The Holiday Season

The pumpkins are here! Halloween is a little over one week away and we are in full fall swing. I've been keeping the windows around me open whenever possible and today marked out first official fall activity - the pumpkin patch. Picking out our pumpkins, playing in the hay, avoiding scarecrows at all cost and watching a marathon of Halloween movies (thanks, ABC Family!) while snacking on sandwiches and laughing with friends marks the first of our seasonal celebrations. What a wonderful time of year! Here are a few shots from the Patch:

 

 

So take a look at this one from this morning:

 

 

Now take a moment and check this out from Baby Girl's first pumpkin patch visit. Now beathe deep and let it sink in. Yep, she's growing up way too fast!

 

So sweet.

Cuddles with Daddy

 



 

Posing with Mommy

The Campbells came, too! Lily and Tucker has a blast climbing over the pumpkins and then playing around in the back yard after we got home. They are so wonderful together!

 

 

A wonderful day to kick off a wonderful season. I'm sure I've said it before, but as far as I'm concerned, the Holidays begin with Halloween and end with Mardi Gras. That said, happy holidays, y'all!

A Work in Progress

I would like to start by saying that I am useless as an interior designer. I can arrange flowers and create tablescapes with moderate confidence, but when it comes to putting whole rooms together, I'm at a loss. I have no spacial reasoning skills and my eye for color is often a few shades off. But that's the good thing about owning your home, right? I can always start over if I need to. I will say, though, so far I think I'm doing OK!

 

It's a work in progress, but here's a quick update! We've been in the house for a few weeks now, and with me working all day and Jason working nights, it's tough to make a lot of progress during the few hours between! But it's definitely coming along. With the new space, the rooms are still looking pretty bare, and since painting the walls took about 2 weeks (again, we didn't have a lot of time between job shifts), I am 100x more hesitant to start putting things up on the wall than I have ever been before. I feel like every nail I hammer into the wall needs to be a certainty, like putting an unnecessary hole would be an insult and an injury to all the hard work!

 

But, after all is said and done, it is truly starting to feel like home. The furniture is coming into place, and Lily and Mowgli have found their own separate world in our new backyard. There is really is no place like it!

 

 

OK so a few before-and-almost-after pictures!

 



 

 

 

This is the living room before. The walls and mantle were a blue-gray with a red accent wall behind the fireplace.

 

This is the painting in progress. I had a little too much fun putting the monogram over the mantle!

 

Almost finished product! The walls are Hazy Sage from Glidden and the mantle is now a true white to match the baseboard.

 

 

This is the dining room before.

 



 

Dining room almost after! It's a rich blue with warm woods, jewel tones and brass accents (chandelier and switchplates). We are in the process of putting the paintings on the walls and finding a piece to store our china and Waterford. Definitely the most dramatic room of the house - more pictures of this one to come!