Pastel Pink and Green... EWWWWW

Yesterday as I was walking by our bathroom I had finally had enough! This 'wonderful' toilet paper holder was given to us by my mom when we bought the house. She bought it for the cottage as a joke/temporary solution to the 'where do we put the toilet paper'. It just happened that when she decided she hated it we bought a house that had the same problem... where do you put the toilet paper when you have a radiator right there and no wall!!! SO Ryan and I gladly took it thinking this would be a 'temporary' solution until we found something better. 3.5 years later its still there. I HATE IT!! I kept telling Ryan I wanted to do something about it but he would say 'oh its just fine' But then again Ryan is the one that said the kitchen was fine before we made it over only to realize after I made it over that it look SO much better now! You have got to LOVE the pale green and pink leaves and flowers on this baby!


I decided to spray paint it black because honestly it couldn't get any worse than it already was. Also the towel rack we have in the bathroom is black. My thoughts were if it looks worse I'll just pitch it and get something else.
So yesterday I took it out back and sprayed away! It was transformed into something much less grandmaish!

It looks SOOO much better!!!

I can't believe I didn't do this ages ago!!!!! And it only cost about $6 for the spray paint!! It always shocks me what a little spray paint can do!!

Families Are Like Fudge...

Remember on my 'to do list' (here) I wanted to do a photo project in the hallway. Well I finally got around to it. This is what my hallway was looking like. Now the small 5 photos just weren't doing it for me.

I had originally wanted to tackle something like what Sherry and John over at Young House Love had done. See below.

However after starring at my wall and humming and haaing... and most importantly realizing that all the pictures frames we had in the basement we had JUST recently gotten rid of because I had decided we didn't need to keep them around. In my own words "we haven't used them yet lets just get rid of them". ARGH I shouldn't listen to myself. SO long thought process short... I realized I would have to go buy a bunch of frames to accomplish what I 'thought' I had wanted. I started to look at alternatives to just using the few frames I had on hand. I forgot about this awesome frame my friend had given me a long time ago and pulled it out. During one of Norah's naps I came up with this...

I like that it is a little more than 5 tiny photos. Here is a close up. I found this quote and it just summed up our family. Families are like fudge, mostly sweet with a few nuts! I knew I wanted to use it and when I found the frame behind a dresser in the kitchen it was just perfect! I pulled out all the fun photos of our family I could find. I know its hard to see but believe me most of these pictures aren't your 'typical' family photo! haahaa. And just because we love her so much, I added 2 8 by 10's on either side of it with photos of Me, Ryan and Norah.

Nothing special but it definitely makes me smile to walk down the hall now!

That is ONE thing checked off our 'to do list'. Actually we have checked off a few things on our old to do list... but added MANY more!! Here is the most up to date to do list (red items have been completed):

1) Make brother and sister in law pillows - COMPLETED!!!

2) Photo project in hall - COMPLETED!!!!

3)Spring Cleaning - COMPLETED!!!!

4)Paint behind toilet in upstairs bathroom

5)Clean Basement

6)Install Carpet

7)Make curtains for kitchen window - COMPLETED (post this week)

8)Fix Kitchen cabinet chips

9)Clean up closets - HALF COMPLETED... needs to be done again..... booo!

10)Organize Kitchen Cupboards

11)Install laminate flooring upstairs

12)Finish painting basement

13)Panel the entrance to basement bathroom

14)Paint back stairway

15) Finish Norah's door (when we flipped Norah's door around we never finished putting the hardware on so there is a doorknob but no place for it to lock into)
16)Fix upstairs shower tiles... they are coming loose

17) Fix upstairs bathroom cabinet mirror

18)drywall under window in spare room (never finished this because we didn't have a piece of drywall big enough but we have leftovers from the basement that we plan on using!)

19)Seal the stones on the outside of the house

That's a LOOOOOONG list!!!!!

Perpetual Pile of Crap BE GONE!

This is slightly embarrassing... SO when we took possession of our house 3.5 years ago it was winter and we just dumped all the construction debree in our driveway. When it thawed out we eventually disposed of it... BUT with all the work we have done on the house that pile of garbage would ALWAYS come back. We would go at most 3 months with a clean driveway before we had more crap piled up in it!!! (me hanging my head in shame...)

This was the first pile of garbage....

After this pile of garbage came the garbage from tearing down the living room/spare bedroom walls. Then it was old shelving from the basement and old carpeting from the basement. Then it was eventually concrete and dirt from the basement bathroom which we cleaned up. BUT then we had to knock out more concrete for the new plumbing... and sadly this pile has been sitting there for over a year!! (once again head hung in shame...)

That was NOT a pretty site!!! I was embarrassed every time we had people over because we are THAT house on the street... you know the one that you hate to look at because it has a pile of crap in the driveway!

WELL!!! Ryan finally managed to borrow a dump truck and on a 40 degree day him and Dave loaded up the truck and FINALLY got rid of it all!!!!!!

This is the cleanest the driveway has EVER been!!!!

We have vowed there will be NO MORE crap thrown in the driveway EVER again!!!!! Plus now we can fit 4 cars in the driveway!!! Impressive!!