I'm back! And updates...

So I'm kind of a crappy and sporadic blogger and I am determined to change that. Starting today.

And we'll start with our house, which happens to be taking up any free time my daughter doesn't take. To make a long story short, we're buying our house (the one we live in already, weird, I know) from the in-laws and we're currently jumping through hoops with the County in order to be "allowed" to do so. This process has been going on for what seems like forever (maybe 6-7 months now?) and needless to say we're all a little stir crazy. So, the hubby and I have decided to start making small changes now to tide us over until we can start knocking down walls and digging up dirt (did I mention we're doing an addition? We are.).

We've long had a giant gravel parking lot in front of our home, called a driveway by very few, and it's been something we've wanted to change (sorry no pics, imagine extreme ugliness). After the piles of snow we so graciously received (grr) this winter and all of the plowing, that gravel parking lot has been quickly creeping into our yard and growing (think Ghostbusters pink slime). To put it nicely, it looked AWFUL and we had basically no gravel left so it was becoming not only ugly but a huge muddy pit. So last weekend we decided we would get out the rakes and at least bring the gravel out of the yard and put it back in the driveway. If you know my hubby, you would know that he couldn't stop there. No, he got out the tractor and instructed me to order a dump truck full of gravel (did you know you can get that in 1 hour?!?) and this is what we ended up with:

Needless to say, I love my hubby and my new circle driveway! Ignore the stakes and the muddy hole in the center. Imagine instead some darker dyed mulch with a beautiful white dogwood like this:

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and some nice shrubbery that our deer won't eat (still working on that one). We're supposed to be getting a load of dirt next week to fill it in and then will come the mulch & tree. I can't wait for it to be finished!

Another thing I've been wanting since we moved in 3 years ago... are lights for our walkway. I ordered these from Home Depot and they came yesterday, so exciting!

You'll have to ignore our demolished liriope (remember the deer & shrubbery comment?) as well as the fact that all of our mulch has washed away... We haven't put all of the lights out quite yet because one of the boxes was damaged and we're exchanging it, plus we underestimated the length of our walkway so we actually need a 4th box. Apparently, being solar powered, they have to charge in bright sunlight in order to work and it's been raining here for the last few days so we won't have a true test until next week. Some were bright last night and some weren't on at all. Hopefully that's just because of the overcast and rainy weather and not a forecast of things to come.

Note, Mrs. Five C's, you may want to stop reading here...

We're redoing our main floor guest bath. It's been a bright and cheery Lilly Pulitzer bath to match our guest room (which is now in the basement) since we moved in. But I've since grown out of my college Lilly bedding days and am in need of a change (sorry Mrs. Five C's!). This is what we've gotten so far:

This is where we're going:

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How funny that the walls in this pic are exactly the same color as our bath now? Now imagine the top half brown like this (maybe not quite as dark and with higher beadboard, yes I know that isn't beadboard pictured but let's pretend):

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Here's a little inspiration:

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You get the idea. To make a long story short, my Mom is remodeling a house and my hubby put up beautiful board and batten (about 3/4 of the way up) and she had the top half painted a beautiful chocolate brown. I've been in love with it since I saw it and we've decided to try it in our bathroom.

These are the paint colors we came home with:

We were both leaning toward Middlebury Brown (center):

What do you think?

More to come soon!

And can you believe Maddie turned 14 months yesterday???

Had to sneak this one in :-)