It's About Time Woman!

That's me talking to myself!  I cannot believe it has been since August of 2011 when I last posted.  Wow.  Bad Jamie.

I was thinking I would try to do a small update on some things that are good and things that I love in my life at the moment.  Then perhaps I can attempt some regularly scheduled programming up in this here joint. Yo boi!

Right now I'm absolutely obsessed with my house.  We've accomplished so much in our short 7 months here.  A few DIYs would include new curtains for the studio/office:

Made this wreath for our front door:

I recovered this cute footstool I've had for a few years with some designer fabric I purchased at Calico Corners:

I also painted a thrifted sewing table for the guest room but guess who doesn't have photos of that?

Of course, I have a few other projects up my sleeve.

My favorite room in the house is the dining room.  I adore it to pieces.

In non-house favorites/fun things in my life, they would definitely include...

This baby:

This music:

This show:

A couple of other faves of the moment are Fresh Market's whoopie pies OMG, South Florida weather in mid-late February (high of 70s and 80s full o' sunshine and blue skies - no S.A.D. here!), JFK conspiracies and last but not least planning my bestie's baby shower from 750 miles away!

That's it!   Until next time and hopefully it will not be another 6 months...

I...I Love You House

It has taken me forever to finally update my blog on our new home!  I was really trying to figure out how to do side-by-side before and after photos in GIMP but that ended with a big #$%! that!

We absolutely love/adore/cherish and are just basically nutzo about our house.  It's the "I...I Love You" House (house numbers are 1143 and apparently back in the day of beepers people used 143 to say I love you).  My boyfriends and I did not use that and I can't remember what we used!

Not that it hasn't already given our fair share of problems in our one month of living here.  For instance, the pool has an algae even the pool company is having a hard time getting rid of and has dumped more than 20 gallons of chlorine in that thing.  The A/C quit working.  The ceiling leaked.  Fortunately, these things have been easy-nothing-major fixes (except for the TBD pool issue). Oh the joys of home-ownership!  We are still unpacking boxes.  Basically, the living areas, both baths, master bedroom are pretty much done.  All the boxes that we don't want to deal with are basically in piles in the office and the guest bedroom. 

What did we accomplish before moving in?  There's new paint on every surface, new baseboards and trim (also painted), lots of caulking, all the doors have been painted, new pantry, linen, coat and utility closet doors. We have new appliances and a good scrub down made the house seem brand new! Ya'll ready for lots of pictures?

Before - Exterior

Before - Exterior close up

After - Exterior painted door turquoise and spray painted the shutters black

After - exterior I love the color! I also love the cute little doormat.  Funny how those details can make a difference.

Before - Entry/living room area

Before - Entire living room area

A

After - Living room

After - new pillows - I love texture

After - entry with Marilyn artwork and vintage record holder

After - entry with new light fixture!

Before - Guest Bathroom - so many wrongs and it was filthy

After - Guest Bathroom - work in progress for sure but so much better!

New Mirror - we didn't have mirrors in either bathroom!

Before - wall on other side of dining area

After - wall o' bookshelves...we used the bookshelves we already had but took the backs off to lighten up the heavy wood color.  I may plan to install heavy duty floating shelves on this wall but this will suffice for now.

Before - Roll Tide kitchen with bad paint job and dirt EVERYWHERE. Appliances didn't work!

After - kitchen - major cleaning, painting the walls a soft aqua and new appliances

Before - master bath (part of it anyway)

After - master bath - paint, new mirror, shelving, towel ring....ta da!

That's about it for now.  We are still working on the master bedroom and I haven't taken after photos yet. 
We still have so much do.  We have big and little projects.  Here's just a few things I have up my sleeve (in no particular order):

• replace garage door
• mount tv in living room
• replace fixtures in guest bath with Oil Rubbed Bronze ones
• purchase new dining furniture, buffet table and light fixture
• finish putting up all the artwork
• reupholster tufted headboard in master
• put up artwork in master
• unclutter and de-box office
• unclutter and de-box guest room
• purchase bed and bedding for guest room
• purchase loveseat that also pulls out to bed for office
• build outdoor table and seating area
• build/buy a firepit and seating
• install reverse-osmosis water treatment system
• landscaping
• new mailbox 

See it's never-ending but oh so much fun!  It already feels like home and a place we will be for a long time.  

The Cart Before The Horse

Side note: my Chinese sign is The Horse. I love horses. Ha! Just kidding. They scare me to death but I think they are beautiful.

I realize The Roll Tide House isn't technically ours yet. Hence the post title: The Cart Before The Horse. However, I would love to share with you some 'before' photos before I overhaul that sucker! And when I say 'overhaul', I mean clean and paint it. Nothing structural or really huge. I hope those aren't famous last words and I end up 6 months into this with a blog post entitled: We've Purchased a Money Pit! Ha!


Can we say blank slate?  It has zero landscaping!  Except for the grass of course.  There is not one single bush or tree on the property! I cannot wait to tackle the exterior!  I've been researching and tagging exterior inspiration photos for some color schemes.  I've considered keeping it white and changing the shutters to glossy black and paint the door a cool Tiffany blue color to painting it green with glossy white door and glossy black shutters! I'm all over the place right now.  First thing is first!  Cleaning!  I think power washing, getting the current landscaping all nice and neat and trimmed (grass is growing over the nice pavers), spray painting the shutters, replacing the garage door and exterior lighting will do wonders initially.  A nice mini-facelift!

Roll Tide House front - I like the front door

The next photo is the dining area.  It's really big compared to what we are accustomed to!  Right now we have a counter-height dining set that sits four people but I plan to upgrade eventually to a normal-height dining set that sits 6 people.  Plenty of room here.  There is also plenty of room for a buffet sidetable that I have wanted forever!  That makes me very happy.  On the right side is the wall o' grasscloth.  We are typically not wallpaper fans AT ALL but I like textury grasscloth.  It wasn't installed properly and the lines do not add up but I plan to paint over it to keep the texture so hopefully you will not be able to tell that the lines are off a bit!

Dining area with sliders and view of the green pool! Ugh!

This is the lovely, teeny-tiny master bathroom.  It was hard to get a photo of the entire room so this is the cabinet with the clear vessel sink, which I just adore.  I do not necessarily like the cabinet since there is hardly any counter space but that is something that can be changed in time.  The shower (not pictured) is huge!!!  It's a double-person shower (bow chica bow wow) and has shower heads on both sides!  Did you notice the bright and lively orange-y/yellow paint?  Yeah, that's going away pronto!  I have no idea what color I want to paint it but I believe something light, airy and zen-like will be just want the Color Doctor ordered.   Did you also notice how dirty it is?  It's gross!  Oh the joys of being empty for over a year.

Master bathroom vessel sink and cabinet

This is the view of the pool from what will be the guest bedroom.  We are truly excited to have a 3rd bedroom!  When we lived in Alabama, we had our spare room (spare-ooome - The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe reference anyone?) turned into an art studio so I could sew and paint and craft to my little heart's content and have the room all to myself!  Our plans are to have the bigger of the two extra bedrooms become our art and music studio and the other smaller room for our guest bedroom.

pool view from guest bedroom

Lastly, another view of the living room.  The front door is original to the house and I really like it but it will most likely need replacing soon.  The door on the coat closet is missing and the lighting fixtures including the ceiling fan need replacing.  Fun times!  I have already picked out an awesome light fixture that would definitely be a splurge-purchase-but-totally-worth-it for the entry.  I hope to find a ceiling fan soon.  I found a few at Lowe's that I liked but plan to search online as well.   Here in South Florida a ceiling fan is a must in a few of the rooms!

Well, that's all for now folks!  I'm chomping at the bit (ANOTHER horse reference?) to get in here and go crazy!  All in good time, my friends, all in good time.

Gucci Gucci

Picture this.

Me just minding my own business.  Cruisin' the internet or reading or eating or drinking.  Then my awesomely amazing husband busts out these song lyrics.  At random.  At any given moment. This is my life.




And of course, I secretly love it.

Update: Operation Humble Abode

Okay so the first house didn't go through because the owner/realtor is in la-la land and asking for $45,000 more than the true comps in the area.  Um, okay...moving on (ha - pun intended)!

The Zombie House didn't pan out either.

This is okay, my dear friends, because we found another house.  Crazy, right?  Not really, considering how many homes are on the market right now.

It's nickname at the moment is the Roll Tide House:

Roll Tide Roll!

It's everything on our list.  Three bedrooms, two baths, living room, dining area, perfect sized kitchen, huge laundry room, one-car garage and an attic.  It's concrete brick stucco which is want you want in Florida so a hurricane will not wash it away.  So we made the next step and put in an offer and guess what? They accepted!  Boo-ya! We are getting a deal - let me tell you!

It's closer to everything! It's 12 minutes from the beach, 5 minutes from Target, 5 minutes from Total Wine, 3 minutes from Publix, 5 minutes to downtown Stuart, 5 minutes to the movies and the mall (the world's worst mall but a mall nonetheless).  It will cut my commute in half yet I'm close to other meeting locales when I'm out of the office.  Have you understood that it's closer, yet? LOL

We had the inspection this morning so there will be some further negotiating but I feel confident this is the one.

Here are a few pics of the inside:

Living Room

Inside Master with the cutest realtor ever.

The Roll Tide Kitchen

Of course, it needs some work but mostly it is all cosmetic.  We plan to have is cleaned professionally, because, it's just plain gross right now - bugs and grimey grime over being empty for a while.  The colors are pretty much neutral except for The Roll Tide Kitchen but you guys know me - that's the fun part!  Picking out colors, new stainless steel appliances, decorating....I love me a challenge!

And it has a ginormous pool!  I will not post pictures of it until it's blue again and not green.  That way you get the full effect....but pool = yah!

Operation Humble Abode

Well, it's only been about 2 weeks or so since Operation Humble Abode began. Our hopes are to find something before or right before our lease is up in November.

If all goes smoothly, it may be much sooner than November! We are going to put an offer in on THE house. I don't want to go into too much detail because I don't want to get too excited or jinx anything. I will say this: it completely fits every-single-bulleted point in this post.

Mr. Fitness keeps telling me to not get my hopes up even though he says it's the perfect house for us too. He knows how I am though. So, I'm trying not to think about it too much - or at least that is what I'm saying publicly. Honestly, I'm thinking it about pretty much every other minute or so.

Please send some good vibes down to South Florida when you think about it.  Purchasing a house is totally big girl, grown up stuff and this time I get to do it while educating myself and not flying blind (like when I was 21 and bought my first house) AND I get to do it with my hubs.

P.S. I bought my first house when the hubs and I were dating and he broke up with me.  I decided if I wasn't going to be with him, then I will just be single for the rest of my life and then I went and bought a house.  My friend Tracy once said, "Jamie, most people go get hammered or do some retail therapy and you go and buy a house!" Ha. Good times.

P.S.S. If this house falls through though, we can always go for the Zombie-proof house so that is a HUGE relief and great Plan B!

Hey-OOOOOO!

How it begins...I don't know who these cuties are but they should start a new show with them...