Our first home

I'm not sure what's going to happen to this little blog in the next year or so but for now I think I'll randomly post when I have some time. As many of you know we are moving back to North Carolina. We are both excited and sad. Had we moved a year ago, I think I would have been a lot less sad about leaving but in this last year so much has happened that has made me truly love Houston. I never thought I would say that. Of course, I know I love North Carolina more and we are more than thrilled to be soooo close to almost all of the people in the world whom we love and care about.

Anyways, I'm sure I'll write another post about moving but for now I wanted to post the pictures of our house from the real estate site. The photographer did a really nice job and made our house look pretty awesome if I do say so myself! :) I do love this house - we were so fortunate that our very first house was such a great home for us.

Our master bathroom

It's that time folks! We are t-minus 2 days from starting the remodel of our master bathroom! I am both excited and SUPER anxious! (I thought I would mention the anxiety in case you couldn't tell from my overuse of exclamation points!) This is a big project and we are going to do most of the work. Eek. But for reals, the husband is super handy and occasionally I am too so I think we can handle it. The main question is whether our marriage can handle it! :)  I'll keep you posted!

As a reminder of the current state of our bathroom, here are a few pictures!

Here's a bit of info on our planning process and I'll keep the blog updated as we move through the various projects.

Planning:
We mulled over the plan for a LONG time (and when I say we, I almost 100% of the time mean ME). We considered what seems like a ton of options but really it came down to three options:

Option 1: Keep the same foot print and replace everything but the tub

Option 2: Remove the linen closet and extend the shower into the linen closet space making the overall shower ginormous. Keep the remaining footprint the same and replace everything but the tub

Option 3:  Remove the linen closet, essentially move the shower over and extend it's size a bit but only so much as to have enough room for a new free standing tub. Keep the remaining footprint the same and replace everything

And we chose option #1! The main reason was cost. Removing the linen closet would mean a large increase in the cost of materials and we would have to move the shower plumbing. The current footprint isn't bad so leaving it is one huge way to save money.

Materials:
After browsing too many bathroom photos to count and visiting several tile stores we (I) finally decided on the materials. Here are some of the photos I used for inspiration:

My favorite bathroom - inspiration for the general feel and colors
picture from Houzz

Inspiration for shower tile and half wall of tile
picture from Creative Homebody

The shower will have white subway tile with a chair rail that runs through the middle much like the above photo. Our bathroom does not have the same layout as the one above so the chair rail will only be around our tub.

We are going to use a gray 6x20 tile in a herringbone pattern on the floor - the tile in the background of the picture below. We are going to use a small carrara marble hex for the shower floor and carrara marble for the counters. 

We went with a set of Ikea cabinets for the vanity, which we purchased last weekend. We are updating the bathroom with new doors and replacing the door into the closet with a pocket door.

I'll share more about the finishing touches later. Here's hoping we only hit minor speed bumps along this trip! :)

The last piece

One of the first projects we tackled in the new year was the final piece of our pantry make-over. While there are still a few organizing things remaining, the last major addition to the pantry was a spice rack. Our spices truly were getting the best of us and when I really thought about it, so were our oils and vinegars.

I either had to grab a chair to reach an oil or vinegar I needed or we bought more thinking we had run out when all along we had a perfectly good bottle of ____ vinegar (or oil) hiding in the back of the shelf. I think we have 4 bottles of apple cider vinegar for this exact reason.

And the spices numbered so many that they were overflowing into an extremely unorganized mess on the bottom shelves of another cabinet.

While having the spices and oils/vinegars right next to the stove is helpful, our pantry door is essentially right next to the stove when open. So we had no issue rethinking our kitchen organization and moving those items to the pantry.

When we looked at the door we decided building two separate units would be the best solution and the husband got to work on it one Saturday morning. It took him a few hours to build both racks and install them. I opted to leave them unfinished. I thought the stain we used for the shelves would be too dark and I hate painting so...unfinished they stay! :)

In the next picture you can see our new spice bottles. We buy a lot of spices in the bulk food section of the grocery store and needed bottles that would keep them fresh. We searched a number of places (Ikea, Container Store, World Market, etc) but had a difficult time finding containers that had a quality seal. Our search ended when I found these bottles. Woo-hoo!

An almost complete pantry!

The pantry is done for the most part. Yay! We met our deadline of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving! And I have to say, I'm happy with the changes we made.

I know I said we were working with a small space but to give you an exact idea, our pantry is 50 inches wide and 23 inches deep. The original pantry had five shelves: three were 23 inches deep and two were 12 inches deep. I hated the 23 inch shelves because food just got lost on them and you couldn't see anything on the two bottom shelves.

Our changes involved adding another shelf at the top and making all of the shelves 12 inches deep. We did sacrifice some shelf space in doing this but now we can easily see everything we have which actually increases the functionality of the space. Unfortunately because of the size of the pantry and the number of items we have in it, it is pretty packed. But at least now its organized and we can easily grab what we need. The husband installed two lights which help a lot with keeping things easy to find!

The upper most shelf (accessible by stool only) holds our espresso machine, our large coffee maker, our rice pot, our canner and has additional space for extras if we buy things in bulk. The next shelf holds drinks - this shelf may be reorganized in the future but we'll see. We used a few bins from Ikea and baskets from the Container Store to organize the other pantry items.

The remaining shelves utilize the bins, baskets, and glass storage containers to organize the items as follows:

• Open snacks in original containers (chips, nuts, etc)
• Baking goods (chocolate, cocoa powder, icing, etc)
• Miscellaneous cooking/baking items (lard, marshmallows)
• Dried goods (we have a serious bulk food section at our grocery store and the glass jars hold these as well as other items)
• Quick snacks (granola bars, energy pouches)
• General grocery items 1 (things like dressings, mustard, etc)
• General grocery items 2 (peanut butter, honey, syrups, etc)
• General and specialty grocery items (homemade stuff, jellies, etc)
• Sweet treats
• Pastas and noodles

The cans are a bit of a mess so I'm working on a solution for those. We still need to add hooks to the side where we have additional space and the spice rack to the door. The wire spice rack for the door would cost us probably close to $200 so we're opting to build one instead. We need to add labels to the jars and I'm considering adding labels to the bins. I would also like to add a stacking set of baskets at the bottom of the pantry to hold potatoes and onions and whatnot. Maybe these?

All in all, I'm super happy we finally did this - it is so nice to open the pantry and see things organized!

When I'm really busy

I developed a strange coping mechanism over the past few years. It seems that the uncertainty and lack of control involved in writing a dissertation (and getting a PhD) has caused me to cope by daydreaming about projects around the house. Yes, I actually day dream about work - just work I have complete control over! :)

While I work really hard to finish up this school thing, I've been daydreaming about the following:

1. An organized pantry
2. Overhauling the kitchen and re-organizing the whole thing
3. The master bathroom remodel that hopefully will begin next year
4. Completing the painting in our home
5. Sewing - curtains, pillows, etc

The husband and I plan to come up with another priority list of to-do's around the house in the next week or so. That way we can pick the most appropriate ones for Thanksgiving and Christmas since we have more time over those holidays to get stuff done.

And we should know a lot more about the master bathroom situation after Christmas  because my awesome SIL and BIL offered to help us with the plans. They are both architects and are in the process of remodeling their home in Philly (and doing a kick-ass job). I'm excited to have some professional help and grateful they offered!

I will also be back on the blog train soon as school stuff will slow down in the next few weeks. T-minus 1 month until defense - October 26 is the date. Eek!

Around here

I took an updated picture of our house last week.  The last time we took pictures it was still early spring and it wasn't nearly as pretty outside. Since then we've had TONS of rain which has made everything so much greener and it even seems as if the sky is bluer.

I did not edit this picture at all - it was really that pretty outside!

Dining room chairs

I honestly expected the dining room chair situation to be a disaster. First, have you looked at dining room chairs anywhere lately? Um, the ones I loved at Pottery Barn ran a whopping $200 for the side chairs and $279 for the arm chairs. With our table requiring 8 chairs, this would have been a TON of money. The husband and I have been looking at chairs since we purchased our table (far before it was delivered) and I was aware that we didn't agree on much except those PB chairs. We were slowly preparing ourselves for that large purchase when we ran into World Market a few weekends ago.

And what did we find? Yes, we found chairs that we both like, that are actually comfortable, and that didn't cost a fortune. Yay!

We were really hoping for something rustic, warm, and inviting and I think the table and chairs fit those requirements wonderfully.

Becoming adults

Why is it that when you get a dining room table you feel like you're one step closer to being an adult?

 

Regardless, we are making one step toward adulthood with the recent purchase of a dining room table. Yay! It was quite the ordeal to find a table the husband liked but we finally did! We ordered the table from Crate and Barrel several months ago, had a defective one delivered and returned and finally received our new table a few weekends ago. 

We have a lot of decorating left to do in the room so please disregard the similar look of the table and flooring!

We had the table one day before we traveled to North Carolina so our first chance to use it came this past Sunday. You can see a glimpse of the chairs we bought for it. I'll update with those later!

Dinner was grilled mahi mahi and tomatoes atop whole wheat orzo with pesto.

Home improving update

Sometimes owning a home feels like a never-ending list of to-do's. I'm sure part of that feeling for us has to do with our home being a bit older and in need of some updates. And I'm aware that some of that process involves personalizing our home. Although I love our home, I feel like all I ever think about is the next thing to needs to be updated. Sometimes I need to remind myself of how far we've come. The truth is, we've accomplished quite a bit in our home in the last 2 years.

Thankfully, except for the master bath remodel, the remaining items on our to-do list are pretty manageable. The main difficulty of accomplishing these tasks lies in finding the time!

Proactive gardening

When we began gardening we weren't prepared for a lot of things. That first season was spent reacting to issues rather than anticipating and proactively preparing for issues. As a result we learned a lot, especially what not to do!

Some of the 'fixes' we made last year were last minute and not always the best approach. This year we're working on improving multiple aspects of our gardening. I updated a little about how we were working on improving on cost of plants and plants in general. In addition to these updates I really wanted to update the structure and landscaping around the garden so it was more visually appealing.

Last year we were faced with a pretty serious bird problem mid-season and our quick fix was bird netting suspended by PVC piping.

Although the fix worked (except for the time a pair of birds got stuck under the netting), it was not visually appealing or all that functional - we had to unpin the net and climb under it every time we picked veggies.

Finally, the area where we put the garden is a no-mans land as far as grass goes so its a muddy mess most of the time. In addition to wanting something a little more aesthetic, I also wanted to make the space more functional. We had some extra dirt from removing the beds and trees in the front and we had extra stone that needed new homes.

I suggested that we use the dirt to build up the area around the beds and use the stone to make it easier to walk around and to decrease the muddiness factor. I also found a nice image online of a garden with netting and the husband designed an inexpensive frame for the large garden. Here is the garden so far.

 We need to attach the netting but the frame is built and only took us (mostly the husband) a few hours one Sunday afternoon.

 We now have a door into the netted area.

 

 The new bed and the rocks.

I think its starting to look a lot better and is definitely going to be easier to deal with now!

Now some close-ups!

Outdoor transformation

I mentioned earlier in the week (when discussing our wildlife preserve) that we spent quite a bit of time outside this past weekend. That's really a bit of an understatement. We worked our bums off! And I have mucho proof of that hard work.

We had a bit of a head start as both of us were not working Friday. The husband laid the sod while I ran a morning errand and we spent the afternoon prepping the large bed in the front yard. We dug up any remaining roots and worked some compost into the soil. We were able to plant most of the back row of bushes before heading out for Mexican and NCAA basketball watching.

Saturday was a busy and full day of outside work. We removed the rock wall to make room for the new plants and finished planting the bed. We began the task of putting in a new rock wall and started mulching. We ended a bit earlier to head downtown for dinner at T'afia (where we had a chef spotting - yes, I'm a total nerd - but Chef Monica Pope is awesome and it was really cool knowing that she was working the kitchen while we were there).

The end of Day 2: Covered in dirt and thanks to some poorly applied spray sunscreen Saturday - burned.

We finally finished up the front at 1:30pm Sunday. We spent the morning completing the rock wall and mulching the remaining part of the bed.

Before I give you the finished front, lets review how it started!

We started with this overgrown mess.

The husband despised the ivy so we removed it and added a rock wall border to the beds.

We pruned the bushes on the left side and painted the door.

 We had the trees removed.

We removed the bushes on the left of the door.

Can you spot the dogs?

And now for the finale!

Little baby bushes that you can barely see, a new rock wall, and grass!

Why did we do all of this when it seemed perfectly reasonable to have all of those bushes and trees in the front yard? Here are our main reasons:

1. We had a terrible time growing grass in most of the front yard because of the trees
2. Three trees planted within five feet of one another is pretty much a disaster anywhere, but especially in Texas where we have drought-like conditions
3. Each tree grew in its own strange way as a reaction to the others, thus removing one or two trees would still leave us with a mess of a tree or two
4. The bushes were so overgrown you could barely see the house and were so poorly maintained that pruning did not improve their appearance
5. Our house faces South East, so we get most of our really hot sun in the back corner and back of the house - removing the front trees does not affect our heating and cooling tremendously

We planted a row of Azaleas, a row of Mondo grass, and a row of Mexican Heather - here are some closer pictures.

Our first azalea bloom

Mexican Heather

The husband was outside playing blog photographer at my request when our neighborhood House of the Month committee members came by. The three women told him that they loved what we had done! That surely makes me feel a lot better about our first major outside planting project!