I mentioned in my last post that we are trying to not attempt any new projects before the holidays, as we have so many cans of worms we’ve already opened.  We have 6 weekends before Christmas (since Thanksgiving is like, 2 weeks away, I know that goal is totally unattainable) so here is my wish list of things to finish in that time….

1. Finish Unpacking.  Yes we officially moved in here almost 7 months ago and unpacked hardcore for a few weeks.  But once the spring came along, we decided to enjoy our time here and not stress about getting every single thing unpacked.  Fast forward 7 months when winter is quickly approaching and we’d like to be able to park our cars in the garage if it snows….

But this heaping pile of stuff is in the way.  No one has ever seen this.  People aren’t allowed in the garage.  It looks like a garage sale because we often pick through the boxes and containers of things in there.  It’s really not as much stuff as it looks like, as nothing is consolidated.  I’m an all or nothing type of person, either it’s organized and color coordinated, or I wait until I have the time to do so.  We have this project planned for Saturday since it will be nice out, wish us luck.

2. Caulk and paint new trim upstairs. I think this one is pretty self-explanatory.

3. Paint this little spot. We had a curtain rod, then decided to go with roman shades and never finished it up.

Btw, that is our formal living room area.  Those shades are about all that is in that room.

4. Finish organizing the office.

That picture is the current status, as of like, 10 minutes ago. We haven’t worked on it in a few weeks and it could use some love.  And organization.

5. Hang items already purchased, yet never hung.  This applies to two things I can think of.  The  arrangement of frames in our family room…

And the shelves we purchased months ago to hang on this dining room wall…

6. Grout backsplash.  That pretty little backsplash that shows up in my cookie jar pictures? Though we had it tiled by a professional friend about 2 months ago, he didn’t have time to grout it and we figured we could tackle it on our own.  We just haven’t done it yet…

Sidenote: I’ve been told that pictures make the backsplash look way more gold than it is.  I think it’s because of the under cabinet lights.  It’s not goldish like it looks in the second picture.

7. Plan out some holiday decor! I’ve mentioned my desire for a runner and table scape, but it is also our first Christmas in the new house, so we need to figure out where to put things.  Including a tree… oh and we have an entire outside of a house now.

Images via this post from Hooked on Houses.  This was funny because I did a google image search and noticed a blog I read came up in the results.  I had to use these pictures after reading the awesome post about the Christmas Vacation house and the entry linked in there about the house from Home Alone.  What kid didn’t dream about living there?

8. Work out a solution for family room window treatments. Seriously, this situation has gotten beyond ridiculous.

Crinkled paper blinds.  ’Nuff said.

9. Learn how to be Martha Stewart.  I bought a cookie cookbook because I have always wanted to try some different cookies for Christmas.  And I suppose this could go under #7, but I want to figure out how to make a wreath out of ball shaped items…

I found directions here, though it’s not exactly what I had in mind, the assembly should be the same!

I suppose this is what a Christmas list looks like when you’re an adult….

On Friday we had some friends from college over (Hi Lindsey and Jon!).  They brought us these cute little birch votive holders from Crate and Barrel…

Which go so nicely with my little Crate and Barrel pumpkin-scape…

My favorite part of these candles is that they’re stitched up the back, corset style…

I put the candles with the pumpkins, which are all still on my buffet since I tried setting the table on Halloween and Macky highly disapproved.

And by disapproved, I mean he rolled all over my clean table cloth then proceeded to knock coasters off the table. He also apparently tried to carry the mini pumpkins off the table, as evidenced by this bite mark I just noticed in one of the pictures…

You know the book/movie Marley & Me? I think I better start writing Macky & Me.

Okay enough with being photo detective and back to my fall table! We have some place mats and I recently picked up a brown table cloth, but I would like a runner.  Our dining room chairs are shades of browns and blues, so anything too holiday themed isn’t going to compliment the room.  Which is probably good, because I’m not into typical holiday colored things.  So I was excited to see this runner that I could use year round and also goes with my little pumpkin/candle accessories…

It’s the Eastleigh Green-Teal Runner from Crate and Barrel.  My only problem with this is a) aren’t there enough things from Crate and Barrel in there?  I know I love the place, but I’m looking borderline obsessed and b) it’s pricey considering I’d probably need the largest size with both extensions in my table.  So chances are, I’m going to pass on the C&B runner, but I figured I’d share it until I find an alternative

ps- please excuse the lighting in these pictures… the dramatic lighting in the dining room doesn’t make for the best photo ops!

I have told myself that we will not attempt any new projects around the house until after the holidays…we have way too many unfinished things to tackle and I have a serious case of hibernation/laziness/seasonal depression going on lately. Maybe, maaaaybe, if we spackle holes, hang things already purchased, clean and organize spaces before Christmas we will start something new.  But for now, we’re cleaning up house.

So today I noticed something else needs cleaning up.  I usually browse sites, leave comments, etc. from my iPhone, so typing this was getting a little cumbersome…

So I decided to also register a shorter domain, that’s a little easier to remember and type.  As of today, you can now get to The Lil House That Could from….

Of course the name of the website will stay the same and the old URL still works, this one is just more user friendly. I always casually refer to the blog as Lil House, now it’s just a little more legit!

Our cats have quite the elaborate food set up in our eat-in kitchen area.  They each get a bowl, plus there’s a bowl of water there…

We started out with just the placemats underneath the bowls, but Macky loves to fling his food EVERYWHERE puppy style.  So we bought some plastic trays from petsmart that are actually for dogs to a) collect the hard food he drops and b) protect our floors incase the water spills.

Sometimes we underestimate the mess that Macky can make, as you can see from the image above that he has managed to get several pieces of hard food underneath the plastic trays.  But even we were surprised tonight when we were eating dinner and Macky was drinking some water.  The aftermath…

Yes, my puppy cat has managed to splash water all over the wall and baseboard…and he was only drinking it, not playing in it.  Maybe we should tile their backsplash too….

One of the added bonuses of buying our particular house was that the builder included sod and landscaping in our front yard.  Our sod was laid in April and we went on to have the hottest, driest summer ever.  We don’t have a sprinkler system and we didn’t want to use too much water, so by the end of the summer our grass was looking awful.  It came back to life quite a bit with some rainfall in September and October, but it is still showing signs of the heat.

Good in some spots…

Awful in others…

Many people in our neighborhood use Scotts lawn services.  They’ve come by before offering to maintain our lawn, but we declined.  We reseeded the bare spots at least twice on our own, with no luck.  We knew the grass had to be aerated, but what the heck did we know about that?  This is our first time actually having a yard! I knew you could rent an aerator, but with the cold weather quickly approaching, we knew it was another thing we likely wouldn’t have time for on the weekends.

So when Scotts came knocking a few weeks ago, we listened.  The very nice man told me how the builder is in such a rush to get the sod down, that they are not laying it on hearty soil.  We learned this on our own while planting flowers this summer, when we saw our soil was actually construction zone orange dirt.  Two of our azaleas never rooted and I literally pulled them out of the ground with little effort and they were still shaped like the pots the landscaper took them out of!  What he said made sense, so we signed up for just some aerating and seeding.  Aerated grass looks like goose poop.

No fertilizers, no pesticides, I don’t like that stuff.  We have a little pond across the street, okay it’s a detention basin with fountains in it, but there is a family of geese in there.  I don’t want those chemicals floating around the cute little babies, nevermind all of the people who walk their dogs, the deer in the backyard and the roaming peacocks. Wait, I don’t think I had this blog for the peacock story.  Another story for another day….

So far we’ve seen a few grass sprouts here and there and hopefully we still have some grass growing time left this fall!