July Shutdown

I think it's safe to say that last week was the most productive week at our house in the history of us owning it. Why do you ask? Well, first of all, I had the week off from work. My wonderful company shuts down the first week of July almost every year for the 4th of July holiday. It's always wonderful to have a break especially when I had so many things on our "To Do" list! Second of all, we made a list of what we wanted to finish and we were able to check them all off AND MORE!

Here's a list of what we accomplished:

1. FINALLY hung blinds in the guest room, office, and TV room (7 sets of blinds, to be exact)
2. Replaced all the door knobs in the house - they were mismatched (one side of the door was silver, other side gold) so as stylish as they were, they had to go. Not to mention, they were old and were painted over so they definitely needed to be replaced.
3. Retextured the walls in the formal living room and hallway (we hired someone to do this, not our area of expertise) - 2 day job
4. Painted the formal living room and hallway
5. Deep cleaned the entire house
6. Replaced the shower curtain in the guest bath - the one we originally bought did not match the sink as well as I wanted and it drove me nuts
7. Hung up the wedding gift painting
8. Hung up a window picture frame in the TV room
9. Found curtains for the TV room - just need to buy them :)
10. Removed a bunch of extra bricks in the front yard

I'm a list maker and I'm quite proud of the fact that the entire list was completed.

The formal living room looks so different painted that I do a double take every time I walk through it. For the past 6 months, it's been a storage room/hallway/assembly space so it's weird to see it actually come together as a room. We absolutely love it and can't wait to add in the final touches (which sounds like there isn't much left, but there is!).

This was my view of the living room on Day 1 of the retexturing

Another highlight of last week was that we had a very furry house guest! Our dog Abby, who lives with my parents, stayed over for the week while my parents were on a fun vacation on Maine. It was so fun to have her here even though we still find tufts of hair throughout the house to this day. It's actually weird to walk into the kitchen, living room, or garage and not see her there. We definitely miss her already.

The cutest corgi you will ever meet

At the end of the week, we headed over to my parents' beautiful cabin in the Sierra mountains and relaxed for the weekend. It was definitely a well-deserved mini-vacation and we can't wait to go back. We went to Lake Alpine one day to lay out on the rocks and eat lunch, went to an Independence Day Celebration at Ironstone Vineyards (complete with wine tasting, delicious food, live music, and fireworks), made mouth-watering home cooked meals, and just relaxed. We don't get up to the mountains often enough so we need to make more of an effort to visit there.

At Ironstone

At Ironstone enjoying the concert

The beautiful fireworks!

We got awesome photos!