I’ve been super busy with grad school work (which I’m finally just about done with!) and I have been sick-ish on and off, so not much has happened around the house so far this summer.

I think I’m going to do a slightly modified blogging schedule over the summer, which basically means that instead of blogging regularly 4 times a week, I may miss a post here or there. It definitely won’t be anything crazy like only one post a week, but there may be weeks where you only see two or three posts – and most weeks, I’ll probably still stick to the usual schedule.

I know this will probably be devastating to those of you who eagerly check for a new post from me every day (right? RIGHT?), but I hope you understand. Summer does crazy things to us teachers!

And now, I’m off to play more Zelda, watch more Desperate Housewives, and turn in the last of my graduate school work so I can finally get started on some projects!

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We aren’t usually huge movie watchers (I am, Corey isn’t), but now that we have the garage finished(ish) and it’s summer, we’ve been watching them almost nightly. We even added DVDs to our Netflix subscription for the summer so that we can expand our options.

So far? We’ve watched:

Mama (silly horror movie)
Argo (love!)
Lincoln (bored out of my mind)
Oz the Great and Powerful (adore)
Life of Pi (beautiful!)

And we have a ton more in our queue to watch. In addition to that, I’ve been watching a ton of Desperate Housewives (every summer I pick a show I haven’t seen all of and watch the whole thing beginning to end) and playing some old-school video games. Zelda for the win!

The dogs are loving it too. Hadley wasn’t sure about it at first because of the slippery concrete, but she seems to have settled right in now.

I think we’re definitely going to get our money’s worth out of this room.

What movies have you been watching lately? Anything we NEED to see this summer?

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Well, once we got the floor painted and the rugs in, it was time to fill the room up with some furniture. We started off with the Kivik sofa from Ikea.

(Note: I have not yet learned how to take photos in this dark room, and the lighting isn’t finished yet, so bear with me as we finish up the lighting and I figure out how to take good photos in here!)

I know a lot of people complain about Ikea furniture, especially on home decor blogs, but I’m just gonna go ahead and say I love it anyways. This couch is beautiful, insanely comfortable, and CHEAP. Can’t beat it. We opted to go with their plain ol’ beige cover – there were several more textured options that we liked a lot better, but they were also much pricier. The cover that we got was on sale for almost 50% off, which means that we saved an insane amount of money and ended up spending less than $900 on this entire (GIANT) couch.

And doesn’t it look good?!

We were originally going to get the loveseat/chaise combination (it’s slightly smaller than this one), but in the end, the sofa/chaise combination was less than $100 more, and we liked it a lot more. Plus, more room to stretch out!

I like the beige color in the room, and the fabric is insanely soft. We’ll probably eventually upgrade to one of their nicer, textured options – just because we like them better, but for now this is great.

Next it was time to add in a coffee table. I’ve been drooling over the wood carved coffee table from West Elm ever since they released it, so it was a no-brainer for us to choose it.

I love that it’s nice and small so it gives us some extra floor space, and we desperately need some more textures and pattern in this room, so it layers right in.

We’ll eventually probably bring down the chair that’s currently in our reading room, but we didn’t want to leave that room completely empty (and I actually use it as it is now!) so that will wait until we eventually turn that room into a nursery. For now, I think we’ve got more than enough seating!

As you can see, we also replaced the old lights with a much cuter option, though it hangs crooked. Annoying! We haven’t figured out exactly how we’re going to fix it yet, but we’ll come up with something. I love the shadows it makes on the ceiling, though!

And, finally, we added a giant projector and dresser to hold all of the components (as some of you who follow me on Instagram may have already seen).

I can give more details on the whole setup and how it works later if anyone is interested, but for now let’s just look. This is actually the dresser that used to be in our bedroom as Corey’s dresser, but we’ve never planned on it being in there long-term, and we think it works nicely in here. We still have a few finishing touches to do on it (as you can see), but once it’s all put together, we won’t have to see any of the annoying components and it’ll hold some of our movies and video games as well. Love!

So, that’s where we’re at right now with the garage. It’s still a mess and needs lots of work, but it’s starting to come together, and we’ve definitely been using it a lot! Next up we need to chat about the curtains we’re adding to hide the water heater and water softener, then we have a few more furniture pieces to talk about, and hopefully we’ll get around to accessorizing and adding in the finishing touches sometime over the next few weeks.

But, since we haven’t gotten to any of that yet, here’s a last look at what it’s looking like as of right now:

I know, it’s a hot mess, but it’ll get there eventually!

What projects have you been working on lately?

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It sounds dumb because I’m working much less than I do when school is in session, but since it’s summer I guess I feel like I should be relaxing more than I am? My house is a wreck, I don’t remember the last time I did laundry, and I just want to take a nap every time I get home from working.

Let’s just say I’ll be glad when it’s all over and I can get my house clean again!

Today we’re deviating a bit from the usual Friday Finds post, and we’re delving into the clearance section of Anthropologie. I was browsing it earlier and found a ton of super cute stuff for a steal, so I’m sharing the wealth!

(Stitch-Striped Pillow – $49.95)

(Goldsmith Knob – $2.95)

(Marrakesh By Design – $14.95)

(Chipper & Sprite Serving Set – $14.95)

(Half-Dozen Egg Crate – $7.95)

(Appellation Utensil Jar – $19.95)

(Ginko Leaf Hook – $7.95)

Where do you like to browse for clearance stuff?

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I know, I’m a dork.

I’m a big fan of simplicity in kitchens – I like for all of the main pieces to be neutral so that the color and pattern comes from accessories on the counter, dishes, and all that other fun stuff. So, these curtains were cute, but they had to go.

Corey and I wavered back and forth a little, but I was pushing for bamboo-style blinds from the beginning. I love the texture and the natural color they bring, and I liked that they’d function a lot better than the curtains – much more out of the way!

I finally got Corey to agree to my plan, so we grabbed these woven blinds from Lowe’s recently. They’re not actually bamboo blinds, but they’ve got a similar texture and Corey is more on board with these guys than the is with actual bamboo blinds, so it’s a win-win.

Before I show you, let me warn you that I did not clean my kitchen before taking these photos. Corey and I are in the middle of a furniture project (and we’re working on it in there because we are crazy), and I’ve had a hectic week with grad school work, so it’s just not clean. Please look past the mess.

So, uh, I LOVE THESE BLINDS.

(Please also ignore the awful area on our wall that still needs to be patched. I promise, it’ll get taken care of this summer.)

This solution is so much more fitting with the style I want for our kitchen – a neutral color, lots of texture, and they layer right in without looking cluttered.

And, as an added bonus, they don’t clash with our dishtowels.

I’m just sayin’. That’s important.

What’s your stance on kitchen window treatments? Do you like to keep things neutral like me, or do you prefer more pattern and color?

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I’ve read a ton of good books in the last few months, so today I thought I’d do a quick list of all the books I’ve read so far this year – I’m always looking for good book lists, so hopefully this will interest someone!

So, here’s what I’ve read from January through May:

1. Life of Pi – Yann Martel

2. House of Night: Hidden – P.C. Cast & Kristen Cast

3. Insurgent – Veronica Roth

4. Blaze – Richard Bachman

5. Vampire Diaries: Hunters: Moonsong – L.J. Smith

6. Vampire Diaries: The Hunters: Destiny Rising – L.J. Smith

7. Uglies – Scott Westerfield

8. Middle Ground – Katie Kacvinsky

9. Twins – Caroline B. Cooney

10. Arena One: Slaverunners – Morgan Rice

11. Walking Disaster – Jamie McGuire

12. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

13. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey

14: Someday, Someday, Maybe – Lauren Graham

15: Dead Ever After – Charlaine Harris

16: The Truth-Teller’s Lie – Sophie Hannah

So far I think the best one I’ve read this year has been the most recent one – The Truth Teller’s Lie. It was not what I expected it to be, and it was one of those books that you just can’t put down. The worst? Twins. Don’t even know how it ended up on my Kindle, but it was quite possibly the worst book I’ve ever read in my life…the only reason I even finished it is because I have a strange, overwhelming compulsion to finish every book I start, no matter how much I hate it.

Other than that one book, though, I’d definitely recommend all of the books I’ve read so far this year! As you can see, my taste in books varies pretty greatly, with a slight emphasis on cheesy young adult novels. What can I say? I do enough thinking during the day at work – I like to indulge a little when I’m reading!

What have you been reading lately? I’m always looking for recommendations!

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So, um, are you ready to see what the garage looks like?!

We’ve finally officially turned it into a room, and I’m super excited about it. Last time you saw it, it looked like this:

Almost there, but not quite.

Well, we finished up the painting, tried out a stencil on one wall, decided we hated it, and painted back over it (don’t you love it when that happens?). So, now that the walls were all finally done, it was time to handle the floor.

Now, let’s talk about this for a second, because I feel like I need a disclaimer. The original plan for the flooring in here was carpet. We plan on having wood (or, wood-looking) floors everywhere else, but we thought a super plush carpet would be nice in this room, so that was the plan. Well, then we actually started working on the room and realized that with our budget, we could do carpet and have a completely empty room, or we could skip the carpet and actually have a sofa and rugs.

I’ll just let you guess which one we went with.

Obviously the carpet was out, so we decided that painting the concrete would be a good choice. Incredibly cheap, simple, and okay-looking-enough to tide us over until we can do something else.

I’ll just preface the rest of this post with this: I don’t love the painted concrete. I thought I would, but I don’t. In fact, I kind of actively don’t like it. But that’s the risk you take when you’re doing a big project like this, especially when you try to save a little bit (or a lot) of money.

But the good thing is, the painted concrete has always been just a temporary solution. And I can definitely live with it until we save up and do something else – which we’re thinking will probably now end up being the same floor we’re doing throughout the rest of the house.

So, with that little disclaimer out of the way, let’s chat about painting the concrete. The first step was cleaning it, which was the most annoying part. It consisted of vacuuming, then mopping, then vacuuming, then mopping, then…you get the point.

Once the floors were nice and gleaming, it was time for primer. We almost skipped this step, but I’m so glad we didn’t – it really sealed up the floors and made them feel less like a garage floor and more like a concrete floor – does that make sense? The fun part about this is you don’t even have to use a tray…you just dump the stuff out on the ground and use a roller to spread it out.

I was concerned at first because it was very…purple…

But it dried nice and clear, and ready for paint!

Next up was painting. Just like painting a wall, except more fun because you don’t have to worry about dripping on the floor. Here’s what it looked like after two coats:

We honestly probably should have done a third coat, but I was over it at this point, and I already knew I didn’t love it and would want to be changing it up sooner rather than later, so we decided to just skip it. You could really only tell it needed a third coat because of the harsh lighting in there (which we knew wasn’t going to be there long!), and the majority of the floor was going to be covered with a rug, anyways, so we decided to let ourselves be lazy.

Now, this is the point where I kind of wish we would have stopped. We had actually considered skipping the sealer step because we’ve seen a few bloggers do so successfully, but we decided to be safe and seal it.

Well, apparently some stain that was on our floor from before (we think it was a spray paint stain) did not play well with the sealer, and once it dried we had giant blue spots on our floor.

You can’t really see them in the photo, but trust me – they were very noticeable in person.

Luckily for us, we already had a big ol’ rug picked out that would cover these spots perfectly, but we would have been very unhappy campers if we had planned on leaving it uncovered.

Once the sealer finished drying (two torturous days), I was more than a little antsy to get the rugs in there. I wasn’t loving how the room was looking, and I was terrified that we had poured so much work (and money!) into this room for nothing.

So, when Corey got home from work the day that the floors were “officially” dry, we rushed into the garage to lay out our rugs. We decided to go for a layered look, partially because we love the way it looks, and partially because we could only find plain jute rugs in our budget that were as large as we needed for this room, and we wanted some pattern. So, the first rug we laid out was this super-thick-weave jute beauty. We snagged it from Rugs USA when it was on a steep sale – we paid about $300 for the 9X12 size.

There are no words for how in love with this rug I am. It is incredibly soft (which was a shock – we were expecting rough!), huge, and just gorgeous. I kind of want to sleep on it. And just so you can get an idea of how thick those threads are, here’s a photo with my feet for reference:

Mmm. This rug is fabulous.

But we weren’t stopping there – next up was this equally fabulous blue zebra-print rug. We also got it from Rugs USA and it was on some insane sale  as well- we paid a little less than $400 for the 8X10 rug.

Fun, right? We loved the zebra pattern, and it brings some much-needed color into the room.

Cullen really likes it, too.

I’m obsessed with how these rugs look together, and I think once the rest of the furniture and accessories make their way into the room, it’ll look fantastic. And thankfully, they cover up enough of that concrete floor that I can mostly ignore it. Until we get around to fixing it, that is.

So that’s where the room is at for now. Next up we’ll chat furniture and lighting, then we’re installing some curtains to hide the ugly water heater and water softener!

Have you ever finished a big DIY project, only to realize you didn’t love the end result?

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Today we’re checking out Craigslist finds in Chicago, thanks to a request from Chelsea. I found some awesome things and I’m totally wishing Chicago was road trip distance from Austin!

(Craigslist Chicago – $75)

(Craigslist Chicago – $150 - all three items)

(Craigslist Chicago – $375)

(Craigslist Chicago – $250 – includes second dresser and nightstand)

(Craigslist Chicago – $100)

Can you believe that entire 3-piece dining room set for $150? My mind is blown!

Find anything awesome on Craigslist lately?

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They’re pretty.

I want to kiss them.

(I do. Sometimes. Shh. Don’t tell anyone.)

I explained a while back that we were getting new windows in about half of the house because our old ones were horrible, failing, and just generally making our lives miserable (you think I’m exaggerating, but YOU try cooking dinner when it’s 100+ degrees outside and your kitchen is basically a greenhouse).

It has made a huge difference in the comfort level of our house to have these beauties. The back half of my house no longer feels like a sauna in the afternoon, and we have a much prettier view of our backyard, thanks to the new setup.

I thought it might be fun (for me, at least – I don’t know how much fun you’ll have) (at least I’m honest) to go through all the windows we replaced and see what they looked like before and after. Before we started this whole process, I had NO idea that there were so many different options for window configurations, and it felt super overwhelming when we were starting out.

Let’s start with my favorite one – the dining room. Here’s what it looked like before (all before photos except the kitchen sink window were taken after we took down the blinds):

And here it is now:

Much better, right? We have two giant sliders that both open up (an important note, since not all of the windows opened before. And not because they weren’t supposed to) and an unobstructed view of our backyard.

I have to say, I am NOT missing the three sets of disgusting, chewed-up blinds that we used to have on here, but the windows are looking a bit naked. We have plans to update all of the window treatments throughout the house, but if I’m being honest this one is probably on the back burner for now. We still have pretty good privacy here thanks to our fence and the row of trees in our yard, and the most scandalous thing we might be doing in the dining room is eating dessert before dinner, so I don’t mind if someone wants to peek in.

Next up is the kitchen.

The window above our sink looked like this before:

And looks like this now:

It just looks cleaner, right? Our plan in here for window treatments is to ditch the curtains (I love them in theory, but they just don’t work for us in real life) and put up a bamboo blind for some texture and call it a day. It will probably stay up most of the time because I love having a view into the yard when I’m doing dishes, but I still want something there because as much as I love naked windows in photos, it feels weird in my own home.

The bay window area in the breakfast nook looked like this before:

And is much prettier now:

I am SO glad we decided to go with a big picture window in the middle instead of a window that opens. We rarely open windows in our house, anyways (because we live in Texas and there are maybe two weeks out of the year where it’s even feasible to do so), and when we do we never really open this one.

Once again, we’ll end up with some sort of window treatment in here eventually, but we aren’t sure where we’re going to land yet. It’s such a big area that I feel like we need something neutral-ish, but I also don’t want to be too boring. We’ll see where we end up!

Now let’s head upstairs to see the two windows we replaced up there. First up is the reading room window – we originally hadn’t planned on doing this one yet, but when we were working on it a few months ago we noticed that the window didn’t actually close all the way…which is kind of a problem. We thought about going ahead and knocking out both of the extra room windows, but it saved us about $500 to just go with this one, so we did. Having all of our windows actually close is kind of a priority, you know?

That’s the before, and here’s the after: 

Once again, much better! Now that this is in, we can finally finish up the trim on this part of the room (we were waiting for the new window) and trim out the window/add a window treatment. We have no idea yet what route we’ll go in here for a window treatment – all I know is I’m dying to get that trim finished up!

And finally, our master bedroom. Before:

After:

So pretty! This is one that I’d actually love to leave naked because I think the view of our giant tree is just fabulous, but unfortunately having it open also gives all of our neighbors and anyone passing by the house a nice view into our bedroom. Which we don’t want. Right now we’re still rocking the too-small white curtains that we’ve had forever, but they’re going to get upgraded, stat. I think we’re going to go with curtains only in this room (no blinds or shade), so that we can leave ‘em open during the day and close them at night – best of both worlds! We’ll, of course, make sure the curtains are actually the right size this time.

And with that, you’ve seen all of our new windows! It’ll be awhile before we get around to the next set of windows, because we want to spend some time paying off these guys (and our new garage renovation, which is still chugging along!), but I think with our next round we’ll finish the upstairs, and then down the road we’ll replace the last few downstairs.

Have you ever had windows replaced? It makes a huge difference!

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If you haven’t read the story of how we ended up with Hadley, you should go back and read it, because it’s a fun one. She was this tiny little mess of a puppy when we brought her home last September, she she immediately captured our hearts.

I have a hard time believing she was ever that small, though she clearly doesn’t because she still thinks she’s about Cullen’s size. She still won’t jump up on our bed without the assistance of a chair, and she doesn’t think she can climb into our car (which is a PRIUS) by herself. But in reality? She’s officially bigger than Ranger now.

She’s not the brightest dog in the world…but we love her.

Our family has gotten a little bit bigger and a lot more chaotic since we got her, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. She’s the big dog we always wanted who loves to cuddle (Ranger is a fabulous dog, but he is NOT a cuddler), and she can keep up with Cullen’s insane amounts of energy.

I’m so, so glad we got her and I still thank Corey regularly for surprising me with her 9 whole months ago.

Happy birthday, Hadley!

Do you celebrate your pets birthdays?

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