Wow, It's been a long time since my last post. Too long. We've been busy but that's not much of an excuse. Here' s the short version of what we've been doing. We had a baby almost a year ago! His name is Braden and he is just wonderful. We finally seem to be getting him to sleep well at night and to take good naps. Hopefully that means I will have more time for some hobbies. And maybe I'll post sometimes too.

Over the weekend

Lately, Joey and I haven’t worked on any projects worth documenting with pictures. On Saturday we worked in our yard. I cleaned out the flowerbeds in the front yard and put down Preen fertilizer plus weed preventer. This year I am trying to prevent the weeds from growing rather than pulling them up later. Pulling them is a lot of work and I eventually get overwhelmed and give up. I also trimmed some of the over grown bushes in the front yard. Joey mowed the front and back yards. He also put down grass seed and fertilizer. It was a really nice day for yard work. It was cool, in the mid-50’s, with rain in the forecast. We finally got the rain on Sunday night. It was a lot of rain too. There were huge puddles all around town Monday morning. Over the weekend, we also ordered some new filters and accessories for our aquarium. I’ll post pictures we get it set up. I’m looking forward to getting some fish.

Our flowers

In a few more weeks, this is what our backyard will look like if we can keep the weeds away. I probably need to divide a lot of the flowers too. The amount of work that awaits us is actually pretty overwhelming.

Do you think ir needs a haircut?

This is our Wisteria vine before it blooms. It is a little overgrown. We've said every spring and fall that we are going cut it back. Maybe this year we will actually do it. If you look close you might see a bench under the vine. That would be a nice shady place to sit in the summer if you could get to it.

It's that time of year again!

Here is an early spring view of our backyard. It doesn't look too bad right now but in a couple months the flower beds will be full of weeds and some flowers too.

The Foyer from Upstairs

Here is a picture of Godiva checking out the new paint. The flowered wallpaper had extended up the stairs and through hallway. It's all gone now. Now the walls aren't too busy for some pictures.

The Painted Foyer

Here is a picture of our foyer with the wild wallpaper removed and a fresh coat of paint. The color of choice this time was a pale green. Again, the color was chosen to coordinate with the lovely carpet.

Foyer Before

What did I tell you? The previous owners were gardeners. Is this not the wildest wallpaper you have ever seen? Although this was the craziest room, I didn't tackle it first because of the work involved. If you've ever removed wallpaper, you know what I mean. It can be a bear to remove. Because of the amount of wallpaper in this house, I bought a steamer. It has been a great help and I've definately gotten my money's worth out of it many times over.

Living Room After

I used the same pale yellow paint in this room as I did in the dining room. This picture really lets you see our "favorite" green carpet in all its glory. I think a more fitting name for this room is the Garden Room. It gets really good light during the day so I keep most of my house plants in here. One day we hope to have fish in our aquarium.

Dining Room After

I chose a pale yellow paint to coordinate with the wall colorings in the rest of the house and the carpet. I am very pleased with the paint color. In some lighting, it almost looks off-white.

Dining Room Before

My first project in the house was to paint the living and dining rooms. Both rooms were this blue-green color with dark green carpet. The room in this picture is the dining room. Notice how the previous owners painted around their furniture. Nice!  

Our house in Indiana. This picture was taken Spring 2004. 

A little bit of our Indiana history

Since I'm going to use this blog to document the remodeling and redecorating of our house, I thought I should share with you how we came to be in this house. We moved to Indiana in June 2003 because of a job opportunity Joey had with GE. (He actually moved here in April. I followed in June after our house in Charlotte sold.)

How did we choose this house? During the house hunting trip paid for by GE, we looked at all 11 houses in the area in our price range. Actually, if we had looked further into Evansville we probably could have seen more houses. We decided that there was no need to live in Evansville. It would just make the commute to work about 50 miles round trip. Who wants to do that when you can commute 5 miles round trip? Of the 11 houses we saw, our house was the only one we saw that had most of the features we wanted. When we saw the house, it had been on the market for atleast 2 years and vacant during that time. I believe it was being sold due to a divorce but it was in good condition even though it had been sitting empty.

Why was it on the market for so long? Well, the previous owers were gardeners and they brought the outdoors in with their paint, carpet, and wallpaper choices. Most people would not choose these colors for their house so I'm sure previous prospective buyers didn't want to put the money and energy into redecorating. We also heard that previously the owners were reluctant to come down in price. We thought that if we could get it at the right price, we would give it a try. We were lucky. The owners finally came way down on the price so here we are...in Mount Vernon, Indiana.

A walk to the mailbox

Walking to the mailbox after work today, I noticed signs of spring popping up everywhere in the yard. It won't be long before our flower beds are filled with tulips and other pretty flowers. Hopefully the weather will take a hint. It feels like winter is blowing back into town. I can't wait for spring.

Laundry Room "After", view 2 

Laundry Room "After", view 1 

Laundry Room "Before", view 2

Laundry Room "Before", view 1

Hello!

Joey and I decided to try something new. We are always emailing pictures to all our family and friends across the country so we thought we'd give a "blog" a try. Check in often to see what we've been doing.

Over the weekend I took on a little project. I painted the walls and put down a new floor in the laundry room. If you know us at all, you know we've been doing lots of remodeling. I'm planning on posting some of our previous projects when I get a chance. But back to the laundry room... A few weeks ago I made a deal with Joey that if he would make some sort of coat rack for the wall in the laundry room, I would remove the wall paper and repaint it. He agreed so I got to work. (He's working on the coat rack too but the wood isn't cooperating. It may be a while before I have pictures of it to post.) I removed the wall paper a couple weeks ago and finally got around to painting on Saturday. I painted it in Buttery Peach which turned out a little brighter than I expected. It's growing on me though. The new flooring is just inexpensive linoleum sticky tiles. I think they look pretty good. Joey helped a little with the floor but I did the bulk of the work. Sorry, I didn't get a picture of the old floor before I covered it up. It was a white/off-white linoleum that was beginning to look a bit dingy. We are very happy with the results. Let us know what you think.