Well, to look at the blog, you'd think that we haven't been doing anything around here!  The truth is that a lot has happened in this house and the old house in the past couple months, but I've been to busy to talk about it. 

So, here are some pics of how the dining room is looking now.  They're a little yellow, but post-processing color correction was not going well, so bear with me.

This is what it looks like from the front door.  Our friend Julio calls it "The Board Room" because of our excessively long table.  We bought it at the Amish Showcase when they were going out of business.  It has 4 leaves, so it can be made smaller, but we were told that if you store the leaves away in the dark then the wood will age differently in color, and when you put the leaves back in, they will be a different color.  So, we decided to leave all of them in and take them out when needed so the table fits the number of guests.

The room is huge... the dining room is actually supposed to be the next room over, but that one is really too small, so we switched them. 

This is a view from the other end of the room, back toward the front door.  I got the curtains at Hancock Fabrics... a spectacular find thanks to our friend Sarah who tipped me off.  Do you know how hard it is to find true red (not burgundy) curtains?? 

This is the triptych I got on Overstock.com.  It was originally for the kitchen but it was too big, so we basically changed the whole plan for the dining room to go with it.  The walls are SW Humble Gold with a little brown added, and mixed in Behr Premium Plus.  The ceiling is a custom color I had mixed to match my ivory dishware.

You get a better view of the chandelier here... it has tiny gold leaves on it.  The curtain rod also has leaves it, but I forgot to take a picture of that.

This is our latest addition, a watercolor painting from a local artist that we found at the Pikes Peak Arts Fest over 4th of July weekend.  It brings in all of the different colors in the palette, including the green, which I am trying to work in with the red and gold... more on that later.  We don't like the frame, so I will be trying to stain it a different color at some point.

And finally, going back to the front door, this is what you see when you first come in... a hand-painted plate I bought in Italy several years ago.

Well, that's it for now... I will post more (hopefully better) pictures in the future.  I'm still working on wall art and table decor.  We also may end up putting my corner curio cabinet in there, we'll see! 

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Today was a very successful day over at the house.  I painted samples of the colors we chose for the dining room and they look great!  So, it's official: Jersey Cream on the ceiling and Humble Gold on the walls.  It really brightens up the room, and looks great with the wood trim and the painting we are going to have in there.  The painting looks a little different in real life than it does in this picture, the background is not so orange.

I also primed the inside of the kitchen closet (that was painted hunter green, royal blue, and olive green... I'm convinced the previous owners were color blind.)

Kevin put together the kitchen island we got from Meijer.com.  It's a natural wood color, but I bought it with the intent to stain it to match the cabinets or paint it a color that coordinates with the walls.  I guess I'll try staining first, and if that doesn't work I'll paint it.  But that's a project for later.

It's pretty good quality for being so cheap... it does have a hairline crack in the top, but I can fill it in with wood filler.  I love the paper towel holder on the side.  The other side has small shelf for spices and a towel bar.  The top extends over the back further than the front so that you can sit there with bar stools if you want to.  We plan to keep it against the wall most of the time, but it has wheels on it so it can be moved if need be.  I will be changing out the hardware at some point, too.