New Furniture: Puggle View

The new furniture arrived without a hitch on Saturday morning (super impressed with the service and attention of Macy's Home Furnishings, if anyone's wondering), and we've been absolutely reveling in the velvety, supportive deliciousness ever since.

So busy, in fact, that I have yet to take a proper photograph. But of course, Tucker has put them to the test, and although unsure at first, has I think come to terms.

It ended up that we had a chance to get rid of the couch on Thursday evening instead of the planned Saturday morning, so I brought a chair down from upstairs. Tuck adapted, but was NOT pleased. Funny pup.

"Real" pictures soon!

Sit A Spell

Exciting times around our house as a new couch and chair are slated for delivery this Saturday!!

We're currently presiding over a family room full of hand-me-downs : A chair and couch that Nate's parents had for as long as he could remember, then gave to him when he moved out on his own after college. They've been troopers, these pieces of navy blue leather-y goodness, but the time has come.

The time has come and gone, actually.

Because the chair is now the only piece of sit-table furniture, fought over by Nate and I, and the only suitable place to sit for guests in that room. If Nate gets to the chair first, I've taken to sprawling out on the thinly carpeted floor. THAT is how uncomfortable the couch is.

Here's what's coming, courtesy of a major sale at Macy's Home Furnishings combined with $400 of Macy's gift cards from our wonderful wedding well-wishers:

The deep espresso color will look great and grounded against our buttery yellow walls, and it's a super easy color to be able to mix in some fun throw pillows with (have plans for those guys already, thank you Pinterest!). The fabric is a velvety ultrasuede, meaning it's durable and easy to clean, a must for dog lovers such as ourselves.

And just because it's pouring rain today and we're talking about furniture, I'm gonna toss up this pic of Nate and Tucker on a sunnier day in our recent past...

Oh and the cast-off leather furniture will live on - The chair is going to a family friend going out on her own for the first time, and the couch - which does actually still have life in it despite my description - is slated for a Saturday morning donation drop-off.

Feel the Power

You may notice the blog has had a minor facelift - There's only so much to write about my own wedding, so I'll be posting about projects and happenings in our new married, home-owning life as well. Enjoy!

I know you're all probably sick to death of hearing about the yard, so I have a variation for you today : The patio! Yes?? 

I know. Not really. But allow me to sing the praises of the wonder that is a pressure washer.

I love this thing. Immediate results, lots of mud all over me, and a lovely arm/upper back work out. Sold!

Yeah, there's a patio under all that moss.

This is the least of it - Forgot to take a true 'before' photo.

Tucker tested, Tucker approved.

It's so nice to be able to walk out without squishing through inches of waterlogged moss forcing you to put on shoes. I personally wish this patio was non-existent (we have a two-level deck that offers plenty of non-grass space), but hopefully we can deal with that in the future. For now at least it's clean!

Reaping the Benefits

New deck chairs mean taking a minute to appreciate all the hard work we've been putting in on the yard.

Cheers!

Found: Second Patio!

You may notice the blog has had a minor facelift - There's only so much to write about my own wedding, so I'll be posting about projects and happenings in our new married, home-owning life as well. Enjoy!

As I mentioned yesterday, we've been on a roll in the back yard, taking full advantage of the first few days of nice weather (finally hit the over 70 degree mark for the first time since last September, woohoo!). Nate's especially been a beast, tearing up (blackberry vines, weeds, dead things) and tearing down (weird chain link fence boxes) anything that needs to be attacked.

In fact, he's so driven that I didn't even get to take a real 'before' photo of the latest improvement, but trust me, it was a doozy.

Along one side of our house a previous owner constructed an open-top cage made of chain link, complete with gate to get in and out. It wasn't huge, perhaps a four square foot base, but we were never going to use it and it was blocking access to some nice yard attributes behind it (a camellia bush and a blooming cherry tree). And as Nate was investigating, he found it had been erected on a rather nice 'patio' made of brick pavers.

Nate gets home an hour before I do, and apparently that's time enough to tear that link-y sucker down. I grabbed my phone for some pictures before it was all over :

part of 'the cage'

Nate working hard - More of 'the cage' on right

 Excuse the big dark shadow in that last photo, but just trying to show how large the area actually is. And to clarify a little depth perception, our neighbor's house you see in the background isn't as close as it looks. More like 40-50 yards away from the fence.

I'm excited to actually USE this hunk-o-space now that it exists - Hoping to get a cute bench or a couple wrought iron-y chairs out there someday. Love it!

Garden Games

You may notice the blog has had a minor facelift - There's only so much to write about my own wedding, so I'll be posting about projects and happenings in our new married, home-owning life as well. Enjoy!

Now that I'm not immersed in tissue flowers, it's time to tackle the real ones outside.

We are so lucky to have bought a home where the original owners really (and I mean REALLY) cared about their yard. All of our plants are mature and native so not only do they look great, but they basically sustain themselves - A huge bonus for yard novices like us.

The bad news portion of this program is that there have been years of renters in the home in between Mr. & Mrs. Green Thumb and us, meaning it's a jungle out there. Starting the work is daunting, but it's pretty darn satisfying to get in there and see some progress.

Exhibit A, my after work project this week :

 This jungle-esqe corner of the backyard was a tangle of weeds, broken terracotta pots, and ancient plant supports. There are a few plants that need to be removed and transplanted elsewhere due to the massively overgrown rhododendron (it can't get cut back until later in the year due to growth cycles), but quite an improvement, eh?

More tomorrow - We're on a roll!

Tunes

It occurred to me this morning that I've never talked about what music we chose for the wedding day events. I had a few surprises, so although I wanted to spill the beans pre-wedding, I kept it zipped.

image

While I was encouraged by every bridal magazine and wedding site out there to "choose a theme" for the wedding, we didn't. And if I had to choose... Well, I can't count the number of times both Nate and I said "we just want everyone to have FUN".

With that said, our playlist:

Seating of the Mothers, Junior Bridesmaids (who were also our candle lighters): 

'Stand By Me', by Ben E. King

Bridal Party (including kiddos): 

'Everybody Loves A Lover', by Doris Day

Bride: 

'Livin' On A Prayer', string quartet version as performed by Vitamin String Quartet

Under Reading: 

'The Prayer', as performed by Charlotte Church & Josh Groban

Recessional: 

'Praise You', by Fat Boy Slim

First Dance: 

'Feels Like Home', as performed by Chantal Kreviazuk

Father-Daughter: 

'My Girl', by The Temptations

Mother-Son: 

'Beautiful Boy', by John Lennon, as performed by Ben Harper 

...There you have it! I must say, Nate originally was not the biggest fan of my Bon Jovi tribute, but he let me have my way. In the end, waiting on the hidden stairs with my dad and hearing that waa pedal intro kick in and everyone start giggling as they recognized the song.... AWESOME. And Nate said it was a kick to see everyone's reaction as he stood up front waiting for me.

I of course have a playlist of all of these queued up in iTunes, and we actually made each of our mom's a cd to listen to post-wedding.


I think all of our choices fit the bill: FUN!

Clean Up Crew: Ring Bearer Pillow

What to do when your ringbearer pillow is an amazing work of handmade lace art? Can't just stash it in a drawer, no way.

Photo by Dana Pleasant Photography

Happily, I registered for a couple shadow boxes at Target, and a healthy dose of luck granted a perfect fit of pillow-in-shadowbox. On the wall it goes!

The latest addition to our wall of frames in the family room. Love it!

Clean Up Crew: More Bottles

As promised yesterday, more bottles! I know, I know, you barely made it you were holding your breath so long.

As you've probably figured out from the LOVE letters going on the big ledge in the master bedroom and the other bottles going on the deep above-built-in ledge in the family room... Our house has more ledges then we quite know what to do with.

There are two facing each other in our big entryway to the house, and one in particular was looking pretty naked to me. Enter, bottles!

 If you've figured out those orange-y balls-on-stems are leftovers too, well, ten points to you (and may I suggest branching out from reading ONLY this blog). I had plans for our wedding colors to be all shades of saturated blues with little pops of coral, but that was scrapped when I just couldn't get enough coral together to make it look deliberate and not random. So! In the castoff pile (aka: my future sewing room) they were tossed, only to have their moment in the sun post-wedding.

Like I mentioned before, in the entryway there are two ledges facing each other. We found this sign on our Mini-Moon and decided it was just crying out to live on a random, peaked ledge. Not a bad fit for having not measured, eh? We were proud.

Now, are you confused yet with all this ledge and entryway talk? Let me offer a better visual:

So there you have it. Most of the bottles are used, the ledges are lonely no more, and the house is becoming a little more of a home and less of a wedding-craft-war-zone every day.

I'll probably recycle the rest of the bottles... But for now they remain in their containers waiting for more inspiration to strike.

Clean Up Crew: Bottles

Clean Up Crew continues with aaaaaaaaaall those matte white bottles I puff-painted and spray painted for the reception tables.

By the time we packed 'em up to head to Lord Hill Farms on the wedding day, the total had hit somewhere around 70.

Not ready to toss them in the recycle bin quite yet, I've been living with them in storage containers for a while as I mulled over what could be done with them in the house without making the place feel like a brewery.

So here's what I landed on:

 Because our home was built when televisions were much smaller and boxier, we can't use the built-in cubby for our flat screen. I guess in some sort of strange decorative attempt the builder put up a large gigantic darkened mirror above the built-in. Thankfully our tv covers most of it, but it still needed... something. So now, or at least for the time being, the bottles are just the thing!

From far away it just looks kind of textural and interesting with the varied heights, and close up you can see that each is different. Because they're all white - and a matte finish at that - they don't seem to add any busy-ness or reflective distraction to the area.

And you're right if you've decided that not all 70 are there... The new home for a few more to be revealed tomorrow.

Update: Looking back I feel like the pictures in this post look a lot stranger than how it looks in person. It's actually quite a clean and Anthropologie-like look... I'll have to see if I can't get some better pictures with better lighting in the near future!

Clean Up Crew: L-O-V-E Letters

Kicking off a new little mini-series here I've decided to call 'Clean Up Crew'.

I've never really heard anyone talk about what they do with all that post-wedding stuff. Not the presents or the dress, but the leftover decor. I mean, what does one actually do with two foot high cardboard letters covered with turquoise tissue fringe?? Or you know, something normal people have left over from their wedding.

In our case, those cardboard behemoths are just the thing to fill out an architectural shelf in the master bedroom. But first, a frustrating little tale :

After the music had stopped and we'd said most of our goodbyes to our guests, 'Maid Melissa reported that one of the female guests had stolen the V from the LOVE letters. She'd seen her walking out the door, but was across the room and couldn't get to her in time to stop her.

I. Was. FURIOUS.

Really, it was the only flawed moment in the entire perfect day. Nearly from conception of the project I had plans for these letters to be used in our home, and the fact that someone thought it was funny to take this thing I'd put so much time and thought into made me so angry.

And I did NOT want to start over and make another V. You all know how long it took me to fringe these things, after all.

Anyway, long story short, Melissa's consternation was overseen by one of Nate's former neighbors, who said she knew the woman who had taken it and she would make sure it was returned (the culprit ended up being her daughter-in-law). The next day Nate thought his rooftop storage box on his truck had been broken into... Low and behold, he went to investigate and found the V crammed inside, shredded and damp.

Again with the furious-ness.

But now, repaired and reunited with L,O, and E, the set is complete and stands where I always envisioned.

Admittedly, I'm still not totally in a forgiving mood over the temporary theft, but I'm glad it ended as well as I guess I could have hoped.