Our Dining Room is Finally Ready for Dining

Our dining room has been painted since before we moved into our house. Unfortunately, it has lacked two things: a chair rail to divide the red paint from the white and a dining room table. We recently bought a dining room table to use when we have visitors (like Dad and Bonita, who were here on March 3rd) and that finally motivated us to put up the chair rail. The result is a dining room you can actually dine in! Here are a few pictures:

The view from our kitchen (note the fabulous berry wreath and pinecones-in-a-jar centerpiece!)

With our tablecloth (Billie seemed to think we need one; she also seemed to think it shouldn't be made of vinyl)

From the foyer (this view really shows off the complete lack of decorations)

It's Beginning to Look a Little Like Christmas

Although Christmas decorations have been in stores for weeks, they don't come out at our house until after Thanksgiving. Thanks go some new decorations that Billie bought on clearance last year, we split decorating into two days, putting most of the things up last night and finishing with the tree today. For comparison, you can take a look at last year's pictures (and our relatively restrained decorating two years ago). Now, on to this year's pictures:

Here is the entryway with our new garland and some new small trees up on the landing.

Speaking of the landing, here are our new trees. One seems a bit weaker than the others...

Despite being seven years old, our regular-size tree is still doing pretty well.

Finally, here is the fireplace with more new garland and some old stockings. Billie bought four of these lighted garlands last year but we only used one.

Now that the decorating is done it is time for pizza, spiced wine, and Love Actually.

Yard Work

When we bought our house last year we knew that we wanted to declutter the yard but by the time we were done getting the inside ready to live in it was too hot outside to do much work. This year we decided that we would get some outside work done, so in early April we had a dying tree cut down, removed quite a few shrubs and moved a few others. Then, since we like to do things as close as possible to when people will be visiting us, we had mulch delivered a few days before Kerri and Shannon were going to arrive and I spent a day distributing it around the house while Billie was at work. Below are some before and after photos of our yard work:

Note the large shrubs in front of the entryway and the dead/dying tree just to the left of the house.

Although the fact that leaves had grown in makes it harder to see, note that you can actually see the porch in this picture.

This view shows the tree next to the house that we had cut down as well as some of the shrubs in front of the house.

Here they have been replaced by grass and mulch.

This was apparently a "butterfly bush" that was long-past the point of trimming. There was another on the right side of the house.

The bush is gone (as is the one on the side of the house) and is replaced by grass. I don't miss it.

Here is another view of the front of the house showing how big the front shrubs were.

And here is the way it looks now. Note that we planted grass in front of the sidewalk since we have more than enough space to plant flowers between the sidewalk and the house.

This view doesn't have a "before" picture to go with it, but it demonstrates the new grass pattern and open space in front of the house.

Finally, we have a picture of the mulch around the bushes in the back of the house. Other than pulling weeds out we didn't change anything back here.

Now that things are cleaned up, maybe we'll get around to planting some flowers next year!

Winter in Suburbia

Although there wasn't much snow left when we got home from Michigan on New Year's Eve, we have had some snow (and colder temperatures that let the snow stick around) for the last week or so. Last night we got about 4 inches of snow from the storm that is burying New England, though that is nothing compared to last winter. Despite the fact that we actually have to shovel this year, it only takes about 20 minutes, which I think is preferable to having to clear frost/ice/snow off of my car every morning. Here are some pictures so that you don't have to drive to PA in the winter to see what it looks like:

Here is our house around noon today when I went out to get the mail. The rest of the pictures were taken from inside the house, since it was cold out and I didn't want the neighbors to think I was spying on them (though I guess I was).

Here is the view from our laundry room over our deck and into the neighbor's yard around 8 this morning.

Looking to the right from the laundry room

The view from our bedroom across the street, where you can see the neighbors shoveling.

Across the street to the right. The plow came by shortly after 7:30, which wasn't too bad considering that our road is only one block long and probably isn't a high priority.

Christmas around the House

It was weeks before Christmas and outside our house, some lights and a wreath faced away from the south.

While inside the entryway there were some strings, of red and gold plastic on banisters and things.

The stockings were hung by the gas fireplace with care,

with one by the basement door in case Santa comes through there.

Some caterpillars gathered in the room without TV,

and last but not least, we put up a tree.

The Indiana Room

We have always planned to have a guest room in our house but after the countless hours of painting in the summer neither of us had much energy to work on it. The fact that our new bed left us with an extra one and a friend from Bloomington was planning a visit gave us the motivation we needed to follow through on our plans. While all of the redecorating took place in the past week, the room has been in the planning stages for much longer. Other than the artwork, almost everything else in the room was bought on sale over the past year or so. Here are some pictures of the newly renovated Indiana Room:

This is where you can sleep when you visit us.

Who needs overhead lights when you can have a floor lamp?

A nice view of the meeting between crimson and cream (or, in terms of Valspar paint colors, Posh Red and Cream in my Coffee)

Billie gave me this clock for Christmas years ago. It is glad to finally have a home.

Autumn in Suburbia

Most of the trees here went from green to brown without much color in between, apparently because of the dry summer. There are some trees, though, that had some color, such as this one in our front yard.


The neighbors' trees are similarly red:


While I appreciate the fall colors, I would also appreciate the leaves falling off of this tree before it gets too cold outside to rake them. Whenever they decide to give up, we have the benefit of being able to rake them into the street to be vacuumed up, which is a lot better than dragging them out to the backyard!

New Bed-ing

When Billie and I lived in Bloomington we used to say that when we had a house the first thing we were going to buy was a king-sized bed. It turns out that we were wrong. (Of course, even the furniture came after a washer, dryer, and refrigerator). Anyhow, in addition to our bed being a bit small (though Billie has gotten a lot better at not taking up 80% of it), none of our bedding matched our new purple, white, and grey color scheme, as you can see in the picture below:

Blue and purple go together in theory...

While we have been picking up king-sized bedding on sale for a while now, we were waiting for the right sale to pick up the bed itself. Last weekend was a semiannual sale at a local furniture store so we decided that the time had come. Our new bed was delivered this morning:

Our bedroom, now with coordinating bedding

Another challenge was finding a headboard that matched the dressers that Billie's parents gave her when she graduated from college. After a lot of searching and comparing a dresser door to cherry furniture that had too much red or not enough red we found this one, which is an excellent color match and is also in a similar style (Billie's dresser has vertical slats on the doors and across the top) as you can see below:

The view of our dressers (note the fall decorations on mine) from Billie's side of the bed.

Our new bed also means that we have another bedding-related issue to address: what do do with our old bed...

Rearranging the Furniture

Since we've been using hand-me-down couches since the beginning of time, Billie and I were both looking forward to having some new furniture. Getting some new furniture for the family room also allowed us to put a few things in the empty living room. Here are some pictures:

Our new recliner, couch, and pillows with the fireplace.

Another view of the recliner and couch.

The matching loveseat. The benefit of buying the same style of everything is that you don't have to worry about it matching!

Here is our old couch in its new living room location. Since we don't have new end tables, this room is still pretty bare feeling.

The old loveseat and chair in the living room. Some day we might put some more things on the walls!