Decorating Dreams

As I've mentioned in a few posts, we'll be moving to New Mexico at the beginning of 2013. The upside to the whole thing is that we're working on getting our own home. OUR OWN HOME! OURS! Not the Air Forces...not a rental...OURS! I'm over the moon about the whole things considering I'd FINALLY get to decorate my house the way I'd want to. When you live in base housing, you pay out the wazoo to fix things (like a smudge on the carpet, or a pin hole in the wall from hanging a picture)...and landlords can be jerk offs when it comes down to you changing wall colors and, again, pesky holes from pictures. 

In my current house, I only have a total of eight things on the walls...it's a little depressing. And I was only able to do that because the holes were existing. If you didn't know any better, you'd think we hated family pictures or something. SO, first thing in our new home is that ALLLLL the fun family pictures we've taken over the years will go up! Yippy! 

One thing that I'd love to do is paint our stairs to look like iconic books. This is a FABULOUS example of what I'm talking about! We're all book nerds, so this would be very appropriate for us:

There's a closet right off to the side when you come in the front door. I'm thinking about making it like a "coat rack" sort of area where Eric can hang all of his junk, in addition to an area where I can hang my purse so it's not taking up space on the counter. I'm torn between the two different ways it can be done, but I'm sort of digging the first option:

Of course, I want to install roll out shelves in the closets for bath towels and various bedding things..

When it comes to the kitchen, I want to do something sort of like this (but in a toned down color) by using a flat paint then doing designs in the same color, but with a gloss finish. I think it'd really pick up the scroll designs on the kitchen table as well as the hutch we have: 

The main project I'm going to do is going to be awesome. Time consuming, but very awesome. I've wanted to do a family tree painting for quite some time, but since we're never allowed to paint on walls that didn't belong to us, I had to sit and bide my time. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

Well, now that we'll have our own house, I can actually do the mural!!! After searching for a while in terms of something that tickled my fancy, I finally stumbled across a very colorful tree picture that would be *perfect* as a family tree for our families:

Now I just gotta do the footwork to get old pictures from when various family members were kids, or when they got married to add to the mix. I'm rather stoked to start that project once we're all settled in. Eric's pretty excited about it himself because he wants to see how OUR home is going to turn out once we're finished with it. 

Of course, there's lots and lots of other stuff I wanna do, especially since I'll still have a fair amount of free time on my hands till I manage to find some sort of job to pass my time. I'm already working on getting stuff set up for John in terms of a school...that should be fun!

At this time, we're still in the works for the house, but we've put an offer down, it was countered and we've settled on it. Actually, I just got an email while I'm writing this that the offer was accepted, so YAY! Still lots of stuff to do, but it's inching ever so closer to obtaining a home for us to...well..come home to when we move! 

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

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'Tis that time of year!

** I'm sorry the quality of my pics are so horrible for this post. I had really bad shakes today and it reflected in the majority of the pics I took :( **

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! It's officially Fall! I mean, to ME, it's Fall because it's September. Eric on the other hand was arguing with me that it's not officially Fall for another eighteen days or some nonsense like that. Whatever! 'Tis the beginning of my favorite season :) With that being said, it was time to drag out the decorations!

As you can see, Eric was absolutely thrilled!

Normally, I like to really doll up the house with leafs, hedgehogs, acorns, pumpkins and etc. everywhere..but, since I'm leaving on Wednesday for two months, I only did a little bit. Eric was teasing because I won't even be there to enjoy it, but in my heart, my house needs to be fall-ish weither or not I'm there. That's just how I roll. Besides, whenever Eric looks at the leafs or quirky squirrel, it'll remind him of me....right? :)

The foyer

One of my trogs filled with putka pods, acorns, hazelnuts and pine cones.

My Party Lite hurricanes (I guess they don't sell them anymore cause I was going to link them from Party Lites site, but couldn't find them) also have putka pods, acorns and pumpkin scented potpourri in 'em. I managed to snag the little birds (and three other ones) last year when they went on clearance due to Christmas decorations coming out. Not bad for twenty five cents, right?

I made my way over to the living room and set up the entertainment center. As you can see, Cole is modeling the front of the room with the leaf garland, pumpkins and a squirrel. My "Home is where the Air Force sends us" sign looks crooked in this pic and made my inner OCD come out. Also, ignore the elliptical, medicine ball and kettle bell...the living room is a part time gym. Didn't ya know? Anyway, here ya go:

Here's the squirrel..again, sorry it's all blurry :(

I wasn't "allowed" to do much with the kitchen...mainly because I think Eric knows he'd kinda trash my leafs if they were on the kitchen table. So, all I put on there was a table runner..it goes all the way across the table, but looks like it stops under the trog.

I switched out my Cup Cake Scentsy warmer for my Montpelier warmer (officially discontinued)..so there's a lil piece of Fall in the kitchen, aside from the table runner:

Annnnd I really had no idea where to stick my "harvest" bouquet, so I just left it with my Amish cutting board and chili pepper container. A complete mismash of color and patterns, but whatever, lol.

I'll be back in the States in...ohhhh....four-ish days, so I can enjoy 'em till then. Best part is that I'll have access to Michaels, Joannes, Hobby Market...oh my god, craft store overload! EEEEE!!

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Happy Fruit

In March, I was trolling through one of my favorite websites, which is Etsy, to see if I could find some fake fruit for my kitchen. In case you don't know what Etsy is, it's a site where people can sell custom made things to other people. Kinda like a stepping stone for people who want to start selling to the public when it comes to trying a home business, in a sense. There have been stories about people whose Etsy stores have taken off so well, that they've expanded into very lucrative companies (how cool is that?). So, I figured that'd be a good place to look for some decorations since I wanted something cute in terms of fruit (ha) and not your typical plastic stuff. 

When I originally set out on this mission, I was thinking about using the fruit in my Trog since that's what normally sits on my kitchen table. Yes, it should be filled with REAL fruit, but we go through ours so fast that I'd like to have something in there rather than a empty bowl. Makes sense, right? Well, I found this seller who makes these SUPER adorable pieces of fruit out of wood! The store is called "Arts of the Heart" . After trollin' through all of the different thing the she makes, I went ahead and contacted her to have a "grocery list" of things made: 4 bananas, 3 apples, 3 pears, 3 oranges and 2 eaten apples. She was totally up to the challenge with the oranges since I guess she never really made them before (Eric says they look like tangelos) , but I think she did an awesome job with everything!

All the pieces are made by hand, so they all have a unique look. Plus, they're small, which helps with their cuteness!

Remember when I got my scale a few weeks ago? Well, since the fruit are a cute small size, I figured they'd look better with the scale rather than the trog, otherwise, I'd have to order a small army of fruit to fill it up.

They actually look pretty awesome with the scale!

Now, I need to find something for the other tray. I'm really torn between getting chocolate chip cookies or a cheeseburger with fries, LOL. 

Decisions decisions...

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Fall Baby

 

I love Fall. Absolutely love it. I dunno if it's because I'm a Fall baby and I feel that it's possibly the best season ever.. or it's because I know my birthday is right around the corner. I dunno. I'm a fan of the leaves changing color, the cold weather, the rain / snow.. I love it all. Fireside "dates" with my husband and enjoying cups of hot chocolate while cuddled on the couch. 

Since it's officially Fall now... it was about time I actually put my decorations up. Eric wasn't too thrilled about it considering he's a scrooge about holidays and such. OH WELL!! Bwahahahaaa

I went on eBay about two weeks ago on the search for Putka Pods. They're like lil mini pumpkins that you can use for decorations. Normally, I stalk for things on Etsy since I like helping out creative peeps, but in all honesty...some of 'em were asking WAY too much for a small bag of these lil' guys. I ended up paying $10 for a 2lb bag....I know, it sounds like alot, but it was just enough to fill two hurricanes and my trog :) It had Putka Pods, Rose Hips and Cinnamon Sticks (yes, it smells very fall-y).

Once my lil pods arrived, I could "officially" put up the rest of my decorations. I say that because..come on.. you know how it is. You have something particular in mind you wanna do and I wanted to make sure I filled up my trog and hurricanes to go with the rest of the decor. 

Eric referred to this as my "Shrine", lol

My little "Welcome" sign in the foyer

Once my stuff from Scentsy shows up, I'll be unstoppable. I'm talking in terms of : Autumn Sunset, Pumpkin Roll, Cinnamon...oh yes.. my house will smell very delicious. And..oh so Fall-y.

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