Oh, hello blog!

Yikes, it's been over a month since I last posted!

Unfortunately, once December rolled around and the holidays got closer, our projects took a back seat.

But I thought I'd share some photos of how we decorated the house for Christmas

And here are a few from a recent blizzard:

Yup, the snow was up to his knees!

I'm hoping, after the New Year, we'll be able to jump into some more projects, namely, finally painting the downstairs bath, buying new toilets for both bathrooms (yay for a Lowe's giftcard from my sister for Christmas!) and figuring out a plan of attack for painting the kitchen cabinets - a project we'll most likely undertake in the Spring!

And one of my goals for 2011 is to blog more!!

And the painting continues!!

In preparation for our housewarming, we got about 90% of the house ready. A few projects had to wait, because, quite frankly, we ran out of time!!!

Today we finally tackled a few projects we had been putting off

Here's a before picture in case you forgot how lovely these built-ins looked:

We decided the brown just wasn't gonna cut it!!!

And so, we brought the rest of the family room into 2010 by painting the doors/handles/hinges/shelves. (You probably also noticed that we painted the gross white/brown tiles)

We also put another layer of insulation in our attic in preparation for the winter (no pics tho!)

Our next project on the "to-do list" over the next month (or 2!) is to paint the downstairs half bath this color:

Whew!

Splish, splash, I was takin' a bath...

Well, more like, I was taking a shower...and was noticing how grimy and gross our shower doors and showerhead were...

So I tackled the doors with some of this:

Because they looked like this:

Pretty, eh?

And after about 2 hours of scrubbing they turned into this:

Now, I realize the doors are still rather hideous (as is the tub itself!) but for now, until we tackle taking down the doors and putting up a nice, curved shower rod and new curtain (and eventually we'd like to put in new doors altogether!) this will have to do!

Oh, and here's what the old showerhead used to look like:

So I bought this guy:

It's a Waterpik Ecoflow and it's supposed to save us lots of $$$ because it has a "pause" button you can use when lathering/etc so you don't waste water..and it looks cuter too!!

This is what the cord was doing after I attached it! I unwound it and let the showerhead hang down, in an attempt to stretch out the cord so we don't get attacked in the middle of a shower!

Get ready for lots of pictures!!

Last night we hosted about 50 of our friends and family to celebrate our new home!

We worked our butts off these past few weeks to get everything ready and we heard lots of rave reviews about the final results!

Here are some loooong-awaited pictures of a few rooms that are finally done!

Living Room:

The Before-

with the previous owner's stuff!!!

The During -

The After-

(The pictures you see stuck to the trim/fireplaces are the before pictures so our guests could see the transformation!)

Master Bedroom:

The Before-

The After-

Half-bathroom:

The Before-

The During-

The After-

(That mirror is temporary til I find one I love..gotta love quick $5 fixes from Target! And we'll eventually get a new toilet, but the sink just neeeeeded to go!)

And a few other updates, etc.:

I really hate the hole the old numbers left behind, but oh well :) Hopefully updating the light fixture soon too!

We decided it was time to do something about the front steps, and while we didn't have the time to paint the concrete before the party, a good power-washing definitely made them look a lot better!!

The Before:

The During-

The squiggle part is the clean concrete - see ya later dirty steps!!

The After-

The power washer did remove some of the old paint that was previously on the steps but overall I think it looks pretty good!

New fall wreath:

New inside doormat from my Mom!

Whew...

Of course we still have a lot of projects to do (paint the kitchen cabinets, paint the half bath, new light fixtures for the foyer/dining room) but it feels sooo good to have accomplished so much in the past 5 months!!

Thanks to everyone who came out last night to celebrate with us!!