Tonight Mike and I decided to make some stirfry for dinner to use up our veggies from the farm.  I fell asleep and woke up for dinner, stumbled over to the table and started to eat when I spotted this…

IT’S MY PURPLE PEPPER! Mike cooked the purple pepper!

So I stopped eating and grabbed the camera…

For those who wondered what it would taste like, it was actually green on the inside, so it tasted quite like a green pepper…

And yes, I just so happen to be wearing the greatest shirt OF ALL TIME!

Before we even bought this house, I knew wanted to get a rainbow of mums to put on either side of our steps in the fall. Like a gradient of yellow, orange, red and purple. So one day a few weeks ago, we set out to the garden center to pick some up. When we got there, there was no shortage of mums, but they were in pumpkin or otherwise fall themed pots. Really I’m not a scrooge, I have just never been a fan of those type of holiday decorations. So I searched for other pots, with no luck. I knew we’d be busy the next couple of weekends, so I thought my mum dreams would have to wait another year and we’d live with our sad spring/summer leftovers.

Then! I went to the Crate & Barrel outlet sale over the weekend and scored some awesome, year round Soleil Planters.

I also picked up this bird because it was $5 and it was adorable. Mike said he only agreed because it was $5. The bird has nothing to do with this post but I saw it on the website and had to brag about getting it.

I only bought 2 pots because I didn’t want a bunch of the same one and I figured I’d just accumulate pots I randomly find places. So I decided to get just 2 mums for my pots to put by my door, since Mike and I agreed after planting and mulching during the hottest summer ever, we were done planting for the year.

Fast forward to Wednesday when our floors were done being installed a little early, so I decided I’d go get my 2 mums. Driving there I thought of those 4 dead zinnias in a row and how I should reeeally put mums there. Then I remembered the blood, sweat, tears and more sweat that went into planting them, but that didn’t stop me. I ended up getting 8 mums, knowing Mike was not home to help me, I was overtired and I had sawdust and an office to clean.

Turns out it only took me an hour or so to make the house fall ready. I planted the mums…

Then I arranged some pumpkins we got from the farm…

Hung the Harvest Wreath from Crate and Barrel…I know, I know, I could have made one for much less! But it’s already October and my free time these days is minimal…

I also bought the wreath hook from Crate and Barrel… I know, I know I could have saved myself the $10, but it matches our door quite well and will be used for other seasons…

To save a little dough, I passed up the Crate and Barrel doormats and instead went to my usual doormat stop- Target.

And tada! House was fall-ified in a little more than an hour.

The only thing I didn’t do was get some fall pillows for the brown chairs on the porch. If I ever pulled out my sewing machine I would make some. Definitely a revision to make for next year, when I hope to do this in September…

I went to the farm again to pick up our veggies yesterday and saw a bin of green, light green and purple peppers together.  I should have taken a picture of all of them because they were just so pretty.  But then again, if you’ve browsed our wedding pictures, you know that I love the purple/green combo.

I overhead someone at the farm say how delicious the purple peppers were last week.  We didn’t eat ours, but maybe we’ll venture out this week and give it a shot. But for now, I put my pepper friends in the usual countertop bowl, accompanied by a spaghetti squash, some tomatoes and some other peppers.

I say purple is my favorite color, but I’m usually more attracted to turquoisey-blue/greens.  But I think I need to get some purple in this house… Shh don’t tell Mike…

As I’ve mentioned and previewed in my last post, this week we are having hardwood floors installed in our upstairs hallway and master bedroom. Wait what? Don’t we have brand new carpet? Yes we do, but like many things in this house it is your run of the mill, builder grade, vacuum-leaves-marks-on-it, carpet.  And I hate it.

Our reason for going with this carpet was to save money.  It was the standard carpet, meaning we didn’t pay anything out of pocket for it.  We had the vast color options of white, pink, blue and this.  I wasn’t a fan of the gold hue, but the upgrades were pricey.  Our bedroom is so large that even just a “level 1” upgrade (read: same carpet better colors) would have cost us $1,000. And that was just for one room.  We decided to upgrade only the 2 rooms downstairs that have carpet (the family room and office) to a berber style and live with these until we could afford otherwise.  Here’s Macky modeling a close up..

The carpet actually didn’t look as gold as I thought it would, and I was thinking I could live with it a little longer than anticipated.  But then this happened…

We had this problem in our condo and knew it was only a matter of time before it happened here.  Macky is a master carpet seam finder.  And he’s also a very high maintenance, needy cat.  Think puppy with separation anxiety and that’s Macky.  So I was painting Brielle’s letters in a spare bedroom one day and he got extremely upset that he couldn’t get to me.  I ignored the crying for no more than 2 minutes when I heard a tear.  Yes he found the seam.  It was all downhill from there.

We didn’t get too upset about it, because we had spare carpeting and knew it could be repaired.  But then something else began happening.  This is a very embarrassing topic that few pet owners discuss, but I’m going to go there. Darwin started peeing on our carpet.

I know, you’d give your cat away, yell at him, spray him with a water bottle, whatever.  But you see, Darwin has a neurological disorder called cerebellar hypoplasia.  We knew this when we adopted him, and it actually was the main reason why we did adopt him.  We lost Macky’s brother, Sunny, to feline panleukopenia when he had just turned two.  When we saw that cerebellar hypoplasia could be caused by a pregnant mother surviving feline panleukopenia, we knew that Darwin was a survivor and felt immediately connected to him.  Plus he happens to be orange, just like Sunny, and the sweetest little thing you’d ever meet.

I found this video of a cat with Darwin’s disorder.  As you can see, his disability doesn’t affect him too much and isn’t very noticeable most days…

So we didn’t know at the time, but Darwin’s disorder can cause litter box issues.  He has trouble keeping his balance and sometimes misses the box. So we can no longer use litter boxes with lids and we cover the surrounding area with puppy pads, incase he misses.  But I think that sometimes he confuses cheap, fluffy carpet with a puppy pad and goes there.  It is not at all a behavioral issue with him and he honestly thinks he’s going in a litter box.  Luckily, he kept to one end of our hallway.

We cleaned it almost daily with our Bissell Spot Bot and Hoover Carpet Steamer, so we never got that “cat lady” smell in our house.  But we never, ever, eveeeer want to get to that point.  We knew it would be nearly impossible to stop him, so we made the decision to tear up the carpet in the hallway.  We feared he would then start going in our bedroom, so as a preventative measure, we also tore up the bedroom carpet since the hallway leads directly there.

And while we decided to tear things up, we figured we’d get some new baseboards to match the higher ones the builder gave us downstairs.  And while we were at that! Our bedroom is massively huge, like in a bad way.

This is the view from where our bed sits (though taken before we moved in). That little area back there is our “sitting room”, but it makes for a quite uncozy bedroom.  We have just a bed, 2 night stands and a dresser, so this is my view every morning.

We wanted to eventually add a wall here to separate the rooms.  Keyword: eventually.  Many people immediately tell us that this room would make a great nursery, though I picture it being my art studio of sorts.  Either way, it would need a door to keep out the terrorizing cats, but we wanted to keep that open feeling.

So the solution? Build a wall with double french doors.

The doors are being installed as I type.  Once it’s all done and the dust has (been) cleared, I will get some after pics up.

But the moral of the story here? Our cats are very important members of our family, so we make sure this house works for all of us.  Luckily, this time, the level of style in the house improved thanks to the cats.  We knew that carpet doesn’t really work for us, but we gave it a second shot and hoped for the best to try to save money.  Though we sacrificed our planned vacation, major office remodel, food, clothing to eventually end up with hardwoods… our floors are going to look pretty awesome and I am very excited to see the outcome!  Plus Darwin just looked at me like he was sorry, and he melted my heart.  One more time for good luck!…

Until the after, kids!

Here’s a tiny glimpse into what we’ve been busy with. More to come once the project is finished! Please ignore the dirty (new!) floors…