Friday Fun Stuff

I received a bonus at work this month and have been thinking about what I want to do with it. Here's what I've decided.

1. My dad. We borrowed some money from my dad to have work done on our house, so I'd like to give him something toward our balance.

2. I've been wanting to get a case for my new iPhone for a few months and finally found one I love. The only problem is that it seems to be out of stock everywhere, so I guess I'll have to be patient.

3. We need a rug in our living room to replace the one Murray chewed up when she was a puppy. I've had my eye on one from West Elm for a while now. Just need to wait for a sale because I'm Dutch and that's what we do.

4. Save some for our cruise. We're taking our honeymoon cruise in January and have our plane tickets and boarding tickets paid for with money we received from our wedding. We'd like to be able to do a few excursions while we're there too, and I know those can be pricey. I've been reading about different things we can do, and ziplining through the rainforest sounds pretty awesome. I just need to talk my chicken husband into it ;)

5. Save money for Italy. One of the biggest things I want to do before we have kids someday is to take a trip to Europe. Italy would be a great place to start and we might be able to swing a trip by early 2013 if Ted can get the time off of work. If we have time, I'd love to spend a day in London or something too. 

6. I feel like I've been blessed beyond words the past couple years. I have a roof over my head and can afford to pay all my bills with enough money left over to have a little fun. I'm married to the man I love and have never been happier. My family and friends are more than I could ever ask for. Because of all that, Ted and I want to give something to people less fortunate this year. I've been thinking about what we could do to help and found a couple places I like. 


I've thought about sponsoring a child in the past and have just never got around to it. 

World Vision and Compassion International are a couple of places I've heard of several times in the past, and this might be what we decide to do. It's about a $35.00 a month commitment, which sounds like a lot, but we routinely spend that on going out for a nice dinner. It's sad to think that amount could feed a child for a whole month.

Another place I found that has some pretty cool options is Samaritan's Purse. They have a sponsor a doctor program that helps fund doctors and dentists who volunteer a year to work in places like the middle east, Haiti or Africa. Ted knows people who have done this, or are planning to, and it's really a pretty amazing program.

 They have lots of other things you can do too, which range from something as simple as donating by credit card with the click of a button, or you can fill a shoe box with toys to be sent to children in impoverished areas. 

So, we have lots of great options out there, but we need to commit to actually doing something this year. It's so easy to get caught up in everyday life, and I need to remember there are people in the world who have so little.

Designer Furniture Wish List

Working around high end designer furniture for the past four and a half years has left me with expensive taste. I have a long list of things I would love to get my hands on. Every once in a while we run across used pieces at my work, so I've been lucky enough to pick up two of these babies in the past few months.

Aren't they pretty? They're original Herman Miller Eames molded plywood DCM chairs. They're definitely vintage, but they're in great condition. I won't mention what I got them for, but let's just say it was a killer deal. 

My biggest dream chair is this one though.

It's an Eames lounge chair with ottoman and it has to be white leather with a walnut frame. I found a knock off version on Amazon that it a fraction of the price for a real one, but it's still definitely an investment piece. A girl can dream though right?

Then there are these. These are Emeco Navy chairs and I specifically want these in bar stool height. Why barstools when I don't even have a bar in my house? I don't know, but the heart wants what it wants. Someday when I have my dream house these will be my dream barstools. I'm thinking three or four would work.

I worked for a Knoll dealership prior to my current job, so I still love so many of their pieces. This is a Warren Platner table. It's between this and a Saarinen Tulip table. Whichever one shows up first on Craig's List I guess.

I want an Eames rocker for my future hypothetical children. They come in lots of fun colors and they're way cute. I like this one, the apple green, and white would go with everything.

Last is this Nelson bench. This would look perfect in my future hypothetical entry way. 

There are so many more things I would love to own one day. For now I just have to dream :)

Blog Love

On the right side column on my blog I have a list of other blogs that I read on a regular basis. Most of them are house and decorating related right now, but in the past it was all about scrapbooking, wedding planning, or many other things that were holding my interest at the time. I still check out other interests from time to time, but I would definitely say houses are tops on my hobby list right now. 

One of my current favorites is Young House Love, which is a husband and wife couple that makes their living by blogging about the renovations they tackle on their own home.

(all images from YHL)

They usually post a couple times a day. Sometimes it's just something fairly mundane, but they do a great job with tutorials and with listing where they source everything along with costs for all their projects. I might not agree with every decision they make, but it's fun to follow their progress.

Another site I've been loving is Hooked on Houses. This blog shows real estate listings from all over the US that are either interesting and fabulous, or interesting because they're just plain weird. She also shows celebrity homes and homes from television and movies. There's a great mixture of old and new and it's fun to get a peek into places you wouldn't normally be allowed.

Real life version of Disney movie "Up" house. Everything inside matches the movie down to the pictures on the wall! So cute

You can tour Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith's house in California. It's HUGE and decorated in sort of a Mediterranean style.

Then we have a lovely photo from a crazy real estate listing found somewhere in Texas. Every room of the house was decorated in a weird gothic vampire-esque style. Even crazier? The house was listed for about $750,000!

This was another entry I found hilarious. Every room of the house was shown with this creepy looking doll posed in some way. In the bathroom she sat by the sink. On the patio she was posed with a drink and sunglasses on a lounge chair. What the heck?

One more that's a fun one lately is House Tweaking. It's about a family who downsizes from their standard McMansion house full of rooms they don't use, to a '50's ranch house they're in the process of gutting for a complete renovation. This is something that is so after my own heart. I would much rather have an older home full of character that's on the smaller side, than a huge cavernous house full of builder grade boringness.

 Anyway, back to House Tweaking. Because they're currently still hanging drywall and stuff at their new house, I'll show you a couple pictures of their old one.

She has kind of an eclectic fun style that I like. I'm very curious to see what they do with their new house, which currently looks like this.

And here is a good one of the exterior old house and new.

She also shows renovations from her readers, and products she's liking, etc. Lots of fun stuff.

So that's a few of my favorite bloggers right now. It's fun to see other people out there who have the same interests I do, especially when all my design friends have moved away. Enjoy! 

House Tour - Before Pictures

Did I mention my house was a foreclosure? It needed tons of work, but lucky for me my dad is a builder and was able and willing to help me out with the major work required to make the place livable. Here are the exterior before pics.

Nice huh? These are both after we had already replaced all the windows, so they're not exactly true before pics. I wish I would have taken a picture of the condition the original windows were in. They were all single pane glass and were barely held in place by ancient caulk. Whatever genius last painted the siding never bothered to protect the windows or the chimney from the overspray, so the storm windows all had what looked like fake snow all around the perimeters. 


Because of the size and location of the original windows on the back side of the house, I wouldn't have been able to have normal size kitchen cabinets. We decided to remove, resize and relocate a few of them so I wouldn't have to worry about that. Because we were planning to redo all the siding, I was also lucky that we could use stock sized windows throughout the whole house! We just chose some that were as close to the original size as we could find. My dad was able to add a little bit of trim to the interior to hide the slight gaps and the outside was going to be re-done anyway. I probably saved thousands of dollars by doing that. The only thing I had to custom order was the front living room picture window because it was such a large size. 

In these pictures of the kitchen, you can see how the layout was really choppy and oddly sized. The floor was peel and stick vinyl tiles and the cabinets were super shallow and rickety originals to the house (circa 1949). The fridge and the oven would have been jammed next to each other in the nook to the left on the bottom photo, and would have covered up a lot of the window to the driveway. 

The dining room wasn't really too bad. The paint was dirty and sloppy and the light fixture was obnoxiously hideous, but other than that, nothing too serious.

The half bath on the other hand... yikes! This room had no ceiling and was filthy dirty. The fixtures, wall tile and floor tile all had to go. 

 

The living room wasn't too much work. The windows were really the only major thing I replaced there. The paint looks much better in photos than it did in real life. 

 

 

The front entry area mainly needed lots of patching and painting. We closed up the laundry chute and the service panel to the plumbing with drywall and replaced the crappy hand rail and light fixtures. I also bought a new steel front door, but we left the cool retro hex tile in place. Had to save a little money where I could.

The upstairs full bath was a complete gut job. Between the crazy water damage and hideous vinyl wall paneling, there wasn't anything worth saving except for the pedestal sink. I moved that down to the half bath after cleaning it up.

Oh yeah, and the medicine cabinet stayed with a new shiny black coat of paint and a new knob. 

 

These are the two extra bedrooms. The top is what we now use as a guest bedroom, and the bottom is our office. The office is a really tiny, funky shaped room, but will probably function fine as a nursery in the future. Basically these both just got a new coat of paint and light fixtures.

Finally we have the master bedroom. Pretty serious damage to the plaster and wood floors was probably caused by having an air conditioning unit in the window at some point. We tore the carpet out of here and eventually replaced it about a year later. New paint and lighting in here worked wonders. Oh yeah, and patching up the plaster was definitely a must.


So that's my house before we prettied it up. I will detail out the after pics in future posts, but you can see it had potential right?

Chicago Birthday Weekend

My birthday was this past Saturday. Instead of a present, I asked Ted if we could go to Chicago for the weekend. We ended up using Priceline for our hotel and it turned out really well. We stayed at the Central Loop Hotel, which was a short walk from Michigan Avenue and everything else we wanted to do. 

We drove to Michigan City, IN and took the Southshore train the rest of the way. I started doing that on my trips to NeoCon for work a few years ago and it saves a lot of hassle with parking and driving in the city traffic. They have tons of stops downtown, so you can usually get pretty close to where you want to go. The best part is that it's only $8.15 each way! 

Next on our must do list was Giordano's pizza. It's been a tradition for me to go there almost every time I'm in the city, and Ted had never been there. Actually, he hadn't been to Chicago in years, so we had a lot of fun exploring together. And eating this...

And this...

And of course Cheesecake Factory for good measure. We definitely ate our way around, but we walked everywhere, which I think counts for something. My feet and legs were so tired by the end of the weekend I felt like a little old lady hobbling around.

Because of my design school background, I learned a lot about architecture and I even took an architectural boat tour once down the Chicago river. It's still fun to walk around and just stare at all the amazing buildings in the city. 

I would love to live near Chicago some day, but I don't know if Ted would go for it. He's more of a country boy at heart. For now I'll have to be content being three hours away. As long as I get to go at least once a year, I'm happy. And 60 degree temps with sun on November 5th? I'll take it!