Dining Room

We've been in our house for a year and a half and we still haven't decorated. Not really decorated. When we moved in, I was determined to resist the urge to run out and buy a bunch of stuff to put on the walls and fill the space and to instead live by this mantra:

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

-- William Morris

That meant waiting to find the pieces I really LOVED. Which takes both time (to research what you want, find what you want and then convince yourself that what you've found is indeed actually what you want) and money (thus circling back to the time issue, to save the money to buy what you've now convinced yourself is exactly what you want).

Because of this, these are the rooms in our house that have remained "unfinished" for over a year: dining room, living room, master bedroom, master bath, guest bedroom, guest bath, Lee's office and my office/loft.

Now I know what you're thinking -- that's all of the rooms in your house. Well yes, it is. Almost. You see, I am comfortable enough to declare the powder room "finished." Oh, and the kitchen! There's nothing left to do in the kitchen (there was never anything to decorate in the kitchen in the first place)...although now that I think about it we could really use a nice stainless steel trash can in there. But I digress.

Because now, you see, three of these rooms are finished. Three! And over the next few weeks I'm going to show off these rooms and the others as I finish them because this is my blog and I'll do what I want. And if you're not into home decor you can just tune out those posts and tune back in for cute pictures of Sugar.

For each room I'll try to post: before pictures, after pictures, a list of resources and, inevitably, the things about the room that I'd still like to change. Because if I waited until every single detail in every room was perfect then I'd never post any of our home decor projects and you'd all be terribly disappointed.

Ok, so here goes. First up: the dining room!

And first problem: I have no before pictures. But it's ok, because the room was TOTALLY.BLANK. before we bought dining room furniture, so you're not really missing anything. Promise.

Here's the finished product:

You see, it all started with this beauty, the china cabinet of my dreams:

As soon as I saw this china cabinet at Haverty's, it was love at first sight. The problem? We hated the table and chairs that went with it. The chairs were too big and elaborate and the table had what Lee called a marshmallow top, because it dented and scratched if you even looked at it wrong.

So we started the search for a different dining room set. But I couldn't get the Haverty's china cabinet out of my head, so we changed our approach. Instead, we'd try to find a table and chairs that matched the Haverty's china cabinet.

We struck gold with Bassett's custom dining table options and after running all over town with a stain sample we were fairly confident that the finish on the cabinet would match the table. And it does, almost perfectly. In fact, the turned farmhouse table legs match the bottom supports of the china cabinet for even more cohesiveness that makes it almost impossible to tell that the they're from totally different stores.

So, here's what went into the room:

- Dining table: Custom from Bassett

- Dining chairs: Harper side chairs from Bassett

- China cabinet: Copley Square by Haverty's

- Curtains: Argentina panels in Peacock from Bed Bath & Beyond

- Curtain hardware: Target

Now, what don't I like about the room? First, the chandelier. In fact, I hate it. It was here when we bought the house, and now it matches nothing in the room. Ideally, I'd buy this beauty:

Because ideally it would not cost $600. I haven't been able to find a suitable alternative, so I will bide my time until the right chrome/nickel chandy comes into my life.

The second missing element is a centerpiece. For now I'm throwing together seasonal centerpieces but eventually I'll need something permanent and non-seasonal.

But even with those two things, I'm declaring her DONE. I'll leave you with a few pics from our first dinner party at Christmas:

Happy Valentine's Day!

What a week it's been.

Things were absolutely crazy at work as we rushed to get this guy's website up and running before his first commercial aired during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. It was a roller coaster ride but as we celebrated Friday night and watched the spot air together as an agency it was a pretty great moment.

Then it decided to snow again. We woke up Saturday morning with about 3 inches. This time though it was beautiful, fluffy, fun snow that didn't stick to the roads. Lee built a humongous snowman but the sun quickly started to melt things away.

Because of late nights at work and the snow I totally spaced on Valentine's Day and didn't get any cards sent out. I barely managed to pick one up for Lee. We did get out Saturday afternoon though and I bought some flowers for our table. It's amazing how much joy those tulips have brought me this weekend.

We decided to celebrate V-day last night with dinner at Macaroni Grill. Beforehand we made a quick stop to pick up Lee's Valentine's gift -- a pressure washer from Sears. Romantic huh? But if you know Lee you know it was a perfect gift.

Lee got me a gift certificate for a massage, and after a busy two months at work that was a perfect gift too.

I hope your Valentine's weekend was awesome. Here are a few pics from ours:

Posing with the snowman

Our neighbor Levi checking out the snow

Sugar isn't sure why it keeps snowing

Pretty tulips

Random Thoughts on a Monday

There's nothing more healing than a weekend with my sister

I'm currently loving the new Lady Antebellum CD

The Olympics start in 4(!) days and I'm pretty excited about that

My favorite Super Bowl commercial? Google's "Parisian Love" - I'm such a girl

I've got an exciting furniture restoration project coming up. I hope it's not a flop.

It's probably too early to be looking forward to the weekend as much as I am

That is all for now.

Snow Weekend

We've had a pretty amazing snow weekend.

We got about 4 inches of snow here, topped by a layer of sleet/ice. It wasn't the most fun stuff to play in, so we spent the weekend:

- Making snow cream
- Doing our taxes (Lee)
- Making soup and homemade pizza
- Watching the Miss America pageant and all 3 hours of Titanic (me)
- Spoiling Sugar by letting her stay inside ALL weekend
- Venturing out to Walmart for more supplies
- Drinking the most delicious hot cocoa while watching the Grammys
- Creating a new blog design (still a bit in the works, but yay for bigger pictures!)
- Did I mention cooking, eating and doing dishes - times 6?

Patio/backyard, with snow cream bowls filled to the brim:






Wal-mart parking lot, eerily full of seagulls. If you know me and my aversion to birds, you know I was NOT crazy about this situation:


All in all it's been a great weekend, just what I needed after a pretty stressful month at work. And we'll both be going in a few hours late tomorrow due to still slick roads, so we get to prolong the laziness just a little longer ;-)

Frozen Ponds and Salty Ribs

Lee finished up his smoker last weekend and was itching to try it out.

We had plans with Chrissy and Mike to take the dogs for a hike on Saturday (they have a new German Shepherd puppy), so we invited them over for ribs afterward. Lee spent Saturday morning deciding on the perfect rub and sauce recipes and prepping the ribs.

We had already postponed the hike once because it was SO cold. Last weekend wasn't looking any better but we decided to brave it anyway. We went to Harris Lake park and once we got moving we warmed up and it was fine.

The last time Lee and I hiked at Harris it was the hottest day of the year, so now we've been on the hottest and coldest days of the year. Both were still enjoyable, so now there's no excuses for any of the days in between.

It was actually kind of cool to see all of the ponds and puddles frozen over. Sugar had fun ice skating:

After two hours of hiking we were definitely ready for a good meal.

Sadly, it wasn't meant to be.

It sure looked pretty while it was on the smoker:

But the ribs were CRAZY salty. Total FAIL. Way less salt in the rub next time. By the time they got done though we were too drunk to care that the meal sucked.

Sugar and Ali had a blast playing together. It's impossible to get a shot of them that doesn't look like this:

Unless there are treats involved:

We all pooped out early. After Ali went to bed, Chrissy and Mike cheated on her with Sugar:

We can't wait to do it again...mostly so Lee can redeem himself with a decent meal.

Piddling and Tinkering

Lee came out of the woods behind our house one day with this:

"I found this in the woods. I'm going to make a grill out of it."

"That's stupid. You already have a $600 grill sitting on the patio."

"Well it's going to be a smoker, not a regular grill."

I rolled my eyes and said "Whatever lady." This is what Lee says to me when I'm trying to tell him something -- it means 'stop telling me what to do. I'm going to end up going along with what you said but first I want to be difficult about it.' So I've started using it back on him. It means 'that's a stupid idea but whatever.'

So he piddled and tinkered in the garage for two weeks and it was great because he was out of my hair and I could watch Ellen in peace without him griping.

Of course there were parts that had to be bought but they were pretty minor -- hinges, handles, grill grates. He bought a Dremel to do some of the cutting and had burnt the motor up within 10 minutes. Lowe's kindly replaced it though.

In the end, he came out with this:

I was pretty impressed, but would never admit it. All he got from me was a Whatever Lady.

Tune in tomorrow to hear about how the first meal on the smoker turned out.

Resolutions

The new year has been here for 13 days now, so it’s high time I share our resolutions with you.

They shouldn’t come as a big surprise though, as these are the resolutions I make every year: to get in shape both physically and fiscally. Or, as someone put it much more eloquently:

2010 = skinny jeans, fat wallet

We're doing pretty good so far on eating better and exercising more. And this weekend we're sitting down to go over our finance goals for the year and how to make them happen.

I’ll be checking in periodically to let you know how we’re doing.

P.S. - I'm also determined to get a new blog design up soon. I was hoping to replace the Christmas design with it but I'm not done yet (ok, I haven't even really started), so you'll have to deal with "Sundress" a little longer.