Happy Halloween!

That’s the first pumpkin I’ve carved in about 10 years. Carving it brought back a lot of childhood memories, from the pumpkin smell to the slimy coldness of the “guts”. I meant to have eyeballs in the eyes, but, well, Matthew’s Cutco knives were just too much for me to handle. So, empty sockets. The pictures not the best. I went out to take it just as it got dark, but as I was standing in the front yard taking photos, this weird half barking, half growling noise started coming from the treeline in our side yard, and well, I got freaked out and ran inside. Matthew wasn’t home and I couldn’t see what was making the noise, so taking a good picture quickly moved itself to the bottom of the list. I still have no idea what it was. I surmised to Matthew that it was probably a Sasquatch and he asked me if he should go take a look, to which I replied, “Whoa, slow down Marine. You don’t have your big guns anymore!” Let’s just say that I’ll be staying inside after dark until this Halloween season passes.

I love Halloween. When I was a teenager, my best friend and I would throw a party every year to mark the occasion, complete with spooky mazes and fake spider webs and dead prom queen costumes. It was always so much fun. I miss those times when Halloween rolls around each year. Having a husband in seminary means that there are some who would frown on my affinity for the holiday, but I say bah-humbug to them! Happy Halloween!

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Corners of our Living Room

Well, I didn’t get photos of our new living room art in the daytime. It was too messy to justify those and I wanted to get outside in the crisp air (finally!) and carve our pumpkin before the big night gets here on Wednesday. So, you get the following, poor lighting and all, but at least you’ll get the idea. Someday, when I finally become super-organized, I will have that magazine cover shot for you. Until then, you get this:

The artwork in the first and last photos was given to us by our neighbor when we lived in Wilmington. He was a retired art teacher and wanted to send us off with going away presents. So nice! And of course, I had to put up our Devil Dog poster in honor of Matthew and my dad and Matthew’s paddle, which is beautiful and was handmade for him by his Recon buddies when he got out of the Marine Corps last year. The second photo is my favorite pic from our wedding day and the art next to it is Klimt’s Fulfillment. We used it as our guestbook at our wedding. I have loved Klimt for as long as I can remember and this is my favorite piece by him. Most people are familiar with the Kiss, but this one portrays such – fulfillment. I guess the name says it all and is very appropriate for a wedding.

These are a few photos from my trip to Asheville this last week. The leaves really aren’t as pretty as they usually are. It’s been too hot and dry for too long.

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Unique World Trends (and stuff…)

I spent part of my day at my friend Jennifer’s gift party. She runs a business out of her home called Unique World Trends. All of her items are imported and handmade. She and her husband Mark spent time in Asia and made connections that resulted in this business.

Her merchandise is lovely and the pictures on her website don’t do them justice. I bought a few items for Christmas presents for some lucky ladies this year, but won’t put a photo up since I don’t want to give away the surprise. If you want to give a unique present this year, I would highly suggest checking out Jennifer’s site, http://uniqueworldtrends.com/ 

I also spent some of the afternoon putting up artwork in our living room. We’ve had it leaning against the wall for months now and I thought it was probably time to put that first hole in the wall. I’ll take pics tomorrow in the daylight.

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I Like Mike

I’ve been traveling, again, for work all week, so excuse the blogging slack. I’m in the far western part of North Carolina, but it’s been raining all week (which is very needed in our drought riddled state) so my pics are few and far between. And obviously, any work on the house has been nonexistant.

So, in the mean time, I thought I’d post a link to my presidential nominee of choice, Mike Huckabee. I’m a news junkie, so politics naturally plays into that. I’ve been lamenting the seemingly small pool of candidates to choose from until today. I’ve heard promising things about Mike Huckabee here and there, so I decided to check out his website and see where he stands on the issues important to me. I’m happy to say that he nails every one. The problem with Huckabee is that he’s the underdog in this highly energized race. So, a year out from the primaries, I wanted to give my show of support for Huckabee and help get the word out.

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Another reason to buy small…

 

In addition to the environmentally friendly reasons to buy a tiny house, here’s a completely different, but totally valid, one:

“Let me be clear: Despite strong economic fundamentals, the housing decline is still unfolding, and I view it as the most significant current risk to our economy,” Mr. Paulson said in a speech at a Georgetown University law forum. “The longer housing prices remain stagnant or fall, the greater the penalty to our future economic growth.”

Mr. Paulson said that “a first and important step” is to identify struggling borrowers early, steer them to mortgage counselors “and find a sustainable mortgage solution.”

“We have an immediate need to see more loan modifications and refinancing and other flexibility,” Mr. Paulson said. “For many families, this will be the only viable solution.”

We downsized when we bought this house, despite being a young couple who will most likely have at least one child while living here. While most of our friends are movin’ on up into bigger homes and mortgages, we found a small home that fits our needs and has a mortgage payment equivalent to or less than rent in this community. Granted, it’s required sweat equity and dollars on our part to do renovations, but those are wants, not needs. As I explained it to one friend who was recently looking for a home, we bought a house that we could afford on one income (should that be required) with a fixed payment for as long as we’re here. Yes, we end up putting as much money into each month as some of our friends with nicer homes do with their mortgages, but we don’t have to do that. Basically, if things get tight, we just scale back on the renovations.

I’ve always been a worry-wart, so this is by far the best solution for me. We also get the bonus of the satisfaction that comes in taking something ugly and making it shine. I do wish for more space sometimes, especially with only two closets in the entire house, but we make do very comfortably. And, I realize that in a lot of places, a small house doesn’t always equate to a small mortgage like it does here. In the end, I’m sure glad that when we were looking earlier this year that we went this route and didn’t get lured into something we couldn’t afford.

Speaking of renovations, I’m thinking of this for our kitchen floor:

We plan on redoing the kitchen at the beginning of the year. We already have the cabinets in storage. We don’t need new appliances, so it’s just flooring and hardware left to decide on. I have always like the look of old school linoleum (or marmoleum) and after doing some research, really like the environmental friendliness of it, the softness yet durability of the tiles and the inexpensive price tag. Home Depot carries Armstrong’s line and I think we may do a cream and sage green combo. I’m a black and white girl at heart and am loving the first picture, but I think it will be too harsh for our little cottage. We’ll see!

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Tiny House

Today is Blog Action Day, which is new to me and most likely most of you reading this. I learned about it from www.houseblogs.net, which gave this as an explanation:

“A day when thousands of blogs are joining together to blog about a single important issue…the environment. Blog Action Day is not pushing a specific point of view, it only seeks to promote the discussion.”

Now, I wouldn’t consider myself an environmentalist by definition. When it comes right down to it, I only have so much time and so much energy to give, so there are other issues that rank higher on my scale of importance. However, I was raised in a home where recycling and composting were the norm before they were cool. So, in thinking about what I could contribute to this discussion, I started thinking about ways that we have contributed to a more sustainable environment in our current home. One of the first things that came to mind was that we bought a home as opposed to building one. No new resources required there. And, it’s almost 90 years old, so it’s sheltered plenty of families over the years in its cozy rooms. It’s also a tiny house, less than 800 square feet. But, it’s set up to use every square inch of that space since there aren’t any hallways. We’re using our space to the max and even thought it’s small, we have everything we need and not an additional 2,500 square feet of wasted space like today’s McMansions, see:

This is what it looked like when we closed on it in February. We’ve added a bistro table, rockers and lights on the porch as well as some flowers in the planter next to the porch, but you get the general idea. It’s amazing how many people walk in and say how it’s  so much bigger than they expected. They don’t even notice we don’t have hallways. In fact, I’m thinking that maybe we’ll never have hallways again. Who needs to waste precious space?

The other things we do to go green are composting and recycling. My mother is a fabulous gardener, so compost was always a most in our house growing up. There’s just something about putting all of our organic waste and clippings into a bin and getting luscious dirt in a few years. Really, I’ve seen the pay off, it’s that good. The compost box was the first thing Matthew built for me when we moved in. He made it out of material he salvaged from work, which is another way to go green. See:

We also recycle. The City of Wake Forest gives everyone a huge recycling can on wheels that goes with the trash on pick up days. It’s so easy compared to the sorting, storing and hauling across town to the recycling center that my parents did when I was a kid. When it’s this easy, why not recycle?

So, that’s our contribution to the environment on this Blog Action Day. I won’t mention that I commute an hour each way to work, in my *gasp* car, by myself *gasp* or that my husband likes to leave most of the lights on most of the time. But we do have one of those squiggly bulbs- that’s one more than we had last year!

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Hello Fall!

      
(Southeastern Seminary, Wake Forest, NC)

We’re slowly working on the house, but it’s so hard to do when fall has finally arrived in Wake Forest, complete with crisp air, changing leaves and sweaters. Unfortunately, we can have neither bonfires or trips to the apple orchards. We are in such a severe state of drought that burning anything presents a huge hazard and apparently it doesn’t get cool enough here for picking apples, one of my favorite fall past times.

Friday night we walked downtown to Art After Hours, which is when local artists display their fares in the shops downtown, which all stay open late and musicians play live on the street. We live in the historic district of town, so we had the chance to peer in on an evening garden wedding on our walk, took the pictures above while walking through Matthew’s school’s campus, all followed by dinner at a new-to-us Italian restaraunt. Saturday was the annual art fair in the town square, so it was a weekend filled with culture. It’s been so long since we took something like this in and it was all free, great for a student’s income!

I had the opportunity to drive out to horse country today and have lunch with friends who were hosting a couple who are missionaries in Central Asia. I won’t go into specifics here since I don’t want to blow their cover, but it was a great time and very educational!

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And here I thought I was without an accent…

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak “Standard English straight out of the dictionary” but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like “Are you from Wisconsin?” or “Are you from Chicago?” Chances are you call carbonated drinks “pop.” What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

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More Befores- And Some In Betweens…

I thought it would be good to post more photos of the house in its “before” state and where is stands as of today. Why, you ask? Well, because renovation projects take a really long time around here and if you people up North ever want to see where it is we live, this is your best chance in the next decade. And remember, we live in a tiny house- less than 800 square feet. We only have four rooms, what you see is what you get!

Living Room Before

Living Room During

Living Room Now
(Not really, but close enough, sans furniture)

Wall Color is Behr Peanut Butter
Trim is Lowe’s Bright White Satin

Guest Bedroom Before (aka “The Sponge Bob Room”)

Guest Bedroom During

Guest Bedroom After Painting

Wall Color is Behr Peanut Butter
Trim is Lowe’s Bright White Satin

Kitchen Before (No Afters Yet)

Bathroom Before

Bathroom Demo
(After tube and surround removed. At this point, I asked Matthew
if it was time for me to panic. He just smiled and patted my head.)

What we found under the tub:

New Shower Surround

New Tile Floor (Mostly Grouted) and Partial Beadboard

Bathroom as of last night
(All new everything installed. Still need to finish trim, sand walls,
paint walls red, window treatements and new shower curtain)

And you’ve seen the state of our bedroom in the previous post. Matthew’s done most of the work and I’ve painted and helped out where I can. He’s done such a great job on everything- such a perfectionist! It doesn’t hurt being married to a plumber when renovating, especially a bathroom that needed to be completely gutted and built up from the crawlspace and studs!

 

 

 

 

 

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Look ma, new flooring!

My dear hubby completely surprised me today by laying the new flooring in our master bedroom while I was at work. For the last sixs months, we’ve been using it as a storage area, waiting on the day when we would have time to patch, paint and lay flooring. Apparently, today’s the day!

Here’s what it looked like before (exuse the dark photos and bad angles, I was still learning how to use my camera):

And here’s what it looks like now:

I apologize for the night time pics- I was too excited to wait for morning light, but those will come when the room is completely finished. Ignore the funky light in the middle. That’s the ceiling fan with the blades taken off and an random lampshade put over the bulb.

All that’s left is the trim and then we can move in! The flooring we used was leftover from our last house. It’s a nice laminate that we enjoy for multiple reasons (easy to clean, tough wearing, etc…). While the other rooms in the house have oak floors, this room had pine that was pretty beat up and dried out, so we don’t feel too guilty covering it up with the fake stuff. Needless to say, I’m very happy with Matthew for surprising me with this. Doesn’t he do great work?!

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