Laundry Day

It was laundry day over the weekend at the Storm household.

Here's what happened when it was time to fold the clothes out of the dryer.

Anything catch your eye? Let's pay a little Where's Waldo Winston?

 Did you find him? :)

There he is!...asleep under the warm, fresh-from-the-dryer clothes.

He stayed there like that until all the clothes were folded off of him, haha! :)

I bet it was so warm and comfy on the cool, rainy day we were having.

In fact, when we were done I could almost hear him thinking, "Hey guys, do you think you could unfold all those clothes and put them right back where they were? I'm trying to sleep here, you know."

And don't worry, I did help fold. I just let Mike finish the last few items while I snapped some photos ;)

I'll leave you with a little video I took of Winston about a week ago.

Like I mentioned, it was nice and cool this particular day we did laundry, but most of the summer it was HOT as a MUTHA in our house without having central air.

Our window units (you can see the living room a/c unit in some of the photos above) usually do the trick, and almost always Winston - being the royal canine he is - prefers curling up on the couch, chair, bed, or other soft, cushy surface.

Which is why it's particularly funny when the cool kitchen floor is where we find Winston chillaxing in warmer weather :)

Case in point:

So cute! haha. Ahhh, a dog's life... :)

Flowers, Fall, and Footprints

A few little tidbits for you here today:
I had a birthday earlier this month. It wasn't a big one...except for the fact that this is now my last year in my twenties :)

These are the birthday flowers my hubby bought for me. Aren't they perty? 

We were at the grocery store together and he said, "Do you want some flowers for your birthday?" and I said, "Uh, yeah!" and he said, "Ok, pick your favorites." Haha. So I chose purple, green and white.

~

On a flower-related note, I read Thrifty Decor Chick's Crazy for Fall post last week and can I just say, I am right there with her! I LOVE me some Fall! It's my favorite season, you know.

So like Sarah said, since nothing says "It's late Summer and Fall will be here soooon!" like some beautiful sunflowers, I picked me up some :)

Just think - soon we'll have pumpkins and apple cider and crisp, cool air - I'm definitely PSYCHED!

~

Yesterday, it rained so hard here that we had huge puddles in our backyard.

Huge puddles mean mud.

Mud means this happened:

Yeah. On the freshly steam-vaccumed carpet.

So Mike stepped (pun!) up and cleaned those muddy paws...

...and the paw prints out of the carpet:

Nicely done, hun! Not even a trace of the disaster that had taken place just moments before!

Thank goodness for Spot Shot...and a man who doesn't mind cleaning ;)

Overdue Kitched Appliance Update

It's been 8 1/2 months since we bought and installed (and payed off thankyouverymuch!) our kitchen's upgraded stainless steel appliances. Forgive me for the looooong overdue post to share it with you...but I've just been basking in their glory this whole time - yup, still loving them 8 plus months later :)

They were our Christmas present to us from us last year :)

I'm holding out hope for a new couch (a sectional!) this Christmas but that may not happen since we've got big plans in the works for another room in our house (the rec room - more on that in a future post if/when it all goes down).

Anywho, here are some shots of our new-and-improved kitchen appliances, with a few other beauty/detail shots thrown in for good measure :)

Dishwasher:

Hubby and I keep corks from wine and champagne bottles:



One of these days we'll have enough to come up with a cool diy project using them.

Stove:

And fridge:

Sorry for the smudgy goodness on the fridge doors...guess it's time to wipe it down again :) I found out a dab of olive oil on a clean, dry cloth does it in a snap!

Above the fridge we removed the cabinet doors and inside placed two baskets that hold our glass vases, pitchers and empty milk bottles (we take them back to the store and get money back each time towards our next half-gallon of milk).

We still need to paint the inside of those cabinets white to match the others.

Here's a lesser-seen angle of the kitchen, standing in the rec room doorway looking back towards the dining room:

And here's my favorite angle; the first thing you see when you walk into the room:

Remember when it looked like this?

And it's hard to believe this angle...

...now looks like this:

Yes Kitch, (my kitchen's new nickname...yes I just nicknamed my kitchen) :) you've come a loooong way - I'm so proud of you, *sniff.

I guess this room goes to show that stretching your dollars by going DIY (we installed our tile backsplash, painted the cabinets, swapped out the sink light fixture, and clad the island in beadboard) allows you to splurge a little in other areas, such as our appliances (which we got from Lowes when they were discounted for the holidays).

Another cool thing? We did all this in less than two years. Not too shabby if I do say so myself :)

Still on the Kitchen To-Do list is replacing our dirt-magnet vinyl flooring. We're thinking a nice earth-toned 12x12 tile would be nice.

How bout y'all? Anyone finally (or almost finally) satisfied with the transformation of a room in their house? particularly a kitchen? It takes time right? Before I got into all this home-decorating/renovating stuff I thought it was a breeze to change up a room, but I've come to find a room doesn't flip with a switch. It takes time and patience and creativity for it to evolve.

Til next time!

~Amy

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

They say to let sleeping dogs lie...I say take photo shoots with them...observe :)

Awww, just look at him. Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Why, what soft, floppy ears you have winston.

What sleepy eyes you have too.

Cold, wet nose? Check.

What's that? You're catching on to my photo shoot, huh. I'm sorry, is my flash bothering you? :)

"Dad! Save me from this crazy woman so I can sleep in peace!"

"Oh I see how it is, you're in cahoots with her :/ "

This post brought to you by People Who Love To Have Cuddlefests With Their Sleeping Dogs.

Fireplace Fiasco

It is HOT as a FURNACE here in Central PA and, without central air (at least I have window units) I'm absolutely melting! We're planning to have central air installed in time for next summer though.

But since I've got heat on my mind, I figured I'd blog bout something heat-related. I don't think I've done a post yet about our living room fireplace.

Last year around springtime it looked like this:

Do you see all that brassiness and the ugly hearth tile?

From the paper and tape in the pics above, I suppose you can guess what was about to go down :)

Yup, I ORB'd (oil-rubbed bronzed) that bad boy with spray paint. Ain't she perty now? :)

But wait! I still had the red-tiled hearth to contend with :(

I'd eventually like to install large slate or some other type of dark gray stone tiles as an overlay, but until we have the disposable income for it (disposable income? what's that? :)  ), I went with this as a temporary cosmetic fix:

In theory, I thought it'd be a great solution to my can't-afford-real-stone-tile-right-now-dilemma. I say 'in theory' because in real life, it wasn't as aesthetically pleasing as I'd hoped...more on that later.

But here's what it looked like after coat 1:

And here it is after coat two with all the tape pulled off:

Ick.

I didn't like it (I probably should've just sprayed right over the grout lines instead of taping them off) because the grout looked gray and dirty compared to the lighter stone color I'd just sprayed on the tiles.

But I lived with it...for more than a year! Here's what it looked like more than a year later:

No better :(

Finally I (and my husband) had had enough of it. It was a constant dust bunny attractor (Due to the texture of the finish) and it never wiped clean thoroughly.

MAJOR FAIL.

Chalk this project up to 'you win some you lose some.' :)

But after a year of it looking constantly dirty, I took a cue from YHL and their fireplace hearth makeover and painted out the hearth in semi-gloss white. Here's their before and after (note, they also painted their brick white. I did not):

    

So I got out my spackle tool since it had the sharp, flat scraping edge I needed, and went to work scraping off the majority of the textured paint:

Even though I didn't get all the paint off (that would've taken days!) I made sure to get a smooth surface so my finished product wouldn't be bumpy or look sloppy.

Here's what it looked like after all the scraping, a good sanding with medium-grit sandpaper, and then vaccuming up and wiping down the entire surface so there was no debris:

Then came a coat of Olympic, No-VOC primer:

Wow. What an immediate change for the better, even after just the primer.

Then I did two coats of Olympic, No-VOC, white semi-gloss paint:

MUCH better!

But I still needed to find a fix for one little detail - the gap between the front of the tiles and the wood flooring (there used to be pink carpet on our floor from the previous owners and it hid this gap before we ripped the pink monster out):

So I sorted through our little stash of trim pieces we have left over from other various projects we've done and found this perfectly-sized (in width and length) piece of trim:

Then I used a thin line of Liquid Nails to adhere it to the floor/tile, hiding the gap perfectly!

What a difference from before to after! :)



Thanks to YHL for the 'A-HA!' moment.

Has anyone else re-vamped their fireplace or hearth with paint, or better yet beautiful stone? I can't wait to install some scrumptious slate down the road!!