look at naked trees and the backs of our neighbors houses.  I try to enjoy this great view as much as I can.

I am so thankful for our home and all the trees that we have in our backyard.

Do you have great views of the change of seasons where you live?

A little Fall decor

When we were at a softball tournament a couple weeks ago, I saw these leaves all over the ground.  I thought they were so pretty because one side of them were red and the other side looked pink.  I thought they would make a great Fall decoration.

So, I gathered some up and brought them home.

Not that we don't have leaves in our own yard but I swear mine don't look like this.  And also, mine hadn't changed colors yet.

See what I mean about one side red and the other side looking pink(ish).

I wanted some to show their red side and some to show their pink(ish) side.

I arranged them on a piece of whtie cardstock.

Then, I glued them down with ordinary craft glue.

I let them dry for a couple days then went and bought a black frame.

I had to trim the cardstock down to the size of the frame and then just put the leaves in the frame like a picture.

It then got hung on the wall.  I really like how it looks.  It adds some Fall to my basement.

Do you do crafts with leaves?  Frame them and hang on the wall like I did?

I'm linking up with these parties.....

Tea cup bird feeder

I saw this great idea on one of the blogs I read about a month ago.

(Sadly, I cannot remember where I originally saw it so if it was your idea please let me know so I can give credit back to you.)

Since I saw it, I have been looking for a tea set at Goodwill.  I finally found this one.  The cup and saucer were $.99 each and the spoon was $.25.

The first thing I did was glue the cup to the saucer.  I used Gorilla glue, which is known to hold anything.

I then glued the spoon to the saucer.  The birds can use the spoon to perch on while enjoying their food.

I bought some plastic conduit at Home Depot for about $.97.  It was 8 feet long and 1/2 inch round.  I didn't want my pole 8 feet long so I just cut it in half.

It doesn't matter what this end looks like, it's going in the ground.

After I made sure the cup and spoon were secured to the saucer.

I added more Gorilla glue to the top piece of the conduit and glued the saucer onto it.

I then put it in a safe place to rest over night.

The next day, I got my oldest son to dig a hole for me.  I wanted to bury the pole about 1/3 of it's length into the ground.

After the hole was deep enough, we pushed the pole into the ground then covered it with the dirt.

I then put water into the cup for the birds to get a drink or bathe in.

I put bird feed on the saucer so they could get a bite to eat.

I think it looks really cute.  I hope the birds enjoy it and my kids don't knock it over with a soccer ball or something.

Linking up to these fabulous linky parties.......

Fall Colors

This is my view outside my bathroom window today.

Stunning!

Hoo Are You? #60

Good morning!

I'm joining in a fun party hosted over at Night Owl Crafting.

Here are the questions for this week and my answers are right below.

1. Do you type on a keyboard the correct way or do you peck like a cute little chick?

I type the correct way.  I first learned to type in high school and have used it ever since.  I cannot stand to be at a computer with someone who pecks on the keyboard.  Makes me want to push them out of the way and finish it for them.

2. Typically how long does it take you to get ready in the morning? 

When it is cold outside, I like to take my shower at night so in the morning all I have to do is dress, put on a little make-up and go.  I have natural curly hair so if I straight iron it, about 30 minutes.  If I wet it and let it dry curly, then about 10.

3. Do you prefer lip gloss or lipstick?

I prefer lipstick for the color but during the day I never have any with me so end up with lip gloss or chapstick.

4. Do you take clothes to the dry cleaner or wash them yourself even if they say dry clean only.

It would depend on what it is.  If it's a formal gown or a suit, I take it to the dry cleaners.  Mostly I try not to buy anything that needs to be dry cleaned.  Jeans and cotton shirts, my normal attire, don't have to be dry cleaned.

5. Do you prefer WalMart or Target?

Definately Target.  Everytime I go to WalMart, I swear I'm never going back.  They closed the Target closest to me so I don't go as often now. :(

Want to join in on the fun?  Head on over to Night Owl Crafting and get to know each other.

Master Bedroom Updates

2001

This is the year we bought our house and this is what our master bedroom looked like.

At this time we had a 2 month old baby and so putting our bed on the frame was most likely last thing on our list of to-do's.

At least the frame was out-of-the-way, tucked off in the corner.

This picture was taken a few years later.  We did manage to get the mattress and box springs off the floor and onto their frame.

The bassinet is gone, which tells me the baby is sleeping in his own room; much to our relief, I'm sure.

We did add curtains, a treadmill and the black chair.

We still haven't added any paint at this point.

Our room stayed like this until 2009.  We had just gotten back from the beach and I was completely inspired to finally paint our bedroom.  Hubby always takes two weeks off in July.  One of those weeks we spend at the beach the other we spend at home trying to do some type of home improvement project.  This year, it was going to be our bedroom.

So off to Home Depot to pick out some paint colors.  Since we had been at the beach, I was all into a beach theme.  I wanted pale blue walls and some beachy touches.

Can you see that little patch of blue?  That's what we ended up going with.

As we got started moving furniture and wiping down walls, we noticed how gross and disgusting our carpet was.  It was especially bad under the bed.  We have a Siberian Husky and she would lay under the bed and it was so gross under there.

Note: We hate carpet for this very reason.

So then we had the bright idea to go ahead and pull up the carpet.  Our plan was to rearrange the bedroom furniture and the bed wouldn't be over the dirt spot the dog left anymore.  Pulling up the carpet seemed like the logical choice.  We would just go out and get the hardwoods that we want up there anyway.

So, that's what we did.  We pulled up the carpet.

And we threw it out the window.

That was so much fun!!

The padding underneath it was equally disgusting and the floor under the padding had this very fine sand type stuff all over it.  That would be our dirt that we live in.  I don't care what kind of vacuum you have, you will never get that gritty sandy pieces of dirt out of your carpets.  Don't fool yourselves into thinking you are.  We have a Rainbow vacuum cleaner and still had the fine dirt under our carpets.

So that all came up and got thrown away and we got to painting the baseboards to make them nice and shiny and new looking.

Actually, the kids love to help paint so we put them to work.

This is how the room looked after we finished painting.

Hubby suggested we add an accent wall and I couldn't agree more.  I love how it turned out.

Since then we have changed the bedding, gotten new curtains and lamps and added some more pillows.

I didn't like the maroon pillows so I changed them.  You can read about the new pillows I made here.

I've also added a few accessories.

So that brings us to today.  The room is pretty much finished save for one very important thing.  The floors.  I know we probably shouldn't have pulled up our carpet until we had new floors to put down but we didn't.  We went ahead and pulled those nasty things on up.  I know some people wouldn't put up with living on plywood floors for very long, but that's just how we do it over here.  It really didn't bother me too much.  I was just glad to have the nasty carpet out of the house.

So this brings us up to

2011

We are finally ready to put down hardwoods in the master bedroom.  I couldn't be more excited.  We went yesterday and picked up some samples so we could decided which color we liked best.  We also have to make the decision as to whether we are only going to put hardwoods in the bedroom and put carpet in the hallway, landing and stairs.  Or, do we extend the hardwoods into the hallway, landing and put the stainable wood on the stairs.  I love the idea of having all hardwoods in the house.  Right now, we still have carpet on the stairs and if we remove it and put down the stainable wood, we won't have carpet anywhere.  We are still in the deciding phase on that.

Now, we need to pick out which color to put into the bedroom.  This is where I need your help.  Here are our choices.

Hubby doesn't like any of them.  I don't know which one I like yet.  What do you think?


End of 2011

We finally made the decision on the flooring for the bedroom.  We decided to go with an engineered hardwood.  We thought that would be the best decision for upstairs.  We also decided to put it not only in the master bedroom but also down the hallway to the stairs and on the landing.  The kids rooms have laminate flooring, which I wanted to pull up and do the same as our bedroom but the hubs didn't feel like we needed.  Not to mention, he didn't want to spend the extra money or deal with the hassle of pulling their floors up and replacing them.

We got the carpet removed, the staples pulled out, the floor cleaned and our supplies bought.

We started in the hallway near the stairs laying the padding.

We went right down the hallway and into the master bedroom.  I'm not sure why the hallway walls look so sunshiny yellow, but they are not that color at all.

We didn't want any edges to end up under the door to the master bedroom so we started laying the pieces of flooring there.

We then went off from that into the master bedroom.  The process was very easy once with got going with it.  The flooring snapped together super easy.

Making progress!

 We got one side of the bedroom done then moved some of the big pieces of furniture to that side and worked on the other side.

 

I get so antsy during these projects.  I want them done yesterday and hate that sometimes they take so long.

 

 

The other side is finally finished.

 

 

I love how it looks with the curtains put back up.

 

Master Bedroom Finished

I was so excited with the floors were finally finished.  I just love how they turned out.

 

 

 

 

The view from the end of the hallway into the master.
 

 
This concludes updates to the master bedroom.  For now, that is.....

But before we go, lets do a little comparison.

2001

2011

What a difference 10 years makes!

 

I'm linking up to these parties......