Flashback Friday

One of the reasons why I love home improvement shows and blogs so much are because I LOVE seeing the before and after. It is soooo gratifying to see the difference!

Because of that, I knew that we needed to take "before" pictures of our house especially because we planned on making a ton of changes to the house. But somehow in the whirlwind that was our house buying/renovating/moving process... we never took any pictures. Well, I guess that's not completely true, we did take pictures of the kitchen before it was ripped out but we didn't take any pictures of the bedrooms, office, or living room until after the floor was sanded and we were painting the room.

I went on a hunt tonight to see if I could find the photos that were posted online when our house was listed and thankfully, I was able to find them online. Here's what the house looked like when we first visited it:

Backyard

Another angle of the backyard (with the brick planter box that CJ had to tear out)

Guest bathroom (only change here is we have a shower curtain)

Guest bedroom (obviously big changes here)

The kitchen - can you believe the difference!??! 

Another view of the kitchen 

Formal living room

Another angle of the formal living room (that's the front door)

Master bedroom (no changes here)

Master bedroom (clearly this looks completely different) 

Office

TV/Entertainment Room

I love looking at these photos because it reminds me how much we've accomplished in the past 6 months as homeowners! I can't wait to see what other changes we make in the next 6 months.

Here's a brief recap of what we've been able to check off our "to-do" list:

1. Remodeled the kitchen - This is one item on the list but this was a 2-month project complete with choosing custom cabinets, buying appliances, choosing the hardware, buying the granite, picking out the sink, deciding on the layout, picking the wall color. Everything is brand new!
2. Put baseboards in the entire house
3. Sanded and refinished the floors
4. Expanded the master closet to a walk-in
5. Painted the kitchen, TV/entertainment room, office, guest room, and master bedroom
6. Hung photos in the master and guest bedroom
7. Ripped out all the plants in the front yard
8. Ripped out the brick planter and hedges in the backyard 
9. Furnished the house
10. Started to decorate the rooms
11. And so many more small things :)

Homeownership is not easy but it's gratifying and SO worth it. :)

Guest Room Love

Since Day 1 (meaning since we put an offer on the house), I had a vision for how I wanted the guest room to look (thanks to Houzz.com*). We knew that we wanted a light and bright room to make it feel a bit larger and we wanted it to coordinate with my college IKEA bedroom furniture that we put in the guest room. After searching a bit, I found this inspiration and fell in love with it for the guest room:

Isn't that gorgeous!?!? I just love the gray and yellow combination. It's so simple yet inviting.

The white duvet cover was relatively easy to find. We first looked at Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond but the bedding at those two stores was unfortunately out of the price range we were willing to spend for the guest room. Luckily though, we made a trip to IKEA one day and found the perfect plain white duvet cover for approx. $30. We were so excited about the find and even more excited about the price tag!

So, as I said before, decorating the house really is a process. Below is a picture of the guest room on the day we moved in. I didn't have the energy time to iron the sheets so I just laid them on top of the bed to give the illusion that it was made. I know, so sneaky. I would have fooled you if I didn't tell you my secret.

Day 1 - February 10

As time went on, the room started to evolve more. We put the nightstand to the left of the bed, I ironed the sheets (GASP!) and finally put them on the pillows and duvet cover, and we bought a nice gray blanket to mirror the inspiration room. So that brought us to this:

Not winning any awards but still progress. That brought us to our latest project that I reference in my last post. We bought 5 frames at Aaron Bros (as I fondly call it) and wanted to do a nice little arrangement on the left wall. We also got an adorable lamp and pillows from Cost Plus and then BAM! We were ready to start making the room feel more inviting.

Step 1: Pick the photos & put them in the frames
This part is pretty self-explanatory. We chose a photo of the mother-son dance, father-daughter dance, my bouquet, me and the groomsmen, and CJ and the bridesmaids.

Step 2: Choose an arrangement
I saw a super helpful post on my favorite blog YoungHouseLove.com that talked about first doing the arrangement on butcher paper, sketching it out, and using that paper to help with hanging the photos. We decided that, since this was more complicated than the master bedroom, we needed the extra help.

So we bought a big roll of white paper (it was impossible to find butcher paper, for some reason), and rolled it out on the floor to lay out the arrangement.

Step 3: Trace the pictures with a pencil, mark where the nails should go, cut the roll of paper, and tape it up to the wall.

I swear, the squares are up there. If I were to draw on top of that so you could envision the arrangement, it would look like this:

Step 4: Mark where the nails should go in the wall by following the guides on the paper and nailing a small hole in each area.

Step 5: Remove the paper, find the small holes that we made, and nail it in!

Step 6: Hang the pictures!

Step 7: Admire your work :)

After we were done hanging the photos, we put the adorable pillows in the room and the lamp and Voila! We had an adorable guest room.

I now creepily walk past the guest room several times a day to stare at our work.

Here's a close up of the lamp:

It has the gray and yellow to go with the color scheme and has a cute owl base!! Oh, I'm so in love.

Right now, the lamp is hanging out next to my bridal bouquet but we're not sure if that's the permanent home for the bouquet. I'm afraid someone will knock it off and then we will lose our wedding keepsake.

We still need some blinds, curtains, and a rug for the room. I also think we might get a bookshelf for the right side of the room; that wall is looking pretty lonely right now. But we're content with how it looks right now! No need to rush through the rest of the enhancements. :)

*Houzz is an amazing source for decorating ideas so if you ever feel stuck on what to do with a room, I highly recommend going there. They have a great app and their website is super helpful too. You can create ideabooks for whatever floats your boat (I've created them by room, it's easier for me to find stuff that way).

One Step Closer

Two weekends ago, my parents came over for dinner at our house and after my mom did her usual "inspection" of the house to see what's changed, she turned to me and said, "You really need to start hanging some pictures." Man, is that the truth! I knew that was the reason why we still didn't feel fully moved in. I completely agreed with her so my goal for last weekend was to hang all the frames that we bought a few weeks ago.

First up, the master bedroom! I would have to say that the hardest part of hanging picture frames is figuring out what pictures to put in the frames. We went through a ton of our engagement and wedding pictures and chose three - one of us holding hands in our engagement photos, one of our wedding date from our engagement photos, and one of us holding hands on our wedding day. We wanted to keep it simple and thought that these ones were really sweet and romantic.

Hanging these frames wasn't too difficult but it was a lot more difficult than the method we used in the guest room (to be talked about in a later post). The hardest part is making sure that you're nailing everything in the right place especially since I'm a perfectionist and will notice if something is even a 1/2 inch off.

Here's a before and after:

Anddddd here's a close up of the photos above the bed:

One thing I've learned throughout this house process is that it really is a process. You can't just move in and have everything set up and decorated the next day (unless you have superpowers). It's really not possible and, even if it was, it's better to take your time. It's so much more gratifying to enjoy the process of picking out the decorative items and to see the house come together step by step. I LOVE seeing how one day the guest room is just a bed and then the next day, after just a few pillows, it's a bedroom. (More on this in another post!)

And last but not least, CJ, my mom, and I participated in the Silicon Valley Kidney Walk on June 1 in support of our wonderful friend Sheila. Go Team Fred!

Chicago Recap

I can't believe it's been almost a month since our trip to Chicago! Time flies by when you're having a blast :)

Chicago was a weekend filled with family, fun, and adorable houses (as I mentioned before). We had a late flight into O'Hare on Friday night so we weren't able to see much of the city until Saturday.

On Saturday, we rode the train in and wandered around the city. We saw the "Bean", Buckingham Fountain, the area where they have concerts in the summer (it was super cool looking! I just don't remember what it was called), Millenium Park, ate deep dish pizza (a must), and went shopping! It was soo much walking so I probably should have worn walking shoes (story of my life). :-) 

Here are a few pictures from our visit to Chicago:

Our ride into Chicago!

Had to take a photo in front of the tulips!
Millenium Park

The Bean!

Definitely experienced the "Windy City"!
Buckingham Fountain

Suzanne graduated from Wheaton college the next day which also happened to be Mother's Day so we cooked a Mother's Day brunch for our amazing moms and then proceeded to run off to the graduation festivities! The graduation was probably one of the best I've been to - it went by quickly and they had great speakers.

Hairdresser/paparazzi for Suzanne! Look at the focus!

We were so sad to go home the next morning but are grateful that we were able to make the most of the weekend!

Hello June!

Oh man, May really did a number on us. 3/4 weekends in May were spent traveling.

The first weekend, I flew to Las Vegas for a bachelorette party. The second weekend, we flew to Chicago for my sister-in-law's college graduation. The third weekend, we went to a fundraiser for one of my coworkers in Fremont. The last weekend, we flew to NYC to visit one of our friend's that lives in the East Village. Sooo much traveling but sooo much fun at the same time. I have to admit, I am SO happy to be home to relax, catch up on sleep, and work on the house.

CJ and I at the Natural History Museum in NYC
CJ's one request was to see the T-Rex behind us :)

While I was in Las Vegas, CJ pulled out all of the plants in our front yard (which is a HUGE job). Our amazing neighbor helped CJ by tying the hedges to the back of his truck and pulling them out with a bit of horsepower. It definitely saved a ton of time! We're so lucky to have such helpful neighbors.

It looks so naked right now but it's going to look so amazing when it's all done!! We had a landscape designer come over 2 weeks ago to look at our yard and do a mockup of the landscaping. We absolutely love what she came up with so now we just need to figure out when we'll do all this planting. (Now's the time that we would love a ton of volunteers to help us with this!! **Hint hint nudge nudge**)

Here's what our yard looked like before:

Our house in February

And here's what it looks like without all the hedges:

Our house yesterday :)

It's so much more open without the hedges! We can't wait to start planting and making the front of the house more cozy. In the meantime, we're just excited we don't have to accidentally walk through a spiderweb that appeared overnight in between those hedges.

Other than that, we're slowly starting to get frames and decorative items for the house but it's is a veryyyy slow process. We want to make sure we make the right decision for each item so we're definitely taking our time.

I'll try to be better about posting this month now that we aren't traveling as much!! I'll try to do a recap of our trips to Chicago and New York!