House Archives - Page 3 of 5

18Dec 2012

Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree

by Nicole ⋅ 1 Comment

We might be a few months into our second year of marriage, but this year we got our very first Christmas tree! Our new home needs a tree. Clearly I had my priorities in the right order since the first order of business was to go purchase ornaments. A couple years ago when we were registering for our wedding at Crate & Barrel I had seen a lot of cute ornaments. Our first and only stop for ornaments was at Crate & Barrel. Luckily for us there was a 30% off sale on all the ornaments!! My husband and I filled up our basket with lots and lots of white, silver and red ornaments. I was pretty sure we were buying too many, but figured we would return the ones we didn’t need.

It seemed like destiny as we drove up Massachusetts Avenue and right by a Christmas tree sale at the local church. Instead of heading the Whole Foods or Home Depot to buy our tree we were going to get it from the church!! They had a ton of options. I am not really sure why we didn’t think of checking out the local churches in the first place. At least we will remember this for next year!

After walking around the available “medium” size tree options a few times we quickly agreed on this guy:

Sorry for the crappy camera phone pictures. It didn’t dawn on me to bring my camera … fail! Anyways, after purchasing the tree we laughed a little at our lack of planning on how we were going to get the tree home. It might have been December, but the convertible top when down and the tree when in the backseat of the car. We made it home just before the rain started in. Pretty good timing if I do say so myself.

We were home and had a tree and ornaments, but we were lacking lights and maybe more importantly a tree stand. We threw the tree in a bucket and walked to CVS. There we purchased a tree stand and 200 white lights. Back to the house we went to decorate our tree!!

After a number of tries we finally go the tree straight in the tree stand. The husband cranked the Christmas music and we spent the next hour or so arranging the ornaments perfectly. Here’s a close up of a couple of the ornaments.

I am very happy with our final product. Check it out …

What do you think?? I’m very pleased. Our menorah and dradle looked great next to the tree throughout Hanukkah! Maybe next year we will buy a tree skirt and actually get some gifts under the tree :) We did have a present under the tree for less than 24 hours. Then I couldn’t wait any longer and gave my husband his holiday present prior to Christmas Eve.

Happy Holidays!

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25Nov 2012

DIY Center Pieces

by Nicole ⋅ Leave a Comment

Centerpieces and/or flower arrangements can be quite costly this time of year. With Thanksgiving over and Christmas right around the corner it seemed like the perfect time to share the DIY rose and cranberry center pieces we make every Thanksgiving. My mom got the idea when walking through the flower section in Whole Foods a few years ago. My mother use to be in charge of making the arrangements, but then my sister took over. Check out our pretty Thanksgiving table will all the yummy food!!

My sister was kind enough to let me document the process of the center piece creation this year. So here we go!

What you need:

~27 Yellow Roses
6 bags of whole cranberries
3 square vases
water

Place the cranberries in the square vases and add water (but not all the way to the top).

Remove the leaves from the rose stems and hold it up to the vase to determine how much stem to cut off. Cut off the stem.

Push the rose into the vase between the cranberries. Then rinse and repeat!! Each vase will hold about 9 roses depending on the size of the vase.

After you’ve put in all the roses add additional cranberries and water as needed so they are almost to the very top of the vase. In this end this is what you get.

As you can see we miss counted the yellow roses this year and had to through in a few red ones. I think it still looks pretty cute!

Happy Holidays and DIY!

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30Oct 2012

Hallway Decor

by Nicole ⋅ 1 Comment

Before the husband and I first moved in together we decided we wanted three black and white photos for our bedroom. We narrowed our personal photos down to a picture from the cherry blossom festival, a trip to mexico and one we took while in New York on the Brooklyn bridge. My friend helped me use PhotoShop to make modify the color pictures to black and white. I uploaded them to Shutterfly, clicked purchased and we were in business!

These are the pictures we chose …

The husband and I went to a couple of framing stores to get quotes on getting the pictures matted and framed. We were looking at ~$200+ per picture for custom framing … WAY too much! The three pictures then spent the next 2 years in a photo album. From time to time we would revisit the idea of having the pictures framed, but never made any actual progress. Last week we found a new location for our pictures … the hallway! I found this post on Young House Love and was inspired. Although I am not ready to take on the whole wall I do love pictures and have some other items that would work for a wall collage.

In any event we decide these three black and white photos were a good place to start with hallway decorations. Since Amazon Prime is like my favorite thing I decided to see if there were any nice 8×10 matted frames on Amazon before going to Michael’s or a custom framing store. I quickly found these picture frames and $17-18 per frame was totally justifiable and the wallet was way more comfortable with it as well!!!

After preparing for Hurricane Sandy Sunday (filling the cars with gas, getting food/water, laundry, dishes, charging every electronic we have and all that good stuff) we took some time out to hang our photos in the hallway. It took a few tries (three to be exact) but eventually we got the two lower pictures level with each other.

It’s nice to see the hallway starting to come together. Whether or not we decide to pursue the whole collage look for the hallway is still TBD, but at least there is something on the wall for now :)

Next up is to purchase a runner for the hallway!!

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17Oct 2012

How Many Quarts Did You Buy?

by Nicole ⋅ Leave a Comment

After painting the guest bath, master bedroom and the living/dining room the only thing left to paint was the master bathroom. We had agreed to leave the builder grade paint in the guest room until we decide exactly what we plan to do with that room. The guest room is pretty much a landing zone or storage room at the minutes, which clearly isn’t ideal. Anyways, similar to the living/dining room choosing a color for the master bath wasn’t easy. We ending up going with a color that’s a shade darker than our living/dining room after putting couple different samples on the wall.

Once we were pretty sure we wanted the color we put a big color swatch on the wall. Do you see my reflection in the shower? Hahaha I was attempting to document the process.

After painting the guest bath we knew that the correct paint to buy was semi-gloss. We “assumed” the guest and master bath were approximately the same size we purchase 1 quart of paint. We were well, WRONG! The master bath is slightly bigger so we really needed two quarts of paint. Back to the store I went to pick up the extra quart. Then something disastrous happened. We started painting the remaining wall and somehow the color just was NOT the same. I really don’t know what happened … the husband and I stood there looking at the wall and then at each other and we were seriously PERPLEXED. In any event it was unanimous that we needed another quart of this paint in an effort to resolve the issue.

Back to Sherwin Williams we went to purchase our THIRD quart of this paint. We were so excited to get home and make that final wall match all the rest that we pulled out all the painting supplies and got to work. Clearly this damn bathroom just didn’t want to be painted … I’m not sure how it happened by the roller started shedding and the wall started to look all textured. At this point we were so perplexed I didn’t even think to break out the camera to document the disaster that was unfolding. We attempted to wipe the wall down with paper towels and start over, but that was an epic fail leading to an empty paint can and a textured wall.

After letting the wall dry and sanding it back to “normal town” we were ready to being painting the dreaded wall again. SOOOOO back to the paint store we went for a fourth and final time. The husband goes in to buy the paint and when he got back to the car he looked a little defeated …

Me – “What’s wrong?”

Husband – “The just asked me if I was aware of how many quarts of the same colored paint we’ve purchased.”

Me – “Too many … but it wasn’t our fault there were so many issues. Didn’t you tell him all the issues we had.”

Husband – “Nope. Just told him I was aware we should have purchased a gallon at the start of this project.”

Me – “Oh okay then.”

My poor husband was so horrified that we had to purchase so many quarts that he wouldn’t own up to the issues we encountered when the sales man pointed out we purchased incorrectly. :)

After the fourth quart of paint we were FINALLY able to fix the remaining wall and put a little extra paint on the other walls. Unfortunately I haven’t master the process of having paint colors show up correctly in pictures when there is zero natural light. Therefore there is no great “after shot”. Sorry :(. It was SO nice to call that project a wrap after four tries LOL. Overall I love the color of the bathroom. Now I am on the hunt for a new bathroom mat and accessories. Somehow the to-do list never seems to dwindle!

Happy home improvements!

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02Oct 2012

Daddy-Do List

by Nicole ⋅ Leave a Comment

You’ve probably heard of the honey-do list, but when my father comes to visit it’s more of a Daddy-do list. Ever since I moved into an apartment in college I’ve always had a list of things for him to fix or do while he’s visiting me. There was one time my parents came to visit and my dad walk in the door, looked at me and said “so what do you want me to do this time?”. I couldn’t help but chuckle a little. Although he might sometimes pretend to be annoyed by my wanting him to do stuff around my house or fix my computer I think deep down he loves it.

So when he arrived a few weekends ago for a visit I already had my daddy-do list planned out. The last time he visited us in the condo he installed a dimmer switch in the living room. The best part of the dimmer switch in the living room is we can make “movie theater” lighting when watching tv. I love it. I mean who doesn’t like lights that dim?!?!

Anyways, I wanted him to install a couple of additional dimmer switches in the condo, but the big project I had in mind was building us a screen door. As I had mentioned in my herb garden post we have this little “smokers balcony” off our living room. Since the weather in DC is finally getting cool it’s nice to open the window and the fresh air in. That’s front door offers a lot of air, but doesn’t keep the bugs out. Seriously my legs and hands were eaten alive by the mosquitoes that got in our house. So you know what that means … clearly we need a cheap/DIY screen door.

That picture was taken prior to moving in. I promise we now have furniture in the living/dining room. My dad was up to the challenge and here’s how we (read my dad) made the screen door.

What you need:

First he measured the door frame and then cut the aluminum screen frame down to size. We purchased 4 pieces of frame. We probably should have bought an extra just in case because somehow we cut the frame a little too small. Luckily my dad is a master problem solver and with a little cooking twine we were able to add in the extra amount of space we need.

After my dad figuring out how to fix our little measuring problem we laid the screen out over the door frame. Make sure to give yourself a little extra screen around the edges. You don’t want it too tight or the screen door will bend inwards.

Take the screen spline and roller and attach the screen to the frame.

Then we cut off the extra screen along the edges. We realized there was nothing to hold onto when pulling the screen door into place. Sooooo Daddy to the rescue as always. We put screws in to use as handles. At some point I plan to go ahead and buy one more piece of aluminum frame and attach that so the handle is a little easier to grab. For now the screws are working out just fine!