New Paint Job

John decided that enough was enough and that he was going to tackle the exterior painting Memorial Day Weekend. He hired a guy from their company to help out for the two day feat. Jack joined Daddy for a little more prep before the painting was started.

Jack is pretty much in heaven, pretty sure John isn't :)

Now this is where Jack pouts...he can't play outside while they're painting, tried that last weekend during color sample time and he had paint from head to toe.

He's miserable, must help daddy!

At least he gets to watch!
Some of the prep and finished color on rear.

Jack finally is set free.


These two guys single handedly transformed our house from worst looking on the block to, not so shabby in just 2 days.



And the finished product...
Just need to pick out some new lights for the porch and either side of the garage door and we're "done" for now with the exterior. After lighting, new picket fence...it's the only thing shabbying up our yard. Thank you. John, you're the best!

Power Washing, Exterior Paint Prep

We spent this last weekend power washing the exterior of the house in hopes to paint the exterior next weekend...and by we, I mean my wonderful, amazing, hardworking hubs, John.

Oh, and let's not forget Jack, he helped too.


After John moved everything away from the house, he sprayed the entire exterior down with a bleach-water mix.
Poor, guy, he didn't complain once, and he does this all the time for work too.

Then he began power washing.


Here are the befores, dirty and moldy eaves.

Yep, we used to have birds in our rafter, that's poop people.

And afters! So much better, just think of how nice it'll look once it's got a fresh coat of paint on it too.





Here are our paint samples, we are going with the middle green-gray, Sage.


But, our house looks much prettier until next weeks painting! Stay tuned!

Pool Removal

Errr, swamp removal. Yep, this nasty "feature" that came with the house HAD to go. After draining it out, we were still left with this pleasant scene above....no alligators were hurt during the pools removal.

Once it was as cleaned out as possible we started dismantling the structure which was MUCH easier than we expected.

While daddy handled the demo of the pool, Jack and I loaded the truck with it's carcass as well as the remaining tree clippings from our tree removal the weekend prior.

After the pool was down John took it to the recycling center, all of it was recycled free of charge!


One pool headed your way, recycling center. Good riddance!

Keep Calm...

Well, here it is...my $10 "art" piece, I love it. The 8x10 Keep Calm and Wash On is a classic throw back to a 1939 WWII poster and oh so fun. I picked up this frame at Bed Bath and Beyond on clearance for $14.99, regularly $25. Two more inexpensive and under $20 etsy art purchases on their way soon. I can't wait for them to arrive!


Find any cool inexpensive art lately?

Swinging from the Trees

Well, if you know my husband and his family, you probably have heard how much he loved swings growing up. Well, that's not entirely true...let me rephrase that, how much he loved swings as an almost grown up. Johns parents had park grade swings in their backyard for the kids and John would spend HOURS as a child and teen swinging on them, listening to his walkman. Well, Johns parents thought it would be fitting to get Jack his very own park grade swing for Christmas.

John might have been more excited about putting it up than Jack was....until John realized that he wouldn't fit into a basket swing.

Jack approves! I think there will be hours and hours of dada pushing Jack on the swing.

Now that's love, right there.

Hope you had a great weekend!

Backsplash Options

I LOVE my kitchen but I cannot help but notice how unfinished it looks without window treatments and a back splash...all in due time and money of course. Here are some of my favorite ideas for back splashes. We have to stick with something that will go with our granite, but I also wanted to tie in some of the subtle gray in the counters as well. That way it'll mesh better with our living area too.

I love the classic feel and clean lines of rectangular glass tiles. Another fun idea we're tossing around is tiling all the way up to the ceiling in the window sink area. I've seen this done before and I feel like it looks very nice. I also really like basic cream subway tile, but I'm wondering if we should be a bit more bold.

Here's what tiling to the ceiling looks like around a window. What do you think?

Kitchen Window Treatments

Deciding what kind of window treatments to go with when it comes to our two kitchen windows looks like it's coming to an end. I have narrowed it down to Top Down Bottom Up shades (above). I love that there are three looks: bottom up, top down and the combo. I also like that they are cordless, so they're kid friendly, will hide our neighbors fence/house yet let in ample light and they're energy insulating. The only issue, white or cream? I am leaning toward white for both windows to keep it bright and crisp as well as to tie in with the living room crown molding...otherwise we are moving the kitchen totally away from whites (like, none) and I don't want the spaces to have two completely different feels- earthy vs crisp and clean.

The only downfall with white is that there is nothing else white going on in the kitchen...weird? Not too sure. I want to keep them basic in color because I think we might go for a busier back splash and there's a lot of color going on in the living area anyway.

Here are the two windows in question. What kind of window treatments do you love?