A Fantastic Feast

And what a feast it was! As our house is a pescatarian one, for Thanksgiving we served "everything but the turkey" and Dave's famous salmon took center stage. Cedar plank grilled with a jalepeno blackberry reduction sauce. Now that's what I call fantastic! Other dishes included roasted apples and sweet potatoes, stuffing, mashed potatoes, spinach souffle, and a homemade sweet potatoe gnocchi with spinach and mushrooms. Talk about an abundance of food!



Sitting down at our new farmhouse table that I just love, love, LOVE! Look at how gorgeous in festive decor.


So pretty!

Here's another angle of the same

I think we all enjoyed ourselves immensely. Now who's ready for another dinner party???

It's getting there, but slowly, verrrry slowly

After the initial hustle of moving everything, the putting stuff up and starting to decorate is finally starting to happen. In fact, the "Parlor" is nearly complete!

The only thing I wonder about now is the placement of the painting. Dave wanted it really super high, but I'm not sold. 

It looks good in this picture tho'! So elegante!

And Dave's office is fairly well finished as well. He sort of had to with school and all, but it's really looking good in there. the pictures do not do it justice!

He's got so much built in space that his challenge was to not fill it up. Sigh, oh how I understand.

And of course my closet was a priority, but keeping it free of clutter is my biggest challenge!

I've got so many nooks and drawers. But no long space for my hanging dresses. Design flaw!

Moving in

The move did not go very smooth. Because I spent so much time painting, I really didn't get much packing done. We had scheduled the truck and friends to help us move on saturday. And truly, in my mind, so long as the big stuff got on the truck, we'd be fine. Well, there are a few problems with that. 1.) Most of the big stuff or furniture has little stuff on or around it. You can't really get to the big stuff without dealing with the little stuff. And 2.) if you have helpers, you want as much help carrying boxes down 3 flights of stairs as you can get. Me personally, can only carry one box at a time and going down 32 steps to drop off 1 box, turn around and go up 32 steps to get the next box is sloooooooowwwwww moving. Oh how I wish I'd packed more boxes. In any case, most of it got done, but we are still quite a ways off from being done.

Here's a glimpse of making the parlor room pop!

I really thought the chaise would fit in tighter to the bay window, but it's still nice. Those shades really go down far.

Do you see Capone? He found a spot on my orange cube.

Dave loves to unpack and make our aspect shelves look nice.

Capone lurking about...

Still some more tweaking to be done, little flourishes to add, but not too bad for now.

and even Larabee discovered a way to the top and can be king high above!

What's so awesome is that he really loves to roll around up there. I hadn't had a chance to clean it, but he dusted it off so nicely for us. Tee hee...

And from the other side we played as well. He loves it up there!

The Parlor: Another Victory

Even though I knew the color I picked to replace the electric blue would look good, I had no idea just how much I would love it. I think it's absolutely gorgeous!

But I tell you, painting around the windows was no walk in the park. Not to mention, the painter's tape is nearly the same color blue as what I was covering. Kind of a brain tease.

Then I thought the big wall wouldn't be too bad until I remembered how high the ceilings go. It was a stretch, but I made it to the top.

And once we started adding a bit of furniture, it really looked rich and gorgeous!

Loves it!

Coming next- more furniture!

Master Bedroom: Victory!

I am so happy with how the color choice of this room came out.

I was so nervous about painting too much until I saw it. But what a good feeling to see it hit the mark.

It's a pretty good sized room too. Long hallway, keeps going...

So much rolling, but it got (more or less) done. The blue really works with the wood color. It's that mid-tone wood that can look dated (like in the guest room) but with this blue it just works. We decided to put Dave's mexican furniture in there as well.

Here it is with the armoires. Not bad at all. Can't wait to add the masks and other art work!

Guest Bedroom: failed attempt

This is the one room I am not happy about. I so wanted a green color.  Green Tea Ice Cream? Avocado? Celery? Spanish Olive?

Well, I did try with the latter, and it's not working.

The close-up and the far shot.

The thing is, this room gets beautiful southern light, and if it's nice, it really is one of the brightest rooms in the house. Do I really want a darker color in there?

Maybe working with the mauve is the way to go. Do some faux effects and purple it up?

But I think a cheery sunny mellow yellow is probably a better choice. Urgh! I wish I knew what to do!!!

The Master Bedroom

So the brown in this room is really a depressing shade of turd. I know I could just go with an off white and keep it nuetral, or I even considered a sunny yellow. But again, I will be bringing my trusty painted boards and see what works with what.
One of the funny things we discovered about the house, is how many times the bathroom and closet has been madeover. Apparently there used to be a soaking tub where the closet now is. I don't know. It's a pretty sweet closet, but for hanging anything long (like all my long dresses), I will have to keep them in the guest one. Only short things can be hung in this designed space.
But, on a positive note, there are quite a few built-ins. There's about 12 cubes, and 24 shoe holders. Sweet! Now, this photo isn't so bad as far as the color goes, but you know me and I will change it. I really wanted a warm rustic pumkin like orange color, but my fear is that it will blend in too much with all the wood trim in there, as well as Dave's mexican armoires. Here is my attempt at painting orange. I had to make it stippled as the bright orange with this light just looked too bright. And come to think of it, maybe doing it as an effect is the way to do the orange color?

Boy, that really is bright. So, now it's not so much the wood trim that bothers me as the dingy looking carpet. Yes, I'd love to rip it up and put down some hardwood, but that project is going to have to wait.

The more likely winner of the color of this room will be a pale light blue. At least that's what Dave's asking for.

Now that I'm looking at this, I might be leaning towards the blue too. So, that is all I'm planning to paint. It's also a bit ambitious? I mean, if we close tonight and I want to paint before we move, that gives me like 2 nights to get this done. Crap! Not closing last week has really put a crimp in my plans. Cuz you know I haven't even started packing yet...