Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween to all our followers - however few of you there be!  It looks like the only one of our family getting into the Halloween Spirit is Buddy - BAT DOG!

In other news, we have finally figured out the cause of DaVinci's incessant meowing!  He is a patrol, security cat.  We were sitting in one room last night and he'd come in, get right in our faces and meow, then head towards the back door and those rooms, meow at the window a few times, then come back and report. "Thanks, security cat!" says Andy, and DaVinci is off to patrol the other end of the house!  Report, repeat, report, repeat!  That's just what he does!  Well, that and sometimes we think he thinks we can understand him. He just sits and tells us about his day, his visitors, what he saw out the window...then he leaves to patrol again.


Happy Halloween!
~Melissa

Rain Rain Go Away!

The rain set in last night and it's here to stay for a while.  It's an all around yucky day!  I'll be so glad when today and tomorrow are over and it's time for the weekend!  I know, I know - I'm lucky that I get Fridays, but on days like today, working 10 hours, 6 o'clock is as far away as Christmas!

Last night, we had our first real rehearsal for A Seussified Christmas Carol.  It went pretty well.  We have another tonight.  We'll be living at the studio by Thanksgiving!

We officially got our renter's insurance this week AND applied for consolidation for Andy's student loans, so this week has been somewhat productive!

For now, I'm listening to NSync radio on Pandora and hoping they'll help pep me up with the help of B*Witched, Christina, and Avril! ♫

~Melissa

Before and After Day 7: Office Space

Can you believe it?  We have reached the end of the before and after posts!  I guess I'll have to start blogging about other things now!  Here's our little office space before we started:

This is how it looked after a whole lot of stuff was cleaned out!  

Yeah - it was THAT bad...I'd actually begin to call this one "organized."

 This room is on the immediate right when you enter through our garage door.  I hope to put a Christmas tree in front of this window next year.  I have one for the living room, but I want to buy another one after Christmas this year.

And here it is now!  It's our office/music/book/movie room!

Yes, all the blinds in our house stay raised about a foot for this reason...

Andy took the folding doors off this closet and made it into a giant book shelf!  Eventually it will be better organized...
I hope!

So that's that!  No more before and afters!  I guess we'll move on to other happenings!  We helped Kira and Chris move into their new apartment on Saturday and attempted to burn some of the fallen jungle in our front yard, but, alas, it was too windy.  Maybe Friday or Saturday THIS week!  We start rehearsals for the Christmas show this week.  I'm the narrator and Andy is Bob Cratchitt in A Seussified Christmas Carol.

For now, though, it is Monday and Monday means work.  Mallory's already listening to Christmas music in her office - at least I'm not THAT crazy!

~Melissa

Before and After Day 6: Cooking Up Some Changes!

Here we are now at Day 6 of our little before and after.  Today's episode - the kitchen.  Again, as in the dining room, we begin with Big Bird yellow.  The good thing about this kitchen - LOTS of cabinet space.  The bad thing - white counter tops and back splash, and plain, brown cabinets.

Here's the before picture with the same faux wood, laminate floor that was in the rest of the house.  On the right, you can see one of my many attempts at removing the shelf liner.  It'd been there since the house was built in 1988 and had its fair share of stains and stickiness.  The picture on the oven (which didn't work) is a picture of me when I was about 3 or 4.  I randomly found it inside one of the kitchen cabinets!

This is the opposite side of the kitchen and that's me cleaning inside the cabinets.  For the first several days we were in, that's all we could really do because there was STUFF everywhere else inside the house!  

The fridge

Handy Andy scrubbing away - notice the bleach on the counter.

Me - still in the cabinet.

I believe this picture is after the first coat of primer.  See the lighter yellow back there?  We learned a lesson about primer during this project - Original Kilz is oil based.  Don't go there.

This is the laundry room - the pantry is behind the door.  I've always found it odd that there's a really cute picture of my cousin, Samantha, that hung over the washer and dryer...

And now, my friends, we proceed to the AFTER pictures!

Newly tiled floor? Check. Shined up refrigerator and cabinets? Check! New Oven? Check!  Cute hand towel and red can opener?  CHECK!  Old English and my dad and his poly urethane helped the cabinets with their 180*.

The opposite side.  Andy loves his Keurig in the back corner.  Oh - you can see the dishwasher we scored for $50 on Craig's List AND the curtains Andy's mom me.  They match the over-the-door one in our dining room!
See that post here.

It's hard to take a good pic of curtains on a window when it's so sunny!  But there's a look at our back yard!

Top of the curtain

Dark, but you can see the shape

And the colors!  I was looking for a pattern with red and yellow in it, but we didn't find much of anything. So, I picked the red/tan fabric and gave it to Toni.  Well...SHE comes be-bopping in with these fabulous yellow-trimmed curtains :-)  I love the buttons at the top!

My cutesy apron/decoration that hangs by the oven.

And these are my dishes!  We had to hunt at several Ross stores for them, but where else can you get a full set of nice dishes for $25?!  I ended up with three sets because when trying to find them online, just ONE replacement plate was $15!  Why not pay $10 more and have a whole extra set just in case?

Well, that's it for now! There's only one more day and a few more pictures to come!

Everyone out there, please say a prayer for my friend, Heather, and her family. We are going to visitation at the funeral home tonight for her daddy.  She's not even 20 and she's burying her father - she needs our thoughts, prayers, and love. <3

~Melissa

Before and After Day 5: What to do to Dine Today?

Big Bird Yellow.  That's where our dining room started.  We don't have any REALLY early before pictures of this room.  There was a table, a china cabinet, and a whole lot of knick knacks.  All that remains here is a bar stool (which we're keeping and refinishing) and a portable dishwasher which we graciously said we didn't want.  Outside, you'll notice the dilapidated sun room.  In it's day, that's where my cousin, Ronnie, would sit and watch hummingbirds outside for hours. However, since he passed away, this room was neglected.  It was windows from floor to ceiling and most of them lost the "double" in double paned and leaked.  So - there was lots of mold, moisture, and general ICK!  We got permission and got rid of the whole thing.

Looking in the opposite direction from the above picture.  Again - the walls - what can I say?!  And there's my lil pink, trusty radio on what became my night stand!  Oh - you can't see it in this picture, but there was a FAN above the dining room table!  A fan! I guess they wanted to keep their food cool?  It was actually in really nice condition and it was a cherry wood sort of color, so we relocated it to our bedroom.  The one in there was relocated to the office.

One more picture - clean swept and ready to make a change!

AND HERE IT IS - THE AFTER!

And here we are now!  Those baskets will go eventually.  They're leftovers from the wedding and the stuff IN the china cabinet isn't staying either.  Notice the new chandelier!  The table, chairs, and china cabinet came from my great-aunt, Nellene.  She gave me the big bread bowl on the table, too.  I LOVE it!  This is the same Cranberry Zing that's on our accent wall in the living room.  That stuff took coat after coat of paint, but it was worth it.  You can barely see the newly laid laminate floor on the bottom left corner of the picture.  Also, notice the pictures to the left of the china cabinet; there's an identical pair on the other side.  The frames were the 2nd thing I picked out when we were registering - they are antique black, but you can see bits of red peaking through.  

This is the left side - two of our fave engagement pics.

And this is the right side - two more pics!

This is what the back door now looks like.  I couldn't get a pic because of the sun, but TRUST ME - the sun room is now long gone! Outside this window is a concrete patio with a growing muscadine vine and BIG tree - Andy's just waiting to hang up a hammock out there next spring :-)

This is a close-up of the curtain my wonderful mother-in-law, Toni, made just for me.  This was an after thought to the curtain she made for the kitchen (which you'll see tomorrow).  I loved the flags/buttons at the top and you can't really see them on the kitchen ones, so she dressed up our glass doors a bit. 

This is our cool clock that Kira Armstrong gave me for my birthday this year...the catch?  The clock doesn't actually work! We're hoping to find a new "middle" for the wall-cling clock because it just looks so cool where it is - slightly to the right of the glass doors.


Well - That's it for today!  Please leave a comment to let us know you stopped by!  It looks like there're about two more days of this little before and after.  Hopefully, I'll successfully continue to blog after the fact as we continue our lives together and continue to improve our home.  We planted grass seed yesterday, so (HOPEFULLY) there will be pictures of green grass to post before it turns off cold.

In store for tonight - auditions for A Seussified Christmas Carol with Fifth Row Center!
www.fifthrowcenter.com

~Melissa

Oops!

Well, there goes my streak of before and after posts!  I forgot to put my Before/After folder back in my drop box folder so I am with out them until Monday.  I guess I'll have to post about life in general instead!

1. Concert at Fusion
Andy's playing his guitar and singing back up tonight in Fusion's CD release party!  If you come, you get a free CD!  The concert is at 7:30 and Fusion is at the corner of Atlanta Highway and Friendship Road.  It should be pretty awesome!

2. Chiropractor
So, I haven't been to the chiropractor in over a year.  I finally decided I HAVE to go because I've had way more headaches than normal lately.  Needless to say, Dr. Tanya says my lower back is out of wack and curving in the opposite direction of where most people's go with they're that off, my neck is trying to curve the wrong way, and my head is on crooked.  Seriously!  I'm not exaggerating!  So - I'm going back again on Monday...then Friday...then Monday...

3. More trees are coming down tomorrow and I'm getting a hair cut!  That's our weekend!

~Melissa

Before and After Day 4: Furniture & Furnishings of a Living Room

The living room of our humble abode began as a small square of carpet, edged on two sides by walkways of that scary, faux-wood linoleum, with handicapped rails lining the walls.  Bare with me on this post - LOTS of pictures!

This is taken from the doorway of the dining room, looking toward the center of the living room.

From the dining room toward the door.

Blurry, but you can see the handicapped rail still up in this one.  It left...uhm...interesting shaped marks on the wall when it came down!  Let's just say the hooks holding it up were mounted by three screws in sections kinda shaped like a three-leafed clover, but the middle "leaf" was longer than the other two. 

Cleaning out...

In this shot, you can see the plywood floor after MUCH hard work of scraping up linoleum.

Who's that peaking around the corner?!  See that yellow paint in the dining room? NO MORE!

Windows up, airing out the funk and ready to paint.

First coat of Glidden's warm caramel after a fresh coat of white on the ceiling.  See that handy little table?  That's my night stand now! Properly covered with a tablecloth, of course.

A look at the intersection of warm caramel meets cranberry zing! I'm sure this was the first of MANY, MANY, MANY coats and cans of red paint.

This is the landing we created inside the front door to keep dirty feet off the new carpet.  We were going to do one just like it in the hallway at the carport door and did...but then ended up using laminate on the whole hallway b/c we got such a deal!  We actually now have two colors of laminate in our house b/c part of it came from Dave's Goody Barn and the other from 129 Salvage.  It's hard to tell the difference, though.

So here we are with 18 days to go til our wedding and I'm at work and...

Andy's supervising while WE'RE GETTING CARPET!

An in-progress shot he texted me.

This is actually the spare bedroom, but it's a good view of the new carpet.  Not the cheapest, but definitely not the most expensive.  We got a great deal from Budget Carpet in down town Gainesville. 

Again, this is the office, but it's just so new and pretty!

Here we are with carpet and red walls and COUCHES!  This couch and love seat have their own story.  They were the first purchase that Heidi made once she was on her own and living in an apartment.  They lived in her apartment, then in the house she and Daniel share, then they got bumped to their kids' play room when they inherited a sectional from Daniel's mom. Sooo....I took them off their hands and got 'em out of their way!

We're slowly adding furnishings here - you can see my swirly curtain rod.  More about the swirls later.

Is this not the cutest picture ever?!  I found this gem at Hobby Lobby and I was describing it to Andy while he was at work.  I was trying to show him how big it was and how good of a deal it was, so I had mom hold it for size comparison. You know cheap skate me, it was hard to spend $40 for a picture, but I had JUST gotten a check as a wedding present about an hour before this.  Mom said, "It's your wedding present from them!  Tell them thank you for it in their thank you note!"  So I did!  Oh - again - note the swirls in the top.

And this is where this guy ended up!

And this is Charlie.  I took his picture at Ross, again to send to Andy to get his OK before I bought him.  This was the most fun shopping day I've had in a while.  Mom and I ended up at Ross for some reason and I found him (who says, but doesn't scream, "GO DAWGS!"), the canisters for my kitchen, and my plates.  I need to post a picture of those, too!  Maybe with the kitchen stuff...

AFTER!  We're still waiting for a picture that will go above the TV
It's about a 3 foot long picture that says "LOVE YOU MORE" as in
♫ "In my life, I love you more"♪ Which is what Andy sang to me
at our wedding!  The fabulous afghan on the love seat was made
for us by Toni (Andy's mom).  I knew it was ours when I saw her
crocheting with red, brown, AND blue!  Our unity candle is on the
cube unit and that's our wedding gift to ourselves there in the middle.
It's 46"  I'm looking for a single-wide cube shelf to put to the left of
TV to make it look more like one, big unit.

Look - Here's Charlie!  He's on the silver table! 

Mirror's from IKEA, sconces were a gift.

Ignore the fact that the picture is crooked and not centered with the love seat and look at the pillows.  These were the very first thing I picked out for our house.  I didn't realize how much they influenced me until I had it all together.  Remember the swirlys?  These are where they started!  There're here, in that picture, on the curtain rods...

and on this awesome lamp shade I found at Garden Ridge!

BEFORE

AFTER