old is new again

Yesterday I was drooling over the FLOR catalog, when I realized we had carpet tiles in the attic (which I knew, since I helped store them up there) but we'd never put them together like a rug before.  We made a rug in the girls' room once (they have green and ivory Pooh Bear tiles), although now their room is so small it goes wall to wall!

In the dining room, though, I was tired of trying to sweep around the Persian type rug we had and tired of trying not to catch the fringe in the vacuum. And the cat had decided it was a perfect scratching spot, and the fringe overlapped the walkway from the side door and was getting pretty dirty.  Plus, it didn't fit quite right under the table and at dinner, your chair was always wobbling half on and half off the rug. So...Brandon went up to the attic and got the carpet tiles down (he actually threw them down...but whatever.  They're heavy!)  And...voilà! 

Love it!  I never thought this was the prettiest carpet in the world when it was our bedroom floor (wall to wall on a concrete floor), but it looks great as a faux sisal rug!  We've had these for years and they've been through at least one flooding incident (maybe two) and cleaned up great each time (pressure washed, etc).  When a tile gets dirty or damaged, just pull it out and clean it or replace it, without having to remove the whole rug. 

And now I feel like I've been shopping and can recycle my FLOR catalog without any more wishful thinking.

operation fiesta ware

I will never forget wandering around Macy's before we got married, trying to decide on a china pattern to register for because we were "supposed to."  We finally chose something blue and forgettable (I can't even remember what it was) and started to head home.  We got almost to the door and stopped.  We ran back and deleted all the blue and registered instead for a set of lovely and durable everyday dishes by Denby.

We still use them every day and have yet *knock on wood* to chip or break a single one!  We have mysteriously lost one bowl--last known sighting was at a Halloween party when I was pregnant four years ago--but the price of replacement pieces online has gone sky high and we refuse to pay that much for one bowl!  Which leads me to our current situation...while I love, love, love the Denby, I find myself wishing for a little more color from time to time.  Enter, Fiesta!  When we moved to the rental house, I was determined to add some color with chair cushions and tablecloths--and thus red, blue, green, and yellow entered our lives for the first time since we got married.  (Brandon is more of a "earthtone" sort of person.  Huge understatement!) 

So for my birthday this year, I planned, schemed, and connived to get these beauties:

Red!  Green!  Yellow!  Blue!  (The little yellow salt and pepper shakers had already made their appearance a few months ago.)  I took this photo about five minutes after I unpacked them--I washed one mug and made tea right away :)  I think they will fit in quite nicely here.  (The red cabinet in the photo has since been moved to another wall but still holds dishes.  I moved all the Denby to the dining room where it can hang out with the other earthtones and be happy.) 

Added bonus:  The girls had been eating on mostly plastic dishes.  My attempts to get them to eat using the Denby failed miserably.  "Those are grownup plates!" they would say.  I'm not sure what that says about Fiesta, but so far they LOVE it.  They've designated a color for each of us and the top shelf of the dishwasher--which cannot be set to anything without a heated dry--is no longer jammed with plastic.  We have four plates, four saucers, four bowls--just as you see here--and we wash them after each meal.  The dishwasher seems a bit empty and lonely this morning and I'm wondering if I'll have to find something to put it in so I can run the silverware and glasses later.

So...I know this is more a "buying new stuff" vs. "decluttering and making do" sort of post, but I think it most definitely fits into the "if you love it, keep it" category of home decor.  It certainly makes me smile and I almost look forward to washing dishes.  How weird is THAT?

long time no see

It's been a while since I posted about the house.  We've been working hard as usual, but have some bittersweet news to share.  We've decided to put 1928 Bungalow up for sale.  We're not really sure where we're headed next, so we'll trying to adjust to the idea of renting for a while until we figure it out.  We've done so much work on the house and the yards over the last five years, but we can only hope that the next owner will love it as much as we have. 

I'll be updating as we go along but thought I'd share a few recent photos.

lena's table update

Brandon hasn't quite gotten it finished, but I thought you might like a preview of how it's going. 

something you haven't seen in a while

Me, with a screwdriver, working.  I'm back!  I'm dressed a little too nice for hard labor in this photo, but since we were just hanging curtains, I guess it's okay. 

We decided to undertake the project of moving the girls to the back room, which has been our den/library/office/spare room/catch-all since they were born.  It's a much bigger room than their old room and it's farther from the rest of the house, so it will be quieter for them when sleeping.  No more tip-toeing around to do the dishes or vacuum!  Yay!  Wait, that means I don't have any excuse for not doing the dishes or vacuuming.  Argh!

Here are some more photos of the chaos created by this move.  We've since gotten the girls moved in completely, and we do plan to repaint later.  But we haven't unpacked the office/library yet, so all those boxes you see in our bedroom are still FULL of books.  500+ books, actually (nerd librarian that I am, I scanned them all into LibraryThing as I packed them...here's our catalog if you care to take a look).

Our bedroom:

The dining room!

More dining room:

The new nursery.  We've removed the Batman print and the

scary mask on the left.  We hope to repaint soon!

little pumpkins

We haven't had much time to work on the house lately, and even hired our neighbor Tony's lawn service to keep up with the yard for much of the summer.  We did manage to get a few veggies out of the garden, though, and Brandon found some time to decorate for Halloween.  Our living room resembles a daycare center most of the time.  We found a few minutes to rearrange the dining room last week in order to move an old cedar armoire into the room to serve as a make-do coat closet, since our house doesn't have an actual closet anywhere that's not in a bedroom.  We moved the clock (which also serves as the liquor cabinet) around twice, as well as the china cabinet, before we finally found a way that worked.  We'll need to attach the china cabinet to the wall before long, since we placed it in the corner and it looks like prime real estate for a baby to crawl under and hide behind.

Speaking of babies, the girls are now five months old and Emerson has her first tooth already!  They are rolling over and scooting backwards a lot, and the dreaded babyproofing stage has arrived.  I've moved around a few things in cabinets, to centralize the cleaning products in an attempt to lessen the number of cabinets we actually need to lock.  Thinking lots of baby gates are in our future and it will be here before we know it.

No pics of the house right now, but here are some of our little pumpkins, in one of their many Halloween outfits.  The yard looks pretty similar to last year, complete with zombie and graveyard.

one of my favorite things about this house

I love the sunlight in this house! I was watching tv the other day and a commercial came on with a kid running around this nice old house with lots of sunlight. I was envious for a second, and then looked up and realized that's what we have. Well, minus the running kid. At least for now.

Gecko does hang out in the dining room. Usually when the sun is right under that chair you see in the photo--that's his favorite spot!

dining room at christmas

This is just a photo of the dining room with greenery everywhere. The window straight ahead has an old Lane cedar chest underneath it, and serves as Gecko's guardpost.