Friday, November 23, 2012

The Dining Room

After living in a place for over 1 1/2 years, I should probably give up on the "finished room" posts. But, well, we are still finishing and unpacking and hanging simple things like, oh say, closet bars and picture frames. It's true. SO. Welcome to the completed dining room! Just finished - down to the last frame hung, and a new welcome with Thanksgiving dinner. Here we go:

Source: etsy.com via Amy on Pinterest

We originally wanted the large Hanka for the wall, but it was actually too large. So I started looking for options, leaning towards something with a little color since our floors, furniture and walls are all rather neutral. I found these painted tree cookies on Etsy (see above) and fell in love, but at $1400 they were out of our decor budget. However, we did have many many tree cookies in the woodshed and even a herd of appropriately colored paint cans in the basement. Perhaps we could reacquaint ourselves with our former DIYer? 


Well, in the good ole days pre-kid days, we would have whipped this puppy up in an evening. Now? This little art project took us 12 months (1 evening of varnishing, 2 hours of painting, 1 hour of topcoat, 30 minutes of hanging and 12 months of thinking about finding the time). But that's the pace of our life currently. The colors splendidly match the colors in our new circles rug for the living room. 


Our pass through got a fresh coat of paint as well. Ideally we would have stained the whole built in a darker white-wash (more grey than white), but that size project was out of the question. So the wall took the hit instead. We had the paint chips up for close to 2 months and surprised ourselves by choosing one so dark, but it's the dark that we liked.


Then, hours before the Thanksgiving guests arrived, Pap-pap and I recovered the dining room chairs. Little things like shades, window stain... finally done. All this, and a perfectly grilled turkey to boot.


Was it well received? I think so


Sunday, November 4, 2012

And then, Halloween













What we've been up to::
:: a big time trick-or-treating downtown
:: a Halloween spectacle
:: a Halloween party of sorts with our Applefest friends (you'll have to take my word for it, I forgot to take even a single picture)
:: MORE trick-or-treating in our old hood
:: a visit from the Switch Witch

How was your Halloween?