Things have been pretty crazy around the Kelbel house this month. Ted is working long, long hours, my work has been swamped too, and we have lots of other things going on. Last weekend we had a family Christmas party with my mom's side of the family, and we exchanged gifts with my parents and brother before that.
I got some things that have been on my wishlist for a while, so I was excited about that. These Fossil shoes were one of my favorite gifts - it's a bad picture, but they're super comfortable and I've been needing brown flats for ages.
Another thing I was excited about was a gift card for one of my favorite stores Ann Taylor Loft. I can't wait to go spend that thing! I also got a couple magazine subscriptions and some other smaller items - my mom is good at spoiling me :) Ted was excited to get a couple seasons of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on DVD (to replace his annoying habit of watching Seinfeld reruns a thousand times haha). He also got a couple ties and a basketball hoop that we will hopefully put up this spring if we can afford to redo our garage.
This week I have a work party with the whole group (about 50 people including our warehouse team) at Carraba's on Thursday at lunch, and then we have one with just the sales team and spouses on Friday night at my boss's house. Note to self - need to look up good ideas for gag gifts! Ted has a coworker who is having a baby shower on Saturday afternoon, and a Christmas party that evening. Another busy weekend! I have lots of food to make, but thankfully we are pretty much done with our gift shopping.
Next week we fly out to spend a few days with my in-laws in Colorado Springs. It will be my first Christmas away from own family, but I'm happy Ted and I will get a chance to spend it with his parents. It's hard for him to be so far from them sometimes. We're planning to spend a day at Royal Gorge
I've always been a bit of a thrill junkie, so I'm super excited to go here. They have a zipline that you can take across, as well as the bridge, but I don't think I'll be able to talk anyone into doing that with me. Plus it's December, therefore freezing cold, so I don't think it's the right time of year for that. Besides that, we're going to some sort of Christmas dinner or something at The Broadmoor, which is a fancy hotel/golf course where Ted's uncle works as a golf pro.
My parents in law live at the foot of Pike's Peak, which is gorgeous, and I've never been to see it in the winter before. They haven't had much snow yet this season, so I don't know if we'll get to see snowcapped mountains or not. We've had an unusual lack of snow here in Michigan so far this year too, and I can't say I mind. We don't own a snowblower, and we only have a one stall garage, so it's been nice not having to shovel every day. I do hope we get a little bit for Christmas day though.
Anyway, I will try to be a better blogger soon, but this newlywed holiday business can be a little nuts sometimes. I love Christmas and have so many happy memories (especially last year and getting engaged!), so it's all worth it. Merry Christmas everyone!
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.
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 :)
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!
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.
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?
