Before & After Mildly Extreme Home Makeover

After many weekends of hard work, deal finding, and magazine flipping here are a few house projects we've completed on our long list to make our house a home. It's been fun working together to figure out how a chair rail is installed, what the "right shade of maroon" is for our dining room and how our furniture works best for us. We've laughed alot, cursed a few times (me) and grown closer as a couple. We've got lots more in the works!

Office Before:

Office painted

Office with chair rail and old college furniture but minus plantation shutters (not that you can tell).

Office completed with plantation shutters. Now obviously it's not technically an office yet as there is no furniture in the room, but patience...

For now just enjoy the walls and windows...

Formal Dining Before:

Formal dining painted minus chair rail and shutters:
Partial chair rail, dining table, no shutters:
Chair set:

Formal dining with completed chair rails, shutters, and table with chairs.

Now all that's missing are the accessories...

Living room minus accessories:

Yes we've since fixed the fact that the coffee table and tv stand are off centered. :)

Rainy Sundays

It's been a while since my last post. So much has happened since that last post!

My mom and grandma are officially moved into their new home! After 2+ months of living out of our guest room she was very ready to have her own home and to have my grandma join her up here. They're adjusting well and having fun decorating their new home and exploring the big city.

This past week was in fast forward. We spent most of the nights after work unpacking the two huge PODS my mom filled up to move here. We also celebrated Tony's 26th birthday with a few dinners out and some very delicious Snicker's cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory (no pictures...sorry we ate it too fast!)

Today was a rainy, cold day...just like I like them. :) We started the day catching up on our dvr'd shows and after an hour or so of that forced ourselves to go to the gym. I'm so glad we did that because after some time on the treadmill and lifting weights our moods were uplifted and we were pumped to be productive the rest of the day. Thanks endorphines!

When we came home it was lunch time so Tony got to fixing his world famous grilled cheese sandwiches while I started making chocolate chip cookies (both excellent ways to celebrate a successful trip to the gym). Here's a blurry outtake from this event.

Yes the remote is next to the amazing cookie dough. That would be me catching up on Real Housewive episodes. Yay for the OC ladies coming back soon!

I could have stopped right here and never even put these guys in the oven. But I did...and they ended up looking like this:

Afterwards Tony got to painting touch up spots in our formal dining room and office. This weekend we finally painted the chair rail we installed many months ago. After waiting months to get the plantation shutters installed in our windows so that we could finish the chair rail next to the windows it is complete! Pictures to come soon! Here is a look at the hubby working hard!

While he was doing that I started prepping food for our meals this week. My latest adventure in being efficient is to cook as many meals as I can on Sundays so that the week is less stressful. Today it was prepping for beef stew tonight (great weather for it!) and making the lasagna ahead for tomorrow night. I'm loving the feeling of coming home on a Monday and just preheating the oven and sticking that night's dinner in for a little. Makes me dislike Mondays just a little bit less.

Anyway, here's the lasagna obviously before it hits the oven tomorrow night. Yes, still watching the dvr. Only then I think it was the Rachel Zoe Project. Tony's just ignoring it in the other room while painting.

We're off to take a nap on a day that's perfect for being lazy! Happy Sunday everyone!