Mirror Mirror on the Wall...

Once upon a time, this lovely mirror hung in the dining room of my family's old house.

When they moved, the mirror traveled across the river to my grandparents' house. After many years there, the mirror came to its final resting place at the Hayes' house.

But in a room full of silver chandeliers and accessories, this golden mirror was an outcast.

One coat of spray paint later...

...the mirror will now live happily ever after.

Bookcase Reveal

We are 90% done with our bookshelves!

(The blue tape marks places to secure the future ladder railing. It is not a permanent fixture.)

We still need to add crown molding and attach the rolling library ladder, but it's nice to finally be able to unpack our boxes of books!

Making progress

For the past month, our garage has looked like this:

I wanted to paint over that light wood color to make it have more of a shabby chic look.

I put one coat of primer on it, then started on the white paint. Here is what the can looked like:

This is a more accurate description:

The big reveal is coming soon!

Come on in?

The front entry of our house needed help.  It was so plain and, to me, it screamed, "We just moved in and haven't decorated yet!"

The first step was a welcome mat.  We started off with this $5.00 mat from Home Depot.

I then added tape and and a freezer paper monogram.

(The font for the letter H is called Plantagenet Cherokee.)

I attacked it with black spray paint, peeled off the tape, and voila.

Not too bad for five bucks.

We've already seen the effects of having a welcome mat.  Not one hour after I put that outside, this little ball of fur walked into the house:

He literally just strolled right in through the open door and made himself at home.  He actually stayed here for about six hours before someone claimed him.  I guess there's something to be said about having a welcome mat!

Catching up

We've been so busy moving in and unpacking that we haven't had a chance to sit down and write about the progress at our house.

A few weeks before we actually moved in, my family came over and we had a painting party so that we didn't have to work around the furniture.

This is Rebecca, my youngest sister.  She's a trim-painting beast.*

The color we used for the Master bedroom and bathroom is Behr's Safari Vest.

The image above looks really brown.  Our walls seem to change color depending on the time of day.  It's sort of a light khaki color, and sometimes it's almost grey.  For some reason, it's quite green in the bathroom.  Luckily, every shade of this chameleon paint matches the fabric we're using for the curtains, so no harm done!

*She is not for hire.

New House

After six months of waiting for the short sale to go through, we have our house!
















Let the moving and painting begin!

Book Shelves

We have a lot of books.

My undergrad degree is in English, and I kept the majority of books from those four years. My Master's is in Library Science, so I have all of those as well. Working as a teacher/librarian means getting gifts from students, which usually turns out to be books (better presents than coffee mugs any day!). Add that to the hubs' collection of books from his schools and personal stash, and we've got ourselves quite the library - and nowhere to display it.

Enter Borders.

When we saw that the nearby Borders was going out of business, we mourned for about 15 seconds and then immediately turned into vultures. This particular bookstore is known for its tall bookshelves and gorgeous ladders. We paid $80 each for three cases and beamed as they put a sticker with our name on them.














The ladders and hardware were running close to $400, and with the closing of the new house coming up, we just couldn't justify that.

A few weeks later we were back at the store, armed with power tools and visions of our home library.



















As we hubs and my dad took apart our three bookcases, we learned that the price of the cases had gone down to $25. Not only that, but ladders were now $35. Sold! Our name was slapped on another bookcase and a ladder.

After several hours in Borders, we were able to load up our goods. Next up: Painting it all to my liking.