Back Into the Swing of Things

It is six months to the day since our wedding. 

The absolute best day of my life. 
And the most amazing honeymoon in Bermuda. 

Posts on each of those later.

I realized it has been 7 months since my last post and I am officially kicking myself in the butt to get back to blogging. I recently looked back to my first post and am proud to say that I have accomplished half of my post wedding to-do list. Dining room has been painted along with the back wall of our master bedroom. And I somewhat worked on our outdoor space, although that has become the hub's territory.

At the moment I am the happiest with our most dramatic change. I successfully tackled the not-so-fun task of painting over the two red walls in our living room. The walls were Behr's "Spicy Cayenne" which we painted a little over a year ago. Here was how the room looked shortly after the original paint job:

 

(please excuse the iPhone quality photo)

I absolutely loved the walls after we painted them. It was the perfect pop of color I was craving and just we needed to compliment our couch and other furniture. We chose to only paint the two walls so to not overwhelm the room. You can't see but the living room connects into our kitchen in a somewhat open floorplan. I'll have to post a picture of that later. There is also a slider to the left of the window that leads onto our deck. So in the end, it actually wasn't a lot of wall space painted. 

Well, a few weeks ago I decided I was over the red. I think what really made me decide was after we received prints of our wedding photos. I framed them I wanted to hang them on the wall. I was disappointed that the deep color of the walls took away from the wedding pictures. Since I printed the pictures in black and white they seemed to blend in with the rest of the room and the dark wall. 

Repainting the walls was actually an easier task than I thought. I simply chose the color that the remaining two walls were painted (along with the adjoining kitchen and hallway). Luckily we had just enough left over that with two coats of primer and two coats of paint - bye bye red walls!

I also ditched the red and yellow pillows for some fun, low-key Ikea ones and a bright lime green throw. 

I am really pleased with the outcome.

Pictures tomorrow :) 

Along with a few shots of the other side of the room. 

And these ones will not be taken via iPhone!

Post-Wedding To-Do

It is official. I am getting married six weeks from tomorrow. And I'm already planning on what to do with my free time once we return from the honeymoon. We've been engaged for about 13 months and for the past 8 or 9 I have had a looming wedding to-do list in the back of my head. I'm kind of looking forward to the feeling of having nothing that needs to be done.

Here is my list of summer 2010 house projects that I hope to accomplish:

• Sand and repaint dining room furniture. We were given this furniture by my in-laws when I bought the house. It's a gorgeous honey colored wood and I love the style of it and it comes with a bench for one side! However I would like to repaint it white and sand some weathered look into it.
• Laundry room - striped walls or bead board wallpaper. Still undecided
• Repaint wall behind bed in master bedroom. We did three neutral walls with one bold, dark blue accent wall last summer and I have yet to find what to hang on the walls or what bedding to use to make it look right. I gave up and decided to make it the same color as the other three and work from there.
• Repaint dining room. The dining room is currently a bright, rich green with white crown molding at the top and baseboard. I loved it for the first two years of living here, but now I am ready for a more sophisticated change. Hence, painting the honey wood colored furniture.
• Outside. I have put this off for the past two summers, but I'm ready to tackle outside. We live in a tiny townhouse, so lawn is not a huge issue. We just have a small patch of grass right outside our walk out basement. But we do have a second story deck off our family room that overlooks the gorgeous white clay creek as well as a patio underneath the deck. I am ready to test out my green thumb and take a stab at trying to keep some plants alive. I also survived hosting my first family BBQ at our home a few weeks ago and I realized I need to jazz up the deck a bit. We pretty much have a table and some chair, but that's about it.

I think this is plenty for now. It's not even summer yet and I'm sure this list with change and grow. But for now I have a three day weekend ahead of me and lots of cleaning to do!