Guess I Should Leave More Often Part III

You're probably starting to think that I go away all the time and leave Chris behind.  This will be the last installment as there are no other trips sans Chris planned for the near future.

A couple of weekends ago I headed down to Austin to hang out with some of my fellow bee bloggers.  I didn't take many pictures (in fact I left my camera at home so all I had was my iPhone) but you can see some great ones over at Allie's blog.

A few shots I took while at the Capitol.

Right before I headed south I received an amazing call from my best friend's mother.  While their wood floors were being replaced, there was an accident with her dining room buffet.  They planned to replace their entire set and wanted to know if Chris and I would like their table and 10 chairs.  As Chris and I were in the market for a table to fill the recently emptied dining room (so glad to finally be done with boxes!) we jumped at the offer!

It took 2 small SUVs and Chris' F150 but with the help of my parents we were able to get it all to our house in one trip.  

We really lucked out with our house as this model normally has a formal living room and smaller dining room in the front.  Without the formal living space in our layout, the dining room is extra large and we got the added bonus of the butler's pantry.  I can't wait to decorate and set the table for Christmas dinner which we'll be hosting at our house this year.

While I was down in Austin, Chris made and installed new shelves for the laundry room.  I'll be on the look out to pick up some baskets to house cleaning supplies that don't fit in the pedestals below the washer and dryer.

Along with other minor fixes like replacing the light in the garage and screwing in hooks to hang items like brooms behind the laundry room door, Chris also found the time to paint the nursery!  We had picked out a color (Behr Spring Stream) back when we first moved in (before we were pregnant) that we loved and thought could go with accents for either a boy or a girl.  It's a blueish green color that's kinda hard to really capture.

Yes, those red curtains from the sellers will be going soon

Here's a shot that I took later in the day with the lights on... totally looks different, right??

I think the real color is something in between these pictures, closest to the last shot from outside of the room.

Seasonal Buffet

Bring on the seasonal decor!!

I love decorating for the holidays, and as we saved up to purchase our house I used the time to hit up several after season sales and stock up on holiday decor.  The original plans were to decorate the fireplace mantel, but after we found our house and decided to mount the TV above the fireplace I had to find another place for my holiday decor.

Enter more online shopping and another purchase from Wayfair! (We previously purchased our headboard from WayFair) I found this buffet, that comes in black and cherry, and fell in love.  I debated for some time before actually pulling the trigger to purchase it and that was my mistake.  When I was ready to click buy at the end of August the black one was out of stock.  I wasn't a fan of the cherry, so I figured that I could hold out until the black one came back in stock.  I tried to find it on other sites like Amazon, but came up with the same problem - out of stock on the black.  I waited and waited, signed up for notification when it was back in stock and checked online periodically to see the estimation date get pushed back further and further (as of right now it's expected shipping is pushed till 11/8).

I waited a month and a half or so until my patience ran out.  I talked it over with Chris about buying the cherry version and if we didn't like it we could always go through the process of painting it black.  When it arrived we were both surprised to see how dark the cherry version actually is - Chris even asked me if I was sure I didn't ordered the black one when he was putting it together because it seemed so much lighter in the online picture.

With the buffet ready to go, I was excited to pull out the fall decor.  My favorite piece being the Ikea lantern filled with various sparkly pumpkins, acorns, leaves, pinecones and berries.

I put up the fall decor as soon as possible to get as much time in before I switch over to Christmas decor.   Knowing myself, the Christmas decor will be coming out next month as we prepare to host our first official holiday at our house (I know my mom is really looking forward to not having to cook for both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year!).

And just so you don't think that we are on top of everything, here is what the rest of our dining room looks like.

This is where all of our boxes were delivered from our storage shed and we are slowing knocking out the last few.  Once they're gone we'll be free to start looking for a new dining room table!

What are your favorite online shopping sites?

Stripes Make Me Smile

I'm loving the stripes that we just finished in our laundry room!

But while actually creating these stripes, we were doing anything but smiling.  I now know why people tend to do stripes in small rooms or on accent walls because it is so much work!

I'm not going to lie, I was ready to throw in the towel about 10 mins into this project as we struggled to figure out the spacing, number of stripes and getting the laser level to stick.

I have to give so much credit to Chris who soldiered on when I was ready to call it a night, putting up the majority of the tape around the room.

I was naive to think that we could knock this out in one night.  Once we were both off of work, and made a trip to home depot before heading over to the house it took us until 11 pm to finish the taping.  The worst part is that this room is so small and to do the stripes around the room we would have to close the door making it so hot!

Since Chris had to close the next night (our last night before the washer and dryer would be delivered), I went over and painted all of the stripes alone.  My dad had already painted over the original beige with Behr Ultra Pure White, and we decided on Juniper Ash for the stripes.  The painting was super easy, and I'm a little addicted to pulling off the tape so that was the part I looked forward to the most.

A couple of hours later and the room was ready and waiting for our new washer and dryer!

There are still some items we would like to do to this room.  I would like to change out the old school light and Chris is planning on creating a couple of shelves to go in place of the current one that has warped paint peeling from it.  

For now though, I'm just weirdly looking forward to doing the first real load of laundry.

Do you have any rooms with stripes?  If so is it a small room or accent wall?