Happenings

In a three short days I will arrive in this happy place...Strolling down these streets...
Having dinner and drinks at the Allen Street Grill...
And resting my head at the Nittany Lion Inn...

Wishing you a Happy Holiday full of happiness and cheer!

Counting down the days...

Only three more days until I get to see this caaaaaute face!

Christmas Decorations - Living Room

Okay this is it, finally, the last of our Christmas decorations. There isn't really much in the living room besides our stockings and two silver Christmas trees. Since the dinning room is open to the living room the decorations from in there help bring the Christmas cheer into the living room. Hopefully next year I'll have a few more Christmas 'things' to add in here. Until then this is what we have...
I do want to point out that I did try to put garland on the shelf with the stockings, but I ended up breaking multiple ornaments because I couldn't get it to stay up there.

Christmas Decorations - Dinning Room

Christmas Decorations - The Tree

Christmas Decorations - Family Room

Snow Storm

Well the meteorologists were right, there was A LOT of snow coming into the northeast. From the time I woke up until I went to sleep, it snowed. We probably got 8+ inches. I thought I would take some pictures just so the rest of my family, who lives in the south, can see. See what you missed guys?

Chest of Drawers - Before & After

While visiting Pennsylvania back in September I ended up coming back home with a small chest of drawers that I thought would look perfect by our front door. The chest of drawers had a lot of marks and scratches, but with a little TLC I was able to give it a second life.

Before

With my free quart of Glidden Polished Pewter paint, a small roller brush, some polyurethane and four new drawer pulls, I am IN LOVE with the final result. Oh, and I can't forget the sander I borrowed from my older sis that helped smooth out the scratches. THANKS JESS!

After

It looks way better in person. Trust me! Oh and please don't think about the fact that it took me almost three months to do this. I'm a busy girl...sheesh!

I started this post last week and wasn't able to finish it until now so if you want to see my Christmas Decorations - Family Room go HERE.

Christmas Q & A

A fun post until I have a chance to upload the rest of my Christmas pictures.

Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping paper

Real Tree or Artificial? I always had an artificial tree growing up, but Sven and I decided to go with a real tree for our first tree and I love it.

When do you put up the tree? Right after Thanksgiving

When do you take the tree down? I plan to take it down after New Years.

Do you like eggnog? It's alright

Hardest person to buy for? My dad

Easiest person to buy for? Mabry

Do you have a nativity scene? No

Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail. This was our first year sending them out, so more will definitely be sent out next year.

Favorite Christmas movie? Home Alone and Miracle on 34th Street

When do you start shopping for Christmas presents? Whenever I see a good deal on something I want to get someone.

Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? No

Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Christmas cookies!

Lights on the tree? Of course. I want to know who doesn't put lights on their tree.

Favorite Christmas song? Silent Night

Travel at Christmas or stay home? Travel, it's been so long since I haven't had too.

Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? YES!

Angel or star on the top of the tree? Star, It was my sister's

Open presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning? Christmas morning, and sometimes one on Christmas Eve Night.

Most annoying thing about this time of the year? Trying to find a parking space at the mall.

Favorite ornament theme or color? I love the traditional red, green, gold and silver.

Favorite food for Christmas dinner? We snack all day!

What is your favorite Christmas tradition growing up? We would always play the new game that we got on Christmas morning after breakfast.

What is your favorite Christmas memory? Always making up plays with my two sisters to perform on Christmas Eve.

Holiday Treat

I think I might just have to take a short break this afternoon for one of these fun holiday treats. Yum!

starbucks.com

Christmas Decorations - Family Room

Since I'm a 'newbie' at holiday decorating I don't have much, decor that is. So this year I decided that instead of spending major dough on pricey before Christmas decorations I would work with what I had and only make minimal purchases. I also decided it would be in my best interest to create a list for what I would try to buy at the after Christmas super sales so I don't find myself in the same place next year.

Christmas Decorations - Dinning Room
Christmas Decorations - The Tree

(Spell check is not working, so please ignore any misspelled words...k, thanks!

Christmas Decorations - The Tree

This past week Sven and I decided to go get our Christmas tree at one of the local tree lots near our house. When we got there two nice men greeted us and told us everything we needed to know about the different types of trees, how to care for them, etc. It didn't take Sven and I too long to find ours, which was good since it was F-R-E-E-Z-I-N-G outside.

Once we got home we got right to work putting on the lights and ornaments.

Being our first tree I'm happy with the way it turned out. I do want to add some more lights though for next year.

Since this is our first Christmas tree together, Sven had the idea to make the left over trunk that he cut off (to shorten the tree) into an ornament. I added some red ribbon to it and wrote "Betsy and Sven 2009" on the back.

Yesterday some of my coworkers came to visit our house for the first time and they gave us a "New Home 2009" ornament, which I absolutely love. Tomorrow I will show you the rest of the decorations in the family room. Stay tuned...

Christmas Decorations - Dinning Room

Christmas Decorations - Dinning Room

So it only took ten minutes to upload TWO pictures. Therefore I am going to HAVE to break up my Christmas decoration post into multiple Christmas decoration posts, because I do not have the patience to wait for ummmm, EVER.

Anyways, here is our dinning room decorated for Christmas 2009. I still want to get some gold chargers, but if not this year I will definitely have them for next year. I like the simplistic look of our table...pat on back...so besides chargers I am very happy with it.



Oh and P.S. That is our new dinning room fixture. Sven and I got it a couple of months ago for a steal. I think we paid $24 for it. Not too shabby.

It's been awhile...

So it's been awhile since I last posted. I just haven't had the motivation to post, especially since I don't have much to post about. However, now that the holidays are here I should have more to talk about. To see how I spent my Thanksgiving vacation go HERE. Tomorrow I will post about my Christmas decorations. So stay tuned...

Gunnar

As most people already know, Sven and I got a 6 month old puppy two weeks ago. Sven found him through a rescue here in town. He is a Plott Hound/Pittbull mix, but if you ask me I think he looks like a lab. He has kept us on our toes these past few weeks with potty training, daily runs/walks and constant playing. He is also a chewer. So we have to keep a close eye on him at all times. Even though he can be a stinker at times, I think it's safe to say we're both glad to have him.

House Update

It's been awhile since I did a home update so I thought I would show you some of the things that we've done this past month. (Disclaimer...my camera is really old so my pictures are not of the best quality)

At the end of July I ordered a sectional to go in our family room and we finally got it delivered yesterday. I am really happy with the color, as that was my biggest concern, right Jessica? I am planning on looking for pillows this weekend, since the ones on there are euro pillows for the bedroom. We're also planning on getting an entertainment unit and ottoman to go here. I will be sure to update as things come along in here.

Also, when my parents were here a few weeks ago visiting my dad and Sven installed lighting in the family room. It's crazy how different the room feels with new lighting. I L.O.V.E the way it turned out. Both Sven and I could not be any happier. (THANKS DAD!)

Also, the weekend my parents came to visit I painted the living room. I originally wanted to paint it blue but was too concerned with it clashing with the dinning room. So I opted for brown, Sauteed Mushroom, instead.

Orange Muffins

Sven and I love orange juice and it is unlikely that you wouldn't find some in our refrigerator. I came across this recipe on someone else's blog that looked easy and sounded delicious. I figured I would share since almost all of the ingredients most would likely already have at home.

Orange Muffins
1 stick margarine
1C sugar
2 1/4C flour
3/4C orange juice
2 eggs2
1/2t baking powder
1t vanilla

Mix all ingredients and pour into muffin liners in muffin tins.
Bake at 325 degrees F for 15-20 minutes.
Makes 24 muffins (about 120 calories each).

Enjoy.

New Toy

Almost daily while living in our apartment Sven would tell me that he just couldn't wait until we got a grill. But while living in an apartment buying a grill was not an option since we didn't have our own outdoor area to keep one. Once we put the contract on our house he told me that buying a grill was number one on his list of things to get right away.

Well after moving into our home we immediately began to fix up and getting a grill no longer became a priority. I really knew Sven wanted one and since we're not putting on a deck this summer like we had hoped, I was feeling bad that his number one and two 'wants' were not happening. So after telling him numerous times we should go buy a grill, he finally decided that it was time to get one, which happened to be the day Jessica and Dan arrived. Shortly after they got here we all loaded up and headed to Home Depot to make the big purchase.

And now it sits in our backyard where Sven uses it almost daily. Lets just say that he is only a little obsessed!

Facelift

As usual I am behind in keeping our home improvement updates current. So in order to get back on track I'm going to take you back to two weekends ago when I decided to paint the guest bedroom.

I knew Jessica and Dan were coming to visit and figured it was time to get my act together and move out the boxes to make room for their stay. Since the guest room would be empty, once the boxes were moved of course, I decided that this would be my opportunity to paint. So after deciding on a color I got to work. Unfortunately I forgot to take before photos. But just imagine cream colored walls and a bunch of boxes in the middle of the room. Yeah not too hard to imagine.

After:

As you can see there is no 'real' furniture in there yet, but our plan is to get new bedroom furniture and then put our black Ikea furniture in there. Until then this is our guest bedroom and anyone is welcome to come and stay!

Stay tuned I will be posting throughout this next week about my dinning room transformation...ooooo...ahhhh
Sven's new toy
and recapping our time with Jessica, Dan and Mabry

My Favorite Girl

I just spent the last five days with this girl...

Mabry and her parents drove up to Pennsylvania last Tuesday to come and see our new home. While they were here we painted the dinning room, mulched our flower beds, played at the park, shopped, went out to dinner and enjoyed each others company. It was sad to say goodbye to them last night, but hopefully it will only be a few more months until we get to see them again!

4th of July Weekend

This past weekend Sven and I did a lot of work around the house. Having a three day weekend really helped us get a lot accomplished. Thursday night after work Sven and I headed to Lowe's and picked up a 5-gallon bucket of white paint to paint the garage and part of the basement. I know what you're thinking...the garage and basement?!?! But in all seriousness I'm not 100% set on what colors the rooms in our house should be painted and we wanted to paint the garage anyways, especially before Sven starts building the shelving for storage in there.

Before

After

Sven has the next seven days off of work so the plan is to get the garage more organized so that we can actually park our cars in it!

This past weekend we also decided that painting the garage wasn't enough, so we decided to tear down the wallpaper in our half bath and paint it. It was the only room that we knew what color we wanted for sure.

Before, our walls had a lovely, I mean ugly, marble 'looking' wallpaper.

With a wallpaper scorer and wallpaper strip mixture the wallpaper came off SO easily. After

A Work In Progress

We still do not have the Internet at our house. Supposedly we will have it today, but we'll see! Anyways I have promised pictures, so here are a few of the downstairs that I took yesterday. As you can see there is still a lot of unpacking to be done. My plan is to tackle it this weekend and hopefully get things more organized and then to take more updated pictures. But for now this is it...

Front of the house and there is a two car garage to the left.

Family Room (We're trying to figure out an entertainment center, which is why there is blue tape on the walls)

Picture of the new lamps from mom and dad!

Kitchen. As you can see the refrigerator is not in the proper place but that is because it was too big and we're redoing the kitchen anyways. So instead of buying one to fit in there, which was more expensive since it was a special size, we opted to get what we wanted knowing that the kitchen is getting redone. (We already have it planned out!)

Standing in the living room, looking into the dinning room.

I will keep posting more over the next week to show what we did this past weekend, as well as what we continue to do on the house. So stay tuned...