I am a list maker

Hi, 

My name is Lauren and I am a list maker. 

I make lists for everything. 

• Food. 
• Cleaning. 
• Organizing. 
• Shopping.
• Work. 
• Crafting.

And apparently I make lists of my lists. 

As you friends out there know, we bought our first home exactly 1 year ago today! Very exciting!

Since we moved in, we have done a few things with our completely blank slate of a house.

We've stripped wallpaper. 
We re-did our closet. 
We made some cushions for our outdoor furniture.
We got outdoor furniture. 

For some unknown reason, in all of my list-making haste, I never ever made a list of all things home-makeover related. 

My work schedule has been crazyyyyyyyyyyy lately. With my limited free time, I only have enough to spare for 1 or 2 small projects a week. But I get so overwhelmed when I come home, because there are 1,000,000,000000000 things to do, that I can't see past the big stuff and actually make headway with the smaller things that are easier to accomplish. 

So I had to do something to organize my home-makeover related life.


Naturally, I made a list. 

I decided that I would open up excel, add a tab for each room in the house, and just type my little heart out. I tried to list out every little item that I could possibly think of, almost to the point of annoyance. 

I am trying to be really good about things for the house and only work on one or two rooms at a time. Given that, right now I am trying to get the Master Bedroom finished. Here is my List for the Master Bedroom...don't judge. 

I will try and get you guys some progress pics soon! Everytime I go to take photos, my battery is dead and then I put the camera down and forget to charge the battery until the next time I go to use it. It is a sick cycle. 
 

No.	Project/Task	Status	Need?	Est. Cost
1	Pick a wall color and paint the walls. Dark olive-y green	Done-zo	2 gallons Filoliol Yew from Valspar Paint Primer in one	$75.00
2	Find bedroom furniture. Ladies Dresser, highboy, and nightstands.	Done-zo	Furniture	$250.00
3	Paint the ceiling	Done-zo	1 gallon ceiling paint	$15.00
4	Paint the moulding antique white... the eternal debate! Antique white vs bright white.	Done-zo	Glidden Trim & Door	$40.00
5	Pick out a BED!	Done-zo	Ethan Allen Bed	$1,500.00
6	Lamps for our nightstands. Preferable antique brass bases to match hardware	Done-zo	Lamps!	$150.00
7	Lamp for our ladies dresser	Done-zo	Lamp!	$100.00
8	Need pillow shams for the bed. Queen Size or King Size? Not sure. Need to pick out fabric too. Maybe fabric that matches the chair/bench	Not Started	Fabric, and maybe piping	$100.00
9	Touch up wall paint near top moulding, especially near the doorways	Not Started	Paintbrush	$3.00
10	Get the Ethan Allen sticker off the floor	Not Started	Nothing	Free
11	Get a box/block or something that can elevate the TV up a few inches so that I can see over my boobs when laying down and so that the plant doesn't block the signal	Not Started	Box/Block	$10.00?
12	Make/Find bookends for the Shakespeare collected on the highboy. Potentially use the porcelain balls from Xmas Tree Shops. Maybe use two pieces of moulding mitered together and the ball in between?	Not Started	1) Moulding 2) e6000 glue (have this somewhere? 3) Stain for moulding & foam brush	$15.00
13	Buy and cut a rug pad for the bedroom rug	Not Started	Rug Pad	$30.00 ?
14	Fix nightstand lamps so that the shades are level	Not Started	Nothing	Free
15	Buy a TV for our bedroom	Done-zo	TV!	$300.00
16	Decorate the dresser and highboy with things already around the house. Vanity items, jewelry boxes, other pretty things.	Done-zo	Stuffff around the house.	Free
17	Get a plant!
18	Order and replace the missing/broken Drexel hardware for our highboy and dresser	Not Started	Hardware	$100.00
19	Make a decision on frigging curtain rods/hardware. I have 2 sets of double rods, but they are brushed pewter. Am I spray painting these brass? Or just using them as is? Test out various brass spray paints and do it.	Not Started	Spray Paint	$8.00
20	Steam the curtains that I already bought. Get wrinkles out. Possibly wash and dry these because they are about 2 inches too long. Wash and dry? Or just deal with the length?	Not Started	Nothing	Free
21	Purchase the leaded glass window dangly thing for our bedroom window, or possibly each bathroom window?	Not Started	Leaded glass art	$100.00
22	Find a bench for underneath the window. Something on craigslist maybe? Needs to be wide and narrow.	Not Started	1) Bench 2) Fabric to recover bench	$300.00
23	Get a wing chair for the corner of the bedroom. Craigslist maybe? Needs to be taller than the dresser.	Not Started	1) Chair 2) Fabric to recover in	$400.00
24	Need a new lampshade for the blue lamp on the dresser. Needs to be a little wider and taller. 12 height x 15 wide.	Not Started	Lampshade	$30.00 ?
25	Pick a wedding picture for our portrait and hang in our bedroom	Not Started	Picture and frame	$250.00
26	Get artwork for above the highboy... some type of collection of a few photos or something	Not Started	Artwork	$50.00

What do you home owners do to stay organized/not overwhelmed in your new home? I would GREATLY appreciate any tips/tricks/best practices!!

HOLLER!

Andddddd I have a closet!

The very first room we are tackling in our new house is definitely our Master Suite. In that room we have a bedroom, walk-in closet, and full bath. We've lived here for almost a year now and are making a big push to get things organized and in place, and figure out what furniture and other things we need to purchase. Of course, getting things organized starts with getting our closet organized!!! Duhhhh. Should have been the first thing we did, but, ya know. 

We have lived in our first house for almost a year now (July 28th to be exact). Although you cannot tell from the picture below, this closet was very bizarrely laid out. It is a very small closet to begin with, so we had to change the layout entirely to really capitalize on the space. 

I tried to draw you up a little sketch in Paint with the layout BEFORE we ripped everything off the walls. As you can see, layout doesn't make any sense at all. Maybe it is because I really don't hang clothes. WAY to lazy for that. WAYYYY too lazy to hang everything.
 

Luckily, my Husband is super handy and we planned out the closet so it would suit both of our needs.  Here is the layout that we planned.

 
After a good 2 coats of a pretty mustardy-yellow, repainting the moulding, and adding several shelves, this closet finally suits our needs. It is sooooooooo much better! Not to gloat, but don't our hardwood floors look awesome with the wall color??!! I just love how they pop.

In case you need some motivation to re-do your closet, JUST DO IT. It will change your life :). 

I won't count this as an item off of The Bucket List until the entire Master Bedroom has been rehabbed. Only then will I officially call it complete. Hope you enjoyed! 


HOLLER!

Why Hello There...

It has been quite the month over here! 

For those of you that don't live in the Northeast... Verizon has been on strike for a month now! Oghhhhh I have about 300 comments on that topic, but I won't spew that here.

Guess what that meant? We haven't had internet since we moved out of our apartment and into our new home in July. JULY!!! 


Needless to say, I have been going through some serious internet withdrawal. I haven't checked a blog in a MONTH. We finally got internet about an hour ago and you guys were my first visit, after checking out what Martha has been up to, of course. 


For your viewing pleasure.... some house pictures! Keep in mind...these are pictures of the house when it was listed. Totally not our furniture. We moved in the night we closed, so there was no way to take pictures before crap was EVERYWHERE.

 

 (Front of house)

(View from backyard)

 

(Living Room -view from foyer)

(Dining Room - view from living room)

(Dining Room - view from kitchen towards Dining Room and Living Room)

(Kitchen - view from Addition. On the far right, that is our front door. The door on the left, is the Dining Room door)

(Kitchen view)

(Kitchen - view into Addition)

(Addition - view from Kitchen. Nice couches, right? lol...)

(Screened-in Porch.... wahoo!!)

 

 (Bedroom 1 - Master - definitely bigger than it looks)

 (Bedroom 2 - It is actually HUGE!)

 (Bedroom 3 - Also a pretty good size)

(Bedroom 4 - CRAFT ROOOOOMM!!! WAHOOOO!)

OK! There you have it. That is a brief tour. I'll have more pictures for you when it doesn't look like the A-bomb went off in here.

As for me, I will be toasting to the internet on the rest of this Friday night. You might not hear from me for a week because I have a ridiculous amount of catching up to do in Blogland.

Holler 

House!

Hiii,

Remember how I told you that my husband and I have been looking for a house? Well... we found one! Right now we are under contract for our first home and we couldn't be more excited/nervous/anxious/terrified.

I hope that I am not jinxing myself here, but I want to share a picture of it with you. I am pretty confident that you will love it just as much as we do.

Oh my gosh don't you LOVE IT?? 

Can anyone tell me what that tree is in our front yard? The picture might not be close enough, but the leaves look IDENTICAL to gingko leaves, but when I google image a gingko tree, it looks nothing like the images.

Anyway, we are so excited! We will likely be closing in the middle-end of July. WOW I better start packing! Luckily we are only moving 15 minutes from our current apartment, so the move shouldn't be too too bad. 

Thanks for letting me share with you, we are SO EXCITED!

I've said we're excited about 8 times in this post, don't mind me. 




xoxo