Master Bathroom.

New shower curtain

Kraken

View from the other side

New faucet

Scarab

Pony

Race to the Finish Line.

Poor neglected blog. I just don't have a lot of motivation to wrote posts, for a few of reasons.

There's the fact that the internet is inundated with design blogs, and while I never really intended to be a full-time blogger, I've become somewhat jaded with the whole blogging thing as a result.

Then there's the fact that I've been super busy applying for grad school (I was accepted, yay!) and trying to finish up my project at work before I leave.

Added to that, we are moving so I can be closer to campus.

Soooo, I have been finishing up projects around the house in preparation for moving out. I love the house, but I've started to emotionally divorce myself from it. It's somewhat liberating to be making these updates that I'm not going to be living with long-term, because I want it to look nice but it doesn't need to suit my personal taste.

So here's the To Do list:

Replace faucet and broken soap dispenser in kitchen
Plants for raised bed garden
Finish painting inside trim white
Touch up exterior paint
Paint front door
Paint back door
Repair flooring in master closet
Replace faucets/pop-ups in bathrooms
Repaint kitchen
Repaint master bathroom
New satin nickel toilet paper holder for master bathroom
Replace light fixture in master bathroom
Replace light covers in closets
Move old light fixture from master bathroom to laundry room
Clean grout through out house
Repair shed door
Touch up paint on shed
Stain bathroom cabinetry espresso
Fix rotted eave
Organize garage
Repair torn window screens
Clean and paint air vents
Remove knife racks in kitchen
Remove cat shelves
Trim large oak tree
Patch hole in laundry room ceiling
Replace range and dishwasher?
Powerwash patio?

Living Room, January 2013

Some mediocre cell phone photos of the living room in its current incarnation. I'm not overly fond of the rug, but it was free and is easy to hose off when the dogs track in mud. And new 8' x 10' rugs are prohibitively expensive. I'm going to take down the Mio wall tiles and put up a 2013 Stendig wall calendar above the couch. There's painter's tape on the back door, because once the weather warms up again, I'm planning to paint it black.

Guest Bedroom.

Figured it was about time for a post, and I've never really featured the guest bedroom before. This room is also where my husband sleeps when he has shift, since he goes to sleep super early the night before, and acts as his second closet for all his military uniforms.

Guest Room Before - previous owner

So this is the room as it was staged before we bought it. I know it doesn't look like it, but that particular shade of beige had that icky Bandaid undertone to it that I always bitch about whenever I mention it. And I repainted it beige too, but my beige has no pink to it.

We don't use this room for much, and I don't spend a lot of time in here, so my main goal was to pick an unoffensive, easy to work with color that I wouldn't have to repaint if we sell or lease the house. We found out while replacing the outlets that it used to be fire engine red, so thank god they painted that. If there was ever a color I hated more than Bandaid flesh tone on a wall, it's red.

Entering

View from door - bed

Contessa and Squid by Omar Rayyan

View from window - refinished dresser

View from closet - chair and window

Landscaping.

Sometime at the end of my last semester, I came home and my yard looked like this:

I had been bugging Husband for awhile, wanting to redo the landscaping; take out some of the grass and replace with something more drought tolerant. Husband was resistant to my suggestions until our neighbor the landscaper said he was planning on doing exactly what I've been wanting, and then suddenly Husband was more than eager to rip everything out.

You can see in this photo I borrowed from Google Street View that the landscaping that was there wasn't bad, it just wasn't what I envisioned in my yard. If you've ever raised St. Augustine grass in a drought zone, you know it's finicky and impractical. Alas, it's what we inherited when we bought the house. I have dreams of a grass-less yard one day, or at the least replacing the St. Augustine with buffalo grass that won't wither in the Texas sun.

Original Landscaping

We expanded the plant beds and bought a ton of native/drought-resistant species, like bulbine, salvia, lantana, agastache, and ponytail grass. A fire ant colony built its nest in the agastache roots and killed it, unfortunately, but I plan on getting another one. It's been about four months now, so what's still alive is pretty much established.

Currently

Overall I'm pretty pleased with it. We finally hit our second planting season, and I have a few more plants I'd like to add in. I also want to sow a bunch of wildflower seeds for next year. Technically we are still in a drought, but we had a decent amount of rain last night and as I'm typing this, it sounds like more is coming. I still desperately want to paint the exterior trim and siding, but that's a whole different project.