Vintage 7-up box/tray ($1.00):

Box of Old Stamps ($1.00):

Vintage Souvenir Canada glass ($1.00):

Wilton Cookie Press ($2.00):

I hope I can go out garage sale-ing again later this summer!

Our house is all decorated for Christmas and all my Christmas shopping is done… now it will be nice to just enjoy the next few weeks, stress-free!  It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Right off of our kitchen is a large closet that was originally supposed to hold our washer and dryer.  But when we bought the house, Funnel and I decided that the noise and mess of a tiny laundry room spilling into the kitchen wasn’t such a great idea.  We thought the unfinished part of our basement would make a better and roomier laundry area, so we moved the washer and dryer downstairs, and the closet became my sewing nook (and will also be a little office area after the make-over!)

All we really did with it last summer was to paint it a pale yellow, remove the large doors and hung up makeshift curtains (made out of sheets from the thrift store).   It’s pretty disorganized and “blah”. 

Although the photo was taken last summer, this is more or less how the craft nook looks right now.  Behind the left hand curtain is a tall, industrial-type of cabinet that houses fabric, and my camera equiptment:

What I am planning to do is:

* Make new curtains .  I would like to do some simple, white, somewhat sheer, breezy curtains, that would go along with the white beadboard wainscoting that we have in the first floor of our house.

* Wallpaper the nook with maps.  I got this idea from the Anthropologie store several years ago and have kept it in the back of my mind.  In Rome, we bought a really cool, vintage Italy map, and just today I ordered 7 more maps through Amazon.  Here’s one of them:

I think the maps will give the nook a vintage feel and also incororate our love for traveling.

* Put up wall-to-wall wooden shelving.  The white wire shelving that is in there now looks very “laundry room” .. I am hoping to make or find shelving that is thick, white, wooden and clean-looking.   

* Buy a wall-to-wall desk/tabletop.   Right now I have a small antique sewing desk for my sewing machine, and while it is a really neat piece, it is small, and we would like to have a large, wall-to-wall desk that could also be used for our computer.

* Get some fun bins and baskets to use on the shelves for storage.  Since we were eliminating our current storage (a big storage cabinet and my sewing desk) the shelves will have to hold all our office supplies, my photography equiptment and all my yarn and fabric.  I want to get some really pretty bins and baskets to put them in.

+   +   +

And here is my inspiration for the sewing nook…

This is basically what I would like the end result to be (but imagine maps instead of the tree wallpaper):

Here are a couple examples of maps used as wallpaper:

{via lovelydesign, apartmentherapy, &  yankee magazine }

I am so excited… I think it’s much easier to be creative when you have a pretty space to do it in. 

I have a free weekend near the end of June that I am hoping I can use to make some headway!  I will keep you updated on my progress.

We closed on our house May 20th and moved in on May 30th.  During the days in between were long, 14-hour days of working on the house.  I took the week off of work, and Funnel had long days of being at his job all day and then working on the house late into the night.  My wonderful mom came down for a good part of the week to clean and paint, and we had tons of help from family and friends.  I am so thankful for all of them.

We cleaned, painted, installed flooring, packed boxes and moved boxes.  And we still have tons left to do – more painting, installing beadboard wainscoting on the first floor, unpacking, landscaping, and installing new siding and shutters on the front.  But it already looks 100% better than it did when we first got the keys.

I am so excited to post pictures of the house, especially my pink and green kitchen but I will probably wait a couple of weeks until we’ve unpacked and finished up a few more of our house projects. 

Funnel & I have had a few moments where we turn to each other and say, “We have a house!”  It’s really neat.  I like that we have a quiet neighborhood to walk around in the evenings, and non-white walls, and gibbons talking to each other across the street when I leave for work in the morning.   

. . . . . . . .

{ photography } Weekend before last, I photographed Zach and Sara’s wedding in downtown Columbus.  Everything was beautiful and we took the formal pictures at the Statehouse.  I am excited to share some pictures as soon as I have a chance to go through and edit my favorites.

This Saturday, I am photographing a wedding in Athens.  I love that all the weddings lately have had unique, beautiful settings.  This one is taking place at The Ridges, which is a very, very old place with lots of history that Funnel and I stopped by on our honeymoon in 2006. 

.  .  .  .  .  .  .

{ busybee } I have been extremely busy, and will continue to be busy with house stuff and, after Saturday, having three weddings to edit in the next few weeks!  I’m behind on responding to emails, and reading/comenting on my friends’ blogs.  Please forgive me while I get myself caught up!  And Sarah – I still need to mail you your prize.. it got packed and I need to find it.  I’m sorry – I suck!

Happy June 4th … have a lovely day!

I was just reflecting on the two and a half years that Funnel and I have spent in this little apartment on John Steven Way.  I came here a month before our wedding, and Funnel moved in when we returned from our honeymoon.  What an exciting time – living together for the first time.  Coming to know each other more fully than we ever could have thought.  It was like those wonderful, much-anticipated sleepovers I had as a little girl, but this time it never had to end.  Best friends, together, all the time.

I am so excited for our next step in our life together and for our new house, but how can I not be a little sad to leave this place?  Our first home together.  Most of the memories I have of our first years of marriage took place between these walls.  Our apartment has seen a lot of love and laughter.  Some “movie moments”.  Some tears and heartache.

I will admit that I am tearing up a little writing this.  It reminds me a little bit of May 6th, 2006.  Funnel’s graduation day (and 24th birthday) and the day we moved him home from Cedarville, where he went to university.  At that time, we were engaged and looking forward to getting married in a few months.  The ride home, a constant stream of tears fell down my face.  It was bittersweet.  Funnel graduating meant that we were closer to getting married, but at the same time, a little piece of my heart felt broken because I would miss that place, where so much of our love story had played out.  I knew we could visit, but it wouldn’t be quite the same.

I am feeling very sentimental and nostalgic tonight.  It seems like the older I get, the more things really move me, and the more I find myself in tears.  Happy tears, sad tears. 

I found this quote a while ago by Brian Andreas, and I really connected with it: “She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful & life was so short.”

Yes, so beautiful.  And gauging by how quickly things seem to be going these past few years, so short.

Last time we visited the house, we heard these strange “whooping” noises coming from across the street.  We concluded that our neighbors had pet birds. 

Today, when we went to look at the house with my parents, we heard the noises again,  much louder and much more frantic, and we discovered that there are monkeys living at the house behind the house that is right across the street from us!

We counted at least 3 very large primates swinging and running around their cage, which was large and suprisingly like one you would see at a zoo. 

And the sounds.  They were like nothing I have ever heard. We went for a walk around the neighborhood and we could hear them two streets over! 

I am against domesticating exotic animals, especially after the horrific chimapnzee mauling that happened recently, leaving a woman in a coma at The Cleveland Clinc with her face and hands gone.  But I will admit that I am intrigued by these neighbors… the primates and the humans that own them.

We have a view of their cage from a certain spot in our yard.  I think this will be interesting.

 
It won’t officially be ours until the endish of May, but for all intents and purposes ((and assuming we can jump through all the hoops that await us)) it is. 

We should be living in our little house, in our little neighborhood, in Pataskala, Ohio in just over a month.

There was so much interest in the house, that the bank has decided switch to an open bidding system.  They’ll collect all offers until 5:00 today, and the highest bidder gets the house.  So we need to put in a new, higher bid. 

We thought they would take the first bid that met their asking price (which ours did), but I guess the bank realized what a good deal it was, and figured out they could get more for it.   It’s a bummer.  We are almost postitive that ours was the first offer in and we were willing to pay what was asked, so I feel like the house should be ours. 

Buying a foreclosed home seems so much more complicated than buying a regular home. 

Now we have to figure out how much we feel comfortable bidding and how much other people will bid so that we can beat them, but not by too much. 

Honestly, my heart sunk when Funnel told me the news.  In my head, the house was “our house” and now there’s a good chance it won’t be. 

We’re praying for wisdom in deciding a bid we are comfortable with, and for God’s will to be done in this situation, whether it means we get it or not. 

And no, this isn’t baby fever talking.  I am not day dreaming about a baby’s nursery, or a little girl’s room.  I want to buy stuff from there for me!   

I was on someone’s blog and they had bought a pretty cool lamp from there, so I decided to check it out.  I was somewhat skeptical.. a kid’s furniture store?  And I looked and now I’m obsessed.

Last summer, I blogged about my dream of having a pink & green, incredibly girly, conducive-to-cupcake-baking kitchen.  Pottery Barn Kids has read my mind.

Just look at this!:

Now, if only Pottery Barn Kids could make these appliances a little bit bigger for me, we’d be all set: