Monday, July 15, 2013

House Tour : Out With The Old, In With The New

I have promised you guys a full house tour for awhile, and I'm finally going to deliver on it.

Even though this house is no longer mine.  We closed on it at the end of April.

To make a long story short, Chris accepted a job out in Dallas, TX, so for the first time in our whole lives we are no longer Floridians.  We were actually officially homeless for the first time since college!  We lived in corporate housing for a little over a month, and closed on a beautiful new home in McKinney, TX at the end of May.

Our house wasn't even on the market for a week before we were under contract for 99% of our asking price after receiving multiple offers.  We closed in less than 6 weeks.  Happy happy joy joy dance plus lots of mayhem and tears and hugs and yay's all around.  It's been a whirlwind of a few months to say the least!

Onto the Tour!

The Back Yard.  We didn't sod all the way down to the back, so it looks a little barren in this picture.  The new sod that we laid a year ago has started spreading and filling in the dead areas though.  Hopefully that'll continue on for the new owners!



The in-law suite bathroom.  We didn't really do much in here...


Kalia's bathroom.  We painted the walls, took out the old shower door, painted the cabinets, and faux painted the countertop.


The in-law suite bedroom.  I wish I had before pictures to go along with this, but I was in panic mode to get it done.  This room used to be Barney purple...blah!  I painted it Moonshine by Benjamin Moore and painted all of the trim white.


Kalia's room.  Ah, this was such a labor of love...I'm not gonna lie,  I cried the last time I walked through here.  We completely gutted this room and pretty much built everything that went into it.  I replicated this as closely as possible in the new home.  I really loved everything about it!


The daybed room.  This room used to have two daybeds in it, but I moved one into Kalia's room, and then into her playroom.  Chris installed the floors one weekend before we listed it.  It's the same floors we installed in Kalia's room.


The front door and the dining room


We hung up mirrors that went to the dresser in the in-law suite, and I painted little shelves and put fresh flowers in there for showings.


The exterior of the front door with the hanging pendant that we installed.


Our living room.  I painted the back of those book shelves along the wall and really loved how it turned out.  All of this trim was an off-white too, so I painted that all shiny white as well.


I also did that key art and those pallet shelves...


and made the Hart sign, and hung the ski's in an x with pictures of Chris and I from our snowboarding adventures.  I'm glad that my 'stuff' gets to stay with us!  I am happy to report that almost all of it fits in perfectly at the new home.



Here's a few of the front of the house, which we re-painted once Kalia got here.


We had to leave the Gator flag.  It was actually a part of the negotiations!


Moving back to the inside...the kitchen.  Oh, how I loved that kitchen.  I pretty much did nada here.  It was the huge huge selling point when we bought the house.






Kalia's playroom.  This room evolved quite a bit since she arrived.  The pictures over the daybed are just black fabric with a picture of her from every week for her first year.  It's amazing how quickly she changed!!  I painted the chalk wall, built and painted the ledges, and then added a family picture wall above the ledges.  Both Kalia and I miss the chalk wall.  If I'm being 100% honest, I don't miss the dust though!


The entry to the Master Bathroom from our bedroom, or the vanity area.  I painted this area twice, did all of the trim white, and we took off the closet doors and spray painted them to get rid of the yucky gold color.


Last time you saw our Master Bath, it was the light blue color.  I painted it gray (moonshine by benjamin moore, my favorite light gray color to go to) because I felt it was more calm and would appeal to a larger audience.



Next up, our Master Bedroom.  I re-did that trunk that my parents gave me and added my sewing machine cabinet that I also re-did to finish out the space.  We've upgraded furniture at the new house, so I can't wait to share what our room looks like now.


Here's a picture of the office.  This room also got painted, and we took out the built-ins, sanded them down, and re-stained them.  They were a blonde honey color before.  I also painted the back of them to make our things pop.


This is the office bath that Chris and I completely gutted and re-did just days before listing the house.  There was striped wall paper and an old toilet, laminate vanity, and builder grade mirror in here.  For such a little room, it required a ton of work, but the difference was amazing.  As you can imagine, we were in a rush, so just use your imagination for the before pictures!



And last, but most certainly not least, the pool deck.  Oh pool, how I miss you.  Our new home does not have one.  I think we'll wind up putting one in, but that yard and that pool were irreplaceable!  





This house and our old neighborhood and our old state, ha, were so hard to leave, but we had to do what was right for our family.  As soon as I quit my job, Chris put out his resume, which is why things got so scattered here on the blog.  Balancing a baby plus Chris interviewing and making up his time with his old job and trying to get house projects done during naptimes and bedtimes because I knew the move was coming was quite a bit challenging.

I'm hoping that I can come back here and share projects and our lives with the four of you that still read this blog (hey 'rents!!).  I'm still working on finishing up getting the last of the things unpacked...like my sewing machine...yuck!!

In personal news, my little girl turned two last month.  Crazy how time flies.  Here's a picture of Kalia jumping on her big gift on her second birthday.  We're still a little hair challenged!!




Hope everyone is doing well!

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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

No Sew Elmo Halloween Costume

Hi guys!  With Halloween only a week away, I thought I'd share a few pictures of the cutest Elmo I've ever seen.  I might be a bit biased...





Kalia is absolutely obsessed with Elmo.  We still don't let her watch TV, so all she's seen of Elmo is books and dolls, but she can't get enough of him.  Half of the time when we ask her what her name is, she says "Elmo!".  Goofy girl!

I got the idea for this costume from this picture I saw here.


I started to tie my tulle around the elastic like she said she did in that post, but I ran out of tulle really quickly.  Because I'm semi lazy, and I didn't want this costume to cost more than $10 (it cost $8 - woot!), I didn't end up doing it that way.

To make mine, I first cut the tulle into 6" strips.  After that, I took Fabri-tac and glue them around a piece of elastic measured to fit around Kalia's chest under the arms.  I glued on one side then double wrapped it around the elastic to hide the elastic from showing.

I thought about going back to buy more tulle at this point because it was pretty thin, but Kalia hated the feel of the tulle against her skin, even with a onesie on.  She kept saying "off, off, off!!"  So I took an old red paint shirt and cut it up and Fabri-tac'd that to the inside of the costume as well.

I just used white, orange, and black felt to make Elmo's face and again, used my trusty Fabri-tac to glue that onto the dress.  Kalia got so excited at that point "ELMO!!!  ELMO!!! ELLLMMMOOOOO!!!!"  That was more like the reaction I was going for!

I Fabri-tac'd the ribbon make a halter style dress that I can tie in the back of her neck.

After I took these pictures, I  cut the length of the dress a bit, it was a wee bit too long for her!  Just for reference, I had them cut 108" x 2 feet for the tulle.  For those of you that are craft challenged like me, it might help!  I just took some of the left over tulle and tied it around a white headband she already had.

Hope everyone has a great Halloween!!  I've been working on a ton of house projects, but most of the time, I either can do them or blog about them!  Hopefully the hubs job will slow down here shortly and I'll get some time to catch up on here...

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Monday, August 27, 2012

Diaper Wreath and Wishing Tree

Well, since we're in party mode, I thought I'd keep it rolling by posting on some of the baby showers I threw / helped throw while I was on my hiatus from blogging.

I've made a diaper cake before, and I've received a diaper cake before.  Let me tell ya, after unrolling a million itty bitty tiny diapers and trying desperately to make them flat so they'd lay in my diaper basket I had for Kalia, I really would be a happy camper if I never had to make one or unroll one ever again.  Those things are a pain!  They are super cute, but not so practical.  I mean, I guess they're practical, it just takes a.lot of work to get to your present!

But I know they're cute, and if nothing else, baby showers are supposed to be cute.  Sooo...I decided to make a diaper wreath instead!

Here's the materials you need :


All you do is take those little diapers, and tie a string around them until you fill up the wreath form.


This one was going on the front door of one of my girlfriends parents house on a tiny nail, so I didn't want it to be too heavy, so it just got filled with diapers.



This next one I hung in the mirror above my buffet in my laundry room and added in a few toys for the new baby boy.  I know when Kalia reached the age where she started wanting toys, I was so grateful that friends had gifted me with them, even though they weren't something I thought to register for.


And this last one was for a second time Momma.  She's got lots of toys, so I stuck with bath supplies to fill her diaper wreath with.  Her first one was also a large baby, so I skipped the newborn diapers and went with larger ones.  Much more practical when your baby outgrows newborns dipes before even leaving the hospital!


Another thing I did for all of these showers that was a big hit was a wishing tree.  For my girlfriend that was having a little girl, I took a branch, spray painted it white, then added in a tiny bit of silver spray paint to make it more girly and added in white rocks.





For all three baby showers, I used this cute little bird notepad and had people write their wishes for baby and Momma to be.  It's a cute way to do a personalized guest book.  I added these little buckets to hold the pens and paper in.




For the Momma's that were having boys, I stuck to bare branches and the yellow and brown rocks.


I also used baby bottles for vases, which I thought was a really cute touch.


Unfortunately, with a wee one in tow for all of these showers, I didn't snag as many pictures as I would've liked to.  Chris snagged this one of Kalia and I at the first shower...it is crazy how much she's changed (she was 5 months in this pic).  She looks so little here!!


Ahhh...love those dimples of hers so much!!!  Sorry, sorry, back to the post...

All of these babies the showers were thrown for have already been born, and I'm so glad I could help their Momma's get ready to celebrate their big days by throwing these showers for them.  I am, however, officially on a baby shower hiatus...for now anyways.  I'm actually onto wedding stuff (yay Jenny!).

Anyone else throwing a massive amount of baby showers, or got any fun ideas for bridal showers / bachelorette parties (that's not x rated!)?  I swear, something gets in the water around these parts...it seems like we go through spurts where everyone is pregnant!

Hope you guys had a great weekend!  Happy Monday!

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