making our house happy: week four

This week adds two more tasks to the happy house challenge, but first-- my results:

Making the bed: 7/7
Empty the sink: 3/7
Sweep the kitchen floor: 2/7
Clear the clutter: 5/7
Sort the mail: 6/7
Spray the shower: 1/7

This week was a mixed bag.  Some tasks, I can clearly stay in the habit.. others, not so much.  I think the hardest nights are when both the Man and I have worked late, dinner needs to be made, and I just don't feel like running through the house doing chores..

Still, the goal is 7/7 for the next week.  It's already pretty booked, with lots of late nights-- which adds another level to the challenge for me.  Not to mention two more tasks added to the list:

Organize the outerwear -  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to address this one.

and

Write it down -  If you know me, you know I <3 a to-do list. 

This one should be easy (and help with my goal of 7/7 for this week.)

How are you keeping your house happy?  Check out how everyone else is doing over at MyHappyHouse.

tackle it tuesday - the cabinet of doom

Meet my least favorite kitchen cabinet--- our base cabinet/pantry.

It's a perpetual disaster.  I know I've bought duplicates recently.  I finally tackled this over the weekend.

I pulled everything out, threw away or consolidated nearly empty boxes, and grouped everything in categories.  It was pretty simple and I didn't have as many duplicates as I thought (yay!)

Then, I just put everything back in the cabinet-- in a much more orderly fashion.

And, of course, because I'm lame.. I added a few tags.

Not that I needed them.  But it makes me happy.. and gives the Man something to mock me about.

(I'm not slightly OCD.. stop with your accusations.)

b

a six dollar splurge

It's been a while since I last went yard sale shopping in an effort to save a little extra money.  I've been avoiding the temptation... at least, until the Man had to work on a Saturday and I was awake in time to hit a few sales before taking my car to the shop. I couldn't resist.

For the first few stops, I didn't find much.  I lucked out when I came across this cute leggy table.

It's a great size, solid wood.. with some fantastic details. It could use some TLC and maybe a fresh stain or coat of paint.

I love the woven inset, and the price couldn't be beat--- a whopping one dollar. $1!

I also fell in love with this funky mirror. I've always loved round mirrors, and even though I'm not sure where I'll put it.  It's fairly lightweight for the size which is a plus.

I think the woven texture is pretty neat and will look great painted in a gloss white, or possibly black. I bargained with the seller and finally got it to $5.00.  It's more than I'd normally pay, but I think for the size it was a pretty good price.

What are some of your latest thrifty finds?

See what other awesome stuff people have been finding!  I've linked up to:

Thrifty Treasures over at Southern Hospitality

and

Nifty Thrifty Tuesday over at Coastal Charm

(who was in Auburn this weekend and found some great stuff at my local haunts!)

making our house happy: week 3

I am loving the Happy House challenge over at myhappyhouse.

So far, I've been doing pretty good.  This week, I did slack a little after a long night buying groceries and a stressful few days at work.  Here's how I did:

Make the bed - 7/7

Empty the sink - 6/7

Clear the clutter - 7/7

Sweep the kitchen floor - 4/7

For this week, we're adding in two more tasks: sort the mail and spray the shower with daily cleaner. The mail will be an easy one, but the shower-- that's a challenge.  I'm trying not to buy any more cleaning supplies-- so vinegar+water it is!

To make it fun, I may pick up a cute spray bottle.  I always seem to be more willing to clean, if the supplies are cute... maybe I'm just that much of a nerd.

How did you do with the challenge?  Click here to see how everyone else did!

bandwagon jumper

I've stumbled upon the awesome blog: my happy house and it was immediately added to my reader. Molly has some great ideas, and I intend to provide the most sincere form of flattery and copy them ASAP! She's got some great challenges going and encourages people to blog along.  I have a teeny blog-crush.

Not only am I trying to keep up with her happy house challenge, but I am going to try and play along with her "Tackle it Tuesday" posts.  I'm notorious for letting random house tasks pile up and ignoring them until it finally drives me crazy. Since Tuesdays aren't always the best for tackling projects around our nest, I'm going to be a little loosey-goosey with the timeline.  Still, I'm going to aim for Tuesdays and hope for the best.  Besides, "Tackle it This Weekend" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

I've got a few options for things to tackle tonight, but I'm thinking the master bath should be at the top of my list. I normally keep a pretty solid routine for the general house cleaning, but with my current project in the guest bathroom (post to come) I've been neglecting the master. It needs some TLC and a hearty dose of bleach, stat!

The Man will be at work late, dinner is already prepped, so tonight is the perfect night to tackle the remnanants of my weekend to-do list.

Any tasks you need to tackle around the house?  What chore do you avoid the most?

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tomato tracking: what a crop!

This summer has been brutal! 

 Lots of HEAT, too much humidity, and too little rain, which is not good for growing (or much of anything, really.) I didn't expect much out of our little tomato garden, but the tender-loving-care and green thumb of the Man has proved me wrong! He's been on top of keeping our plants watered, fertilized, and happy.

 We've had an awesome crop of tomatoes, with plenty to share with friends and family.

We've also had some surprisingly large tomatoes-- mainly from our mis-labeled Roma vine.

I've never seen a roma tomato this big!  Thanks to the Man for modeling our monster roma.  This just seems like a huge tomato to me, I've seen insane sized tomatoes grown by the Dad and my Sweet Grandma, but I am still surprised that this madman came from our garden.

I couldn't wait to slice it up, add a little salt and pepper and dive in.

Nothing says Alabama Summer to me like crazy heavy humidity, blazing sun, and home-grown tomatoes.  My favorite being the tomatoes, of course!

How does your garden grow?  Any surprising crops?

colorblocking

It may seem like there hasn't been much going on at the nerdy nest, but we've been prepping for some big changes.  Or at least, big to us. 

It's been almost a year since we tackled redoing the kitchen and painting our kitchen, livingroom, and hall.  After about 5 months of chaos due to our drawn-out kitchen update, the Man decreed a moratorium on home improvement projects.  In that time we've just been plugging along with home maintenence and making small tweaks with decor. But I've been patiently waiting to tackle some of our other rooms.

I mentioned brainstorming my office updates, but that's going to be a drawn out project since I'm waiting on the perfect furniture to define the space.  However, we have a few other rooms that are desperate for some updates.  The previous homeowners had very different tastes when it comes to color choices.  They preferred a yellowish beige-y brown.  In almost ALL the rooms. 

As you can remember from our living room, it takes me a few tries to decide on a color.    I want things to flow throughout the house, so I've been trying variations on my favorite color Glidden's Antique Silver (color matched to Behr).

In the kitchen, we lightened the color by 50% and I thought that might help to brighten our dark guest bathroom [the swatch on the left] and then darkened Antique Silver by 75% to try it a little more bold [the swatch on the right].   The swatches don't read true to color because the lighting in the guest bath is miserable.  Plus, you can see the lovely yellow/beige/brown underneath.  I'll probably try the swatches again once we've primed and make a final decision (or get more paint samples!)

We decided to mix things up for the master bedroom and try a few different colors....

From left to right: Smokey Charcoal, Blue Grey Slate, Antique Silver (darkened 75%), more Blue Grey Slate, Smokey Charcoal (lightened 50%) and Blue Grey Slate (again).

We wanted to go darker in here, and the Man is a big fan of dark, bold colors.  We both love blue and after looking at about 300 paint chips, we gravitated towards Glidden's Smokey Charcoal and Blue Grey Slate if you couldn't tell by the swatches above.

We'll be using the Blue-Grey Slate in the bedroom.  In our lighting, it reads as more of a deep navy which I'm really excited about. 

I love the pairing of navy with crisp white trim and linens. 

For the master bath and closet, we'll use the Smokey Charcoal to mix things up a little bit (and brighten up the darker spaces without being too drastic from the Slate color in the bedroom.)

I was a little hesitant to go for such a dark color, but now that I see the swatches on the wall-- I'm loving it and can't wait to get the room painted!

I think the colors all work pretty well together...

Do you gravitate towards certain colors?