kitchen: better late than never

We've been in this house for, ahem, a year and we haven't really done as many projects as I had imagined.  It's hard, it's overwhelming, and staying on top of 2 acres of yard is no small task when you are terrible at it.  Seriously, our yard is insane and needs so much work right now.  It also seems like every time we talk about a new project (bedroom furniture, new carpet) we are hit with a four-figure bill for removing a family of raccoons from the attic and repairing all of their damage.  I wish this wasn't true.  Seriously though, before we moved in, I imagined our weekends being like a Lowe's commercial: lots of smiling, laughing, and "after" pictures.

Yea.  What those ads don't show is all of the crappy prep work, moving the furniture and random crap that is everywhere in your house, and the endless clean-up work.  They don't show the times when your husband knocks a hole in the drywall with a hammer.  Twice.  I'm also not sure how these people have so much energy on a Saturday morning after working all week?  I feel like this is a more accurate representation of a Saturday morning:

Now we now have about six months to get some serious painting/decorating/general work done.  What can I say?  I have always worked better under a deadline.   One room that I wasn't able to deal with after we moved in was my pistachio-green kitchen.  My parents helped us repaint and I decorated that room last September.  Hooray!  One room down.  Only eight to go.

Kitchen/Breakfast Room: Before

Kitchen/Breakfast Room: After

A Bicycle (Key Rack) Built for Two

I have officially bought the first item for the house.  Huzzah!  While feeding the monster this weekend, I came across a pin featuring this awesome key rack from Etsy:

It's totes adorbs!  See, bicycles built for two (bicycle built for twos? whatever.) are an unofficial "thing" for me and Wes.  Actually, it might be an official thing.  It started at the beach in Hilton Head in 2008:

We were babies!  Just kidding, we look the same.  I still have those pants.  We have continued our tradition in St. Simon's:

 In case you are keeping score, doing something twice still counts as a tradition.  And in our defense, we intended to do it in Gulf Shores last year, but couldn't find a rental place and also it was raining and we may have spent too much time at the bar.  It's still a tradition, though!

Our awesome rehearsal dinner actually had a bicycle-built-for-two theme.  It was pretty great, and we scored this personalized print!  This may be hung over the key rack, who knows?  The possibilities are endless!

The Pinterest Monster

We are less than one month away from closing on the house.  I am going to spend the next month having that feeling you have on Christmas Eve when you're so excited you can't fall asleep.  Y'all still have that feeling in your thirties, right?  Anyway, we are excited.  I'm so excited that I have already created approximately nine Pinterest boards dedicated to various areas of the house.  This is me:

When Pinterest attacks, it is mighty.   It starts out as a friendly, harmless let's-just-browse-while-drinking-my-morning-coffee, and then all of a sudden it's an hour later and you're late for work.  True story.  Pinterest is at the same time wonderful and terrible.  Pinterest will teach you how to make delicious chicken.  Pinterest will revolutionize your relationship with broccoli.  It will show you amazing outfits with perfect accessories that in a million years you will never own.  However, Pinterest will also trick you into making a banana omelette by telling you they are pancakes.  Pinterest will convince you that ridiculous things are ingenious, like taking your bagel to work in a CD case and the classic using-a-dustpan-to-fill-up-a-bucket trick.  It will tell you seven hundred ways to a flat belly, none of which will make you look like that girl in the picture.  Pinterest also makes it very easy for misattributed quotes to "go viral," as the kids say.  (P.S., Olivia Wilde said that one.  In Cosmo.)   And don't get me started on parties.  Pinterest will unapologetically almost spoil a sweet boy's first birthday party.

But perhaps Pinterest's worst transgression comes in the form of home decor.  People don't live like this this, right?  These kitchens are not real.  No one has the thing where the cutting board pulls out and has a little hole for the trash to go straight into the trash can.  It's exhausting to see these things when you live in an actual house that regular humans inhabit.  Not a house with a tiny built in playhouse under the stairs.  (really? is this a thing?)  Or this house which is totally photoshopped and if it isn't, I'm moving tomorrow.  How is it possible to browse those boards without going completely insane?

See generally here, here, and here.

So the challenge here is to keep the Pinterest Monster at bay with a healthy dose of realism.  I have a great house to work with, but we don't live in a fairy tale.  I'm pretty sure that I can't DIY myself into a treehouse filled with endless wine fountains and an infinity bathtub.  Pretty sure...I haven't run all the numbers yet.  But even if I can't plant a tree in our master bedroom and construct a bed out of natural wood and a hammock, I am not a failure.  Our house will still be lovely.  But in the meantime, dear readers:

Here I am!

Apparently I am blogging just enough lately to keep me from completely deleting this blog.  Throughout the many iterations of this blog (I keep reinventing it...sneaky or indecisive?) I have come to learn several things about myself:

• I started blogging in my twenties.  I am no longer in my twenties.
• I like to alternate between blogging about mundane things and making sweeping, profound observations on Life (capital L life - big stuff).
• I'm probably trying to be a little profound in this post, but just be cool, everyone.
• I like cats.  I am obsessed with my cats.
• I can't run.
• Weight ain't nothing but a number...that tells you how much you weigh.  And is directly related to your cheeseburger and potato chip intake.
• I just can't blog unless I have something to blog about.

So I'm here to tell you that...wait for it...at long last I have something to blog about!  I know that you just breathlessly uttered "what could it be?"  (You've been waiting for this!)  Well, since you asked, it's a little place that looks like this and in one short* month will be ours!

Inside this sweet little gem (which I like to think resembles the house from Father of the Bride...I said resembles, people) awaits numerous poor paint colors, outdated bathrooms (including: The Bathroom Without a Shower and a Toilet So Close to the Tub that Your Knees Touch the Edge and Did I Mention It Has Carpet), more questionable carpet, a sprawling bonus room adorned in peeling wallpaper, and a plethora of what will be empty rooms until we can afford to fill them up.  You, dear blog readers, will be in for a treat as I document each delightful and probably-most-of-the-time boring step as we transform the inside of this home to match the beauty of the outside.  Which is totes amazing.  If you think about it, it's kind of like the opposite of the Biggest Loser.

Also, I plan to talk about our cats.  You're welcome in advance..

*This month will probably feel like agony.  Two-bedroom-apartment based agony.