My Happy Wall.

I know that y'all are laughing at that title but it really does make me happy.  I am talking about this.

The wall of art that Caden made in first and second grade.  It makes me smile every time I walk by it.

It is hard to photograph this area but it is a small hallway that is between Caden's room and the guest bedroom.  I have had this same grouping in the Florida house, the Cincy house, and now this house.  Each piece is adorable.

This was something that he made in kindergarden.  We were building our first house and he made this out of cereal and glitter.  I am so happy that it has made all the moves in tact.

His little hands that my mom photocopied when he was 2 yrs. old.  I went into the ugly cry when she gave this to me for Christmas:)

A picture that he drew of himself.  He even added his glasses that he use to wear.  That was drawn in second grade.

And finally a little poem that he wrote when we lived in Georgia.  I found it in his drawer.

So there is my wall of happiness.  I will forever treasure it.  It reminded me of a recent post from Edie.  She talked about how it was just 'stuff' but how she loved it and missed it.  So moving.  Please stop by her blog and read it.

I have a few things to show y'all in the next few weeks.  I have been getting the house together but I have to take pictures of everything.  Right now I am trying to figure out my Photoshop Elements 8 and IPhoto.  If anyone has any advice, send it my way.  It's frustrating.

Happy Monday,

Mel

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Been a busy week.

It's been a busy week for me. Not much blogging going on and hardly no time for visits to all of you.

I have been working on this.

And this.

And sadly the chairs didn't make it to the family room:(

Then I went to this.

And this.

Y'all know how much I love to organize and I took a day to do just that. We have a pantry that is small so we asked the builder to add two shelves to the hall closet. (you can see one in the picture) I decided that I needed that closet for hanging up my laundry when it is finished drying and also for my swiffer etc.

So I reworked the closets and it is more functional for me. I will post pictures of the finished product when I can remember to take pictures.

I then went to work on this.

This is the bonus room that Gary and I will share as an office/craft space. I can't wait to finish this room and show you the closets (there are two) and a full bath that is built on a step up. It is going to be really nice.

The room looked much worse than this. This is before EVERYTHING was unpacked and put up there. I took a picture with my cellphone and sent it to a friend and she called and said "that is a lot of stuff!" It was completely overwhelming.

Anyway, I have made great strides this week. I found some fabric to recover the ottoman that is in our family room, found someone to make a roman shade for my dining room, and got the bonus room where we can walk in it without me breaking a leg:)

But now I have to do this.

Caden went with me to pick out a new Christmas tree. We decided on a tall skinny one and I am hoping that I like it. He has also promised that he would help me decorate it, so when I show you a picture of it, you'd better remember that! HA!

So as you can see, progress is being made and I have lots to show you but I have to remember to take photos of everything. I start something and forget about pictures and then I finish and don't remember them then either.

But honestly, I have been so busy that I haven't had time to blog so it wouldn't have mattered.

Hope everyone has had a good week and that you'll have a better weekend. We will be decorating the tree, cooking some football food, and watching the ACC game Saturday night.

Sounds like a perfect weekend to me.

Mel

Help!

ETA: Working on posting some other pictures of the black chairs in place of the couch.

Hello everyone! I am desperate for some help. I am going to show you some photos of our great room and ask for some advice.

This room is long and not square. We just bought furniture last August before we moved to Cincinnati and I am really trying not to have to buy anything else.

That's my problem.

In all the photos you will see a bunch of junk and I am embarrassed for y'all to see it but we just moved in and it is still a mess. So forgive the vacuum cleaner, the Uggs, the ladder....you get the picture.

So here we go.

This is the long wall. Gary wants to put the couch on that wall and buy a love seat. It would look best but I don't want to spend the money. We had the couch there and this morning I moved it around. This is what it looks like now.

With the room being long, it just isn't working right. Nothing is coming together the way it should.

I like walking in and seeing this.

If we bought a love seat, you would still see the sofa table when you came in but that is what I am trying to NOT do. Buy another piece of furniture.

So I thought about moving my chairs from the kitchen into the great room. They would be beautiful to see when you came in because they have a pretty back to them and some great fabric. I could then move the sofa table to the foyer wall. We don't have anything to put on that wall either:(

I would have to buy another rug though and there wouldn't be anything in the kitchen. So my question for all of you is do I buy a love seat and move the couch back to the long wall? OR do I move the chairs from the kitchen into the great room and buy a new rug?

I have a couple of options.

1. is buy a love seat and move the couch onto the long wall.
2. is move the chairs from the kitchen into the great room and buy a new rug.
3. is just leave it has I have showed y'all and wait on the love seat or just decorate around the long wall.

Thoughts?

And here is a little peak at the black dining room. I am going to have to redecorate it and have some roman shades made for the windows. I am thinking a yummy fabric for those. We get the afternoon sun and it will fade my furniture so they are a must. I will show you the room whenever I get the light changed out and get it decorated. Some thought is going to have to go into that room too. ;-)

But for now, here it is.

So help a girl out! I'm ready to hear all your thoughts. Bring it on.

Mel

In a funk.

That's how I feel. I am in a funk. I guess the last year has just hit me. For the last week, I have felt like doing nothing but sitting in the recliner. There is stuff everywhere and I just don't seem to care.

I don't do good with messes.

I usually am all gun hoe to get everything put up and in its place but for some reason, this time, I am not. I guess it could be that I have just unpack and decorated a house not even a year ago. I think that that is the main reason.

Gary is on vacation this week so he will keep me busy and on task. The first thing we had to decide was where to put the furniture in the family room. The room is long and wide instead of square.

We are thinking that the couch should go on the long wall. I normally wouldn't put a couch on a wall but I think that this is the only place for it. It will require buying a love seat and I don't want to do that but Gary says that it will look the best.

Here is a shot that shows the pretty molding. Oh how I love the molding in this house.

Here are the two rugs that we were trying to decide upon. The red rug is not that big but it was in the family room in KY. and I bought the green one for our master bedroom but never lived there long enough to finish decorating it.

Here is a view of both of them down and we went with the green one. It has more color and is bigger so it just looks better.

A glimpse at the box that was built for the tv. I will show you a better picture when I get the room finished.

Furniture and junk just sitting in the middle of the room:(

Caden doing what he does best.

I kid, I kid.

Okay, so maybe I'm not kidding:) You can see that I put the buffet on the smaller wall and you can see more stuff sitting everywhere.

Here is a shot of my office right now! I know a lot of you thought that I had already finished the office here but that was a post done just to enter a contest. LOL! I am not THAT good at unpacking. This is what it looks like after Gary brings in box after box and wants them unpacked. I just sit stuff everywhere. (he is trying to get all the boxes out of the garage)

So as you can see, the house is a disaster just as the move has been. I think that is another reason for the funk. All I can see is the mess, all the stuff that has to be sold or given away, the claims that have to be filed, and all of that on TOP of Christmas coming. I can't even go there.

But on Friday night, after Gary got off from work, he brought me this.

And these.

So I had a snack before I went to bed.

That boy is a keeper, I tell ya:)

I don't have a picture of the dining room yet. The painter is coming back today to repaint it and finish up. I pray that he gets done today. We also have the people coming to look at the dryer. I really hope that it gets fixed today as well. I had to get the company to pay for laundry service last Thursday but now it is all piled up again.

We are really busy and trying to get everything done so it will be a busy week for us. Wish us luck.

Melanie

Finally Home.

Yes, we have finally moved in. We spent our first night here last night. We had to be out of the apartment by tomorrow at noon so we took a couple of days and moved our stuff out.

We are just moving stuff from one pile to another;-)

This move has, by far, been the worst to date. We have moved a lot over the last 12 years and this one just blows all the other ones out of the water.

First, we had to move our furniture to storage. The guys at the storage facility here in SC didn't rewrap it and it got damaged. Many pieces are going to have to be repaired. Then it rained on moving day. That held the progress up. We really thought that it couldn't get worse but then it did.

The refrigerator got damaged as I talked about here. We are filing a claim and hope that they will replace it. After all of that, the movers couldn't find the hardware to put the beds together. They left and the next day Gary & Caden unloaded the ENTIRE garage to find the box marked 'parts box.' It was in the middle of the garage on the bottom of the stack. The movers should have seen the box and kept it out. After we found the box, they sent the guys out to put the beds up.

They didn't even do that right and Gary had to redo them.

So, as I am making a list of THE REPAIRS that the company is going to have to make, this is what I found.

See those two red stickers? That is what they mark the furniture with. There should only be ONE sticker on the bed but there are two. There are two because of this.

That's right. They took a chunk out of the bed (when they took it down in KY) and didn't tell me. They put two stickers over it so that it would stay together.

This bed is not even a year old. This is a chunk and not a scratch. It is big.

That is just one more thing that has to be fixed.

On Friday they sent a third party person to set up the washer and dryer and hook the refrigerator up. I was unpacking in the bedroom and the guy came back there and said that the refrigerator wouldn't fit. It.Would.Not.Fit in the space. Then he dropped the other bomb that just about sent me over the edge....the dryer wouldn't start! My brand new dryer! I just set down on the mattress (since the bed wasn't put together) and wanted to cry. I wanted to call Gary and tell him to come home from work but I didn't. I didn't cry either. A little while later Gary showed up because his boss sent him home to help with the house and he got to work. They are going to send someone to look at the dryer on Monday. I am very upset about the dryer. I have to have the dryer and I am hoping that they can fix it and that I don't have to have it replace. I am afraid that I am going to have to have the refrigerator replaced also.

The other thing that happened was the paint. I picked out the same color that we used in Kentucky. We hadn't had it that long and I wasn't tired of it, so we decided (or I decided) to go with it again.

Our painter has been painting for a couple of weeks now and he painted the kitchen the other night but when I came back over, I didn't think it looked right. Gary didn't either. We just thought that it was a different house, different cabinets, and different lighting. It looked like it had a berry tint to it. I couldn't quit thinking about it so I brought the color swatch over and guess what? Yep, it was WRONG!

Lowe's color matched it wrong. I went to Lowe's on Friday night and they redid it for me but I still didn't like it.

It just had a red undertone to it. It is the color on the right. I am so glad that our painter had not painter the great room or hallways because that was going to be the color. I thought the second from the right was a little light and the one on the left was very close to the color that I loved, so I went with the third from the right.

You can see the difference in the colors in this photo. I am so happy that I changed it. I used Prairie Dust which is what I painted Gary's office in Kentucky. We also paid the painter to repaint the kitchen. It is a nice creamy khaki color. He is trying to finish up and get out of here. He has worked nonstop for days. But tonight, he told me that he would be back Monday and finish up all the touch up and put a few more coats on the black dining room walls.

This is what our great room looks like right at this moment. I have washed all the dishes and the kitchen is set up except for all the stuff on the counters;-) The bathrooms are almost finished but I will have to wait until the painter leaves for me to really get to unpacking. Until then, we are living in a mess.

So, as you can see, it has been a disaster. I am completely wiped out. We both are but each day I am putting one foot in front of the other. I know that it will all come together. It just might take a little longer than it usually does.

I just want to thank everyone for your sweet comments and all the prayers that have gone up for us! We have needed every single one of them:) I really appreciate all of you.

Melanie

My Favorite Room.

Susan at Between Naps on the Porch is having a Mom Cave contest. I love the idea of a 'mom cave.' Men always seem to be the ones that get to have a man cave so it is nice that Home Goods is sponsoring a giveaway for the best mom cave.

This is the first house that we have ever lived in that had room enough for me to have my own special space. Gary has had an office in two of the last houses that we have lived in and it was nice to have an extra bedroom to use however we needed to.

This is a space that I read in, blog in, and scrapbook in. I love it. So let's take a tour.

This is the view from outside of the room.

I ordered the desk online at Target. Some other blog friends had the same desk and assured me that it was a great buy and it has been. I love the open storage and how big it is.

My printer station.

The bookshelves are from JCPenney's. I had one that was in Caden's room and so I used it and ordered another one.

A print from Red Letter Days and a sonogram of my son. It was a gift from my mom.

The bookshelves hold my books and some of my pretties. I made the print at the top of the shelf.

The desk holds a lot of things. Some of my favorites:)

A cute cup to hold pens and a reed diffuser, both from Home Goods.

My computer station holds all my crafting supplies.

A print of our home in Florida.

Since I don't have drawers, I use baskets and plates to house my papers and as you can see, my paint swatches.

Initial plates with the initials of our family.

More storage and finally a look from my desk.

The only thing that my 'mom cave' is missing is a sitting area. I would love to buy a chair and and have a spot to read in. I have a seat at the desk but one a little more stylish and comfortable would be great.

Thanks for taking the tour of my mom cave with me. Go see all the rooms that are linked up at Susan's. There will probably be some really great rooms.

Melanie