House Goals for Fall/Winter 2017

This year has been the first year since 2011 when I have felt able to decorate, get things done around the house, and take time to enjoy the process. I was a brand new mom in September 2012, then I was pregnant in September 2013, then I was a mom of 2-under-3 with a 1 year old photography business in September 2014, and so on and so on..

..and with that being said, I feel my happiest when I'm working around the house and the kids are outside playing and having fun. It's the best. This fall is starting out wonderfully.

Here are our fall/winter goals around the house:

Have a storm door installed on the front door.

I really want one with a solid glass panel so as not to distract from that pretty paint color.

Replace the front exterior light.

We removed the very old and faded brass ones when we moved in and installed these black ones that are too long for the little square white panel behind it (if you look closely you can see what I'm talking about). Now they're super faded and kill my front steps vibe. I found a little white one that I want to install, so that'll happen soon. (I kinda wish we had 2 lights out front.. oh well.)

Repair/repaint front steps and sidewalk.

The other thing that seriously kills the vibe out here is the concrete. Before we can paint it, we need to repair it. There are some surface areas where the concrete is flaking a little. Once we get that fixed, we'll repaint it. I'm thinking a dark gray.

Price new railings for front steps.

This is a stretch. DH will probably laugh at me when I bring it up.. buuuuuut I think Chippendale panels would look incredible on our front steps instead of these very boring metal railings that scream "jailbreak."

Paint the upstairs office/guest bedroom.

I've already chosen the color -- Benjamin Moore's "Glass Slipper" -- but I just have to clean the room out and get it painted.

Big boy bed for DS.

Our little guy is tall, and he's outgrowing his crib. We have it set up with the safety railing to use as a toddler bed, but yeah, it's time for him to graduate from that into his own bed. It'd be easier to just buy the railings and give him a full-size bed, but he really wants bunk beds, so we're looking into them.

Window coverings for the kitchen windows.

We currently having nothing over the kitchen windows above the sink. I used to have cafe curtains, but they faded, and I took them down. What I really want are small faux-wood blinds and an upholstered cornice, so I'm going to see about doing those on a budget.

Front Yard of the Duchess

In the weeks since I've last blogged, our house has been given a facelift via repairing and painting the old trim, putting on new shutters, and painting the front door an entirely different color. Unfortunately, with the way our lot is situated with the rising/falling of the sun, I always seem to catch these horribly lit images of our house. I'm going to try to get better shots with my MKIII, but who the hell knows when I'll get around to that..

But anyhow! Yes, all of this happened around the end of July, and I basically fell in love with our house all over again. It's been a long road for me and the Duchess.

Earlier this month, DH and I used a Sunday when the kids were out with their grandparents to our advantage by visiting a local nursery to buy new shrubs. We grabbed 4 japonica waxleaf shrubs to put underneath each window. This picture was taken a couple of days after we planted them.

Funny story about the shrubs in the front of our house.. get ready.

When we saw the listing photo, it was a picture that was taken months before. From what I recall, the house was listed about 2 years before we saw the listing, and the owners decided to rent the house instead of sell it, which is how it ended up back on the market. The photo of the exterior with full-grown boxwoods carefully clipped into pretty rounded shapes was not what we saw the day we looked at the house in real life. Instead, the shrubs were all ridiculously overgrown, blocking the front walkway, and really just fucking with the overall aesthetic of the exterior.

Literally less than 2 weeks after we moved into the house, we used a friend's heavy equipment to rip out every last one of those shrubs. Including a Japanese maple. (Granted, the Japanese maple was ugly as sin to me, #sorrynotsorry, but I wish now that I had lived with it a little longer. Especially since everyone gasps at me when I tell them this little factoid.) Almost every last fucking shrub on our property was torn from the earth (minus the side of the house where our crepe myrtle tree lies, and the adjacent burning bush and euonymus goldens, and my beloved hydrangea by the AC unit). Because I am a moron, and because my husband feared telling me to fuck off and leave the landscaping alone.

I dreamed of peony bushes and hydrangeas in the front of the house. Pops of color everywhere. Nevermind the fact that I had no fucking clue what I was doing with plants, and I was in La La Land about owning a house and believing everything would be perfect.

The only great thing about this stupid decision was that DH and I planted grass seed on the side of our front walk closest to the road, which one was lined with overgrown shrubs, and we love how this opened up the front yard and made our house look more welcoming than it seemed with a row of shrubs blocking your view of the steps.

Anyhow, back to the tragedy of this decision, over the years I've tried planting things in the front of the house. I picked up 3 Japanese hollies and put them down on the left-hand side as foundation/hedge shrubs, only for 2 of them to die by the end of the year. The only one that survived was a fat little fucker on the left-hand side of the front, closest to the garage; and as it turned out, they were dwarf varieties, so this little guy would widen out like crazy, but he never got taller than he was when I planted him. In front of the Japanese hollies, I put in pink azaleas. They're still alive, but they're certainly not thriving like I hoped. They're kind of small, and I would have hoped to have seen more growth by now.

With the addition of the japonica waxleaf shrubs, DH and I tried our best to work around the little fat holly that remained, but in terms of proper spacing for nutrient availability, as well as the overall even-ness of the way our yard looked, the holly had to go. We tried to rip it out gently so that I could replant it, but DH and I ended up having to hack it from the ground in pieces. And that was after I pruned it back to make it more manageable.

Honestly, I was sad about it. For days afterwards, I would find little sprigs of holly from it that would drift across the yard or the driveway when I was going to work in the morning, or watering the plants in the evening. Jesus, I'm a plant killer.

Weeks later, though, things seem to be going okay with the yard. The japonica waxleaf plants are looking good. One of them has leaves that are turning a little brown, but I'm not sure if that's to be expected? or if I'm watering them a little too much? I'm hoping they make it.

This past week, DH and I added 2 knockout roses to the left-hand side of our house that is plant barren. I'm hoping they'll grow quickly.

My hydrangea on the other side is doing well, too! Back in April, she was looking rough. I was worried that maybe she was dying and I'd have to face facts: I suck at gardening or plant care of any kind. But surprisingly, she's looked beautiful this summer! Not much flowering, but certainly large and plenty green. I tried to sprinkle some bone meal down at the base of the plant, but she's so huge, I couldn't get it under there. The little bit that I might have gotten down there doesn't seem to be doing a damn thing, but it's only been 2 weeks, so I guess I should chill. I read that phosphorus will help with hydrangea flowering.

The Soul Crushing Reality of Motherhood

There's that saying "the straw that breaks the camel's back," and if my mental state about being a mother was a camel's back, then today was that straw.

We were up early. The kids have this newly learned skill of refusing to get out of bed on work days, yet being up at the ungodly hour of 4:50-5:15 AM on weekend mornings. (Friends without kids, soak it up.) DH was taking my SUV over to his parents' house so that he and his dad could change my brake pads, so rather than feed them, dress them, and hustle them out of the house so early in the AM, I opted to stay home with the kids. You know. Because we have Disney movies, and bins of their own toys, and a big comfy shag rug on our family room floor, and snacks, and it's home. And we're both working parents so the kids are in daycare for 40 hours a week. Who wouldn't want to be home playing with your own toys, watching your favorite cartoons, and hanging out?

My kids, apparently.

DS pretty much lost his shit on me around 10:30 AM. He was refusing to leave DH's room (with video game consoles and a gigantic TV) even though I had asked him nicely twice, so I turned off the cartoon DS had chosen (as he wasn't even in the room watching it), and that was the trigger that set off a meltdown. He grabbed his foam Thor hammer and hit me with it, so I promptly put the Thor hammer in the garage with the outgoing trash. DS grabbed another toy and threw it at me, so that went out in the garage, as well.

Long story short, DS hit me, so he got spanked, put in time out, and then after refusing to behave in the family room with me and DD, resulting in me getting kicked by him, he went up in his room for some quiet time to think about his behavior. Also, I was shaken up. Having to try and restrain him was heartbreaking. I felt like the worst mom ever, watching him kick me and then laugh in my face. What was I doing wrong?

When DH got home, we switched roles for a bit. I went upstairs for some quiet time, and then he got the kids down for naps. I decided to take a rare nap myself. When I got up, I was hopeful that the worst of the day was behind us.

But then DD was like, "Hold my juice box," and pitched multiple fits all afternoon long. Melting down, kicking and screaming, refusing to settle, responding to my calm questions with splotchy red faced screams.. it was too much for me.

I ended up crying into my phone, talking with my mom, about the sad reality that I've finally had to come face-to-face with: I love my children more than anything in the world, but I don't like them right now.

I think back to those days when I was so desperate to become a mom, clutching negative pregnancy tests, or clinging to the results of my latest HCG draw with the partial molar pregnancy, and I wonder now, What the hell were you so excited for?! To watch them fight with each other 24/7? To get kicked in the face by a child you prayed God for for years?! To hear the other child scream at you with disrespect so ferociously that her face turns bright red and your ears ring? To take them places only to return early because they literally decide this is the opportunity in which to test every fucking limitation you set? To work full-time at a job you hate to afford them a wonderful preschool, simple but fun birthday parties, a trip to Disney every other year or so, art supplies when they run out, new clothes or fun costumes when something's on sale, the occasional treat when you're out and the kids see something they might like, just to give it to kids who figuratively shit all over it?

Oh yeah, everyone wants to rub it in your face about "sleepless nights." Oh, take naps now, they say. Get used to being up all night, they'll repeat over and over. Your kids come first, they'll preach with wagging fingers, as if you thought you were going to relegate them to a closet somewhere or something.

No one tells you about what happens when you are trying to do everything right and it's still not enough. When your child is acting out and you're trying to be firm enough for him to take you seriously, but gentle enough not to harm him or make him afraid of you; when the "Time Outs" don't work and you have to spank, but someone tells you you shouldn't be spanking at all, but a family member says you're not spanking enough; and other parents at the daycare center are telling you about how your kid is the aggressor, but in the car on the way home, you have to listen as your baby - this little person you literally birthed into the world - cries in his car seat about how the other kids were mean to him and said bad things and he acted out the way he did because of it, and you have to figure out how to navigate his hurt feelings with your instinct to protect him versus the black-and-white of what he did and how do you approach that without making him feel as though you don't support him or care about his feelings; or how you sleep at night, wondering if he's aggressive because you spanked him that handful of times? or if he's aggressive because you're not firm enough when you utilize "Time Outs" and taking away toys, or, if he's aggressive, shouldn't you put him in karate to teach him self-control and discipline? And what if he needs more positive male influences in his life? Maybe it's time to set up a playdate with other boys from preschool since there are so many girls at daycare. But what if all he wants to do during the playdate is talk about Moana and princesses, and what if the boys pick on him and then he acts out? What then?

No one tells you this fucking shit.

No one.

Exterior | 6+ Years in the Making

The home inspection done over 6 years ago when we bought our house specifically stated that parts of the exterior trim needed to be replaced due to rot and damage. Overall, the trim also needed new paint, and our shutters were fading.

We're finally getting this shit taken care of.

We have a guy - a carpenter who came highly-recommended from neighbors - who is going to be repairing/repainting the trim, and installing new shutters.

Our house's original color scheme was white siding with cranberry shutters and a matching door. The cranberry shutters, however, are this disgusting faded pale purpley red.

My first thought years ago when we talked about replacing the shutters was to go black with them, but then the white siding/hunter green shuttered house across the street from us was flipped, and their shutters were now black. Still a great look, but I knew we had to run changes past the HOA, and they probably wouldn't approve 2 houses in such close proximity to have the same colors.

The color we chose for the shutters is called "Granite," so, gray. Because #grayiseverything.

Look how exciting that image is. Woo.

Although, honestly, I am excited! They're not "real" shutters, as in ones that have the latches and whatnot to function as intended, but none of the houses in our neighborhood do, so spending a small fortune to make the shutters on our house legit was not even up for debate.

That's what we call "Dream House Swag."

Once the HOA responds to our color change request (we should know something on Tuesday), we'll order them and then count down until the end of the month when the fun on our exterior begins.

The Winner is..

Woo! We're going with white cabinets for the kitchen.

The samples came in and we spent a couple days mulling them over. The darker cabinet option was beautiful, but with the soffits/bulkheads over our kitchen cabinets, I felt as though the darker cabinets would only make our kitchen look smaller.. shorter, if you will.

The game plan is white shaker-style cabinets (even though I have a raised-panel option pictured above), but that option in itself is still up for debate. I worry that we might look back in 5 years and think, "These damn shaker cabinets.. trendy AF."

We've also gone ahead and decided to move on buying the flooring tile (pictured above). The thought right now is that we're going to do a herringbone pattern in the kitchen, mainly because I think we're going to run into uneven walls (or better yet, walls that are off by a 16th of an inch, as we've found is a trend in this house everywhere else.. who knew), and instead of having the vertical tile lines start to look crooked as they get closer to the cabinets, the herringbone pattern will be unique enough that people won't notice. Also, I want to do thin spacing between the tiles, and a dark gray grout to match the tile as best as possible. No more white grout. Not on a kitchen floor, that's for sure.

Once the flooring is all purchased (we're buying it 150 sq. ft. at a time for a total of 2 separate orders), we'll start saving up for the cabinets. They're "ready to assemble" - RTA - cabinets, and once we order them and they come in, we'll just store them in the garage. Then my thought process is to have an electrician come out and install recessed lighting in our kitchen ceiling so that I can get rid of the florescent light over the island (and put in 2 pendant lights!), repaint the ceiling, and then have a new window put in over the sink - a sliding window instead of our double-hung one that is a pain in the ass to open and close. When all of that is done, we'll move forward on taking out the old and replacing the new.

DH isn't 100% sold on recessed lighting. I think it's worth looking into, but of course if the estimates come back and we can't make it work, then we just can't do it. We'll keep moving along and maybe revisit in a couple of months.

But in the meantime, I'm excited to have a bright, light, airy kitchen soon!

Planning for a Kitchen Reno

I have hated our kitchen since we first walked through our house 7 years ago. Good space, sure, but it needed work. The ceramic tile flooring that previous owners put in was done poorly. The honey oak cabinets were showing their age. The laminate countertops were a faux green marble. Soffits/bulkheads adorned the tops of the cabinets, sadly. I saw potential, but I also saw dollar signs.. or, if I had an emoji handy, the one with the money flying away.

Luckily, though, kitchen renovations are expensive, and so are babies; so when we promptly had the Tiny Overlords, all my kitchen plans got side tracked.

However, these days, DH and I are seriously throwing around talk of getting new cabinets, countertops, and flooring. I am figuratively on cloud nine, y'all.

Here we have the 2 "vision boards" (?) I made with inspiration for the kitchen:

White Cabinets

Dark Cabinets

I've been so gung ho about a white kitchen for years now that I hate to even consider the darker cabinets, but the price is so much better with the darker cabinets that I'm entertaining it.. but let's be honest, I'm 99% sold on white cabinets. DH doesn't care, but he leans a little more towards the darker cabinets. Ultimately, if he has adequate island space for meal prep (he loves to cook), he's good.

Yesterday, I picked up sample tiles of the flooring in the white cabinet vision board. DH and I both really love it, and we're considering tiling the kitchen floor in a herringbone pattern. We'll see.

We're waiting for sample doors of the white and espresso cabinets to come in later this week so we can see the quality. We would be buying RTA (ready to assemble) kitchen cabinets and hiring a family friend who does kitchens and bathrooms to come in and install everything.

Either way, it looks like the kitchen reno is happening this year. Worst case scenario, I'm at least getting a new damn floor, and I'll giggle with glee as I smash the ceramic tile flooring that's in there now. You have no idea how much I loathe that floor. :)