Dining Room - The First of our Home Tour

I don't know about you guys, but I love before and after pictures as well as house tours. I could go to open houses all day and still want to see more, I love to see what other people have in their homes, obstacles they've overcome and things that they still need to work out. Our house is a 1 1/2 story built in 1911 and sits on a lot and a half, which is one of our favorite parts. The house itself has come together fairly nicely in the last 4 years since we closed and was pretty...well...ugly to start. The inside was a sea of cream. Cream walls, cream woodwork, cream cabinets. Everything. In most rooms you could see the outlines of where pictures were hung for 30 years without moving and what a "lovely" shade of cream the walls originally started out as.

I'm unsure of when the last of the cream was covered but all that remains is the back porch which will hopefully be gone this summer if the money comes up to finish it off.

So here's the dining room when we were viewing it for the first time

Okay, so I lied, not everything was cream, there was one gorgeous wall of cat puke burlap wallpaper, SORRY. I wish we had more pictures of the dining room upon moving in, but I don't think we do. 

The day we closed, the wallpaper came down because it would literally scrap the hair off your arm if you walked too close. We tore out the carpet and painted the walls, this is how it remained for a couple years, it's still the same color but things have been added and removed.

Progress:

We lived like college students with the bare minimum of "normal" and that TV has long since been tossed out (actually, I think it may still be in the basement). The pack n play was convenient for when our son was young but it's now at my mom's house and we made due just fine with the couch for diaper changes for Sydney. I actually can't believe how long the dining room stayed like this with that ugly table and just...junk in the corners. 

This is how the dining room looks as of today (literally an hour ago)

Okay, I have to talk about the hutch. This hutch is one of my most favorite thrift store finds, it was a gift from my parents after I all but begged for it this past winter. It was a little wobbly and needed wood glue in one spot but overall, was in great shape. They got it for $45 and my dad and Seth added bracing to the bottom, as well as a thin piece of trim to cover it. It screams 1950's and has had my heart since I first laid eyes on it.

 Samson decided to play in the cabinet while I was taking pictures, and here are two family members I forgot to mention yesterday. Our dogs Bandit (fluffy & white) and Lucy (black & white) they always have a way of sneaking into pictures.

The table was in storage at my parents house for I don't know how many years. I kept complaining about our old dining table and chairs which actually were different ones from the "middle years" picture, they were huge and gaudy and falling apart. My parents had completely forgotten about this table until I spotted it in their storage room and took it home with me. The chairs are from a used furniture store 4/$20, I painted them black and added some duck cloth fabric I already had, even though it's not my favorite colors or pattern. The bench was $50 or so from Walmart, it doesn't match perfectly but works and Samson loves sitting on it.

 View from the kitchen, into the dining room and then into the somewhat clean living room, which will hopefully be my next post.

 The other corner with our little black cabinet and the bane of my existence, the nook. Oh that nook. It is the catch all of the whole downstairs, given it fits on the tiny shelves. I've cleaned that thing out countless times, and it always ends up housing things like business cards, pens, glasses, paper, tape, keys, fingernail clippers, etc. etc. etc... Any suggestions on how to keep it organized are more than welcome. Seriously.

And now we come to the electric organ, a completely random and yet loved piece of "furniture" in our house. It was made in the 1960's and served us well in our church until a few years ago when our organist just couldn't play anymore. It's missing the bench and no one knows how to play it properly but when it was offered up for free by our new pastor, we jumped at the opportunity. It was a PITButt to get out of the church and then into the house but once it was in, it just fit. Suggestions on what to hang above and next to it are also very welcome, I never realized how bare some of the walls were until I took these pictures! 

I didn't mention previously, but the flooring was added two years ago, it's just laminate over the existing hardwood, we did it ourselves in a day and have been thrilled with the results. So there's the dining room, as I said, suggestions are welcome and any comments or questions would be great as well! Thanks for touring! 

Our Family's Introduction

Hello! As a first post I thought I'd start with a short intro of our family that is sure to be outdated in a few months time, nothing stays the same in our house.

Hey, that's me too! 

My husband Seth and I have been married for almost 6 years, lived in an apartment in our college town for two years before moving back "home" and buying our first house in May 2010. He has a degree in business administration and is currently working part-time as a tax preparer, he was laid off the end of November where he worked at a farm implement dealership. He's a loving, sweet man with a dry sense of humor and a willingness to at least listen to my crazy schemes. He's my rock and my love.

And then there are my babies. My God, my babies. If there has been anything given to me that I don't deserve and that I can never repay, it's my children. Samson is my boy, he's almost 3 1/2 and "spit-fire" is the nice phrase I'll use to describe him. He's conniving clever, crafty creative, and shifty (yes, I'll leave shifty). While all those may seem like negatives, in him they are why we love him. Always up to something and quick to giggle when he gets caught. He taught me what it meant to love someone unconditionally and without ceasing. Life will never be dull now that he's apart of it.

Next is the sweetest little thing that could ever exist in the world, she is the icing to my cupcake and the sugar to my spice. Sydney Marie was born in December 2012 following a miscarriage and she was just the thing to help us heal. She could not have been more of a blessing in a hard time and there's been many moments where I've cried into her blanket while she's slept on my chest. She loves her brother, playing in water and is quite content with a good snack and a soft blankie to snuggle. She's often referred to at "Neeners" a nickname coined by Samson when she was first born. "Sydney" was originally "Nee-Nee" according to Samson and it has since taken many forms but has finally settled to Neeners and sometimes Baby Neeners.

Then there's the latest and not quite complete addition to our family, Baby Z #3 to arrive in late October. This one came as a surprise and while the timing isn't the greatest, we're thrilled and excited to welcome this little guy or gal. We find out this Saturday at an elective 16 week ultrasound that's my Mother's Day gift from my kids and husband. We're guessing boy, and will be very surprised to see otherwise!

And last but not least is, me! I'm Sam, a stay-at-home-mom to the little urchins and wife to the bigger urchin. I turned 25 last month and was married at the tender age of 19, oh so very long ago. I am a hopeless clutter-bug with the desire to change my unorganized ways with mostly failed attempts. I also have an unquenchable lust for all things dishes, passed down from my mother, the two of us in a thrift store is a recipe for disaster. 

hello!

Before all those things, I'm a born-again-Christian (check out all those hyphens!) and I'm attempting to live a life that is what God intended for me and my family. As the years have gone on it's become more and more apparent to me that there's far more to life than things and money and the last 6 months have shown me how true that statement is. Learning to live on less than half of what we previously made has put many things into perspective for me and I wanted to share my experiences with others going through the same thing. 

So I guess to sum all this up, we're the Z's and this blog will be about the things we know, the things we'll learn, and everything in between.