A few house updates.. warning, this post is long and picture heavy!

I'm not sure that I ever posted pictures of the office/future entry with everything put back. Keep in mind that we still need trim on a lot of our doorways, and I still have things to hang on the walls. But for the most part, this room is in one piece again, and I love it! Eventually my desk will go in the basement. If that ever gets finished! Which it will, come hell or high water, before a baby is brought into this home. I swear it. Anywho, without further ado...

I am so in love with this color!

Oh and the closet door - will be replaced. Hopefully soon. That thing is an eyesore in this room!

And that stool is an extra for our island, which will find a new home someday. Along with the pillow on it. That belongs in our living room, but I can't put it on the couch for fear that the dogs will ruin it. They don't chew things, but Gracie has been known to paw at things to make them more comfortable for her. Or so we assume that is why she does it. Either way, I am madly in love with this pillow, so it stays safely there for now. Eventually I would like to get a chair for the living room, that the dogs won't be allowed on. The pillow will go there.

And I had mentioned a while back that I wanted to get a picture of these three rooms together. I absolutely love how the colors look when you sit in the living room and look through the hallway areas.

So that is that.

Another project we did recently was a stone wall outside. We have a driveway like a stretched out lowercase h. Horseshoe with a straight part next to it. The island between the horseshoe and the road is an area which we have been meaning to tackle for a while. We've been collecting rocks from other parts of our yard for some time, and piling them up in the island. Finally we figured the neighbors were probably even more sick of looking at that mess than we were, so we recruited J&K to help us get it done.

Here is the before, from both angles...

And --drumroll please-- the after!

You should be able to click on the pictures to see them larger.

I am SO proud of us for building that wall! J&J did most of the rock moving, while K and I cleaned out the middle of the island. It was full of leaves, grass, leaves, rocks, leaves, sticks, and more dead wet heavy leaves. Nasty! Our next step with the island will be filling it with loam and planting some things, but that will have to wait until next spring. For now, we were just happy to get a big thumbs up from the neighbors as they drove by. We won't be kicked out of the 'hood after all!

In other yard news, remember our beloved Japanese Maple we planted last April? And remember how it fell over and I nearly had a heart attack? Well I am happy to report that after replanting it, the love fern made a quick recovery and is still standing today!

Here is a picture of when we first planted it:

And a picture of what it looks like now. Granted, we did a poor job of keeping up with the weeds, and the mulch looks the same color as the grass that hardly grew, but dude, check out the maple!!

Again, picture should get larger if you click on it. Look at all those leaves! I am so happy with it; it's so great to look at the two pictures now and see how much it grew!

Finally, back inside I had another project I tackled, with the help of J and my dad of course. This dresser is in our guest room, and will eventually be a key piece of furniture when the room is a nursery. I had been thinking it was my brother's growing up, but it turns out it was actually my father's when he was growing up! So this piece is going to be staying in the family for three generations, which I just love.

However, I didn't love that enough to keep it looking like this. I forgot to take a picture before I took the hardware off, but you get the idea!

We brought it into the shop and sanded it down to be ready for spraying. In the meantime, I began what I thought should be a simple task of picking a handle. Well let me tell you, they sure did stupid things with furniture back in the 50s! The top three drawers' handles were 3" on center. Pretty standard. Well then the rest of them were 3 1/2". It was damn near impossible for me to find handles that came in both 3" and 3 1/2"!!! After a lot of debating, I finally decided to get 3" handles for the top three drawers, and then 5" handles for the rest, and fill the old holes/drill new ones.

It was such a stupid deliberation that literally took a week and a half of scouring the internet, all to settle on the first handle I liked from the very start. I exhaust myself. But, it was worth it.

Here is the dresser, painted white, with new weathered nickel hardware!

That frame is actually going to be hung in the office/future entry, along with a matching frame of Gracie pics. And I've got plans for those lamps, but won't worry about it til there is a baby in my belly.

Which, with any luck, there will be soon! That's right folks, we are finally officially TTC. We are taking it easy, and I am no longer temping, just charting other signs. We shall see what happens.. keep your fingers crossed for us!

~I applaud you if you read this entire post.~