{The Abode} Upgrading Our Dining & Living Room Floors

 This is a project that I've wanted to tackle since we moved into our home (16 years ago!).  Our dining and living rooms both had sad grey wall to wall carpeting, that only got worse as the years went on.

Here's the dining room before.

Because of the open floor plan of our home, each of these rooms is adjacent to wood flooring (spot the kitty!). Why they had carpeting I'll never know.

Here's the living room before.  We put area rugs in each of the rooms to try and down play the hideous carpeting.  

I never wanted to get new carpeting because I only wanted wood floors.  This is a good shot of how the living room adjoins the foyer and the family room.   

The floors had to acclimate to our home for a week before they could be installed. Willow is helping.  We had to empty out the rooms of all small furniture and decor.

Our installer worked so quickly that I barely had time to snap some "in progress" photos.

They match the kitchen floors pretty well!

Here's the living room after. We're still playing around with furniture placement so it's not finished but I'm LOVING the  new floors!

The after shot of the adjoining floors. The foyer has a diagonal beveled design which we may update one day.

The dining room after shot.

One more view.  It's still in progress but we're getting things back to normal. I don't  know what took us so long to do this!  It was not as costly as we thought it would be and it makes such a difference! What do you think?

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Claire Justine

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{Get Thrifty} Thursday

I haven't done a {Get Thrifty} Thursday post in so long. I haven't been thrifting much and if I have, nothing has caught my eye.

 Until I saw this guy! This wooden crate was calling my name.

 I picked it up for $1.99.  I've wanted a long wooden box to make a centerpiece out of it and I knew this would work.

 I jumped right in with some of the mason jar tea light holders from that I have leftover from the grad party. Cute, but it needed more.

Then I added in some pumpkins and burlap leaves from the Dollar Tree. Dollar Tree's fall stuff is really good this year.

 I might stain the crate a darker color but for now I like playing around with the arrangement.

I call this a successful upcycle. What do you think?

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{Get Crafty} Paris Postcards Garland

This has to be one of my easiest holiday projects.

I received a tin of Paris postcards last Christmas from Miss High School (formerly Miss Middle School)and found them when I opened up our decorations this year.  I think they're too pretty to use (at least for now) and how fitting are they for this year?

I wanted to display them but still be able to use them if I wanted to later (so no holes or glue please).

I already had the mini clothespins and I bought a roll of festive ribbon to hang them on.

I've scaled back my decorations this year so this was a quick and easy fix for the dining room mirror.

The whole project is reusable! Can you think of any other way I could use the postcards for decorations in future years?

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WOYWW 11.13.13

So I'm a little late but this is what I've been up to.

 Last week I made my maiden voyage to Hobby Lobby and West Elm! I didn't even take any photos at HL, I think I was too overwhelmed, but here's some WE loveliness.  

 Both stores were amazing!

 We were visiting College Girl this weekend so nothing else got done around here and this is how my dining room table looks.

 I'm getting ready for some upcoming projects. I want to reboot my Starbucks Cup Angels and I have some other surprises in store.

Oh and I love this birthday card I got from Miss Middle School last month. I was just taking down our cards and I had to keep this one. It lights up when you press the little button on the front.  The photo doesn't do it justice, it's got pearls and lace and pretty vellum paper....it's going in the china cabinet-that's how much I love it!

I hope you're having a good week!

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No-Sew Hemming Ikea Curtains

Remember when we got these new curtains a few weeks ago from Ikea?

They started out looking like this (even after two hot washes and dryings).

Since they didn't shrink at all enough I had to hem them (darn).

Here's what I needed to hem them:

Iron & Ironing board

Measuring Tape

Straight Pins

Chalk

 Heavy Duty Fusible Tape

Yard Stick 

Courage

 I put the curtains on their rods and decided where I wanted them to hit the floor.  I put a few straight pins in the panel where I wanted the hem line to be and measured the distance to the bottom of the panel.

Then I popped it up onto the ironing board and flipped it over to the back side of the fabric. I transferred the measurement to the back of the fabric with chalk and the yard stick.

Instead of making one deep hem (or cutting any of the fabric in case I messed up), I ironed the fabric up to the line, making a straight edged fold.  Then I unfolded it and doubled it up so the hem was about 4 1/2 inches total (just doubled up in thickness).

I used the chalk and yard stick for measuring and marking on the back side of the fabric.

The fusible tape made it easy to hem the curtains. I made an initial hem with half of the fabric then folded it up again for the finished hem and closed off the ends. I think it looks neater when they are fused shut.

I repeated the process with the other panels.  There were a few tears and curses along the way but I'm fairly happy with how they turned out.

In fact, I love them!

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Friday Phone Dump - Week 52

Can you believe it's been a whole year of my Friday Phone Dumps?  I sure can't! This past week has been nice and relaxing with just enough socializing to keep us from getting sick of too much togetherness. ;)

row 1 *Dipping goodies*decorating the piano with my Starbucks Cup Angels*setting up the dining room for Christmas dinner*

row 2 *the breakfast table set for Christmas morning*Christmas Eve candlelight service*Coming out of church in the snow was so pretty!*

row 3*Christmas Eve pics at my mom's house*

 row 1*Christmas morning*opening champagne for breakfast*cooking the turkey for dinner*

row 2 *hubs & me*College Girl making her yummy lentil-walnut loaf*Hubs carving the turkey*

row 3*Appetizers*the tree in our room*Dining room*

row 1*dinner at our favorite vegetarian restaurant, this was the Blue Plate...yummazing!*Dessert Menu..such a hard decision*and the winner was Recontructed Blackberry Pie (except they swapped out blueberries for the blackberries and gave us lemon sorbet to make it dairy free..so good!*

row 2* getting ready to have some friends over on Friday night* Hello 2013 Healthy Eating Motivation*a beautiful snowfall yesterday, we drove by this cathedral and I snapped a photo*

row 3 *spent the rest of the snowy day reading and relaxing* the first of two parties we went to last night*the second batch of turkey & stars soup that I've made with the leftover turkey*

What have you been up to this last week of 2012?

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Dining Room Curtains...Finally!

My naked windows finally are decent!

Meet the Lappljung's...

from Sweden.

We haven't had curtains in there since we took down the sheers last March.

We went from this...

(an old picture of the sheers)

To this...the valances were there from the previous owner's of the house and not my style.

I loved having more natural light in there after the sheers came down.

 I wasn't sure what kind of window treatments I wanted and most of the curtains that I did like were going to set me back at least $200 a window (ouch!)

Until I found these beauties at Ikea.

They were only $14.99/pair and the bold red print caught my eye.

I really like them against the chocolate brown walls.

I did have to hem them but I used iron on tape so no sewing was involved.

I found simple, inexpensive ORB (oil rubbed bronze) rods at Target, which is just what I wanted.

  Since I also wanted the curtains to stay as wide open as possible, I used drapery rings with clips on them (also from Target).

I think they freshen up the room and give it a more modern feel.

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