Weird Ways You Find Us

So, one of the cool things about Blogger is that it shows you how people get to your blog.  Not surprisingly, most people come here through Facebook, since I try to post a link there every time I post here.  Our wedding site (kimandlandon.com) is another referring site as is Google Plus.  But my favorite thing to look at are the search terms that people look up and find our site.  Most of them are what you might expect.

Paint colors are probably our most popular "search terms" which is why my post Paint With All the Colors of the Wind   has more hits than any other post we have.  I can understand that.  I googled plenty of paint color names when we were trying to pick out colors for our rooms and for the exterior.

Mega Grieg w/ Yellowish Stone

My favorite search term however, has to be "mouse poop cake."  My first though was "What post could that possibly link too?"  It turns out that it was this one about taking down the cabinets and soffits in the kitchen and finding old boxes of cake mix and lots of mouse poop.  (I have to say that it was one of my least favorite projects on this house, only rivaled by the taking up of all the tile in the entry way. Landon's vote is for taking down and then rehanging the ceiling in the main living area/kitchen.)

So, I can understand how searching for "mouse poop cake" would lead you to that blog entry, but I still can't figure out why you would be searching that particular combination of words.  Were they looking for information about what to do if you had a cake with mouse poop on it?  Did they want to order a cake decorated with fake mouse poop? (I worked in an industry where I can see that being viable.)  Did they need to know what happens if you eat a cake contaminated with mouse poop?  So many options, so few good ones.

(I tried to find an image of some kind of "mouse poop cake" but couldn't, so here's a link to one of my favorite blogs Cake Wrecks instead.  They have lots of cakes that look like poo...)

Whatever the reason, I hope they eventually found what they were looking for.  And I hope that they enjoyed the blog while they were here.  If you have any good suggestions for why someone might be searching "mouse poop cake" let me know in the comments (or just leave a comment to say hi!  I love getting comments.)  And if you found your way here through some wacky combination of search terms, I hope you find what you are looking for.

Where We Lay Our Heads

So while we have moved into our house, we haven't moved into our Master Suite yet since the bathroom isn't finished yet and most of the supplies for the bathroom have been living in the bedroom. Instead we've been staying in the largest of the guest bedrooms (I call it the green room, Landon calls it the not-purple room).  All the bedrooms are still something of a work in progress since a lot of furniture will move around once we move into the master bedroom, but we've started to get things more settled.  I though now might be a good time to give a little more before/after information on where we are with the two guest bedrooms.

First up, the Green Bedroom.  I started out as a dingy yellow office that looked like this when we first got the house:

 And, yes, the giant desk is now ours.  I'll sell it to you if you want it since it's currently living in the middle of our garage and taking up roughly the space of a small car.  It's a nice solid desk, but it's entirely too big for two people that both use laptops all the time.

During the reno process, the room looked something like this:

Carpet and Trim gone.  Walls sanded and patched.

New light switches installed for the new overhead fan/light.

This was after I discovered that the old owners had painted over a
wallpaper border about 5 coats of paint ago.  Parts of it were
peeling off, so I pulled it down before I primed and painted.

And the drywall patch where we had to pull wires
for the fan/light and switches.

After new floors, lots of wall patches, fresh paint, a new fan, new doors, and all new trim, the room is looking something like this:

The bedding is from my old townhouse.  I bought it at Macy's and I love the green.  The rug came from Landon's house--it was in his bedroom there.  The curtains were also from my townhouse, but there they lived in the living room.  They're the nice insulated ones so they keep the room very dark and very warm (necessary since the window in that room is cracked and all the windows are drafty.) The mismatched dressers are mine and Landon's.  His (the one near the door) will move into the master once we're in there.  Mine will stay and I'll use the dresser that matches his for the time being.  I'd also like to find/make a head board for this room to make it look nicer and more finished.  I don't have a picture of them, but I've also add two framed pieces of "art" that I found at Goodwill and hung on either side of the window.  The mat matches the curtains and the art is dried, pressed herbs.  It works with the nature vibe we have going on  in there pretty well.

The other guest bedroom is now known as the Purple Room due to the purple IKEA bed spread in there.  It began life looking like this:

You only get one picture because it had to be the most uninteresting room on the planet.  Just a giant beige box with crappy carpet, bumpy walls, and a wacky closet door.  During the reno we did some work: 

The weird closet door.  The closet extends from the wall
to about six feet to the left of the current opening.
It is a nice sized closet, but most of it wasn't useful.

So we widened the door.  This was my first time using the saw.

Beige box with no carpet.

Must like in the other room, it got a new floor, lots of work on the walls, new paint on the walls and ceilings, a new closet opening (we still need to put the bi-fold doors in ), a new ceiling fan, and some furniture and now it looks like this:

The new closet opening.  No doors yet.

There are currently two dressers in this room, one will be mine once we get into the master and one holds all of my crafting supplies and will eventually live in the nook in the craft room.  But for now, they both have a home in here.  At some point this room will get my childhood bedroom set which includes a headboard/footboard, dresser, and desk.  The bed clothes will stay the same, and rug (also from IKEA) will stay since I like it.  The curtains are also from IKEA.  I found them in the As-Is section for $8 each, which is awesome.  I still need to hem them, but currently the extra fabric serves as a nice cat bed when the sun is out.  The large dark bookcase came with the house and has been holding random tools and house related stuff.  Eventually it is going to get a fresh coat of paint and will find a new home somewhere, but that has to wait until it warms up enough to work on it outside.

So, that's where we are in terms of bedrooms so far.  They aren't done yet, but we're getting there.  And when I look at the before and after shots, I can see exactly how far we've come.  

Bathroom Before and After

I finally found some good pictures of the guest bathroom "before" so I'll let you be the judge of how it turned out.

Before:

And After:

 

The only thing left from the old bathroom are the cabinets, which we painted.  Everything else is new, including most of the drywall and the subfloor.  Also, it is tiny and very very hard to photograph, so I apologize   

It's a Cat's Life

One of the biggest worries for us with this new house was how the cats would handle it.  Cats don't do well with change, and this was going to be a big change.  But we also hoped that going from an 1100 square foot house to a 2000 square foot house + basement would give them more space and make it easier for them to avoid each other.

So far things seem to be going well.  We've only had one real incident when Malcolm get scared of the basement and wouldn't use the litter box down there so he peed on a sack of potatoes in the pantry (I guess it was the closest thing to dirt he could find).

I wouldn't feel too bad for the cats, though.  They might be just a little bit spoiled.  We've done our best to make them feel at home in the new house, and that includes arranging things just for them.  First, I put some unused stools in front of one of the windows in the front room so that they can sit there and see outside.

It's a favorite place for them to sit.  They can watch the garbage truck and the mailman and all the people taking walks in the neighborhood.

If that doesn't float their boat, they also have the Catsle.  It's a home made cat castle that Landon built for them when they were still living in Lexington.  It has three interior levels, a scratching post, and a padded top level with a heating pad.

The top is one of Malcolm's favorite places to sleep, and Gidget likes to hide in the middle parts.  It's not always going to live in the middle of the great room--we hope to put a corner china cabinet in it's place one day--but until we finish the family room, this is where it gets to stay.

Gidget's favorite napping spot is in the Kitty pyramid that lives in the office/craft room.  She only likes it when it's up off the floor, so it's currently living on a rubbermaid tote of books that should have gone to the basement a long time ago.  She likes to get in there and sleep all day, especially now that it's kind of cold.  Malcolm naps in there too, and often there are fights for who gets to sleep in the pyramid, so we're debating buying another one so they don't have to share.  Although we know that even having two, they will both still want to sleep in the same one.

When it's sunny out, both cats also like to corner of the bed in the purple room--so much so that they were leaving a giant hairy patch on the duvet cover.  I had to start keeping the bed covered with another blanket just to keep it looking nice.  I pull it off when company comes over, but most of the time the bed looks like this:

They also have their very own food and water station set up in front of the widow closest to the pantry.  Everyone has their own food bowl and a water dish, although which one belongs to who is hard to say--mostly they eat from the one that has the most food in it.

And we also made sure to set up what we like to call "Kitty TV" in the back yard to keep them entertained.  It's amazing how entertaining a couple of bird feeders can be.

They can sit in front of the huge sliding glass doors and watch the birds and squirrels eat.  Right now they don't spend tons of time there, but I think once there is someplace soft to lay, they will enjoy it more.

We're also working on finishing up a tube that will allow them to go to the basement whenever they want, since that is where their litter box is going to live going forward.  That project involves a big hole in the drywall along with a concrete form tube and some drywall mud.  Once it's done, you can bet I'll have pictures.

So to sum up, our cat's aren't spoiled at all.  Maybe.

Dining in Style

Another room that has undergone a major transformation is the dining room.  When we bought the house, it looked like this:

It was the only room other than the kitchen that had any overhead lighting, and it was a ceiling fan.  I wish I had thought to take a close up of the fan, since it was lovely with a crystal base and 1980's fantastic styling.  Alas, it has long since gone away and been replaced by this:

And, as you can see from the first photo, we added a pantry and a broom closet on the back wall once we took down the wall between the dining room and kitchen.  I really wanted to keep a formal dining room, but there wasn't a way to do that and also have an island and a pantry.  Now, I'm so glad I have my island and my pantry and I really don't miss a formal dining room at all.

The pink thing in the bottom left?  It's a cat viewing platform so the cats can look out the front window.
Yes, our cats are spoiled.  

And, yes, those are balls of yarn as a center piece.  I used what I had.  

We did move the light fixture  quite a bit so that is centered between the windows--one was once in the living room and one was once in the dining room.  The table is my old one that was inherited from a family member when I moved into my very first apartment way back in 2002.  It will get replaced eventually with something a little nicer, but he works for now.  The "bar shelf" will also get replaced eventually with a side board or a buffet, but we needed somewhere to store all the various wine/beer/cocktail glasses we've accumulated over the years, and so we used what we had.

We also hope to one day find a nice corner china cabinet for the corner next to the other window where the Catsel (Cat Castle) currently lives.  That will get moved to the family room once it is finished and I'd love to have a place to store my nice dishes one day.

I will say that with the island, we haven't eaten at the table at all, except when my parents were up to visit (we currently only have 2 bar stools, although we have room for 4).  My thought is that we won't use the table much until there are kids and then only for dinner.  But still, it's nice to have it.  And it's so nice to have a wide open space since it makes the small living area feel larger.  Not that we're lacking for living space.  We have more than we need already and we still haven't finished the family room yet.

Framing the Issue

Now that we are starting to get the furniture settled a little bit, we can begin hanging some things on the walls.  Since Landon had a grand total of one thing hanging on the walls at his house in Lexington, despite living there for several years, it's been mostly up to me to figure out where to put things.  Luckily, a few weekends ago my Dad and Step-Mom came to visit and, while the guys were working on tiling the floor of the master bathroom, Kathy and I hung up some frames.

The one wall that I was having the most trouble figuring out what to do with the stretch of wall in between the craft room door and the first door to the family room.  It's in the foot path to the kitchen area, and so we can't put any furniture there, but I wanted something there since it's one of the first things you see when you walk in the front door.

While I was showing Kathy the collection of frames that we had, she mentioned the idea of doing a whole grouping of frames on that wall.  And we went to work.  We started with the one piece of art that Landon had, a photo he took in Maine, and worked off of that.

We added a poster I was given as a high school graduation gift many years ago as well as a framed score sheet from a game of hearts that was a college graduation gift from my church group.

Once we had the three major pieces, we tried to find some things to work with them, but there wasn't really anything that fit just right.  I went a few days later and got a new frame for my lighthouse poster as well as a square shadow box frame for and a regular 5 x 7 picture frame.

I found a photo I had taken in Charleston, SC for the small frame and balanced it out with another frame the same size that we already had in which I put the score card from a game of mini-golf that Landon and I played on our second date.

As for the square frame, I decided to use a project idea that I got from the Young House Love Book--Project 124 "Whip up some Custom State Art".  I found an outline of Kentucky online and downloaded it and sized it to the dimensions I wanted.  Then I printed it out and traced it onto some scrapbook paper I found at JoAnn's for $0.69.  I used some blue scrapbook paper as the background and then mounted the outline in the center to get a really nice (and coordinating) piece of art that cost about $15--nearly all for the frame.

I was the perfect thing to finish off the grouping and now I love looking at my wall of art when I come home every day.

We may eventually add more to the bottom, but for now I like it.  And, since it's nearly the only thing we have hanging on our walls at the moment, it makes things feel a little more like home.