It's Beginning to Look . . . or Feel . . . or . . . ok, I just wish it was Christmas!

I know I just mentioned fall decor not that long ago, but now that it is Thanksgiving week, I can't help but think about Christmas decor, especially since Thanksgiving is so late this year. I mean, we only have a little bit over a month until the big day. Hello, people! We need to get a move on.

Ok, ok, hold your horses. Don't worry. I am all about respecting the gobbler and letting Thanksgiving be its own day. However, I am contemplating decorating for Christmas the day before Thanksgiving for a few reasons: 1. We won't be spending Thanksgiving day at our house, so it's not like we would be celebrating turkey day surrounded by red and green and Christmas trees. 2. The weekend after Thanksgiving we are going to be pretty busy, because my parents are coming up from Georgia. 3. The weekend after THAT we are also going to be busy. So, I could decorate with my parents here (my mom might actually like that), or I could just decorate one day early and then have it all ready by the time Christmas time (a.k.a. Black Friday) rolls around.

Anywho. In light of Christmas decorating, I thought I would share some of my decorating from last year. Keep in mind something: this was my first Christmas decorating a house. I am actually pretty proud of how I pulled it off, but I have added a ton of new things to my decorating bin this year, so I can't wait to mix it up, either.

Blah, blah, blah. Enough with the typing. Christmas 2008 at Scenic Drive:

(Dining room)

(Christmas tree)

(Baker's rack in the dining room)

(Fireplace mantel with the old stockings. I got new ones before Christmas. P.S. Can you tell I like lighted garland?)

(New stockings from Crate and Barrel)

Cleaning Schedule

I have struggled with cleaning since we've bought this house. I mean, my house isn't filthy or in squalor or anything (put those phones down please), but I still feel like I could be doing better. In the summer when school is out it's usually not too much of an issue, but when school is in and I am gone from 7:00-4:30, plus sometimes later depending on the day, I have to admit all motivation is out the window, ESPECIALLY when I have lesson plans and papers to grade and e-mails and dogs to walk and dinner to make and . . . well . . . you know.

So I've decided to create a new cleaning schedule. This schedule has me only doing "real" cleaning four days a week, so there are three extra days for flexibility and whatever else is needed. So far it's been pretty manageable, but we'll see how it goes (because, well, I'm lazy).

Sunday - Bathrooms

• Disinfect surfaces (doorknob, sink handles, bathroom sink)
• Wipe mirror
• Scrub tub
• Scrub toilet
• Wipe down baseboard
• Sweep and mop floor
• Wash towels and bath mat
• Take out garbage
• Also on Sundays: wash/change bed sheets and grocery shop (this was always our day before this schedule. This includes cleaning out the fridge, coupon cutting, and planning, but that doesn't usually take long)

Monday - Kitchen

• Wipe down cabinets, appliances, faucet, windowsills
• Wash dish rack
• Wipe down garbage can inside and out
• Clean microwave
• Disinfect countertops
• Sweep and mop floors (include living room in sweep because dogs = fur)

Tuesday - Bedroom

• Dust all surfaces
• Wipe switchplates, doorknobs, doors
• Empty bedroom garbage
• Vacuum
• Wash light-colored clothes

Wednesday - Living Room/Dining Room

• Dust all surfaces
• Vacuum (include couch)
• Wipe down baseboards
• Febreeze fabrics
• Wash dark clothes

Thursday/Friday/Saturday

• Straighten up/vacuum
• Organize 1 closet, area, etc.
• Wipe down bathroom sink again (it gets funky pretty quickly)
• Kitchen laundry

Daily

• No dishes in the sink
• Load/unload dishwasher
• Wipe down kitchen counters
• Sweep kitchen and bathroom floor

I think this will work for now. I hope I'm not forgetting anything. We'll see how it goes, but I really think this is going to work (as long as I don't turn into a lazy bum!).

Book worms

(Books on our dining room table)

My husband and I love books. I mean, we LOVE them. We are avid readers . . . hey, I'm an English teacher, so I guess it's fitting!

Anyway, my husband also insists on buying every book that he wants to read, and unfortunately (or fortunately) I have fallen suit. This means that we need some storage for all of those well-loved pages and pages and pages. And well, for a while we did not have the storage.

Luckily, we have a family friend who is a (as we call him) "master woodworker" who offered to make us some bookshelves for a wedding present. Unluckily, he is also a master procrastinator because it took us about six months after the wedding to finally get them. We also had to paint them ourselves (which was okay with us! We got free bookshelves after all!). It was our first real project in our house, and I have to say, I think it turned out pretty well!

(Sorry these are out of order . . . stupid blogger)

(The living room with the finished bookshelves!)

Dining Room Dilemma

I have a love/hate relationship with my dining room. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. There are some great things about it. For example, the large bay window lets in a lot of light. I also love the double-sided fireplace it shares with the living room, and I especially love the light color of the fireplace brick.

Here is a picture of the dining room right after we moved in:

(See that beautiful fire place? And you can see a tiny bit of the window on the right)

We've done a few changes - added some furniture, changed out that hideous light, and while I like it sometimes, I am still on the fence with the blue wall color. Do I change it? Do I keep it? The old owners painted it that color to match the heavy duty curtains that were already there. I get a lot of compliments on the blue color, but I don't know . . . it's so . . . BLUE. And sometimes it has me blue. And sometimes I'm not. I'm so wishy washy.

Here's a more updated dining room picture:

(The much nicer dining room light fixture)

Anyway, what do you think? Do you like the blue suede walls? Or do they make you feel a little down in the dumps?

Fall Decor

I know it's a little bit late in the season to be posting this (or maybe not? I don't know. I've already got *gasp!* Christmas decorations on the mind so maybe my scheduling is off) but I wanted to post some of my fall decor.

This year I have more in terms of basic home decor, and I want to use it in my seasonal decor as much as possible. I really like how a lot of my fall decor came out. Am I as good as, say, the Nester or Young House Love? Uhhhhh . . . . no. But, hey, it works for my taste right now and I have lived with it for over a month (which really says a lot!).

So without further ado, Scenic Drive's fall 2009 decor:

(The piano in our living room with some gold plates, pumpkins, and corn stacks)

(Dining room center piece: fake pears in a glass cake stand with fake leaves around the bottom)

(Baker's rack decor - candy corn in a hurricane, black candle sticks on a tray with river rocks, orange candle and fake pumpkin)


(The house all lit up in its fall glory)

I'm not going to deny it: fall is a teaser season for me. I really do love it, but I mostly love it because I know Christmas is coming up. I can't waaaait for Christmas decorations to come out. I've been bookmarking ideas for weeks now! But until it's time (the weekend after Thanksgiving for me - I gotta respect the Turkey Day), I can be happy with my fall decor.

Befores and Afters

Our house has undergone a lot of change since we've moved in. Not a lot of expensive change, mind you. We have invested a lot of sweat equity into our home, but, I've got to admit, that makes the changes that much more personal to me.

Here's a taste of what we've done so far. For example, the kitchen BEFORE:

(Kitchen before: dark, drab, ugly, with pink tile, dark gray walls, dark ugly cabinets and green curtains. Needless to say, it needed to be changed. Sorry for the poor quality photos)

Our kitchen AFTER a gallon of primer and white paint (for the cabinets and the tile - YES, I painted the tile backsplash!), a gallon of taupe paint (for the walls), and new hardware (that cost us $.99 a piece on clearance instead of the original $3.99!):

(Looks pretty good, huh?)

We also used the same white paint for the cabinets and kitchen tile in the little half bath off our kitchen, which also had the horrendous pink tile in it.

Half bath BEFORE:

(Blech. Excuse me while I vomit, please)

Three days and half a gallon of paint later, the half bath AFTER:

(Soooo much better. Ahh, I can breathe. I love paint.)

Another big project we had going on this summer was our backyard fence. Originally there was a dinky little wire fence that worked okay for our two dogs, but only fenced in a small portion of our yard. We decided to get a vinyl white picket fence and install it ourselves (well, my hubby installed with his dad and brother. I just made "executive decisions.")

Our backyard BEFORE:

Six long months and a nice vinyl fence later:

The moral of my story is: did we do some giant, bank-breaking renovations to our house? No, of course not. We have a two bedroom ranch in a modest neighborhood. We're not going to get a huge return on large investments. However, you can really turn a house into a home with some modest investments that might take more time than money, but are definitely worth it in the end.

(Our dogs, Baxter and Molly, definitely think it was worth it!)

Our house

(Our living room just after moving in)

We bought our house in May, 2008. It was, in all honesty, love at first sight. In fact, I fell in love with it before we even toured it, from pictures online that our realtor sent us. When we did the walk through, the smile on my face must have been apparent, because my husband commented on it. By the end of the night, we knew we were going to make an offer. The house had only been on the market for two days.

Of course, there was a lot of activity on the house, and by the time we had our offer in, three other offers were also on the table. The sellers were going to consider all offers and then make a decision. We offered 158,000 (the asking price was 155,000) with 10% down and no seller's assist (where the sellers contribute towards the closing cost). The offers were due on a Tuesday by 5:00 p.m. At 9:00 that Tuesday night, I got the offer that the house was ours! It was one of the happiest moments in my life (come on, we weren't married at that point!). We closed on May 1, 2008, but did a rent-back option for the sellers and moved in on June 18, 2008, the day we got back from our honeymoon.

The house is a 1700 square foot ranch, with two bedrooms, 1.5 baths, a living room, kitchen, dining room, sunporch, and finished room in the basement, all sitting on .55 acres of land. We didn't do any painting before moving in (although that changed over the past summer), although we did have to purchase furniture and new appliances (fridge, washer, dryer). We have had a bit of a hectic year (getting married, new job for me, my parents moving to Georgia) so we are just starting to do some updates (new windows in our bedroom, floors being redone, putting up a new backyard fence, painting kitchen cabinets and a few rooms).

Over the past year and a half, I have fallen in love with our starter home. While I know that we won't be able to live in this home forever (the two bedrooms is the first reason, of many), I am perfectly content with where we have begun.

(Our backyard when we moved in)

This is only the beginning

I have decided that my love affair for home decorating blogs has extended past the point of "normalcy" and is now encroaching upon the realm of "obsession." So much so, in fact, that I have decided to start my own home decor blog. Not because I am a good decorator at all - oh, no - but because I find so much inspiration in reading other blogs that I just HAVE to contribute in some way, or, at least, pass on the inspiration. I have another blog that started out as a personal blog, then morphed into a green blog, and then a home decorating blog, but I have decided to keep the domains separate.

So here goes . . . we'll see what happens, I guess.