Let it snow-- at least a little!

On Sunday we were treated with a lovely dusting of snow-- the first real accumulation of the season I would say! As usual, the best part of the snow is watching Walter flip out and enjoy himself.





So I got to snap a few photos at least! The rest of the week has been full of slush (what Washington seems to dish out best) but all we've been hearing about since then is this massive attack of snow tonight. Supposed to be the worst storm since 1985-- and I dare say, bring it on Washington! If you're going to snow; do it right. No slushies. I want a full-on spread of snowy-white puffiness. WOO!

Also, perhaps I'm realizing now that just like washing your car and having it rain shortly after-- pulling out your fireplace means you finally get snow and the chilliest temperatures around. Eep! Here's to cuddles, tea, and warm blankets...

Too much time stalking blogs = destruction in the tiny house.

There is something to be said about spending too much time on the net. When you spend as much time as I do stalking other home improvement blogs, you start getting crazy ideas in your head. Kind of like when I decided I needed to tear our fireplace insert out after reading about what they did over on Young House Love. Which to say, theirs was creepy, kind of dangerous looking and old-- ours was actually in quite great shape. Some would dare even call it pretty. Behold!



Although it seemed like a great idea when we first got the house, it quickly posed a few problems. For one, the actual burning space was only the size of a large shoebox, and didn't hold hardly any wood, and secondly-- it was just big. And outdated. And filled our house up with smoke whenever we lit it. And let's be honest, I'm a sucker for redesigning things-- especially since we have plans on selling this house for (hopefully!) more than we paid for it. So alas! It had to go. Bigger, brighter things were in our future!



It did take a bit more tinkering than YoungHouseLove had with their fireplace, but it came out after Josh, Bryan and I put our heads together. (Who knew it would come apart into so many pieces?!) As soon as we removed it, our tiny living room felt just a little bit roomier, here-- look!



Not much of a 'makeover' at the moment I admit, but I have a plan. Big things in this little fireplace's future, I must say. I have been searching for the perfect copy-able mantle, and I finally found my inspiration photo-- a page from my recent catalog from West Elm:



I am so lucky to have a handy-man for a father, and a husband that doesn't mind me tearing holes in our house (and wasn't upset that we found out later that our fireplace was nearly unusable without the insert... the previous owners ripped out the masonry to install the tube instead... we would like to replace it later, but for now we will just make it pretty-- again, resale value, we would love to once again have a workable fireplace!). After some planning, we decided that we could pretty easily tile around the inside frame and on the floor, and build a mantle similar to the picture. Which of course lead to a trip to Lowes, and some tile samples...



We are leaning towards the small dark tile in the front-- but in a larger size. A bit textured, a bit modern, but still dark like our picture. Perfect! Next step is to put some thinset over the bricks to make it level, then tiles on the frame and on the floor after that... super exciting!

In other news also, we (and by 'we', I mean Bryan-- he surprised me and installed them before I got home yesterday-- my husband is awesome!) were finally able to install our Christmas present from my grandparents-- new doorknobs! We did a last minute swap with color, but I think we made the right choice. I love them!




So overall, it's been a surprisingly fun and productive week! +2 more homeowner points.

Who gets excited about dishes?! Well I do, of course...

First of all-- happy late Christmas/New Years! This year turned out to be incredibly relaxing, as well as full of nearly all of our family tree-- which is always a treat.

My Christmas present from Bryan came in the mail today-- a new crisp set of dishes from Crate and Barrel (after discovering that the dish set I had been pining for at World Market was out of stock and discontinued-- thanks anyways for searching everywhere Mom and Bryan, you're the best!) They are fantastic! Although I have made it one of my New Year's resolutions to stop neutralizing our house (everything is turning black and white over here); I needed one--complete-- set of dishes, because right now I have three.

Another great part? My professionally-trained chef husband makes me fancy dinners on these dishes. Here's a quick snapshot:



Crabcakes with Parmesan couscous on greens with a lemon garlic vinaigrette.. fancy. +2 husband points. Nice work sweetie!