Better late than never

After having a small heart attack when seeing the last heating bill, Matt decided that even though we are approaching February, there is still plenty of winter left that from which we can protect ourselves . Enter the window plastic:

Now, caveat here, I personally hate window plastic. Most of our windows are double pane, but there were a few stranglers that were not replaced whenever the others were, making it a necessary evil. So, I swallowed my pride and now we have a better protected window:

and you can't even really tell, since Matt did such a good job. Only one so far, but it's a start!

It's not exactly for the house

But eventually we are planning to put it in the yard...

That's right, we are building an arch for our wedding.  Before it retires to the yard, and before we can get hitched, we have to build it! Which meant a trip to Menard's for quite a bit of lumber in our trusty old van:

We forgot to take the seats out beforehand, but the old girl did great.

In other news, Leroy did this.

He's a very active cat... svelte, lithe, you know...not to mention modest.

Chicago swanky

As some of you might know, Matt and I don't get each other Christmas gifts. At least not in the traditional sense. Instead, for the past 4 years or so, we've taken a trip to Chicago together. Matt uses travelzoo to find a hotel and we plan something fun to do. One year we went to the Art Museum, next Shed Aquarium, the next to the Field Museum. Its lovely and it's always the highlight of my Jan/Feb.

Well, this year, we were a little stuck. We'd been to all the good museums (from other trips to Chicago as well as previous year's trips) and we didn't really feel like trying to decide on a show or having a really expensive dinner. Then, Matt (as he often does) had a brilliant idea. We decided to go find some fancy pantsy home stores and get some ideas for the house. Enter the LuxeHome at the Merchandise Mart. Turns out, according to their advertizing, that they are the largest collection of luxury home stores in the world. Pretty awesome. So Matt and I put on our best faux rich swagger, dove in and told everyone we were "renovating an old farm house" which is not far from the truth, really.

Rather unfortunately, most of the stores closed at three, but we did get to go in a couple:

First we went to an amazing paint store that also sold custom wallpaper called Farrow & Ball where we picked up a color swatch book of their historical paint colors. Matt and I also really like this wallpaper called Wisteria. I think it might be awesome to pick a small wall and use wallpaper as art, but I'm not really sure we have a small wall that would work.

Next we went to a lighting store looking for some lights for the kitchen. We are looking for something new for above the butcherblock and something for above the table. We found this light (coincidentally named Sorenson. It's fate, I tell you).

Might be a little too nautical, but pretty, for sure.

Then we went to the Kholer store and found lots of exciting things, including our coveted apron sink in a crazy blue. (I stole this from the Kholer website, but we did see that exact one)

We also saw this awesome shower tiling:

and this tub with a wall that raises and lowers.

Finally, we went and looked at flooring. Lots of floors. Beautiful, 12 dollar a sq ft floors

Which was very inspiring. and sobering. but mostly inspiring.

Leroy's loot

So, we did register for a couple things not for the house. But to be fair, they aren't for us either. They are for ol' furry britches, cause we can't resist

First up, the only toy worth buying our cat, the giant krinkly ball

Now, over the years, we've bought fluffernutter a ton of toys. Mice, catnip, feathers, laser pointers, you name it. And the only toy he likes more than just a balled up piece of paper is the krinkly ball. Anticlimactic, but hey, he knows what he likes.

And since we've bought a lot of them, we had to have some place to put them (well, when they aren't all living under the couches). Right now we are using good old cardboard:

So, I thought maybe we'd upgrade to some nicer baskets that don't say "tofu" or "organic carrots" on the front

And I"m still toying (haha, get it?) with the idea of putting one of these babies on the list:

Now that the tree is down, that corner looks kinda lonely. Plus then we can put up the Christmas gifts Kate and Nate gave us ( you can see one in the corner there) and finally declare ourselves crazy cat people. I mean really, who are we fooling anyway?

WAWGTDWI - part 2

So, I think we can all agree, we have a big kitchen. Its got a ton of counter space, lots of cabinets, and a full wall pantry:

It also has a great coat closet:

Which was totally perfect when it was summer. However, now that it is winter, and we don't want to track snow everywhere, we've been doing this:

And while this is perfectly fine, the awkward, hopping dance we do every time we come in is fun to watch, but less fun to do. So i thought, hey, we have a lovely big kitchen, why not take some advantage of it? Enter the bench:

It matches our furniture and we can sit on it to take our shoes on and off. Amazing, I know. If we want to get really fancy,we can even buy some bins to go on the bottom and a cushion for the top. Plus, if we put it in front of the window, Leroy won't have to sit on our table (in baskets) to see out the windows anymore:

Not that he's even trying in this picture, but trust me, on a normal day he spends a pretty good amount of time there trying to see what the squirrels are doing in our yard.

What are we going to do with it?

Since we've started registering for gifts for the wedding, and since most of them are for the house, I thought I'd start doing some installments on the things we've asked for and what we are planning to do with them. First on the list, new lamps!

We're asking for a number of lighting options, mostly because all the lamps (minus the awesome one we got for Christmas) were either inherited or bought at the Dig and Save (where clothing is sold by the pound).

Here we have exhibit A, our living room lamp:

 Its listing a little, not the right color, and well, just getting kinda old. So is the one in our bedroom (notice I tried to dress them both up with scarves, not sure if that helped or not):

 So, we asked for some pretty new ones to replace it with:

We also asked for a smaller version to replace the sad lamp we have on our table in our front room (disregard the giant mess please) and the one upstairs in the extra bedroom:

Ah, so much better:

In addition, we asked for a replacement for Matt's desk lamp, which is kind of dated

and definitely not as pretty as this one

Tune in tomorrow for another round!

It's electric!

While I was out of town this week (in NC to help my customer upgrade and then in Chicago to get my wedding shoes and my first dress fitting) Matt and Mark were super busy. It's hard to tell what the biggest win is, but I think I have to go with retiring the pull cord at the bottom of the stairs in favor of a more 21st century way to turn on a light.

 Check out the video they sent me while I was at my customer (this video pretty much made my trip)

They also started to run the cat5e and coax cables that we are putting in all the rooms. This meant drilling some more holes in our floor. If you are super impatient, skip to about 16 seconds in.

AND today they put two brand new GFCI outlets in the bathroom (which didn't have any before), pretty amazing if you ask me.

Notice the double light switch. that's cause we are replacing the old, only semi-stable light (and its lovely decorative duct tape) with an awesome new fan/light combo.

Pretty swanky, I know. Of course this means more time in the attic to properly install the vent, but Matt and Mark are the awesomest and already bought the parts to get it done. And, special shout out to Mark for both taking the videos and helping me figure out how to embed them.

splish splash...

Backsplash!

We've pulled the trigger and bought the backsplash tile this weekend. It was a two hour adventure in the Tile Store, but we walked out victorious. We looked at slate, glass, quartzite and finally settled on tan marble with a mosaic accent. You can see our cabinet color, a sample piece of the butcher block and the counter refinishing swatches in the picture for perspective.

The idea is to put up a 3 inch strip of marble, then a two inch accent strip and the the rest marble. Sort of like the picture below, but with the accent strip a little lower down (and 12in marble tiles instead of the little ones they have)

Now we just have to find a weekend to get it done :)

Its a new year

Welcome 2013!

Well, we've been pretty busy what with the holidays and the wedding getting closer and closer. I did manage to shop some sales over Christmas and got us a new blanket for the bed. You might also notice the new lamp in the corner. That was a gift from Mom and Dad (thanks guys!) because they have the same on in my childhood bedroom and we've been coveting it for quite a while.

We also got money for the backsplash and Matt got a bunch of new tools. Can't wait to go to the tile store and pick out some pretty stuff.


We've also been busy registering for wedding gifts. Look for posts in the new future highlighting things we are asking for and what we are going to be doing with them :)