Spring Cleaning and Inspiration

When I worked in Philadelphia for two years, my aunt, mom, sister and I had a tradition of getting together for dinner and drinks in Philly when my aunt was in town from Chicago. Last week my aunt was in town, so I was able to get together with the girls for the first time in a long time! I made plans to meet my mom at Anthropologie's garden store, Terrain, for garden inspiration before heading into the city.

The shop itself is absolutely beautiful but way too expensive, so we shopped for inspiration and succulents and sat down to enjoy a snack. If you ever visit Terrain, I highly recommend ordering a cheese plate in their cafe.

Mary eating cheese

I left Terrain with some ideas for our little back yard and the cutest little pot of succulents for our kitchen. Now that spring is here, I want to incorporate more plants throughout our house, so the succulents are a start.

Succulents in my kitchen window :)

We enjoyed dinner at The Dandelion Pub in the city, a little restaurant we have been wanting to try for years. The food is "British pub" food and decent but not a place I would consider a "go to" in the future.

The Dandelion Pub menu

On Wednesday night I went with my sister and her friends to free yoga at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a very cool experience. The instructor worked at yoga studios throughout the city and it was so tough! The beautiful atmosphere was a distraction to the difficult yoga positions.

View from the Art Museum

Art Museum Yogis

I tried to keep busy throughout the rest of the week but the weather was not cooperating, so I was left without a car for the majority of the week. I was going stir crazy so I painted the downstairs doors a very dark gray.

I was very happy with how the doors turned out, so we will be painting the rest of the doors in the house the same dark gray, a big project.

Before

After

On Thursday afternoon I went home to Kutztown with my sister, too much alone time was not doing good things to my head. It was so nice spending time with my family, doing yoga and eating great meals.

Farm to Table restaurant with my parents

On Saturday morning I met with my Aunt Hallie and Uncle Larry for a 6 mile run around Kutztown. The 10-mile Broad Street run is in two weeks and my runs have been terrible, so a good run was a confidence booster.

Post-run pictures

Andrew came to Kutztown Saturday afternoon and we were able to meet with our kitchen contractor to make some changes to our plans and pick out our cabinets. The contractor, Mike, is a family friend who lives down the street from my parents and has done three kitchens for my parents over the years. It was so cool to visit his home and shop, where he will make our kitchen!

The shop!

Andrew checking out the paint gun

We picked out the cabinets, which will be painted an off white. I really think a light kitchen will be beautiful and brighten up the house, but I have a lot of decisions to make on everything else!

Our cabinets (in Cherry)

After picking out our cabinets, we headed back to my parents for homemade pizza, french fries and gin & tonics. My parents recently bought a Breville pizza maker, which makes very delicious pizza.

Pizza prep

Nom!

On Sunday we had my dad's entire family plus Andrew's family over Easter dinner. The weather was beautiful and I always enjoy spending time with my family.

My sister and cousins

The Haughton family :)

I have one more week at home before heading back to Charlotte to start my new project. I didn't finish the projects I had planned last week but I am going to take advantage of my final time at home and make the house beautiful for spring visitors!

Too Much Time to Think

This will be my fifth week at home and I am going a bit stir crazy. I have had a few disappointing roles interviews - one in Milwaukee where they were looking for someone with more experience and another in Portland that would force me to come home at 6:00am every Friday morning - so I am back on the bench. In order to make the most of my time, I picked out a few key projects to do. The first is to make our little back yard a more enjoyable place to hang out because right now it is ghet.to.

We would love to get a new fence eventually but until then, I am going to have to do the best with what we have. This week my plan is to clean up the area behind our fence and stain our patio furniture.

Next, I need to pick a color and paint our front door. The color now doesn't bother me but it is old and really needs a fresh coat of paint.

Our little front door

The trim around the door needs replaced as well but that project is going to have to wait until Andrew is available to help. I need to learn how to use a saw so I can do these projects myself...

Rotted door frame

It is supposed to rain this week so I am going to take my home improvement projects inside. If you visit Home Depot and find the cheapest anything, that is what we have in our house, including our doors. Since replacing all 12 doors would be super expensive, I am going to try painting them and replacing the door knobs.

Cheap bedroom door

I found a deep charcoal gray and new bronze door knobs, so I am going to test the look on our two downstairs doors before redoing the whole house. The perfect rainy day project :)

Hopefully these projects will keep me busy and next week I will be jetsetting to my next project! If not, house projects are gonna keep rolling.

Spring and Windows

Spring is finally here and last week was my third week without a project and on the "bench." I have interviewed for a few roles but haven't found anything that will be a good fit, so I have enjoyed waking up in my own bed, eating home cooked meals, cuddling with the cats and lots of exercise.

Mer Mer working out with me :)

We don't do much during the week after Andrew gets home from work but it's nice to see my husband every day. One night we did manage to head to North Philly to check out some ghetto cheap doors - we were very excited to have cheaper options after getting a ridiculously expensive Pella quote.

We need to replace the kitchen doors this spring before installing the new kitchen and it would be so nice to have the summer with nice new doors. I really like the doors with half glass (above) so that we have sunlight in the kitchen. We will also be replacing the storm door with something new.

New storm door

On Friday night we had Cody and Claire over for homemade pizza (my new favorite) and french fries. It was a relaxed little night in with some not-so-healthy but very yummy food.

I have been buying the frozen dough at the grocery store, along with the pizza sauce and cheese, and it all ends up only costing about $5/pizza. We roll out the dough, experiment a bit with toppings and cook in the oven for 15-20 minutes. It is SO GOOD. 

Yum!

After a delicious Friday night, we were finally ready to get back to house projects. We have a nasty habit of finishing projects 90% and then losing interest in completing the project. We started the exposed brick project about two months ago and never finished it up (mostly because we don't know what we are doing and it makes a mess)!

We worked on the wall for about an hour before taking a break to meet with an Andersen window consultant to discuss new windows. Again, we only wanted to replace the windows in the kitchen so we were ready for our new kitchen installation.

The salesman knew his stuff and he was very convincing that we need new windows throughout the house, something we also knew (see our window disaster from October). We also know that windows are very expensive and we have some other bigger, more value-add projects that need to take precedent.

Current windows from the 1960s

  

We aren't really sure what happened in the two hours that the salesman was at our house but we ended up signing papers for 9 of 13 windows to be replaced for an astronomical price. We both felt sick to our stomachs and took our aggression out on the exposed brick.

We made a mess but we accomplished a lot before heading out with friends for a drink and to contemplate the windows. 

Our ending point

I woke up Sunday morning with a window hangover - I just did not feel right about the cost of the windows and how it was going to affect our upcoming year. We looked at our contract and saw that we had three business days to cancel with no penalty, so we called and cancelled. It was like a huge weight was lifted! I don't think we will make a similar, impulsive mistake any time soon. 

It was a beautiful day so I met up with my sister and we walked into Old City to explore.

Historic Philadelphia

I love Sundays with my sister, they make it my favorite day of the week. In the past, I have had anxiety issues on Sundays but when I spend them exploring the city with my sister, I forget about the upcoming travel and stressful week.

Lunch at Wedge and Fig

This week will be my fourth at home and not on a project so I will be looking for new opportunities, while also taking vacation time to enjoy the beautiful spring weather! This is the best I have felt in six months and I will be sad when it ends.