emerald city diaries – Page 84 – family + adventures + the emerald city

my weekend in pictures.

{what a wonderful forecast!}

{i made tea for my grandmother on friday afternoon. she insisted we use real tea cups & saucers.}

{saturday was opening day for boat season. lots & lots of boats out on lake washington.}

{we took a family walk to the ravenna ravine on sunday morning. sadie decided that she wanted a drink of water. & to take a swim.}

{i attended a bridal blessing on sunday afternoon. what a view!}

{the bride-to-be!}

{we spent the afternoon of cinco de mayo at our friend andy & hailey’s house. they have the most perfect lake house.}

{the view of lake washington & mount rainier from their dock.}

{the weather is finally warm enough for me to break out my summer-side of the closet. very exciting!}

{love to start the week with a fresh bouquet of flowers. #thebestpartofspring}

a year in review {house diys}.

it is hard to believe but we have been in our house for a year – can you believe it? while it doesn’t seem like yesterday that we were moving & packing & unpacking, it definitely doesn’t feel like its been an entire year. {where does the time go?}

i thought since so much of this blog is devoted to the work we have put into the house, it would be fun to do a review of all of our house projects over the last year. {also, this is making up for the fact that i have been horrible about keeping the house tour tab up-to-date.}

here we go! {are you ready for lots of pictures?}

{entryway} – chalkboard paint

{living room & dining room} – paint color, curtains, west elm light

{bathroom} – paint color, Ikea light, vanity

{kitchen} – paint color (walls), painted cabinets, painted countertops, painted tile, kitchen island, roman curtain

{office}

{bedroom} – paint color, roman curtains, closet doors

phew! it is hard to believe we did all of that in just one year. we still have lots of things on the to do list, including some bigger projects that we are saving up for! reviewing all of these projects makes me thankful that we have such a fun house to work on & enjoy. it was scary to make the decision to buy a house last year {it felt so grown-up!} but we have loved every minute of it & learned so much.

what sorts of projects have you completed in your living space? do you ever go back & review all of your hard work?

my weekend in pictures.

{sidenote: my weekend update is backwards this week due to my not-so-quick-to-learn the quirks of my new computer.}

{our rhodie is finally starting to bloom – very exciting! it is strange though that it is coming in bright pink because last year it was white… anyone know why?}

{sunday brunch with old & new friends at americana in capital hill.}

{caught up on some glossies this weekend. yep, that is vogue from march. i am a bit behind.}

{yep, painting again. finally finishing up the hallway that i started last weekend.}

{one of two trips this weekend to the lowe’s paint counter. has anyone else tried to match ceiling paint without a really good ceiling sample? fellow homeowners please do us all a favor & leave a sample paint can of the ceiling paint for the next owner.}

{paint samples to figure out what color to paint the hallway. we went with driftwood grey by martha stewart. grey, i know, surprising.}

{on friday night we celebrated my good friend sascha’s thirtieth birthday at bastille in ballard. happy birthday sascha!}

{you can’t come empty handed to a birthday party, right? cupcakes it is!}

this weekend flew by – did it for you too? i don’t understand how monday thru friday often drag on & on, & then saturday & sunday are gone in a blink! we were busy wrapping up a few on-going projects on the house & trying to tackle our ever-growing {out of control} yard. how was your weekend?

one year house anniversary.

one year ago today – april 27th – we closed on our house & {finally} got the keys! can you believe it? the day we became homeowners.

{first family photo with the house}

{the keys}

{the u-haul. oh my goodness am i glad we don’t have to pack this up & move this weekend!}

i am planning to do a big review post of all of our house projects from the last year on the blog next week so be sure to come back & check it out!

do you celebrate the anniversary of when you moved into your house/apartment/condo, or is that just us?

my weekend in pictures.

{finally arranging on our new bathroom counterspace. i picked up these fun silver mint julep cups from one kings lane to hold cotton balls & q-tips.}

{got diesel for the first time in our new car. the green is fun!}

{paint rollers & drywall – story of our weekend.}

{ikea bins. i was in organizing heaven!}

{finally sorted out the mess in the bathroom vanity. since i don’t have a label maker (yet) i used fun chalkboard labels instead.}

{aaron joined me on sunday morning in my favorite vinyasa flow yoga class. afterwards we noshed on a bagel. carb loading post-yoga is totally legit, right?}

{i had already prepped & primed the hallway before i realized we didn’t have the paint color i needed to finish painting it. alas, i see hallway painting in my future next weekend.}

{i am glad that someone likes & enjoys these upholstered tables. they sit in front of our front window, so sadie has a view of everything in front of the house. plus, she likes to bring her favorite toys up to join her.}

we had a great weekend, but as always it went so fast! there were a lot of house projects which is exhausting but it feels great to get a few things off the checklist. we had terrible wet weather all weekend with the sun only peeking out for a few hours at the end, but we are in for a warm week (seriously, mid to high 60s you guys!). how was your weekend?

bean town.

our thoughts & prayers are with boston today as tragedy continues to unfold. i can’t even believe what i am hearing & seeing. i will be holding my loved ones a little closer this weekend.

xo M

image via

updated closet doors.

now i am sure you are thinking “updated closet doors, doesn’t seem like much of a blog post.” am i right? well, you are. except that we have been “working” on the closet doors for some time now. remember back in november & december when we painted our bedroom? well, that is when we took off the closet doors & they haven’t been up since. needless to say it is a big deal around here that we have closet doors again!

as you can see from the pictures below {the befores} whoever had painted the doors before we moved in decided it would be wonderful to paint all of the hardware too. {seriously, who does that?} so when we took down the doors to be painted from their original yellow to white-ish {the color of our trim} we decided it would be lovely to restore the hardware. once we got the hardware off the doors {hinges, hinge pins, & faceplates} we soaked them in a crockpot full of water & a bit of laundry soap. {the crockpot was a $5 steal from the goodwill that we will only use to soak old metal hardware & other crafty things.} it took two rounds of a low crockpot, but we finally got all of that paint off!

{before}

{after}

what an improvement, huh? it is lovely to have the hardware back on as it should be. you know, all metal-y & not all paint-y. plus, a bonus because i got hooks in the inside of my closet – yay! we picked up three of these hooks from anthro & while they aren’t exactly the same metal as the door hardware, it keeps with the antique-y look. i do put my clothes away, but it is nice to have a place to hang your twice-worn jeans or put together an ensemble ahead of time, don’t you think?

have you been updating any of your hardware {buying new or refinishing old}?

my weekend in pictures.

{sadie was making friends at anthro on friday night. sometimes we have to be careful that she doesn’t fall in love with another person & follow them home!}

{we had a yummy veggie lunch on saturday at chaco canyon.}

{rain, rain go away. we had lightning & thunder that shook the house in the late afternoon on saturday.}

{we hosted some friends for dinner on saturday night & aaron made homemade gnocchi – yum-o!}

{sadie was hunting squirrels, & aaron & i enjoyed all of the spring tulips on our family outing sunday morning.}

{the sun was out – after days of rain this week – so we celebrated with a bit of open sunroof.}

{we had sunday night dinner with my grandmother & saw 42. it was awesome. go see it, stat!}

we had a fun weekend mixed with a few small house projects & some good quality time together – like a dinner date on friday {fancy!}. it is hard to complain about wanting spring to come faster after a sunny day like today, but we have had so much rain the last week that we are ready for a change {though the wet conditions have made growing grass seed much easier}. per usual, the weekend has come & gone so quickly leaving us wishing it was just one more day. oh well, back to the grind. how was your weekend?

updates to the bathroom {mirror & drawers}.

i wanted to share a few more updates to the bathroom. sorry if this feels like i am beating a dead horse, a bathroom is a bathroom, right? this is probably the last post until we do the toilet & tub.

this weekend we aaron worked on the mirror situation that we had going on. we had a medicine cabinet that was recessed into the wall. after aaron was able to remove a few screws from the inside of the cabinet, he pulled it out from the wall.

you can see the lath in the picture below that is up against the wall studs. it appears that some of our walls have dry wall right over the old lath & plaster, & some of the walls are just the old lath & plaster. in the gap beneath where the cabinet was we found a crumpled up newspaper. it was dated 1938. it is sort of hard to believe that the medicine cabinet is that old.

i was originally wanting to put a big antique mirror in the space above our new vanity, but price & convenience led me to target instead. i was able to find a mirror that was big enough to fit the wall space {see target silver beaded wall mirror} & could even have gone a few inches bigger {this mirror is 34” by 28”}. it isn’t perfect, but it works for what we need now. perhaps we can upgrade to something nicer in a few years.

the big white rectangle that you see below is drywall patching that we haven’t had time to prime & paint. because the original medicine cabinet hung portrait {& the new mirror is landscape} aaron had to do a bit of patching. hopefully we will be able to prime & paint it in the next few weeks.

i had mentioned in the original vanity reveal that aaron & my dad had rebuilt the drawers to accommodate the undermount sink. here are some pics of that. they kept the drawer fronts, but then turned the rectangle drawers into squares. aaron also had to reconfigure the drawer supports underneath to accommodate the smaller sized drawers {shown in the last picture}. we are lucky that the drawers are deep enough to hold toiletries, make-up, etc. that we don’t want to get lost under the sink.

have you been shopping for mirrors lately? where is your go-to place?

my weekend in pictures.

{aaron & i made the snapshot of the day at work with a pic taken from our machu picchu trip.}

{double dinner date at ciccehtti, the sister restaurant to my very favorite serafina.}

{this may have been the best play of the night in a fun round of cards against humanity.}

{we dined at portage bay – one of our favs! – for breakfast this weekend. twice. yep, saturday with aaron’s cousin nathan, his wife kendra, & ben & sarah, & then again sunday with our friend jerry.}

{you may recognize that art from a pillow we used to have. well, after sadie murdered the pillow, i salvaged the art & framed it.}

{saturday night at kenmore lanes with nathan & kendra. it was quite the happening place!}

{back to some painting on sunday afternoon. priming & painting our closet doors that finally made it back up after removing & soaking all of the paint off of the hardware.}

{we needed a pick-me-up to make it through our sunday evening grocery trip. thank you starbucks for being in our qfc store.}

{i love the spring as it means fresh bouquets of flowers in the house every week!}

{aaron surprised me with a subscription to real simple.}

we had a really fun weekend working around the house to finish up a few never-ending projects & also seeing lots of family & friends. aaron’s cousin nathan & his wife kendra were in town & we had such a blast with them on saturday. it is hard to be so far away from family sometimes, but awesome when we can all get together! the rain returned to the emerald city as it normally does this time of year. while we are bummed that the temperatures have dropped, we are hopeful that the continuing rain & showers will help our soon-to-be-planted grass seed fill in our lawn in a few rough places. how was your weekend?