House update in pictures.

Before:

and after!!

Woo hoo baby, what a difference, huh? The room looks so huge now.  We also did the alcove to the right in the picture that leads to the bathroom and closet and out the side door.
 

Spiffy isn’t it?? The front door and trim will be painted white and the wall will be some kind of light brown that complements the green. I think it’s called "wheat grass". Being an open concept house, there are no real room dividers or doors. Beyond the staircase is a hallway leading to the formal living room/dining room so that’s why the color will have to be different. With no breaks between rooms, the whole dang house would be green if we just kept going! lol.

So! Does the color of the family room evoke a feeling of being in a summer cottage? I think it does and it’s just wonderful having a beautiful & clean room in no danger of kids marking up or damaging the walls and paint job! We have also found a couple of things to put on the wall to go along with our theme.

This is one of the puzzles the kids put together last summer and we glued it together. Now we just need a wood frame and it’s perfect! Yay! We also have a cross stitch of a duck in water that my honey did 20 years ago. (Yes, real men cross stitch! lol)  We also have a large round table that’s coffee table height that I am going to paint white and have pillows with matching fabric to the sofa slipcover and curtains (different materials) to sit on for a game & puzzlemaking table. After seeing how nice this room came out, we are feeling confident we can really make this place shine to sell.

So this is how we spent my birthday:

Yep, we painted, painted and painted some more. Besides this alcove, we also did the entire family room and hall. Wow, did we do some painting, and it took aaaaall day long. We did get one break though when we headed out to do some shopping.

We needed more paint!  BUT, we went to Lowe’s and since it was my birthday and since they have all kinds of wonderous Christmas decorations and I absolutely love Christmas (along with my cohort hubby!) I got to pick something. My first choice was what I ended up with but I tried to find something just as magical at a lower price. Unfortunately, or fortunately…either way lol, the two other things I wanted were both sold out. So I got the clock in the picture above where I am holding up the puzzle picture.

There’s a clock in the middle and in the four corners are doors that open and little elves playing instruments come out and go in and ‘dance’ when the music is playing…sorta like a cuckoo clock. I can set it to play continuously or I can set it to go off on the hour every hour. I love that. It’s a nice little smile all day long when they pop out.

We were so worn out though that the romantic dinner had to wait until Sunday but the salmon ravioli came out just scrumptious!! Mmmm! I had leftover pasta so last night I made cheese ravioli with a slightly different sauce and I also made pecan bars which were out of this world, and I am not big on nuts. (Hey! No cracks on the fact that I AM nuts! LOL!) It may not seem like such a romantic or fun birthday, but I actually enjoyed it. It was nice to be working together as a team towards a common goal. We were both married to people before that always made projects like this hell to get through, so we revelled in laughing and joking and getting some real progress made on getting this house ready for sale. We make a damn good team the two of us. Red Green says "If the ladies don’t find you handsome, they ought to at least find you handy!" Well, lucky me! My hubby is handsome AND handy…AND a sweetheart too!