Let The Renovations Begin!

Maybe it has something to do with the winter time and the fact that I want to be inside…ALL.DAY.LONG. The bug to change the world has hit me…or actually maybe starting a bit smaller is key and that has led me to begin renovations on my home!

As you know I completed the guest rooms minus a few decorating items but at least those two rooms are done and the doors stay closed until people come to visit (hint, hint!) On to the bigger projects where I actually have to focus and take my time because these are the rooms that people actually see a lot more.

First up is the living room!! Pinterest inspiration struck again and I decided with this house I really need to stay in-tune with myself and my style. I am a “coastal” girl and I should just allow that to happen! Light blues, creams, and seashells galore! Gotta bring a little bit of the ocean into my mid-west life here. Thankfully, the German husband of mine is just cool with whatever I do! 🙂

So I saw this picture on Pinterest which you can find it’s original place on the House Of Turquoise Blog here. This is the idea! And although I can’t exactly do it JUST like that it was a great start for inspiration!

Previous walls in the living room were in my opinion dark blue. Nothing wrong with dark colors, it just started to depress me. There is only one large window and two smaller ones in this room. Not a whole lot of natural light pouring through so it was important to me that we lighten it up…A LOT!

I fought with the idea of paint colors and finally landed on THE color. Glass Slipper by Benjamin Moore. I spent hours searching for the right color but every one of them was either too “baby blue” or “too dark.” This color by Benjamin Moore has a hint of green in it so its not going to give you that newborn baby room look.

So all in all it took me to do the entire room in about a week! I know, that seems insane but first, I was all by my little self doing this. I had to take SO many breaks because I also have dog duty and other house duties to attend to. On top of that, I’m scared of heights so being on a ladder was just REALLY challenging for me!

End result – Exhibit A:

Harley loves his new space 🙂 He’s going to be 5 tomorrow! Everyone say Happy Birthday to this sweet, cupcake!

End Result – Exhibit B

So as you can see this simple change turned the room into something different. I actually like to sit in there all day now. No…wait, I actually don’t sit around all day. I’m off doing very productive things because that is what housewives do! 🙂

I painted the panel above the fireplace white because I’m having a hard enough time figuring out what to put there. A picture? A clock? An abstract piece of art? A canvas print? It’s not easy! But at least it doesn’t look like its a focal point anymore. So maybe whatever goes there won’t be THAT important.

Also, I painted ALL of the molding…ALL of it.  I couldn’t bare the thought of trying to scrub out all the crayon marks, old pizza, and several other questionable substances I found in my journey.  Another reason why I shouldn’t have children…my OCD does not allow for ANY messes! But doing that simple little thing made this room look like it was just built. Almost. It gave it all a bit of much needed makeover and I’m feeling complete!

Next up: DECORATING!! Will be added a bit of greenery, end tables, lamps, curtains and something for those shelves and above the mantel. Its all getting there! Slowly but surely!

Then on to: DINING ROOM/KITCHEN! Will be adding backsplash, brightening it up as well, and re-staining the cabinets! Wish me luck!

Anyone have any ideas for the space above the mantel? Would love to hear what you got!!!

Until next time, Readers!!!! xoxoxoxoxo

A Writer’s Heaven

Finally….a place for me to sit and do what I LOVE to do most! 🙂 AN OFFICE!!!

I know I’ve been talking about this for months and how excited I am to show you guys. It’s still not 100% yet but I’m working with the small space. Got the furniture bits in there and now it’s time for all the decorations/plants/etc. So…Here it goes!

After much discussion I decided to go with dark gray walls and white furniture. Seems to be “in” for the moment so I went with it! Funniest bit was I worked forever on painting this room. First coat didn’t really dry as dark as I wanted but I was ok with it. Went back to the store to get more paint, started painting and found they were two totally different colors. The girl who mixed the paint the first time around completely gave me the wrong shade of gray. THANK YOU, MORON! So, I decided to leave the largest wall as the lighter gray and the rest as the dark gray….and this is what we have!

Walking into the office you see (right side wall is lighter gray)

Then we have the cubed bookshelf. It’s my stock of English books! 🙂 And a few of Toblerone’s. I told myself I would go back and read all of these again. Doesn’t hurt! I definitely need to add to it though, no empty spaces!!!

This picture is amazing. Everything old is what I want in this room and this is a scene of NYC in 1932. Not sure you can see it so good because of the glare (SORRY!) but the harbor is missing quite a few buildings and this is long before World Trade Center was built. Back before all the terror and Prohibition was just ending. Just a great piece if you ask me!:

And of course this is my favorite part so far. Right now there are pictures of my grandparents and family – all B&W pics of course. It was these pictures that gave me the idea for the room so I went with it. I felt I needed a special place for them to be displayed. Soon this will be overflowing with them and from Toblerone’s grandparents too. Just have to make the copies but it will be all different sized frames all overlapping one another…chaotic…because that’s what family is. A whole lot of love and chaos and in this case – a mix of cultures and memories:

So, that’s what I have so far. I’ll be adding more vegetation to the room to add some color to it but for now it’s my little hole in the house. It’s my sanctuary to write and have peace of mind. It may not be anyone else’s Heaven but for me…it does the trick as far as inspiration goes.

Let me know what you think and what ideas you have for other decorations to liven it up a bit!

Until next time, Readers!!!! xoxoxoxoxo

An Update From Germany

Let’s see, where to begin.

1.) Our Garden situation. Ha. I realized there is no possible way for me to write this in a nice way. The company that was supposed to come JULY 1st (!!!!!!!!!!!) obviously did not. It’s been 17 days and during those 17 days we had a heck of a time trying to get in touch with the owner of the company. He screened our calls, didn’t return messages. We turned on “stalker mode” and called 4 or 5 times a day. Finally, a not-knowing secretary answers the office phone and gives us the dudes mobile phone number. HA! I’VE GOT YOU NOW, SUCKER!

Well, he fed us a million excuses as he choked on his words in fear. Saying that one of the workers was out due to a sick father, another worker had some other ridiculous thing like he lost a leg in a bread cutting accident. Who knows. Needless to say, the dude said he would call us on Friday (that was two days ago) with a full report and a date of when he would be able to start. I’m sure you guessed it, he didn’t call. I’ve decided every day he goes without calling or starting, I’m knocking off 500 Euro from the contract of 21,700 Euro. At this point, he’s down to 15,000 Euro. I hate unreliable people. It’s not my thing. Either way, it needs to be done by August 27th because I’m throwing a big party here and I promised people the jacuzzi would be up and running. And it will be – god willing!

2.) My language classes – you know the one that is for a year, 25 hours a week, 5 hours a day, every day – will start in the beginning of September when the school holiday is over. I thought I was looking forward to it and a bit of me is, however, it’s just an awful long time to be in a classroom when I have enough to do at home. I mean, seriously, I would rather be cleaning or something like that. (I have housewife syndrome!)

3.) Because of the undisclosed reason that is keeping me quite busy lately I’ve decided that since I won’t be traveling much (our trip to the US has been cancelled for now due to this as well) I will do a typical 30 day Blog challenge. Why not? Get to know the sugar behind the spice, ay? So it’s a new topic, every day for 30 days. I may change a few of them because I think they are ridiculous.  I will start this next week I think on Wednesday or Thursday probably and go from there. I regret to say that the majority of my blogs for possibly the next 6-8 weeks won’t all be about Germany and all the sites and crazy ways of the Germs, but I want to give you something! So, like it or not, thats what you’re gettin! 🙂

4.) I’ve decided to ask around and find the best and easiest way to make an Erdbeerkuchen  directly from a German because I have a lot of traffic checking out my blog on the matter in which I didn’t get into specifics. I only threw around my frustration with reading directions in German and took pictures. So, that will be coming soon as well!

5.) I’ve been dying to show you guys the outcome of the office here but it’s not entirely finished. “We’ve only just begunnnnn.” (Singing the Carpenters in my head) The painting is done and all that but I really didn’t want to show you guys until all the pictures were on the wall and we had shelving and what not. We have a desk, a chair, a rug, and the rest is boxes of books that need a home! I may show you the before and during. At a later date you get the “After and completed pictures.”

6.) I’ve decided to find some sort of Blog Ads – brings in more traffic and the like. Anyone have any good suggestions? Ones that are free would be better obviously! 🙂 This would also motivate me to write more if I knew I had people coming to the site!

Thats the update for now. I’ll be writing more later. I PROMISE this time!

Until next time, readers!! xoxoxoxoxo

Landscaping Without a Green Thumb!

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that our house was built and designed by the mayor of this town. He ran out of money and had to sell. Clearly his eyes were bigger than his wallet. Obviously, not the smartest cookie in the jar because he drilled massive holes in our walls and I mean a lot of them!! Reference: the blog about the bathroom and see what I’m talkin about. Awesome-sauce!

Along with many other things that need to be finished, we have to design and put up a big ole chunk of moola to get our yard finished. Below are some pics that I took of what it looks like on the outside. We’ve got a lot of work to do. You’ll see the weird rock crate thingys they use as decoration here. Absolutely not. It looks like an unfinished jail or something!! Toblerone states it has something to do with the water or something, but I really don’t care. I’ll slip the landscaper a 50 and tell him to rip it right outta there! Nuff said!!!

The front deck

To the right side of our front deck

Directly behind the house with sheds

Driveway full of dirty small rocks

Backyard view

Crazy crated rock things...

Front door and steps

Our backyard - all the way to the concrete wall

Front of the house with rock crate thingys

I don’t have a green thumb, as they say,  but I would like one. I’m not sure where to begin and how to really plan for a garden. I saw this picture in a Pottery Barn and fell in love with the simplicity of it and the globe lights above. I have to have this and I will. We have a small backyard so I’m trying to figure out how to do this without taking up too much space! Maybe instead of a 10-seater table, I’ll break it down to 6 or so…need some tall trees placed strategically, beacuse oh how the Germs love their sunshine!

Is that not the cutest thing? We obviously don’t have too much privacy as most of the houses are very close together, so I’m contemplating a large fence or thick trees.  So far for sure we need a space for the jacuzzi , I want a vegetable garden, and a small pond with a waterfall area, and a place to sit and eat/drink outside with friends. Too much? Maybe so….but I think we can make it quaint without cluttering it too much.

We have two sheds out back where it’s very shady all the time so I’m thinking we may remove one or both of those as we have SO much space here in the house and the garage.

Who has some ideas for me? Any one have ideas for the space we have?

Looking through some options that they advertise here, it’s quite different. Take a look at some of the houses here and how they do their gardens. In some cases, it’s like thay don’t want any grass whatsoever. Hmm…different.

Here’s some pics I found on the web but it doesn’t really give you the full idea of what I’m looking at. I have to pick a certain stone, then decide on the size, the color, the placement, the design….oy! This crap is for the birds! I say, we hire a designer and I tell them what I want and they can do it, I’ll go on vacation, come home and BAM! It’s perfection!

Seems to me I’ll be following a very modern style, thats pretty much all they really offer other than some Zen garden stuff, not a fan of that either. Oh well! We’ll see how persuasive I can get with some English style gardens 🙂

We should be narrowing down choices for stones for the driveway soon and also have the guy who originally set up the rocks out front to come and check it out for us. He originally didn’t want to talk to us – come to find out Mr. Mayorpants didn’t pay the company their money for what they did. He probably won’t be elected into another term.

Modern vs Traditional

Ah, yes…the big question when it comes to decorating your home. I think I may have mentioned but incase I didn’t…here in Germany, buying a house is a little different. For one, you take all your light fixtures, with you…secondly, your entire bathroom set-up (ie: mirror, cabinets, etc.) also get ripped off the wall and you take it with you. What in the world is that?!

So, the previous owner ripped everything out of the bathroom except the tub, toilet, and two sinks, leaving us with a million huge holes in the tiled walls…awesome. (And to think the previous owner was the mayor of the town. Smart man.) Shown here:

If you look closely you can see what I mean with the holes. Looks insane. (Sorry for the mess, we currently have no cabinets or anywhere to store all of our crap..aka..my excessive amount of products.)

So, off we went on a quest to find the perfect bathroom set. Something, I never thought I would have to do. But hey, taking it all in stride. The majority of what Germany has to offer is fairly modern. I always considered myself to be traditional or not totally old-fashioned but a little bit of vintage tied in. You know – “homey.” However, being here and feeling a bit brainwashed by looking at it daily, I have given into a modern style set. Thats ok though because I am TOTALLY in love with it! Expensive…but awesome!

We are having it custom made by Leonardo Living to our liking but this is the store models to give you an idea:

Directly in front of you is the we are purchasing. It’s one sink (instead of the two we have now) and more counter space and obviously the drawers below. LOVE this. It’s simple but has great space for all my “crap.” The mirror is very large and is equipped with the perfect light – aka. doesn’t show any flaws. Thank you, MIRROR!

Obviously, I need more space than this so we will eventually order an additional cabinet for the right side of the counter but thats for another day. We did purchase two side shelves that attach to the mirror. Shown here in white but ours will be gray to match the drawers of the sink.

Love the idea of the “sunken cups” I didn’t know what else to call them but these buggers are VERY expensive. The unit includes one (1) little shelf…each shelf is 72Euro. What the?!?! The unit plus one shelf is somewhere around 170Euro…stupid. You would think all of this would be included! Nope…not at all. Jerks.

So after my shock of that…we also will be purchasing two towel holders that are extendable, shown below ever so lovely by Toblerone. lol. He’s the next Vanna White.

Each is also something like 80Euro each. I don’t even know anymore..ridiculous! So I told him to wait on those and we will find a similar store to Home Depot and do it ourselves for a fraction of the cost.

After all of this, we are getting all pieces for around 2,200 Euro I think, plus 150Euro gift card to the store, plus delivery and installation for free. Fantastic! I should point out that delivery and installation are not always free here. It’s a real pain to get them to do this. Thank goodness Tobes is able to translate and get what we want.

During all this, we were given capuccino’s…how cute! I could get used to this!

Did I mention this would be 6-8 weeks before we see this?!?! OY!!!!