B&B

Guess what we're doing. I can't WAIT. We have a Lowe's near us that is closing, so we decided to take advantage of some of the savings that are going. I mean the whole store is 35% OFF, and lots of things with even greater discounts. So while we contain going broke over wanting to buy everything, there have been a few things we have been able to snag and stock up on at a great price. More on all those little treasures later. We were able to get an amazing deal for the wood that we need for our, Jesse's little project in the master bedroom. I am so excited, because one of the first things I have wanted to do since moving in is add some architectural details to a lot of the charm this house already has. So here's what we are planning.

Do you see the re-accuring theme going on here. BOARD & BATTEN. GAH. So happy that we got to take advantage of the sale and get the supplies that we need to make this already very simple and cheap project that much more cheaper. YAHOO. Don't worry I will be sharing a step by step process when we actually get this thing rolling, just so excited I had to share. Here is a glimpse of what our room currently looks like.

I have a tinsy list of to-do's to get this room up to where I would like it to be, but now I'm being able to cross off one of my most anticipated projects. Stay tuned for the reveal :)

~BDD

Better late than never

ok. So this week was crazy. I felt like I blinked and it was Friday. So much happened this week, can't wait to share everything that has been going on. Monday started with about 7 loads of laundry. Which might not be a lot for some, but that's more than double what I usually have to do on Mondays. THEN probably one of my favorite things this week, was I got to head up to a great friends house on Tuesday and help her paint some stripes in her living room from our stripe love. Such a great time hanging out and painting, laughing and I got to be kid free, thanks to my great sister who offered to babysit. Love having a fantastic family so close :) Oh and then it was just fast forward for the rest of the week, hence why I have not been on here at all this week. Oh but I miss it :) So super late I know, I usually do these on Mondays, but aside from the laundry this past Monday was just one of those days where the kids need my full, undivided attention all day, so duty called. Well head on over to 'In the Pot' and check out this reader recipe for crock pot sundays. Well enjoy your weekend, I guess we are supposed to get more snow. Did you hear that, SNOW, in October. I don't care though cause it's really nothing big, and just makes it feel like christmas is that much closer. YEAH =D

~BDD

Little BITS of door makeover and fall decor

OK, so I did a few more fall things around the house, and figured I would give you a little update on our door appearance. So here is our side entrance, that we use as our main entrance. It's perfect when you are coming in with groceries, because it comes right into our kitchen. Here's what we had to work with:

BEFORE

Not bad, but with the doors red, and then with the dark teal porch posts. Remember these :

So there was just too many colors going on that didn't match :( SO you remember our fantastic porch transformation, we were so thrilled with how much better it looked after. See :

SO I had already painted the exterior doors twice, to get rid of the red, and liked them much better, 3x a charm, but was still not 100% sure if I was feeling it. And then once the porch was done we had some paint left over so I decided to paint both our porch and front door to match. And this is what I got.

Still have 3 more things to do. Change out that tacky brass door knob, get a new screen door and paint it black to match, and finally get a name decal for the door as I mentioned here. But before I go on let me show you another little upgrade we did, that I am so in love with. Before we had just an open square window. I think I was the only one that felt this way, but I felt like I was in a fish tank, and anyone could just come up and look right through the front door and see what we were doing. So I did a little searching, and found this. It's a window film in Etched Lace and it cost $21 bucks. Gives me privacy but I loose none of the light. NONE. I have had it up for about a month now, and I love it just as much as I thought I would. Here I will show you what I'm talking about.

It looks great from both sides, and no curtain to deal with. YEAH. It was exactly what I was hoping for, and pretty easy to install.

I love it when he volunteers to do things like this, because it always comes out so much nicer than me trying to hurry through it. Ok onto the last bit of fall touches I did, because honestly I am chomping at the bit to decorate for christmas. So while I was getting a few things from walmart I strolled through their craft and hardware section and picked up a few things:

The canister I already had, I just wanted some fall like things to go in it.

I put that arrangement on my side door, as you saw above, and then decorated my pumpkin.

Using upholstery tacks I got for $.97cents ea., also from walmart, I began to tack out the letter "D" for our last name.

And this is what I got:

Nothing fancy, just enough to make it personal. It was so easy to do, I totally free handed it, I didn't really have anything to go off, other than just making the a capital letter "D" that is. 

SO there ya have it. 

I've already began making a list of all the things I want to do for christmas decorations this year, 

so you can pretty much bet, 

I'm done with fall, for now :)

~Have a great Friday! We are finally going out for our anniversary tonight (woot woot) we're about 3 months behind, but that's ok. Just as excited to have a date night. Thanks for stopping by :)

~BDD

CHILI

"In the Pot", as promised.. coming to ya every monday.. Sunday's crock pot meal. Can I just say, I love crock pot's, always a success. Go on over and check it out :)

Post Projects

Well, in between cleaning, taking care of runny noses, and loads of laundry, I wanted to hop on here today just for a little update to recap some of the projects I was working on ( and finished) back in September. Sorry for being such a slacker and not getting these up here sooner, so that they were actually part of my self proclaimed 'project month' as mentioned here, details to follow.

First : We have these two lovely beauties :) HA. I received them both as free hand offs from a family member who was getting rid of stuff. I actually got them quite a few years ago, before any house, or babies, or talk of babies for that matter. But I saw them and thought to myself "Someday when I have kids these would be so cute painted (at the time I was thinking white) and then my kids can use them. Well many years later after saving them twice from being thrown out (hubby had no idea why I wanted to hold on to them) they now get taken up from the basement dusted off and prime suspects for my projects. 

I started giving them both a good wipe down, and a rough coat of white paint. I say rough because I wanted them to look really worn-in and 'shabby chic' like, so I made sure it was slapped on with no real thought.

side note : So glad that crack in our porch is gone baby gone. To see that project click  here.

I didn't take any photos of that process, but after the white paint was dry I began to paint them each (lightly) a different color. I chose a light baby blue for the rocking chair, and a celery green for the step stool. Both of which I had on hand, so if your counting that's free furniture + free paint = FREE :) Here is a close up of what each piece looked like with the colored paint done.

I went over them lightly with the color because I wanted the white to be peeking through. The rocking chair photo shows it best. Then I grabbed some sand paper that I already had (catching my drift = free) and went to town. Just sanding down to the wood in areas that would have naturally worn over time, and anywhere else I thought looked good, again keeping 'shabby chic' in mind. And this is what I got :

I couldn't be more thrilled with how this little rocker came out. It looks kinda bright blue in this last photo, the more accurate color would be the one right above it for the color, but I assure you it a very nice light blue, and goes so well in their room.

Now this little guy I had to do one more step on which I will explain here. When I sanded it down on the edges the wood underneath was practically white. You couldn't even really tell that it was wood. It looked like this :

The outcome was kinda bugging me, so after looking at it for a few days I decided to try to get the wood to show through a little more I would grab some stain. Which I think you have figured this out by now, but I already had. Making this entire project FREE, just using things I already had. Me likey =D Ok, back to the staining. 

I opened the stain, grabbed a Q-tip, and just started rubbing it on the exposed wood areas so it would grab. I did a few applications, making sure to wipe up any drip marks (cuz that would have been a pain in the butt after all this to see stain dripping down the sides). And after a few applications I got more of the wood look I was hoping for. 

And here it is in it's new home. The perfect height for little teeth to be brushed, and little hands to be washed. My son even pulls it out to our kitchen island to help me cook, or see what's going on up there if he's interested. 

Second : One more little project. I am not a keeper of many things. I would never be mistaken for a hoarder or a sorry for the mess, we just moved kinda excuse (my husband says he gets that last one when he goes into a customers house that is a mess, only to find it in the same condition when they go back the following year). Anyways.. I like things put away, in there place, neat and tidy (guess you could say I totally get it from my dad, sorry dad :p). Well much to my grandmothers despair (thinking I have no value for sentimental things) I do occasionally come across stuff that I just can't seem to get rid of, and don't really have a place. Birthday cards people. What do you do with the birthday cards, or any you've received for that matter?

 Well I saw a photo of this, and thought that's perfect. They are in order, and can be stored neatly. For instance my birthday this past year I got some really, really great cards. I don't know if I was being emotional about turning another year older closer to 30, AHHHH, but I just couldn't see throwing them out. Here's whatcha do. Grab a hole punch and the metal rings (you can get at any walmart or staples in the office supply section) make even hole punches through your cards and then put the rings through to make them into little books. SO cute, and you can still thumb through them, and read everything on them. 

You could group them together by occasion, year, special event. The list goes on, cards, letters, love notes, kids stuff. You name it. Well there ya go, sorry so late but a few of the other projects I got down in september. 

~Any projects you've been dying to tackle, or just finished and love how it came out? Let me know I would love to hear about it =D

~BDD

Apple Picking

Well, fall is here in full swing, and a huge tradition we do around here is go apple picking. So here are some photos of us doing, just that =D Enjoy, and I hope you are enjoying the change of season just as much as we are :)

Applecrest Farm

Getting ready to take a tractor ride out to the orchards.

My sweet little lady & I.

His favorite part :)

Lip smacking good :)

Jesse & I 

(rare for us to take a photo together these days)

Pumpkin Patch

This pretty much captures the essence of their relationship. He love to make her laugh :)

Getting them both to smile at the same time is a bit ridiculous these days, so I gave up :)

Ohh my sweet little gem. She is getting to big =D

Well that was our trip in a nut shell. Unfortunately we were experiencing a bit of a heat wave. I think Florida sent their weather up here, because it was about 82 degrees, and extremely humid. Oh well, we plan to go again in a few weeks just because we had so much fun, and Jesse is dying to make another apple pie. Which came out delish :) We love all of our family who is not here to share in this time with us, we miss you greatly, and hope these photos help you share in our joy :)

"O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree"

via pottery barn

Wait, WHAT? O Christmas Tree. Yeah you are really seeing this correctly. And I know we are only in the middle of October, BUT, christmas is right around the corner, CRAZY? Let me say that again Christmas is right around the corner. Oh my gosh, that is just crazy. Especially to think that if Christmas is coming, that means my baby girl will be ONE before I know it. AHHHH. Ok well back to what this post is really about. I know technically most of us aren't even thinking about christmas yet, BUT, earlier this week we headed out to Tonry Farm to tag our christmas tree. We have been doing this for the last 4 or 5 years, and each year we get smarter and smarter. We used to just go and pick out and cut down our tree in the same day. Which usually meant sometime shortly after Thanksgiving, and it was freezing, and there was usually snow. Do you know how hard it is to truck through snow covered fields, and decide which tree looks full, when it's covered in snow and you are freezing your tail off. Well it was fun, but now we have to decided to go out ahead of time to TAG our tree, so that way after Thanksgiving we can just go out and cut it down, AND that means you get the first selection, and not all the good ones are tagged. I can't tell you how many times I would find a tree, walk around it nodding my head yes, and then see the stupid tag, that means it's somebody else's :( WAH. So last year my mom and I decided to head out in early novemberish and pick out our tree. BUT it was still cold, and we walked the ENTIRE farm, and I was 8 1/2 months pregnant. YIKES. So this year we took advantage of one of the insanely warm days we were having, and went this past week. Success. So here it is, can't wait to go back and cut it down and start decorating our new house christmas. 

We brought decorations (also a first this year) so that other people will clearly see from a distance that this one was taken :)

And the precious little tag, that says "this one is already taken"

HOORAY

So I know it still might be alittle early for you, but it's christmas, and since my husband has this crazy rule that I can't decorate, listen too, or watch anything christmas related until after Thanksgiving (I mean we are talking the day after Thanksgiving) I figured I would just leave you with a few photos to help you feel inspired about the pending holiday season :) 

via pottery barn

One of my all time favorite christmas pictures, via pottery barn :)

~ Happy Friday Everyone~

~BDD