This is part of our house that you’ve never seen, that I’ve been wanting to share since I started this blog. Just finding the precious daylight time to photograph it was hard, but I have short work days at work this week and no school, so I finally got a chance to spend some time in there!

Our walk-in closet was the very first project we tackled here since I knew the 10 feet of wire rack the builder provided wasn’t going to cut it for me.  I needed some sense of organization in the house in order to be able to live with the constant chaos in other areas.

I like to be able to get fully dressed in the closet and not have to run and get things from dressers and whatnot, so I knew I needed at least 3 drawers for socks, underwear and tank tops, an area for folded tees, an area for hoodies/sweats, an area for jeans, some long hanging space for dresses, etc and an easily accessible area for my perfume, deodorant headbands and other accessories. Oh and some hanging space for my extensive scarf collection 🙂

Mike was okay with just buying some wire racks for his side and that is what we did in our condo. My side had some cheap Closet Maid stuff that eventually fell apart and he dealt with the wire shelving. So I was insistent on doing it right this time, and doing it right away. I didn’t want to start with a messy closet and have it be something I’d have to tear apart to organize months down the line.

I knew California Closets was very expensive, so we went to Lowe’s and really got lucky. We were able to get this Allen + Roth closet organizer, which had everything I needed.

Once we saw this, Mike was convinced that a closet makeover was a good idea. It is solid wood, the same length as our closet, a nice dark stain and had the perfect combination of hanging/open/closed storage. So we picked up two of these back in the spring. We had a rent a truck, pull some muscles, borrow Mike’s brother to get them off the truck, then open the boxes in the garage and take the pieces upstairs one by one because holy hell, solid wood is heavy.

Mike started with my side and I used one of the spare bedrooms as a closet while he worked on it. Please excuse the in-progress iPhone pictures, I wasn’t really updating this website at the time, nor had I really told anyone about it yet (okay I still haven’t really told anyone about this, I just wait for people to find it :))

Turns out our floor plan wasn’t exactly accurate and our closet was a little shorter than 10 feet long. No problem though, since the organizer was solid wood and we were able to cut it down. But we had literally just moved in, never even used a saw before and had zero confidence. Mike managed to cut down the wood pieces, using our circular saw on the garage floor since we had no work table to put it on, but we didn’t have anything to cut the pipe piece. So the closet project went on hold for a week or so while we borrowed the right tools. Finally we were able to assemble my side.

After a little experience/confidence, Mike’s side seriously took him like an hour.

We had both sides up and were really impressed with how it looked. But we realized it would have looked REALLY great had we painted. So we looked at each other, it was about 7pm on a Saturday, and we ran to Lowe’s for a gallon of paint. It was so spur of the moment that I don’t even remember the color. We fully painted it that night, kicking ourselves that we didn’t paint BEFORE we put it up and instead had to navigate in between all of the openings.

So without further adieu, here’s our DIY walk-in closet 🙂

View from the door, still need a window treatment!

My side, obviously Macky isn’t normally allowed in here since he looks like he’s never seen it before…

Mike’s side, he has less shoes so his side gets the laundry basket and the garbage can.

The best part of Mike’s side, his impressive collection of pants that look like a display at Banana Republic (and I know, because I used to work there :))

Macky modeling our Target storage ottoman that is home to my flip flops in the summer and serves as a place to sit and put on my boots in the winter.

Closer view of my side, we keep a Shark stick vac in the closet and I forgot to move it out of the way. So please ignore the funny purple handle that photo bombed this.

My little accessories area which is currently home to my Target jewelry tree full of my chunky bracelets that don’t fit in my jewelry box, headbands, wristlets, sunglasses, lint roller (essential for a pet owner!), perfume, deodorant and sunblock (essential for the palest person in America). I am planning on revamping this area soon with some hooks and lighting so it’s a little more organized.

The naked window, which has such a pretty view of the backyard. Thankfully the window is small, high and faces the woods!

The side of my closet that is home to my scarves, cardigans/other button ups on top and shirts on the bottom.

We stuck a cheap mirror on the back of the door, which was an absolute necessity!

Here’s the view of our bedroom from the closet. The funniest part of showing people our bedroom is that our walk-in closet is painted, but our actual bedroom isn’t. Baby steps!

We’re very happy with how our closet turned out. I am almost disappointed that it doesn’t look as good in pictures as it does in person! It appears cluttered in these pictures when in reality, there’s so much space and I still have my summer clothes in there!

On Christmas Eve, we painted some random spots we had that needed touching up. I mentioned the holes from our curtain rod in my Christmas To-Do List post.

When Mike installed our new speakers (which he still needs to post about!), we got a new drill hole in our dining room wall. So we decided to finally break out the can of Benjamin Moore’s Waynesboro Taupe.

What a difference with some daylight, huh? 🙂

Then into the dining room…

Thankfully, the touch up spots were flawless.

Since I love this paint color and it’s one of the few true taupe colors I’ve found, I decided to try a swatch for our bedroom. While Mike had roller in hand, I asked him to put a tiny bit on one of our bedroom walls. Then he did this…

He is laughing hysterically at me in this picture because after he rolled past the 2 inch mark I was like Wooooah! Hey! What the heck are you doing?!? I said a swatch!!! Apparently he has no clue what that means. Sort of like how I’ve been telling him since we moved to bend at the knees (we ended up in the emergency room with a pulled out back earlier this year) and just a few weeks ago he told me he had no clue what that meant. Oy!

So I currently have this on my wall…

And it’s definitely too dark. We actually have the lighter, neighboring shade from the color swatch (Himalayan Trek) in our entry way and upstairs hallway and it is way more gray than taupe. Anyone know a good light taupe color that’s not too gray and not too beige? We have a possible contender just beyond that door in the walk-in closet, which I am planning on finally sharing with you tomorrow!

Oh and this title? We painted and then made lasagna. True story. We’re trying to diversify our skills 🙂

On Sunday, we were hit with our first major snowstorm since moving in. Thankfully, Mike’s grandfather bought us a snowblower just the week before, amid rumors of a storm around the 21st. That storm never came, but thankfully we were prepared when we were hit!

Yesterday we went outside to assess the damage. Wait… let me rephrase that… Mike went outside to assess the damage and I watched from the window. I planned on going outside to take some pictures and make a snowman, but MY GOD IT WAS FREEZING.  And ridiculously windy. There was no nice, sunny, day after storm weather. And it was my birthday, so I didn’t feel guilty sitting in the house while Mike used the snowblower. I mean, it’s not like we had to shovel this year, right? So in order to have some documentation of the storm to show you, I took this video of Mike snowblowing the driveway, with my iPhone, from the comforts of our bedroom…

Then I realized this was kind of mean. So I marched outside in my rubber boots and brought Mike some water.

I also took some pictures. It is ridiculously hard to take pictures when a) your hood is covering your face b) your hands are numb because you can’t use the camera with the mitten top covering your fingerless gloves and c) the snow is so bright and you’re too cold to play with camera settings.

See how deep that is?!

It was so windy that the covers blew off of our wood piles…

And there were these funny snow drift spots everywhere…

I think it’s safe to say that my mums are officially dead…

Hey there’s Mike again!

Thanks to the plows, we have to climb a mini-mountain to get the mail out of our box…

Though it still took Mike quite a while to do all of the sidewalks and the driveway, it was no where near as awful as it would have been had we not had the snowblower. Yesterday Mike rescued our next door neighbors, who were shoveling out their driveway with garden shovels. Then tonight, we came home to see our neighbors across the street (who we’ve never met) returning from spending the holidays in Canada and being unable to even find their driveway. We offered the snowblower, but apparently we were just a little too late, they had managed to shovel just enough to get their car in.

So even though we thought we were a little late with the snow preparation, apparently we were in the best shape out of all of our neighbors. Once again, THANK GOD.

This was taken on my birthday in 1992, 18 years ago today.  I am happy that I decided not to decorate my bedroom with teddy bears this year…

Incase you don’t live on the east coast, this is the current view of my porch…

Where are the stairs??

I took these through the window since I wouldn’t dare to open the door.. I attempted and the snow just blew in my face. The wind is blowing the snow everywheeere, as you can tell by the fact that our little pre-lit trees by our front door are covered.

Though I wish we would have had a chance to pick up some paint or curtains before the storm hit so that we could be productive, we are actually quite cozy sitting around the house eating all of our Christmas leftovers. It sure helped that we made these a few nights ago…

And these…

Aaaand these…

Mike’s creative side seems to come out in the form of pretzels. I think it’s the only decorating that is quick enough to hold his attention. He actually started the process without me while I was still throwing cookies in! 🙁

The best cookie of the night?

The Macky cookie. That is my husband’s handwriting. Quite scary that sometimes you can’t really tell our writing apart.

It may be scarier that it’s still snowing and we’re down to like, 5 cookies. I’m going to have to invest in some Pajama Jeans after this weekend. Thank God we finally got a snowblower!!!