Project: Guest Bedroom!

When my mom came to visit over the summer, we surprised her by completely re-doing the guest bedroom before she arrived.  Here are some before and afters!

(keep scrolling down to the next entry in order to read a catch-up on my life since the last post and see more random photos)


BEFORE: no shades on the windows above the bed, a giant boxy TV, carpet/bedspread/walls that don't match, a basket full of stuffed animals, one tiny bedside lamp


BEFORE: more of the big TV, no place for guests to hang clothes (the closet is full of John's clothes since our closet is a weird size), and cheap vinyl blinds on the big windows, a paint job that wasn't done perfectly, and was too dark for the room (imo)


Step One: Primer!


Complete!  ... also, you can't tell because they're up at the moment, but there are actually cellular shades on those windows now!


I got six FLOR tiles for around the same price as a nice area rug and they look like they were made for the room! I love that you can see more of the hardwood floors now, too, since this is a good size for the room


I've had this wooden blocks forever - and my parents and sister have a set, too - but I've never had anywhere good to put them before, so a goal was definitely to get a shelf to put them on, so John built me this one.  There's also a nice green (to match the bedspread) candle on there now that I never got a photo of, but it helps so you don't think it says MOMK instead of MOM)


I was originally planning on repurposing some old lamps we already had in the house by just getting them new shades, but then I found these cute lamps at Target for the same price as new shades, so I had to get them! (we gave the old lamps away to a friend who needed them, so it was  a win/win!)


I took this photo before getting the new lamps, but it gives you an idea of where we hung all the art, and you can see that we replaced the big TV with a small computer monitor (and computer), and left our guests with a wireless mouse and keyboard. There's also a shortcut on the desktop of the computer to take you right into our Netflix account so you can watch movies before bed!  It's like pay per view in a hotel without having to pay! (and with no adult selections)


New Cellular blinds on all four windows! (at the same time, we put room darkening versions of these up in our bedroom. Awesome!)


And now there are hooks on this wall so you can hang a dress if you happen to bring one when visiting us!  Under this (I didn't do a good job of getting photos, apparently, since I have to describe so much...), the basket that used to be full of stuffed animals? It's now full of extra blankets for when it gets cold in the winter!


A detail view of the FLOR tiles


We chose the paint color by taking the blue pillow (that I love) into Lowes and holding up paint cards until we found a good match - NOT BAD!


Close up of the bedding - ignore the lamps, I hadn't switched them out for the new ones when I took this photo)


Close up of the photo on the left wall - this is a photo of a hosta bud from our backyard that we used to have hanging in the living room. I love the photo, but it never really felt right there, it's PERFECT in this room

Week Off

My week off of work was fantastic! I can't believe I haven't written over here since before that! Oops.

I spent 2 nights in Virginia visiting one of my favorite people - Kristy. She and her wife recently had twin girls and I was able to meet them and spend some time with the new family!

The rest of the week was spent just relaxing around the house, catching up on various errands/stuff, and (hooray), being sick on Friday. that part wasn't very exciting!

On Saturday I will run on a Relay Team in the Akron Marathon. I'm only running 4.8 miles, but it's the longest I've ever run, so I'm pretty excited. I've been training and it's been going really well, and I really look forward to my runs on the days that I do them (three times a week), so I'm not sure what I'll do with myself now that it's over (and getting a bit chilly outside to keep running). I'm sure Il'l find something else to do!

I'm actually almost-caught-up on my photo editing, but of course I'm very far behind in posting over here, so I apologize that these photos are from May/June:


John built this structure to hold wood for the firepit. It actually has a roof on it now, and a hook to hang the fire pit poker thing


Salad with seared Tempeh, cranberries, almonds and homemade dressing


A rose in our backyard






Turning over the charcoal Chimney


Maia


YPA had an event at a Wine Bar


This picture cracks me up because our thyme plant is now 500 times larger than this


Organized garage! One of the BIG tasks on our 2012 House Projects list was to re-inforce the roof of the garage, hang the old kitchen cabinets in here and organize the garage in general. It's all done now and even though this was a project John was more excited about than I was, I have to admit, I really like the final product!


My Bay tree, back when it, too, was tiny!


I love this photo. It's my desktop background at work


My hair!

Wait, Labor Day already? Oh goodness.

I'm trying to take this three day weekend to catch up on my photo editing. I'm currently editing photos from early-mid July - but the photos I'm posting here are still from back in May!  So, I might be posting more than one entry today, or this week.  I know, I know, I say that a lot and rarely actually do it, but... we'll see.

As for this long weekend, we kicked it off by driving down to Cincinnati on Friday to see our friend Joe Garcia - aka Hoseff play a show down there.  Then we stayed in a very fancy hotel before making our way back up to Columbus on Saturday, where we spent the day catching up with friends that live there.  Finally made our way back to Akron Sunday morning, and went out in the afternoon to buy Dominion: Dark Ages and that pretty much sucked up the rest of Sunday (it's good).

Only four more days of work until I take an entire week off!  And less than four more weeks until the Akron Marathon!  Did I mention I'm running in the marathon? Not the entire thing, you can run it as a relay team, and I'm running 5 miles. I'm pretty excited!

Back in early July I posted about the new floors that John and our friends put into the family room. Here's one of the transition pieces that John put in between the entryway tile and the family room. Pretty good match for being from a completely different store/brand!

Split Pea Soup

Maia. Always on my clothes.

I somehow missed one of my hair cut appointments and it got really long and annoying.

I did a talk about using Gimp to edit photos for a local Web special interest group.  It went pretty well, but perhaps my favorite part was after the talk, when I walked around the (very) small college campus and got some photos of the buildings.