Curb appeal

Were moving

The blog not us. Hee hee. I decided that my house adventure is going to take awhile and so I decided to start a fresh new blog without the year in the title here http://thecaliforniafarmhouse.blogspot.com I have only posted a welcome post for now but I will be moving all the info so far over and will be starting new blogs tomorrow.
Thanks,
Ali B.

We have a new door

We woke up this morning and got right to work on going to get the door we wanted and pick knobs. We were working by 11 am and it took until 6:30 to finish one door. Dear lord it was way more work than we anticipated. Here is our gross before door and our beautiful new door. I love it so much I keep going back to look at it. It adds to the cottage/ country look we like. It makes my heart happy each time I see it. I'm in love with my new door.I aDOOR it.  Now to install the other 8:( on a good note we are getting rid of the 80's brass!!! Whoo hoo!

YUCK! The old door.

Who knew that doors would be such a pain?

For my birthday I decided that I wanted new doors for my house. We went to the local lowes and debated between 3 door styles for weeks. We narrowed it down to two doors but still couldn't decide. Today I went and bought one of each of the doors to see them in the house in hopes that we could decide on the winner. We put them in the house and knew instantly which one would be the new doors in our house. Can you guess which one? The white or the wood?

Finishing the porch and another gross closet redone

HAfter I posted yesterday I keep looking out at my new porch. I felt like it needed one more thing (or two) to really invite you to take a seat and relax. I decided to sew a few quick pillows with some old material I had in the garage and for the stuffing an old pillow that was going to be thrown away. A quick sew along the edge and 10 minutes later. Voila! 2 new pillows that I LOVE. Don't you just want to grab a book and sit in the lovely breeze? I do! I do want to get a little something cute for the table in more fun color but until I find the perfect thing a candle will do. 

I have a closet (man do we have a ton of closets) that is in our downstairs hallway. It is the backpack and book central for school, the important papers box, various computer cords and office supplies. It gets cleaned every 6 months or so but it is always a mess and the door never stays closed. Yuck!  There is a floor there somewhere (I think). Grabbed a trash can and started by filling it up. Took the games to the spot in the garage we made when we cleaned, put the baseball stuff with the baseball stuff in the garage, pulled in an old bookshelf that was going to the trash, a few tubs that were in the trash pile and a functional space or a cloffice (closet office) Homework will be easy to do, well maybe not easy to do but we will be able to find everything to do it. Room for the backpacks on the hooks that were taken over by my stash of backpacks. Re organized the drawers for todays uses. One of them said Ali's school and considering I have been done with school for about 2 years it was time to change. So there it is. Another organized space. 

Before

Before

After 

After. Our little homework and
school supplies area.
I think the schools will be much happier
 if they see us taking care of the books. 

Front porch redo and my weekend recap

Aren't they the cutest ever?

rare pic I am going to add of myself. 

My husband was out of town for the weekend going to see some good friends and do some work stuff. This was a good thing for me because it gave me a chance to catch up on some blocks. Of course I didn't spend every waking moment on blocks but pretty close. The boys and I went to dinner during the superbowl so it was dead and we were able to act like dorks with no looks.

I also decided awhile ago that I really wanted to teach myself to crochet. I watched a few youtube videos and 3 hours later I have an eternity scarf. It is basically a circle scarf so you can double wrap it and wear it as a hat and scarf a the same time. 

The last few weeks my front porch has been driving me nuts. We had a wind storm and it took the matching chair to the one from the picture and blew it all to heck. We were down to one chair and a crappy table that we have had forever and it is in terrible shape. So here is the before. 

Here is our crappy table. Instead of getting a new one I decided to attack it with a paint brush and some leftover paint that matches our front door. A coat of paint and a little TLC and we are back in business. 

Here is the after. Bright, cheery and inviting. I am looking forward to hanging out on the porch with my hubby while we talk about the future over a cold beer. You can picture wine if you want as well. So for the project I revamped the table so that was free and the chairs I picked up on clearance because they had sticky stuff on them and were dirty. I washed them and used some 409 to get the sticky stuff off and for $14 I have a cute new porch.

Jazzing up the front door

At the beginning of january I bought some new really simple wreaths for the front door. Nothing fancy at all. They are grapevine wreaths from Michael's and I think they were $2.50 each. I bough $1 ribbon spool that I used to cover both. They were a little simple but I didn't know what I wanted to do to jazz them up. Here is the before. I found these sprays of desert roses and cattails on clearance and fell in love. I have fond memories of cat tail hunting in North Dakota with my Grandma and Mom and the desert rose in the state flower of North Dakota. I remember one time we had some cat tails in out dining room and we didn't know that they popped to spread their seeds. There was cat tail fuzz everywhere. Anyways, cat tails always make me happy so perfect for the door. Since they were on clearance I paid $3 for all of it. 

I flipped the wreath over and added the little flowers by tucking them in the branches and it really transformed my wreathes. So for two wreaths I paid $9 and it is a custom set that is meaningful to me.