House Update

We've been hard at work on the house in the last two months, and we are finally done with enough of the projects that I can share some great before and after photos!

Kitchen

Not a lot of change here.  We got a kitchen table and actually managed to get almost everything put away.  This is the next room we would like to paint, but we're stuck on the color.  I'm also planning to change out the window coverings when we paint, but they'll do for now.  

The best change in the kitchen - Chris made me a new drawer to replace one that was seriously broken when we moved in.  Nice work!

Dining/Entry

We painted the dining room a light blue and put up a few holiday decorations.  The Christmas decor is up now, but that's another post!  Also, check out our "Familia Bahrij" tiles from the Azores.

Living Room

Goodbye, yucky dark rust-colored paint.  Hello, bright pretty green!  

Nearly five years after its initial construction, we finally stained and varnished our bookcase.  It makes the perfect TV stand for our new living room.  I will certainly think twice about staining anything again, though.  I had brown fingers for days!

One of our favorite construction projects was the addition of wooden cornices over the windows in the living room and dining room.  We had a similar cornice over our sliding glass door in Kansas and loved the look.  We decided to duplicate it here and love the way they finish the room.  We learned a lot about compound miters during this project.  Most importantly... buy a miter saw.

Master Bedroom

This is by far my favorite room transformation in the house.  Maybe it's because this is the only room I can say is actually finished!  I transformed two cheap shower curtains from BB&B into extra-tall window coverings by adding 24" of dark purple fabric to the bottoms.  We also made the two large purple frames using molding and purple spray paint.  Talk about inexpensive custom frames.  We intended to put pictures in them, but once they were up, we kind of liked they way they looked.  They may get pictures eventually.  We'll see.  If you look really hard, you can also see the pillow I posted about a while back.

Some of you may have heard me tell you that painting the ceiling is never a good idea.  This room is the reason why!  The sitting room off the master bedroom had a lovely children's scene painted on all four walls and the ceiling.  We had to paint the ceiling three times to cover the tree branches.  NOT fun!

Office

Another project we're really in love with is the office transformation.  We added three built-in shelves to hold our eight boxes of text books and notebooks as well as our computer equipment.  Chris modified the front face of the cabinet (where the keyboard pull-out used to be) to create a great desk drawer.  We also LOVE the orange color we chose for the walls.  It may seem a little crazy, but it works perfectly with the color schemes I have planned for the adjacent rooms.

Spare Bedroom

Just a small change in here.  Goodbye pink, hello pretty steel gray.

There are still lots more finishing touches to do all over the house, but the bulk of the hard work is done.  It feels great!!  Now... we get to start on fun outside projects.  That might be the only good thing about winter in Texas - it's never too cold for yard work.

The Big 1-0-0-1-1

Forever Home rolled over 10,000 hits this weekend!  *Cheers*

A big thanks to my friend Ashley.  To quote one of her previous posts, "I've known Amanda Ashley for longer than most of my non-family readers..."  As someone who's known me for a very long time and as a fellow engineer, she understands my fascination with numbers.  She was kind enough to let me know she rang in at number 10,011.  She also gave me the date and time, including time zone, of her visit.  Not to be outdone, my cousin Karen, messaged a few hours later to let me know she was number 10,002 but couldn't get the comment box to cooperate (thanks Blogger!).  I many never know who claimed number 10,000, but that's okay with me.  Here's to another 10,000 visits!

UPDATE (11/30/12):  I received an e-mail from my friend Amanda letting me know she was number 10,000, but ran into technical difficulties posing a comment as well!  Boo Blogger!  Yeah for my readers!!!

I'm Going Pro??

First things first... before you read this post, check out the pageview counter at the bottom of the page.  If  you are within a few visitors on either side of 10,000, please leave a comment with your visitor number.  I'm really curious to see who my 10,000th visitor is!  Thank you.. now on with the post.

Through a series of conversations with my cousin Amy, I somehow managed to land my very first professional photography gig last weekend.  I was more than a little reluctant to have someone paying me for a relatively unknown quantity.  You see, the H-Family wanted family pictures with their two little boys.  I'd only ever take pictures for my friend Jacki (2011, 2012).  She and her husband are adults and will pretty much do their own thing for the pictures.  I'm really just a glorified tripod/remote combo for them.  After some coaxing by Amy and even a few reassurances of "no pressure" from  MomH, I agreed.

I spent the next week browsing Pinterest for photo ideas, tips, and tricks.  I figured the more information I had the better!  All my research made me feel much better, and I think it paid off in both the pictures themselves as well as my editing after the photo session.

On Saturday, I met the H-Family at Mission San Jose, now one of my favorite spots in the city, and spent nearly two hours snapping pictures of two adorable little boys and their parents.  I couldn't have asked for a better family to work with.  Simply wonderful!

I ended up taking well over 500 shots, about 85% of which ended up in the recycle bin.  It turns out the best way to capture little boys in constant motion is to take 10-15 shots in a row and pick the ONE where their eyes are open, no hands are covering their faces, and they are actually sort of looking in the direction of the camera.  I ended up with about 85 really good shots.  Not too bad.

Here are a few of my very favorites. Thank you H-Family for a great photo session!