picnic with grandpa

over the weekend my mom coordinated a picnic with my grandpa at his nursing home.  the weather was beautiful and i'm sure he enjoyed sitting outside as much as we did.  and the girls are ALWAYS up for a picnic.

grandpa is now wheelchair bound and has some slight dementia (which can lead to some rather interesting conversations). 

i love how my sisters hair is growing back.  she looks very gi jane / sinead o'connor.  awesome.

and kevyn, my little foodie, loved the tapioca pudding my mom made special for my grandpa.

here neely is trying to show me how she can stick a quarter to her head.  silly girl.

once all the picnic'ing was done, the girls kept themselves busy doing cartwheels....

...and playing games like pin the tail on the...  tree???

we are not too sure who won.

on a side note, if you are up for some good blog reading, i would highly recommend the series edie is writing on life{in}grace.  the series is called 31 days to hospitality and it is so good!

~becky

house renovation update

the house is coming along slooowly.

we are at a point that where all the subs want to come in and do their trade but only at a point when they feel confident that no other sub could potentially mess up their work.  and they want to do it on a day when they are the only tradesman working.  ugh...  i'm pretty confident that if this scenario was in a different setting and consisted of women, they would be called diva's.  just sayin'.  i guess i should be happy that all the subs take such pride in their work.

we've opted to keep the long leaf pine ceilings in our living room and in the adjacent office.  other than the holes that the need to be fixed, i think it looks great.  the hvac guys thought it would be ok to put a return air vent in this ceiling (the large square hole in front of the back windows).  they assured me they would put a nice looking vent there.  i assured them there was no such thing as a nice looking vent.  the vent was moved to a logical place and they will be fixing my ceiling.  

my countertop people are scheduled to come out and do their field measurements tomorrow and this is what my kitchen looks like as of wednesday evening.  i swear it is like two steps forward and one step back.  i'm constantly questioning and correcting things.  my contractor keeps telling me that these "changes" take time and i'll reply that they "are not changes, only corrections."  in a previous post i had a picture that showed where our built in refrigerator would be.  it never looked right to me and i questioned it often.  over the weekend i made the call that the small wall on the left of the refrigerator would have to be moved in order to get the look i want.  removing the wall would also mean fixing the ceilings and floor.  so here we are...

our wood floor guys also started on wednesday.  i already love them.  our house poses many obstacles when it comes to our floors transitioning from room to room due to the many times it has been remodeled.  i love that the suggestions the floor guys give me are clearly not the easy way to do things.  which i'm sure i will pay heavily for in the end, but today i love them.

on a side note, jeff's garden at my parents house is flourishing.  the pumpkins have pretty much taken over the right side of the garden.  we planted them pretty late this year so we might end up with some christmas jack-o-lanterns.  kelby is eager to pick the carrots to take to the class bunny at school.  i think she still has a few weeks before they are ready.

and yes, jeff likes to wear his old scrub bottoms for painting and gardening.  :)

jeff also transplanted some of the canna's from my grandparents house (which is now my house) to the side of my parents garage.  they seem to have made the move just fine.

a few updates

i'll start with updates on the house...

in our kitchen we will be using large planks of wood for our backsplash.  i call it the "planking," but there is real term that my contractor corrects me with.  it starts with an "s."  whatever.  i'll continue to call it planking.

Source: southernliving.com via Becky on Pinterest

the planking is up and the cabinet guy has several of the cabinets already made.  our mudroom is just about done!  eek!  oh, and see that outlet above our kitchen window?

that is for a light that will look something like this...

Source: lifeingraceblog.com via Becky on Pinterest

jeff and i tackled the painting job ourselves.  interior wall painting that is.  everything else we will leave for the professionals.  other than our paint color failure, scary makeshift scaffolding (see below), and jeff's neck killing him from the long hours of looking up at the ceilings, it was relatively easy and i'm glad we decided to do it ourselves and save a few bucks.  

back in may when we started the house renovation, we totally thought we would be in our house before any cold weather would hit.  we were wrong.  sunday the high's were in the 50's so friday night jeff and i made the dreaded trip to our storage unit to see if we could find any boxes with warmer clothes in them.

this is what our storage unit looks like.  keep in mind that this is only our storage unit.  we also have stuff stored in my sister's garage, my parent's garage, and several rooms in my parent house.  (sorry about that guys!)

after two hours of climbing, digging, opening and re-packing boxes, we found three boxes of clothes for the girls and more importantly we found kevyn's super k cape.  kevyn informed me that she wants to be a princess super hero (yah, weirdo) for halloween and that the cape was an essential part of her costume.  mission accomplished.

as for our soccer season, kelby continues to be a rockstar on the soccer field.  she is very eager to tell you at the end of the game exactly how many goals she made, how many goals she helped with (because she feels she should get credit for those too) and how very few goals the other team made.  she might be a little competitive.

kelby & cousin natalie giving coach john high fives:

i hope that my next post will blow. your. mind. by all the progress that got done on our house this week.  that is totally wishful thinking on my part.  i can dream, right?

~becky

fall porch lovin'

after jeff read my post about jokingly putting pumpkins on our front porch of our "no where near done" home, he quickly told me "don't even think about it!"  ok.  

for now i will live vicariously through pinterest...

Source: google.com via Becky on Pinterest

Source: wedo.does.it via Becky on Pinterest

Source: southernliving.com via Becky on Pinterest

Source: intimateweddings.com via Becky on Pinterest

Source: sunset.com via Becky on Pinterest

i have some seriously pinterest porch envy...

~becky

round top

anyone else make it out to round top yet?

jeff, kevyn and i made a quick trip on sunday.  it was chilly and muddy sunday morning so there wasn't much of a crowd.  once the sun started to peak out through the clouds the traffic picked up.  

we overheard some of the dealers talk about how business had been slow and on several occasions we had dealers offer to come down by 25% or more without even asking.  of course i know their markup is quite a bit more than that, but still!  

one of my favorite vendors sets up in warrenton and her booth is loaded with vintage school pieces.  last spring we bought several things from her including four little chairs we plan on putting around a small table in the girls room.  i think we've also purchased a vintage globe from her too.  

i loved this old book cart.  i just wasn't sure if it would work in the girls new room.

and how cool is that table?!?

we ended up coming home with this piece.  the vendor was very eager to sell us something and i think we got a great deal.  it is an eastlake piece that is expected to be from the late 1800's.  we think it is neat and i have a few ideas on where to put it in our future home.

~becky

paint failure

who knew picking paint would be so complicated???

as soon as my husband and i decided to purchase my grandparents home, blogs have become my new late night read.  i love following along as others also go through their own home renovation or even room updates.  i steal so many great ideas.  when it came time to decide on paint, a large part of my decision came from blogs that i follow.  

as a case and point, i follow joan of for the love of a house.  her home is to die for!  i just love her style and she very graciously shares all of her sources.  this is a picture of her kitchen:

for the love of a home

see what i mean?!?  love it!

she used benjamin moore white dove for her cabinets, ceiling and trim and benjamin moore gray owl on the walls.  "perfect!", i thought.  i'll get a sample of each.  and i did, along with a few more that got some good reviews in blogland.  as mentioned before, i go to the local ace hardware for paint samples and they carry benjamin moore.  so all my paint samples are from benjamin moore with the exception of "ash" on the far left.  it is from renovation hardware and i loved the way it looked here.

going back to the benjamin moore white dove, several of my inspiration pictures that i have pinned use white dove.  i was certain that white dove would be my trim and ceiling color.  so certain i told my contractor to go ahead and get it for the ceilings.  big mistake.  keep reading.

so here is what happened when i started sampling colors...

this is an iPhone pic so the colors are distorted some.

we first put up the potential wall colors; classic gray, shoreline, gray owl and ash.  jeff and i both agreed we liked the classic gray the best.  he insisted that the gray owl had too much blue in it and thought that shoreline was too dark for the look we wanted.

ok.  gray owl it is.  

but to be certain, lets just test that white dove that i JUST ordered 10 gallons of.  

*gulp*

i hate it.

if i were to use white dove on my trim and ceilings, they would be darker than my gray owl walls...  jeff quickly got the other two whites we tested on the exterior of our house and we sampled those.  we both agreed to use the same china white as we used on our exterior for our ceilings and trim too.  

now i'm super eager to get everything painted so i rest easy knowing i made the right decision.

~becky