Old Soul, Young Heart

The kitchen was deee-sgusting when we moved in. The fridge was the first thing I started cleaning when the house become ours and it took me like 2 hours to get it livable. And then I wiped down the cabinets, which didn't even really help because they are just so grease covered. We think they must be original (which means they are from 1969). Unfortunately I don't have any before pictures of the kitchen (what the heck?!). It's like the one room that I missed, I guess! I think maybe I didn't take before pics because the cabinets are still the same and they'll be the same for probably years. If we ever get new ones, the kitchen will be so much better. But here's a pic of us before we painted in there, though! It's a door knocker with our last name on it (thanks, Joy and Phil!) and a giant "new home" cookie (thanks, Aunt Peggy)! In December, we decided to paint the kitchen. We had friends coming in from Florida and so we thought it would ...

The dining room was the first room that we painted. It was this weird purple/lavender/gray color that I might've otherwise kind of liked... but not for a dining room.   Before: Testing out our two neutral tan colors. There's that god-awful carpet and curtain situation again. The only good thing about the dining room was the light fixture. Glad we didn't need to change that! Awe! But there's that nasty brown trim again! After: Don't mind the wrinkly curtains. After This dining room table and hutch came from my dad's. He and I together carried those pieces from our dining room at his house to our new house (with some help from his pick-up truck on the way). It was so heavy! The set is what my mom picked out years ago and it's not the most modern furniture ever, but I wanted to have it because it's high quality and sort of sentimental for a few reasons.  The dining room is the only room where I have Precious Moment...

The front room is the room that's right off the foyer. It was this terra cotta color when we moved in. The walls were in pretty good shape and we didn't hate the color, so instead of trying to paint another room, we decided to just keep it. We still had to paint all the baseboards and trim around the windows, though! We took down those hideous curtains god-awful curtain rods. The new carpet makes a huge difference. Before Before After After After Right now I think the front room is the coziest. It's nice because the sun shines right in and I can see the sunset through the windows if I happen to catch it. The front room is kind of "my room." I'm struggling with decor because I don't the house to be too matchy-matchy, but also not hodge-podge. #firstworldproblems

It's been quite a while since I wrote a real blog. The fall semester at work felt a little crazy. I taught for the first time and some of the volunteer roles that I took on had a lot happening. And most importantly, we closed on the house and moved in! 203 West Monroe We did work on it for about 4 weeks before actually moving in. It was a lot of cleaning and painting with some small renovation projects. (I can say small projects because the boys did them and I wasn't really involved. I'm sure Philip would say they weren't all that small.) We had so much help from our families and for that, we are so grateful! I want to start sharing some of the pics that show you all of the work we've been doing! So to start... what we'll call... the foyer! Before After Any trim in the house that is now white was that nasty brown color before. We also got all new carpet (thanks to our negotiated carpet allowance from our offer on the house). The wall color i...