Wallpaper- It's Not Just For Walls

So yes, back to decorating. We have a built-in entertainment-type center in our family room. I'm thinking about wallpapering the back of the book shelf for some added pop. How can I not consider the idea after seeing these fabulous examples?

via Better Homes and Gardens

via Ideal Home Magazine

via Get Blinds and Design

Good Riddance

We've had a lot of dragonflies in our yard lately. I wasn't sure if I should be nervous around them because they do contain the words dragon and flies in their name so like I would any new friend (or insect) I encounter, I googled them.

Turns out they are indeed a friend because they eat mosquitos.  Carry on with all that eating dear dragonfly, carry on.

But this dragonfly raised a good point. You know it's time to cut down the dying flowers when a dragonfly can land on a weathered shell of one.  So that's what we did this past weekend- cut down the flowers.  And I have to say, IT FELT GOOD. 

Until next year I guess.

Read here, here and here for more on the pain in my ass hydrangeas. Oh alright, since I'm fair, here too.

Happy Anniversary

Narls just entered preschool; his first day was last week. Em's still getting up and going to daycare like she always does, but I still put a special first-day-of-school outfit on her too. As we were leaving, I thought it'd be a sweet tradition to get snap their picture on our porch the morning of each of their first day of schools...

So here is 2010's.

That got me reminiscing about all of the great memories we've made on our front porch during our first year in our home.

Memories of Clay & Ami date nights.

Chubby babies in undies waiting for me to get the mail.

And afternoons of new shoes.

And now a memory of us, celebrating our first anniversary in our beautiful home.

Hard to believe THIS was only one year ago.

A Year's Worth of Finished Projects

We've been working hard at our casa this past week, getting our garage ready for winter and also completing our last project of our first year owning our home. If you'd like to see other projects we've finished in the eleven months and two weeks that we've owned our house, then click here to see Narls' bedroom, here to see Emerson's nursery, here to see the kitchen & dining room and here to see the main bathroom.

 

Sadly I don't have any before pictures of the garage, but the whole back wall was filled with boxed that we still hadn't unpacked from when we moved into our house almost exactly one year ago (the boxes you see in the picture are unopen beer from Clay's beer-of-the-month club). We unpacked the remaining moving boxes- using the three pile method consisting of Put Away, Throw Away and Give Away -and moved the majority of the kids' playthings and bikes into the shed for the winter.

We've had this old beer fridge in our garage since we moved in and we've never used it. So we put an ad in Craigslist saying it was free if someone wanted to come get it and it was gone within the hour.

Our next plan of action is to move the deep freezer down into the basement and we'd have the entire garage to house both cars all winter (which is nice since we just traded in our minivan for a Ford Edge).

Next summer we hope to get the garage walls dry-walled; right now I'm just thankful to have the last of the boxes unpacked and put away.

Happy Birthday's

This post has the same general topic as my last, a year of memories and entertaining also means we've celebrated a year of birthdays!

Clay's birthday rounded up the last of my small family's and we helped him celebrate turning 34 a couple days ago. Good thing Narls was there next to him because that's a lot of candles to blow out ;)

Last January we celebrated my 31st birthday and Narls' 3rd. March was dedicated to our baby girl's first birthday and what a special event that was.

A year's worth of Happy Birthday's sung and a year's worth of birthday cake ate. Here's to hoping this next year is even half as wonderful.

Party at My House

Only two weeks left in our first year as new home owners.  Today I want to talk about one of my most favorite things about owning our home- ENTERTAINING.  I love hosting gatherings and in this past year alone we've had countless dinner parties, a Christmas-cookie-decorating get-together, many many game nights with friends and we've been the go-to spot for out of town loved ones.

Like my bestie Misty who visited from Arizona.

And my true love Mary Anne who loaded up the kiddos and traveled all the way from Wisconsin.

And my bff Tearah who was home from Texas.

And my dad and his wife Kat who came from Missouri.

I know that we'd be able to entertain guests no matter where we lived, but it's especially nice to do it in our home.  A place where we are constantly creating memories and I love that so many of our friends and family members are creating memories here too. A place where I'm worked my tail off to create a comfy and inviting space; I think it's worked too because that's often what I hear from the people who visit our home- that it's so comfy and cozy and they don't want to leave.  I wish they didn't have to.