Updates!

Phew! It has been over two months since I last blogged. I thought for a long time whether or not I should even write another post on this blog or whether I should just take the entire blog down. I decided, at least for today, to write another post if for nothing more than to just document some of the many changes that our house has undergone in the last two months. After all, that is what this blog is about!

I got so busy this semester with school that I just couldn't justify spending time to blog. It was a fantastic semester though, and at the risk of being prideful, I am extremely satisfied with my 4.0 considering the sheer amount of work I had! I actually had fun for the first time in school, largely due to actual interest in the topics I was studying and making some friends with people I worked on projects with. I anticipate that I will have time to blog until mid-January, when I go back to school. This coming semester will be my last, but I have to take 18 hours at three different campuses. So needless to say until I walk across that stage on May 11, I don't believe I will be blogging much ;)

This semester we spent our free day (Saturday) mostly working on home-related things. So I thought I'd just round up some pictures of things that have changed in our house over the last two months. So here we go!

We rearranged the furniture in our living room. We also got a new couch at World Market- for a killer deal. We switched the rugs in our living room and bedroom so the new one in the living room ($20 from Ross) is a much bigger, better size for this room. I recovered the ottomans in painter's canvas. (ignore the mismatched blinds in the dining area behind)

The sofa is the luxe sofa with the charcoal velvet slipcover. Love it. It's so comfy and soft!

You can also see, we moved the dresser from our bedroom down to the living room and it is storing serving pieces and table linens.

 The new arrangement has the television in the corner. It really opened up the room a lot.

Over Christmas we were at Aaron's mom's. She has a large acreage and there are old family buildings on it. We found some pieces to bring home that I'll post about later. This is a piece of cedar we found, I installed metal brackets and put it on the wall above the dresser. We aren't sure that the wood is super old, but love the character of it. Still need to accessorize it (I just put it up this morning)!

 We also finally purchased and put up faux wood blinds on the three windows in the living room, which also allowed us to hang the curtains higher and wider. The blinds sure were an ordeal, involving three trips to Home Depot. The cause for all of the struggle was three windows that varied slightly in dimension.

Perhaps the biggest change and the one that has made the most impact is our painted cabinets! I am so in love with them. They make the entire downstairs feel lighter and brighter. I'll be sure to post our method and before and afters soon.

What makes them look even better is the brand new (convection!) range and microwave that we got on Black Friday with Christmas money from family. Aren't they just great? Cooking is a joy on appliances this pretty- and I love the features on this awesome range so much that I want to cook all the time. 

In September we (well I should say Aaron's awesome aunt and mom) added above cabinet lighting to our kitchen. It looks so great and warm!

We discovered a leak in our faucet so we had to buy and install a new one. We opted for one with a separate sprayer since the sprayer part was what was leaking on our old one, and if this one leaks we can just replace the sprayer. We weren't too upset about the leak though, because our old faucet wasn't totally our style and also spit out foamy stuff every time you turned it on.

One of my favorite additions to the kitchen is the addition of the shelving that Aaron built from scratch! We painted it in the same color as the cabinets and put the shelves right up against the cabinets to help them appear built in. I love to put my dishes on them and it cleared up some cabinet space!

Also found at the family property in a tiny little house that Aaron's grandmother lived in was this galvanized top. It appeared to be used as a top for some beekeeping contraption! I just hung it up in the kitchen for a magnet board and put a few of our Christmas cards on it.

Well, that's been our months in review. I'll post more details soon!