We still have 2 bedrooms with zero furniture in them and an empty formal living room, but we can’t help thinking of ways to improve on our house.  One of the ideas floating around our heads for a future renovation is an overhaul of our eat-in kitchen space.

When we bought our house, the model had already been sold.  We walked through it about a year before, but we were in so many models that we hardly remember the details.  One of those details was whether or not there would be room at our island for some stools.  The saleswoman assured us there would be, but when we moved in  we realized she was wrong.

We hoped to change the countertop on our island to a contrasting color (I imagined a dark butcher block) with about a 12 inch overhang for two stools.  Hence the two pendant lights over the island.  Though I was sad that I couldn’t sit at the island as Mike cooked and tell him about my day, we were okay with it.  We always planned to use our condo dining set since I wanted a much more casual dining feel than a formal dining room has (and we paid only $199 for it in ’07- table AND chairs AND glass top!)

(sidenote- it was dinner time when I took these pictures, how cute are they??)

Now that we actually live here, we’ve realized that the kitchen really is the heart of the home.  Whenever we have people over, everyone stands around the island.  We try to tell people to move into the family room or dining room, but they won’t budge.  So we started to think of solutions and I was reminded of a model we walked through about almost 3 years ago now.  It had a similar kitchen floor plan as ours, but the builder offered an optional sunroom.  I remembered that the builder was Ryan Homes and I recently scoured their website for pictures.  Unfortunately, the development we visited was sold out, but I was in luck that I have a disgusting memory and figured out that the model was the Yorkshire.  I managed to find floor plans and pictures on the Ryan Homes website.

Here is the basic layout of our kitchen, as displayed on their website…

And here are the additions we’d like to make, also via the Ryan Homes interactive floorplan tool…

Our builder did offer an add-on to the back of our house, but it was more vertical than horizontal and we didn’t think it would be very functional.  We liked that this was more of a room than a bump-out and didn’t extend very far into the backyard.  We also have high hopes for the backyard area someday, but that’s for another post.

I also found some still images of a Ryan model home that was upgraded with the exact changes we would like…

There is also a virtual tour of this house here!

Ideally, we would love to do something like this, opening up our kitchen, extending our island, adding an area for stools at the island, making a bar area on the opposite side of our sink with additional seating.  We would open up the area from the window through the sliding glass door. We would lose the upper cabinets to the left, but honestly there’s nothing really in those.  And we’d gain the space in the new base cabinets in the island.

We just think we can add some special touches (Wine fridge anyone?? Bookcase area in the island??) that will make our kitchen look more custom and less builder grade.  Plus adding a nice large sunroom will give us a ton of options to work with.  And of course, the cats would love all of those additional windows!

Maybe in 10 years.  But we can dream, right?

ps- I started a Facebook fan page for this place, come here to join!

pss- Please join, don’t feel creepy, I need friends

Another item on my Christmas to-do list was to make some crafts, including a wreath.  So last night, I gathered my supplies.

Yes, I am crafting on my kitchen countertops.  Take one guess why that is.  Mhmm, because of Macky.  For some reason he doesn’t acknowledge anything we do on the countertops. The last thing I needed was a glitter covered cat!

I had no plan of attack.  Actually I did, I wanted to make a full-out ornament wreath.  But then I saw this woodsy wreath at Michael’s and I bought it.  I wanted some of it to show through, but I wasn’t sure how to approach it.  So I attached some floral wire to some ornaments and started adding them in bunches…

(Please ignore my reflection… I am wearing a giant shirt that is even too big for Mike)

I remembered I had some silver ribbon upstairs that I got to decorate our staircase.  I grabbed that and wrapped it around the wreath.  I wanted to make the ornaments into a sort of wrap around pattern and I figured I could follow the lines of the ribbon to do so.

After I attached the ornaments with wire, I hot glued them to one another to give the tight cluster effect.

Then I just continued to make clusters around the pattern of the ribbon, wiring and gluing!

Then I added a silver bow off to the side to finish it off.

And tada! All finished!! I hung it inside until we decorate the outside of the house this weekend.

For good measure, I took some pictures in the partial daylight this morning.

The dining room gets the most light in the morning, so I brought the wreath in there for a few shots.

I usually prefer cleaner, simpler wreaths, but I decided to step outside of my comfort zone.  I was unsure at first, but now I like my little creation. The different sizes of ornaments have a bubble-like effect and the wooden wreath still shows to add a rustic element.  As I said earlier, this will be going on our front door which is covered by our porch.  To feed my need for a simple wreath, I am planning on making one for the inside too!

I have the attention span of a gnat tonight.  Here are my random thoughts…

A rare daytime photo snapped before work this morning.  I just had to show you the new shades in the light!

All you need in life….

I picked up a can of brown and white spray paint.  I am tempted to run around the house and find things to paint but it’s 10:30 and….

I am tired from playing with these all night…

I figured December 6th is late enough to at least start making some holiday decorations.  We’re planning on getting a tree this weekend.

A sneak peek of my ornament creation…

I’ll tell you aaaall about it tomorrow since I’m tired, cranky and I have glitter all over my face.  Have I ever mentioned that I hate glitter?? Hate it. All you need is one piece on your nose and it annoys you all day.  And I currently have it all over my pajamas…..

‘Til tomorrow kids

One of the items on my Christmas to-do list was to do something with the window treatment situation in the family room.  Incase you didn’t catch Kerry’s perfectly imperfect post on our family room, here are some pictures.

Hard to tell in this picture with the sun, but the window on the left has no paper blind on it. It’s naked. The things would not stick in this room for some reason and that one in particular fell down like 30 times before we gave up on it.  The rest were just stuck to wherever they would stay…

I couldn’t tell you how many times we stood on the couch, did three bounces then attempted our highest jump to slap these suckers up.

These paper shades weren’t hung because of laziness.  In fact, we tried hanging 3 different shades before deciding that we didn’t like them.  This has been a 7 month ordeal.

My first idea was a cordless bamboo shade from Macy’s, since we had a lot of gift cards from our wedding left to cover the cost. I wanted bamboo shades to bring in another wood element since the room felt very fabric heavy. They were custom order, so I only ordered one to see if we would like it. Apparently it comes directly from China and took about TWELVE weeks.  So we got it, hung it, looked and each other and immediately hated it.  That was attempt one.  I wish I rehung it and took a picture.

Attempt two is also undocumented.  Since I was stuck on the additional wood element idea, we thought maybe we should do the 2 or 3 inch blinds in a dark stain.  Do you have any clue how hard it is to find those things in a stain as dark as our entertainment center??  Most in-stock wood and faux wood blinds come in white, light wood and cherry.  We would have had to special order blinds which would have cost us more than $100 each… we needed 5.

Attempt three, a woven shade from Lowe’s.  The first time we hung it, it was completely sheer.  So we decided to pick up some privacy liners, which required going to two different Lowe’s to get 5 of them.  Then we attached it, which was no easy feat with Macky around.

And when we hung it it looked like this…

Definitely not right. I needed time to properly sew this thing on and since I was extremely frustrated with it, I sidelined it for a few weeks.  Plus we only have weekends to work on things, so just finding 5 shades and privacy liners took up about 2 weekends.  So I finally did get it right and…. we hated this one too.  The brown was too dark and it looked cheap.

So then! I decided to forgo the wood aspect and go with good old fabric roman shades.  We already have them in our office, formal living room and kitchen.  The ones in our living room and office are from Lowe’s Allen + Roth line and we love them.  Our downstairs windows are all 72 inches long which is actually the standard in-store length for these shades.  The problem was that they have limited colors… we have blackout version in smoke in our living room and the ecru in our office.  We ideally wanted blackout shades again, since Mike doesn’t like that he can’t see the TV during the day.  We tried one of our ecru ones from the office and the color clashed with our accent chairs.  I wanted a dark brown, but Lowe’s didn’t carry them.  So I thought I’d try JCPenney, where we got our custom sized kitchen shade from, but the 72 inch shades were custom also and would have been about $90 each, plus shipping.

We then decided to give the white roman shade from Lowe’s a shot.  I liked the idea of the white since it wouldn’t make the room too dark and would keep the bright and airy feel.  It wasn’t a blackout shade, but for $25 each, could we really go wrong? Then we hung it and the white was too white against our mantel…

I was bummed and very confused.  What the heck was the solution? Then a light bulb went off in my head.. I could dye them off-white! This was my new mission, until I realized there is no slightly-white dye.  I would have to take my chances with a diluted beige.  And the color we needed wasn’t even off white, since our Ikea curtains in our kitchen are off white, as are our cabinets, yet the trim work in there looks bright white.  So I could potentially ruin this shade trying to dye it.

I scratched my head for a few more weeks, then realized this was really stupid.  We should just go with the white shades.  Mike wasn’t a fan, but I told him that when we have people over, our shades are always up.  They are only down for us and really, I’m sick of seeing the neighbor in his kitchen every night since he has no blinds either.  So last weekend we went to Lowe’s and we were only able to get 2 more in the size we needed.  Then this week THE SHADES WERE RECALLED.  No, no this could not be happening. I panicked a little, because I am the most paranoid pet owner ever (for good reason) and these shades are all over my house.  I read about the recall and it wasn’t a mandatory recall, so we decided we think we’d be okay.  The shades have a very sensitive safety release, so sensitive that we often accidentally unhook the entire shade.  So we knew that if Macky really got stuck in there it would release.  We also try to put them up before we leave the house.  But now the problem was, could we get the other two shades we needed??

Today we traveled to another Lowe’s and found the other two shades we needed and strangely, there was no sign, no warning, nothing about the recall.  If I didn’t read the news religiously, I would have had no clue.  So long story short, today we finally hung window treatments in our family room!!

Adios paper blinds! Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out!

Macky shared my resentment.

“Peace out paper!!!”

They just need to be steamed at this point and we’re good to go!

And right now, we can watch Dexter without worrying whether or not Jordan Chase is stalking me through the naked family room window.

That sense of relief alone is worth it.  Doesn’t the fire look photoshopped? It’s not, totally real.

So there ends the Window Treatment Saga of 2010. Hopefully. I still want to go to Lowe’s and ask them for 12 of those release clips I just read about. Better safe than sorry!

Oh and I think I want to add some curtains…. but first I need a break from worrying about these windows

Lil House has been a very good house this year, minus the whole our-hardwood-floors-downstairs-may-be-buckling thing.  But that’s okay (we hope), they’re under warranty.  If there was a Santa for homes, we’re pretty sure this is what our house would ask for.

1. Delta Pilar Touch 2O Single Handle Pull-Down Kitchen Faucet

I thought this faucet was the coolest thing ever before we even had the house, when that commercial came out with the song that was stuck in my head for, well, months.  Yooooour hands can do so many many thiiiings! Okay here it is…

(via)

But we imagined Macky would figure out how to turn it on and flood the house. Fast forward to when we have a house, move in, get a backsplash, pendant lights and…builder grade faucet.  We did pay the extra 50 bucks to have the builder install a faucet that requires only 2 holes.  So when the backsplash was done, we wanted to get a faucet that required 2 holes, was stainless, had a pull down sprayer and was sleek… no strange braiding or trim around the edges.  We went to Home Depot and I was immediately drawn to a particular faucet.  Little did I know it was this one.  THE FAUCET FROM MY FAVORITE COMMERCIAL!  We checked to see if it was made without the touch feature but it’s not.  It’s not even a big deal to us now, since Macky doesn’t go on our counters at all ::knock on wood:: I just love the way it looks and it fits the criteria!

2. Nail gun

(via)

No that’s not me, but I did a google image search and this picture was too appropriate to pass up.  But I do have dreams of installing molding and building things.  We got a circular saw for Christmas last year and now we just need a nail gun!

3. Dash & Albert area rug

Remember my area rug plea? Well one of you left this link in a comment…

Thank you melarse! I want!

4. A king sized mattress

(via)

Okay that’s the world’s largest mattress, but that’s what I would feel like if I had one.  It’s just something we keep putting off buying because well, mattresses aren’t cheap.

5. Large White Drum Pendant Light

This is the Large Finley Off-White Pendant light from Crate & Barrel. I’ve loved drum pendants forever, but never knew where to put one.  I think I want this for our entryway because, well, why not!

6. Tool bench/storage

(via)

As I mentioned earlier, we have a circular saw, but we have no where to use it! And there are tools scattered all over our house…

ps- You have no clue how tempted I was to use this image instead. Google image searches are fun

(via)

7. Some Apple Art

(all via)

Mike is an Apple fanatic (Macky’s full name is Macintosh….) He bought one of these posters years ago and I loved it.  And all along he thought I wouldn’t let him hang it up.  Psssh he forgets that I am the coolest wife ever It was the Lucy and Desi one and we had it framed, matted and hung in our old office.  We’d like to keep it and maybe add to the collection.  These are some of my favorite ones (so hard to choose!). Clockwise from top left, Jane Goodall, Ghandi, Jim Henson and John Lennon/Yoko Ono.  I love the Apple connection, but I also love the message. Thinking different is something we try to do everyday, almost to a fault. Plus we love these particular people.

8.  Snowblower (!!!)

(via)

This one is actually quite urgent and probably should have been first.  We’ll probably pick one of these bad boys up soon, though the price tag gives me the creeps.  Since we’re cheap, the last time we walked into Sears to check them out we left with a shovel.  A SHOVEL, not even two.  So if it snows tomorrow, only one of us can go dig out our long driveway.  We’re very smart.

9. Ikea Mongstad Mirror

I have wanted this mirror for years.  Many, many years.  We had no place for it in the condo, so when we got this house I knew I wanted it.  I still want it and I know exactly where it will go in our bedroom.  Plus it’s an affordable $99!  The problem? It doesn’t fit in our car. I’m sure Santa’s sleigh could accommodate.

10. Custom paintings from Dog House Pet Portraits

(via)

I have wanted one (okay 4) of these since I saw that the artist, Kristen, painted Dooce’s dogs.  How cute would Macky’s mug look on one of those? We would need 4 of them (Macky, Mowie, Darwin and of course, Sunny) so they would be way too pricey.  But if there is a Santa….