Dining Room Reveal

Howdy. Like I posted last, we hosted all of our family here this past weekend. And having a party is just the deadline I needed to get me motivated to paint our newly renovated dining room.

Just to refresh your memory, here's what our boxed in dining room looked like before we took down the wall between it and the kitchen:

And after the wall, but before redesigning the two spaces:

And TA-DA! The AFTER after:

Here's the transformation all together:

We installed faux panel molding under the chair rail and I painted it all white. The top I painted Benjamin Moore's Revere pewter which I LOVE.

Another angle and please excuse my kitty sneaking into this shot! We have big plans for the wall with the little hutch. Big plans being a built in sideboard with white cabinets, marble counter, and upper cabinets with lighting and glass doors. But for now, the budget is telling us, that this'll do for a while :)

My absolute favorite part was putting all the artwork and accessories back into the room. This painting was in our living room, but never quite felt right there. It's a painting a friend of my grandmother's made for her. We'll hang this up once we get the cabinets for our built-in sideboard over here.

I found these curtains on clearance at Target for $14 a piece. I love the design and the bold statement of black and white.

This beautiful painting was my aunt's and it shows the Hudson River near where she lived in New York. I love the vibrant colors in a room full of fairly muted colors.

Now of course I'm itching to replace this old dining set that was a hand-me-down from my parents. No offense, but the Scandanavian look just isn't my style. All in good time.

Freckle Man is busy hanging shelves, finding a solution for our phone outlet hanging mid-wall, and installing our new kitchen island cabinets! Stay tuned.

Birthday Season

As I mentioned here, all of my kids have their birthdays within a month of each other. We call it "birthday season". I didn't really want to have any of them be summer babies, but hey, there's only so much control you have over these things ;)

So, on top of hosting three kid parties, one for each kid to invite their friends, we also host a combined family party for all three. It seems like the humane thing to do for the grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins, rather than heading to our house three separate times within one month.

The kids always have a blast with their cousins and I usually try to do a little something special. This year I hired an ice cream truck to come. Yummm. I've gotta say though that the grown-up's liked that treat just as much as the kiddos. It was awesome!

Here are some snaps of each kid opening presents.

Freckle Girl turned 3. I'm noticing that she's doing this smile for pictures a lot lately. Hmmm. Better than the gigantic fake smile look. 

Freckle Diva is turning 7 later in July. See those huge dangly earrings she's wearing? She begged me to let her wear those for the special occasion. Plus, her neon nail polish matched the heart on her shirt. Can't get much better than that!

Freckly Boy is turning 10 next week. I love this picture because it captures his excitement, right down to his flailing super-psyched hands :)  He was bombarded with Nerf weapons...what more could a 10 year old boy ask for? He was in heaven!

We spent a ton of time on the porch (which Freckle Man has FINALLY finished the screens for) while the kids ran around the yard with water guns and balloons.

Happy birthday to my "babies"! Hosting a party definitely lit a fire under my you-know-what to finish up the dining room and kitchen painting. "After" pics are coming soon. Stay tuned!

The least exciting home blog post ever

Another not very thrilling project we're getting done here on Berry Lane is upgrading our boiler. Since this is another big ticket item, we decided to do it when we refinanced recently.

Our old boiler, shown here, was on its last legs.

Everyone who came through our basement, including workers who don't work with plumbing, like the electrician, did a double-take when they saw that boiler. Whoa! That things going to blow any second! There was a big-time leak/corrosion issue happening here:

Freckle Man has been putting strategically placed buckets under the leaks until we could get it replaced. Of course, the few days before the plumber was due to come, it was leaking a ton and we had to keep our fingers crossed it could last a couple of days before dying.

Whew, we made it!  We love the plumber we chose. He also replaced the furnace in our old house. He does a great job and is more affordable since it's a one-man shop. I never knew a boiler could look so space-age and shiny-new:

We also upgraded the Super Stor at the same time:

Oil burners don't get as efficient as gas heat but there is a small incentive for going as energy-efficient as possible. I think it'll come to an $800 rebate...not too shabby!

Freckle Man thinks this bad boy looks a bit like Wall-E :)

Ok, there are more fun projects to show in the next couple of days. Hint: I finally got my butt in gear to finish the painting in the dining room and kitchen. It is looking awesome!  Stay tuned.

Roof & Gutters

So, earlier this month we closed on our refinancing and were able to get cash back and keep our monthly mortgage payments more or less the same. We're planning on putting that money right back into the house, mostly in not-so-glamorous but necessary projects.

Before the ink even dried on the check, we started on the first big project: replacing the roof and gutters. We knew when we bought the house that the roof would need to be fixed sooner than later. There were at least two layers of roofing and the shingles were barely holding up.

Here's a before shot (don't mind the peeling paint, that's on the list too):

The roofing company dropped off a big old dump-stah. I do live in New England after all. Oddly enough, my littlest is in love with this big "lellow" dumpster.

The roofing company was able to give us a really good deal on replacing the gutters at the same time. The existing gutters were in BAD shape. This gap in the gutters happened to be right about the front door so anyone coming to the house in the rain would get gutter water dumped on their head. Lovely.

Not only that, the leaky gutters were also causing damage to the siding in places like this (that's our rescue kitty Mouse in the window):

And since we knew we were replacing the gutters we got lack with cleaning them out...hence, there was enough material in there to support plant life:

Check out these after shots:

Stay tuned for more not-so-glamorous upgrades and some fun kitchen/dining room reno updates!

Crazy Town

Last week, my catch phrase was "crazy town". As in, I was living in CRAZY TOWN. As the school year winds down, there are always a million end-of-the-year parties/performances/gifts that I suddenly realize I must participate in. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't skip out on a single one, but man, is it all tiring. The last day of school we all woke up late and I proceeded to act like a drill sergeant until my kids had finished all of their teacher thank-you notes and were running for the last bus ride to school.

And just to make Crazy Town even crazier, I decided to throw all three of my kids birthday parties the same week. My intentions were good. My kids all have their birthdays within a 5 week period, June 15th to July 22nd. Freckle Diva has always had her party near her birthday mid-to-late-July and at least half of her friends can't attend due to vacation schedules. Freckle Boy's birthday is early July so we've always had his party near the end of school before his friends hit the road. Then Freckle Girl was turning the big 3 the last day of school, so suddenly we were looking at having all of the parties that week.

I decided to rip off the band-aid, take the plunge, what have you, and just go for it. Then an unexpected and major work deadline came down and suddenly I was getting about 3 hours of sleep every night of that week. Sweet! Just what I needed.

First up was Freckle Girl. Being that she was only turning 3, I expected to host our playgroup, serve up some cupcakes and call it a day. But, um, no. Freckle Girl had plans. PLANS. She decided she deserved a gymnastics party. I guess she's been bitter that her sister takes gymnastics and wants in on the action. At first I thought, no way!, but then it dawned on me that hosting 20 of her closest friends at gymnastics meant that I didn't have to have 20 two and three-year-old's running wild in my house. Sign me up! Bam. Check written.

Freckle Girl and her friends had a blast jumping and bouncing and rolling for an hour followed by cake and snacks. Granted one girl puked, but hey, what's a party if it doesn't end in puking? The bottom line is that Freckle Girl was BEYOND excited.

Next up: Freckle Diva. She's turning the 7 in July and really wanted to have a bowling party. Once I'd made the decision to have Freckle Girl's party at gymnastics, I was all, bowling? Awesome. Who do I make the check out to? I have to say, the bowling party rocked. I mean, seriously. Check out that awesome carpeted wall behind her in the pic below! The staff there did EVERYTHING and the girls bowled, sang along to the pop tunes, and hit the arcade. Couldn't have gone smoother.

And last, but not least, it was Freckle Boy's turn. He'll be turning 10 in early July. Seriously? TEN? How am I the mother of a 10 year old? Last I checked, he looked like this:

Freckle Boy is pretty low-key so he chose to invite his closest friends to come swim, have pizza and watch Men in Black. Apparently a move from 1997 is retro. Again, I feel old. Boys may have a ton of energy and make a deafening amount of noise, but I find them easy. Let them be boys and they're happy. I gave each boy a water shooter to take to the pool and they were entertained for, oh, about two hours. For real. Freckle Boy was in heaven. Look at that smile. That is pure joy right there.

So it was the week of Crazy Town. But I wouldn't change a thing. Each kid had their unique moment to be celebrated in their own way. Summer, bring it on! Stay tuned.

Just Call Me a Maxxinista

First of all, a couple of disclaimers. I know nothing about photography and the lighting in our house is pretty awful. So I apologize in advance for the picture quality here. I'm brand new to blogging and am having a blast playing around, but I've got a lot of getting up to speed to do.

Ok, I feel better getting that out there :)  So just a quick post about my latest trip to my local TJMaxx/HomeGoods. Also known as shopping heaven. I have to drive right past the front of the shop to get to the grocery store and occasionally the outdoor displays call to me. These navy striped pillows were in a big bin and I couldn't resist swinging by.

At $9.99 each, I felt like it was my DUTY to buy them. Ha. They're huge and perfect for the kids playroom. And I love how they look with these orange jumbo pillows the kids use during movie night.

They also had gray chevron bean bag chairs that comes with an ottoman/pouf. I'm feeling a bit over chevron but deep down I still think it's perfecto for a kids playroom. And at $129, it was really reasonably priced. I've been looking for bean bag chairs but have held back since I need to buy one for each kid or there will be World War III.

Freckle Girl thought it was pretty awesome. I did too. I probably would've caved but there was only ONE. That's a sure fire way to make my summer miserable refereeing fights over the special bean bag chair. I wish they had lots of the same item like at Target but I guess that's part of the beauty of HomeGoods...you never know what you're gonna get.

And while I was there, I just HAD to check out the clothes. I've been feeling pretty blah about my wardrobe. I'm drawn to neutrals but everyone needs to spice things up from time to time. This Calvin Klein ikat shirt was only $16.99!

I've also been looking for a set of colorful mixing/serving bowls and found this melamine set for $19.99. And in one of the colors I'm currently obsessed with, tomato red. (Ok, they look ORANGE in this pic. Have to work on my photog lighting...I'm clueless!)

I realize now that I need show more of the rooms in our house. That was the teeniest little peak at our master bedroom. Also, our refinance went through and we're starting on some MAJOR, but not very exciting, renovations this week. Stay tuned!

Island Cabinets

Ok, there's been a teensy bit of minor progress around here. I primed all the wood trim and red walls.

It's a start and I'm trying not to beat myself up for not wanting to paint at night after work and getting the kids to bed. I'm only human but looking at all the work I need to do is driving me a bit nutty.

Anyway, in addition to painting the dining room and kitchen, the other big piece that's needed to finish our renovation is the kitchen island. Right now we still have this little placeholder table in the space where we'll install the island:

As I laid out here, we're going for a square-ish island with seating for two people on two sides. Ok, so this is embarrassingly low-tech, but here's a little sketch for ya. The actual cabinet space will be 2x3 feet and then with a foot-plus of counter overhang, the total floor plan will be 3x4ish. Do you like my precise measurements? ;)

To put the island together, we only need two cabinets. One 24 inch base cabinet, seen on the right above. This will just have two doors and one shelf inside. This is going to be the kid snack cabinet. The workspace is up top so they'll be out of my hair when they're grabbing their munchies. The slide-out trash drawer will be right near the sink and so convenient for when we're chopping and prepping food.

So, since we aren't going to match the granite countertop (I'm not in love with the granite the previous owners chose), I'd really like to match the existing kitchen cabinets. Or at least get as close as possible.

Here's what we have now:

We brought one of the doors to a local kitchen shop that we heard wasn't outrageously expensive. They would be able to match our cabinets EXACTLY. The only problem? They wanted over $1000 for 2, yes TWO, cabinets! Um, considering our budget is pretty much done, that's not happening.

Enter Ikea. We used Ikea cabinets when we built a peninsula in our first house and they were surprisingly awesome. Sure they're a pain to assemble but the price is right and they were actually very sturdy.

It looks like, from the catalog at least, the Adel beech veneer model will match pretty closely.

It looks like there are a couple of handle options that might work as well.

Next stop is planning a shopping trip and driving the 45 minutes to our local Ikea. Since I'd rather gouge my eyeballs out than drag my three kids through what is potentially the most awesome store on the planet. When my mother-in-law were comparing calendars I realized we don't have a free weekend day or evening for 4 weeks! How sad is that? We might just have to try to fit in a long lunch break while we're both working.

Stay tuned and thanks for the first comments! I love hearing from you.

Outdoor Updates

While progress is sloooowwwly happening in the dining room and kitchen, we have some good developments outside.

First, our sad little planting area right out front next to the mail box is perking up!

Check out this hydrangea that we thought was a goner!

And this little guy that was a deer snack all winter long is doing pretty well too:

And one of my favorite spring flowers, our pink peonies, are in full bloom right now:

In addition to a new roof and gutters, we've decided to hold off on upgrading our siding (was way too much $) and get our house painted. As you know, the royal blue accents make me pretty much mental. Plus, you can see the paint is obviously in need of some help:

Here's a wide view of the blue garage doors and shutters. Cringe.

Along with paint, we'll do a little upgrade by installing new lights and house number.

So, here's the paint plan. We're going to take the shutters off and keep them off and go for a cream color with white trim. I'm leaning towards Benjamin Moore's windham cream, which is more yellow than beigey cream.

Where I really want to have fun is the paint color for the front door. I've thought about purple, orange, and apple green. A safer bet, but one of my favorite colors right now, is gray. I love yellow and gray together. I'm thinking Benjamin Moore's chelsea gray:

I hope it'll be dark but not so dark as to look black on first glance. The great thing is it's only paint and I can change the door color quickly and easily at any point! Stay tuned :)