So long summer...

So this post has nothing to do with house related stuff. I just thought it would be fun to re-cap my summer! Since fall is defiantly here and I am in the mood for sweaters, soups and festivals I wanted to write about all my adventures I had this summer! Does anyone else feel like summer has flown by? But then all at the same time it feels like I crammed a lot of stuff in those 2 months! My first summer adventure could possibly be my favorite. I was able to spend a weekend with my college friends for one of their baby showers.

I cannot even tell you how much fun we had. There is just something about getting together with college girlfriends….it was exactly the kind of weekend I needed! All of our lives may be different but we still did the same stuff we did in college. Talked for hours, laughed until we cried and ate junk food on the floor in a circle:) two of them had their babies with them and it was so great to see how they have turned into such wonderful mommas! My friend Sarah was able to stay at our house for the night before we headed up to Michigan. This girl is the greatest and I think she might be one of the best Mom’s that I know.

She loves her kids to pieces and I am in constant awe of her knowledge when it comes to all things kid-related! I think I may have to hire her when I have a baby as a mommy consultant! We were able to go to the beach for the day which was great! This picture kills me but we were going to get a picture of all of us even if it killed us!

Next up was a visit from some of our friends Brian and Bethany Dario! It was a quick overnight visit but defiantly worth it! They were on their way back to Texas and made a quick stop at our place. It was so great to catch up with them, and we had just found out they were expecting so that made it even more exciting! We cherish our friendship with these two and as you can see by the only picture I took, we always have a fun time with them!

I was able to go to New York for the first time for a work trip.

Technically I was in New Jersey but we went to New York for a day. We managed to be in New York the day that the heat index was over 100 degrees! Since it was my first trip, we did all the touristy things. Empire State Building, Central Park, Times Square, the usual.

 I surprisingly didn’t do any shopping which my husband was shocked about but I did manage to stop at Magnolia Bakery for their cupcakes! Oh my were they good…and yes I pretty much ate that whole box of mini cupcakes….I had to they were melting:)

Sometimes life throws very unexpected curves. My Grandpa passed away this summer very unexpectedly. I could write a book about what this man meant to me.

 He was the kindest most helpful person I have ever met. He was a Mr. Fix-It man through and through. He probably tore most of the wallpaper off in our house. It was and still is heartbreaking but I know everyone in my family takes joy in knowing that he is in heaven today.

 We had a wonderful time remembering and telling stories. All of his grandkids were able to be there which was a really great thing. It was wonderful seeing all of them and spending time reminiscing. We took a trip up to Michigan for some of the services and were able to see My Grandma and Grandpas house they bought when they were first married and the house my Mom grew up in. I was able to ride in the backseat with this girl for 8 hours…which made the trip much more enjoyable!  

And last but not least a few weeks ago we headed up to Elgin to celebrate our nieces first birthday! I cannot believe this girl is already one year old.

To say she brings so much joy into our lives would be an understatement!

She was such a trooper through the whole day and I think played with the wrapping paper more than her presents!

My sister in law threw a great party and it was a great ending to our summer. I am looking forward to the fall and everything it brings! Since it is cooling off we are switching our house efforts from working outside to working on stuff inside! There could be a bathroom or kitchen reno in our near future! Stay tuned!

Why So Blue?

Our front door had the blues...big time. I am going to show you the after picture before because the before is soo bad.

I don't even have a definite before picture, but hopefully this picture will somehow help you figure out what it looked like. It had bad 70's plastic flower moulding in the middle of the squares. Take my word for it, it was bad.

We talked about just buying a brand new door, but after we both had sticker shock at Lowes one day we decided to see what we could do with the door ourselves. In all reality it s a really nice steel front door and the cheapest wood front doors we saw were around $200. I spent some time researching the proper way to refinish a steel door. It didn't seem like too hard of a process. I started by ripping off all the old moulding which left me with lots of holes to patch. Since the door was steel I couldn't just use any old spackling I had to use Bondo.

It is basically something you would use to repair scratches or dents in your car. So once we filled all the holes with the Bondo it was time to sand. This is probably where we made our one mistake. We put too much Bondo on the holes...we basically over-filled all the holes. We thought that would be better so then I could sand everything down nice and even. Wrong. I probably sanded that door for a good hour or two with a palm sander and it didn't look any different. And since my arm was numb by that time I knew this process wasn't going to fly. The directions said that this was the most critical step in the process of the re-do.

Basically once I primed the door the scratches or unevenness would show and it would be too late to fix. So we came up with plan B. We went to Lowes and bought some moulding and a thin piece of wood. We essentially wanted to cover the middle section and add some detail to the door, all whiule covering up the center section that wouldn't sand down. Once the door was sanded as much as it could be I used primer and then on came the color! It took me awhile to convince Cody our front door should be a fun bright color. He was a little hesitant but I just thought that a dark brown would be so ho-hum. At first I thought a green would be nice, then after holding up about 100 paint samples in the green/blue family against the siding, we both loved this color and thought it complimented the siding color.

The door took about 4 thin and even coats of paint that I put on with a small foam roller so you wouldn't see any brush strokes. Since we were upgrading the door it self I figured we might as well spruce up the door handle! We took off all the door hardware and I used a liquid de-glosser then primed them with a spray primer. Then I sprayed them with Oil Rubbed Bronze Rustoleum Spray Paint. I did about 4 coats waiting 30 minutes between each coat.

We used Liquid Nails to glue the piece of wood onto the door since we didn't really know how nails would be going into the steel door. We just used heavy stuff we had laying around the house to hold it down while it dried...including Cody.

Once it was down and dry, we added the moulding and I did a few last coats of paint on it. Since the door was now all spruced up it was time for the frame to have a little bit of a makeover. All our windows and trim on our house are dark brown so we wanted to keep things consistent. I primed the frame then did about 5 coats of paint on it.

This was defiantly a project that took a couple of nights and a weekend to do. But it was well worth it and a whole lot cheaper then buying a new front door! And I love the pop of color it adds to our house.

The Great Wall of Frames

I have been wanting to do a gallery wall in our house since we moved in. I knew I wanted one in our hallway. Why do hallways always have to be boring? Well I did not want ours to be! I love the idea of a gallery wall of pictures and being able to change out the pictures when ever I feel like it. I have seen gallery walls done in a lot of different ways. After I saw this post from the blog Young House Love (who Is probably my favorite blog to read) I knew I wanted a similar look for ours. At first I thought I wanted all the same style of frames, but I kind of liked the idea of different styles and shades of white. My frames came from IKEA, Target, and West Elm. I followed the same process Young House Love did when it came to figuring out how to hang them all.

I cut out construction paper the size of each frame I had. As daunting as it was I think this is the best way to figure out the placement you want. After I cut them out, I started taping them up until I had the arrangement that I wanted. Then came the long part! Measuring and nailing all of them. I measured each frames hanging device and marked it with an X on the wall so then I could just hammer right into the X then pull the paper off.

Then, I just started hanging the frames. I hung some of the larger frames first then filled in with the smaller ones. Once I was done with that I started filling them up with pictures. I also snagged some velcro dots that I put on the back of each frame in the corners. I wanted to make sure they would not fall off the wall too easily!

They are super sticky so I know they will stay on the wall! And its still easy to take them off the wall and switch out pictures. And here's the afters! Its hard to get one shot of the whole thing.

I still have a few pictures to put in, but I love it! I love being able to display all the pictures that we love.  from old ones of our family to some of our wedding pictures.

I have been saving some old pictures from our family's that I can now display. We love the old vintage look of them.

Here is my favorite one of Cody when he was younger...

And another great one...when Cody proposed to me! We got it captured on camera!

We love being able to display all our favorite pictures! I think after Cody got over the initial shock of how many holes I was going to be putting in the wall he loves it just as much as I do!