Year Two!

Many house things have happened this year that pre-Rowan and full time job would have gotten lots of attention.

Things greened up and I tried my hand at an herb garden and a few container gardens

Also put some flowers in by the mailbox.  Rowan picked them all later in the season...

Then a groundhog ate most of my vegetables and I wept.  Drake suggested that I should have built a fence.  This, to me defeats the purpose of a container garden.  

Rowan thoroughly enjoyed our sprinkler system

And if the groundhog hadn't gotten to brocoli, he surely would have

 Drake built Rowan an art easel

Then Drake built us a bed!

perfectly safe to drive this way...

I helped a little.  This is me drawing the cut-out

I also did the glaze treatment.  But truly, this was Drake's baby.

Once it was all assembled, I decided it was too tall for a pregnant lady, so Drake built me a footstool!

Ignore the carpet.  We're working on that one.  

Here it is in our room-- notice anything different about our room?  

Perhaps this photo from our first walk-through will refresh your memory...

The PLAID!!  It's gone!  I got fed up sometime in the late spring.  In fact, we have removed every scrap of wallpaper from the house. 

(Lies.  One closet downstairs remains.)

A couple of other bedroom projects:  I refinished the top of this dresser, and also painted the pulls and a little trim around the mirror to match-- sprayed the inset top portion of it with hammered bronze, and then finished it with 4 coats of poly

Found these cute little side tables at a yard sale and paid $5 for the two of them! Then sprayed them with "Paprika."  They turned out to be the perfect height for side tables for our bed :) 

Here are some more before and afters:

Such a little thing, but there was no mirror in the bathroom-- the wall is slanted above the sink, so this was our only real option

The gold frame is one of three that I found and have used for various projects-- for this one, I sprayed some clothespins gold, ran twine across the back of the frame and pinned up pictures :) 

Also made the curtains, difficult to tell from this photo, but they have a bit of orange in them, which may help explain some of the orange in our room.

Here's another of the gold frames which started out in our bedroom but now lives in the Dining Room:

It's all of the collector G&S cigarette cards that I won on Ebay this spring.  I cut and mounted cork board to the frame, then used tiny binder clips and map pins to display all 50 of them.  

Rowan talks to them while he eats.

Also just added this little painting from my brother Greg which I had framed downtown at my favorite downtown business Accent on Art.  He bought it from a street artist in Paris during his travels abroad this semester. How fun?  I always wanted to buy something when I was studying there, and never did.  Full circle. :) Montmartre and Sacre Coeur there in the background.

I don't know that we ever showed you the updates to the front bedroom either:

From our first viewing.

And now:

 Sorry for the unmade bed.  The devil is in the details...

Vases from my Memere and some lovely Swedish horses from a friend we made at Ohio Light Opera who sent them on to live with Rowan. 

This horse is from the 1919 World's Fair :) 

That's Drake.

We showed you the kitchen when we removed the Shady Brook Farms wallpaper, but here are a few more details...

I made some shadowboxes with some of the tintypes that I've collected

Key storage

The recycling center that Drake built! (busy busy!)

Some then and nows of the living room

Now...

(man I've gotta fix those couple of frames poking out) 

Can you see the new carpet?  We replaced that last Winter... look at that tiny jumper!

I made this for Christmas :) 

Dining Room from walk through

And at Thanksgiving :) 

We deep-fried a turkey...

Front room before:

Now, our biggest update are these two things:

Our new player piano, and my Mom's cousin's painting which we had framed.

Upholstering Great-Memere's furniture is so high on my post-pregnancy to-do list it's not even funny.  Look for a really awesome front room update in year 3 :) 

We painted over the woodpaneling in the hallway too!!

Before (difficult to see-- but it's up behind the staircase):

We also have a gallery wall.  Every night Rowan says goodnight to all of his family :) 

The floral wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom is gone too!

Before:

Now:

I LOVE this bath toy storage frog :) 

I had to use textured paintable wallpaper because the walls were such a mess underneath the paper.  Made the curtains from curtains we had previously made in Austin.  Made the little bubble canvases (there are three in the bathroom) based on a Pinterest tutorial.  Do you know about Pinterest?  go there. it's awesome. The link will take you to my Pin page-- come follow me!

Lastly, we repainted the upstairs Bathroom.  

I don't have any befores.  It's not the most remarkable room in the house.  But now it is very peaceful and lovely!  (And doesn't have a floral wallpaper runner)

Found the anchor and sprayed it Navy-- Sprayed most of the bathroom hardware (Oil Rubbed Bronze) including the ventilation grate that you see in the upper RH corner.

Sprayed the faucet fixture and the Mirror as well as the hardware under the lighting.

Made this little painting too :)  It was something Drake had started ages ago and then I saw a tutorial (on Pinterest) and did some more work on it.

So there we are.  Another year.  What's on the list for this year? So many possibilities.

• Build a sectional for the back patio
• Fence in back yard and add play structures and benches for the wee ones
• Frame out basement landing/stairs to create a new laundry room (eventually a play room in the giant extra room in the basement) 
• Move laundry to basement and turn current laundry room into an office/guest room
• Re-roof the shed and paint it to match the rest of our house
• Other things?  
• Insulation
• Seal/finish front porch
• Dry-lock basement
• Install crown-moulding in Front Room, Living Room, Dining room

Happy New Year!  Here's to a wonderful 2012 :)

We can't wait to introduce you to our baby girl in February!