Our Home this Christmas

This Christmas, my parents drove to North Carolina from Maine, and my sister flew in from San Diego.

We went to see the Nutcracker in Raleigh.  When I was young, I took ballet and danced in The Nutcracker, so I love it.  Tommie humors me, but his eyes glaze over after the first dance, so it was nice to have my family there too--slightly less glazed.

We had Christmas dinner (ham and the works) in our new dining room.  

We took a two-day trip to Wilmington, NC so my sister and I could take embarrassing photographs with cutout heads from Dawson's Creek in popular filming locations.

We laughed, we fought, we ate lots of food, took lots of pictures, and watched Christmas movies.  We exposed my sister to "life-changing" chicken and waffles.  My sister and I exposed my mom to the movie Magic Mike (that's not a Christmas movie?)  We also started a bunch of new house projects with help from my dad (still in the works).

This Christmas, we were all together, which is something we haven't done in years.

Little Living Tree

We've been hustling to finish painting the dining room just in time for the holidays; speaking of holidays, this Norfolk Island Pine is our tree this year.  We usually don't have a tree at all (you know, trying to "save" the environment and all) but since we're hosting Christmas at our place this year, we felt like we had to do some decorating.

The small potted pine was under $20 at Lowes, and since it's alive, we know it will last even beyond the holiday.

Outside, we wrapped white lights around the front porch rails.  I love how they light up the boxes under the roof and kind of want to keep them up year round.  Just like the rest of the house, we have years to grow into our full-on holiday decorating potential.

Turkish Triptych

Remember this big blank wall behind "Maya's" new couch?

Well, we finally ordered a piece of art to display on it, and we love the way it came out.

It's a scene of the city of Istanbul that Tommie took during our honeymoon to Turkey in 2011.  

We were toying with the idea of getting panoramic prints for few of Tommie's photographs, but prices for large images can get expensive…add to that any frames and we were quickly looking at over a couple hundred dollars for just one piece of art.  

We have ordered several of Tommie's photos on 16x20 canvas before and have been really pleased with the quality, so when we noticed that Canvas On Demand was having a 70% off sale for a three-panel "PhotoSplit" (triptych), we jumped on it.  It cost $75 for what was normally $350.  One of the benefits of canvas is that no frames are required, saving additional costs.  

It took us a long time to decide which image to use.  Finally, we decided on the sepia mosque scene because we figured the coloring and the image itself would look great above the couch.  Even though it is one image broken up into three sections, serendipitously, each panel has two marionettes in it and could almost exist on its own.  (Each panel is 15x30 inches with a two-inch gap in between.)  

Our advice for choosing an image to use for a triptych is to go for a scene that was captured fairly close up and includes a large impact subject.  Each panel should look good on its own as well as together, and don't choose something that will be ruined by the breaks.  The hardest part is, of course, hanging them so they line up perfectly.  Let's just say there was a lot of math involved (not on my part or else they'd be way off.)

Thanksgiving Lamb

We celebrated our first holiday meal in our house--Thanksgiving with Tommie's parents (and cat).

We collaborated on cooking non-traditional lamb (who says we all have to pick on turkeys?) with traditional Thanksgiving sides like stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, and homemade pumpkin pie.

Even though our dining room is a work-in-progress, our Craigslisted table and chairs serve us well for the holidays.  Next up; Christmas with my side of the family.

Perches on the Front Porch

It's great having a covered front porch, especially in a quiet neighborhood.  

By the end of November, porch-sitting season is just about over, but since we just got the house painted, we wanted to spruce up our outdoor seating.  

Our house came with a nice wooden porch swing, and I got a sweet $20 rocker from Craigslist.  

The rocker got a fresh coat of white paint and compliments the new white trim.

Since the painter's ended up power washing all the cobwebs off our porch swing, we broke out some of the leftover gray shutter paint (Sherwin William's Gray's Harbor Superpaint in satin) so that it better matches the house and seals up any splinters in the wood.

  (Porch swing and house before and after.)

Come spring, our little perch on the porch will be completely refreshed and ready to enjoy.

Guest Room Finishing Touches

With Tommie's parents headed our way for Thanksgiving, it was time to put some finishing touches on the guest room and bath. (The color looks different in pictures--it's light lavender with a yellow accent wall.)

Some recent updates to the guest room include a yellow, gray, and tan chevron curtain bought for $15 at Target.  We also put a desk in the corner so people can set up a laptop if they need to do work.

I thought this floating shelf would be a cute way to display some reading material for guests, like local magazines.  (We're getting another small floating shelf to put above it to better fill the wall.)

The guest bath also has a couple new features like a chrome hotel-style curved shower rod (I don't know why, but I love how spacious these things make the shower!).

There is also a updated large silver mirror I bought for $20 on Craigslist, and a nice new chrome towel rack with shelves.

Our guests may have one of the best spots in the house so far!

The Brave, the Bold, and the "Blue"tiful

I dreaded making a decision about what colors to paint our house.  We're first-time homebuyers and I definitely don't feel like a decision of this magnitude is within our scope yet.  But, as I mentioned in the previous post, our house couldn't go another season without being sealed up with a fresh coat of paint, so we were forced to dive into exterior decisions head first.

When the blue we chose (Georgian Blue, Superpaint by Sherwin Williams in satin finish) started to go up on the house, it was like Dorothy entering the technicolor Land of Oz…and it was more scary than exciting. 

A small portion of the side and back was painted on day one and left over the rainy weekend so we had some time to acclimate to the new color creeping up the side of our house.  As the paint dried, the color took better to the siding and became less bright.  Still, I bugged out my eyes every time I came up the driveway.  That is one blue house!  (It looks even brighter on the computer!)

But as the color went up on the rest of the house and the trim was transformed from beige cream to a crisp white, it all started to come to life in a good way.  Many of our neighbors stopped to give the painters (Clint Crabtree) compliments on the progress and the color change.  The painters did a fantastic job.

When the color was up on the whole house I didn't have a heart attack, in fact, I swooned a little over the white trim against the rich blue.  Two coats of new paint even makes it look like we had new siding installed and covered up all the faded and weathered spots.  Even standing on the front porch feels like we're in a brand new house (just don't come inside).  In short, the house is bold and "blue"tiful.

(Before)

(After)

(Before)

(After)

Other exterior improvements we hope to make over the next year include a new door (maybe painted?);  new windows and screens upstairs; new porch lights (maybe even getting a couple pot lights installed in the porch ceiling);  painting the porch swing; updating to modern style house numbers and door bells; hanging plants and a couple new plants (maybe hydrangeas) this spring. 

(Before)

(After)

Our new white vinyl windows also look a million times better with matching white trim.

(Before)

(After)

Did we pick the perfect color for our house?  I don't think so, but truthfully, there is no "perfect" color when you're going through a booklet of color swatches that's five-inches thick.  In the end, we chose a color that brings out the unique design elements of our exterior and makes the house look 20 years younger…and it needed that.  Balancing the blue with classic white trim and gray shutters (in Gray's Harbor by Sherwin Williams) helps ground it.  Like any big change, it will take some time to get used to, but it's already growing on us.