Our House "After"

This is our house after a lot of hard work, painting and landscaping!!!

We are going to have our chimney tuck pointed this spring, because unfortunately the ivy that was growing up it all those years destroyed a lot of the mortar and damaged some of the bricks.

We love to landscape so this is our favorite season!

My Mother's Day present a Japanese Maple Weeping Laceleaf, we planted it together as a family that's a great memory that will last forever!

Now we feel like people will want to come inside our home rather than keep driving by!

Our front lawn with our flower bed with our new Hemlock, we wanted our landscaping to reflect our style, all cottage!

Our House "Before"

I took this picture the first time we looked inside our "future home" with the realtor in Sept. 2006. Mario and I somehow saw something so much more than a house in dire need of a lot of love and hard work! We saw all the potential it had. We bought the "diamond in the rough" house of the block! The front porch light was literally hanging by the wires. There was absolutely no curb appeal! Our friends here in Iowa thought we were crazy! But we knew we loved the neighborhood and all the character the house had to offer. It just needed a family that cared about it enough to bring it back to life. It has taken us nearly 2 years and still going, but it's nice to reflect back on all our hard work and feel good that we're headed in the right direction...

Dance Recital Time!!!

Emma on our front porch and in front of the theater where her recital was held at! There were 1o1 different dances. It was about a 3 hour recital, whew! Our little Emma looked beautiful. I cried when her class went on stage! She just went out there and looked so BIG! I love to watch the little ones they are so cute! We had a great day!

Emma and Ethan enjoying some candy, flowers, and balloons!

Antique Egg Shaped Door Knob!

Mario found this gorgeous knob at an antique shop. It's probably from the late 1800's. It's from the Victorian era!

Our sunroom under construction!

It will be nice when we finish it! But it is taking a lot of work. We have to paint walls, ceiling, woodwork, and door. We are also installing new floor. Oh and new baseboards. Wow, just writing all that makes me tired! I can't wait until the decorating part of the project!

Antique Church Pew, After

We think it turned out pretty nice for being about 100 years old! We are going to use it to sit on in our sunroon/mudroom when we take our shoes off!

Oh, and our room is coming along, slowly! We are installing the baseboards tom! Yeah! Then comes decorating it! I want to put a table set in it to eat at, I have a lot of ideas but again I have to do it on a BUDGET!!! I'm learning to stretch that dollar!

Antique Church Pew, Before

We bought this church pew at an antique shop at a deal! This is the before pic before we restored it! It needed a lot of cleaning but nothing a little love and hard work couldn't take care of! The owner of the shop was planning on refinishing it but we wanted it "as is" and got a deal! Please excuse the room it's in. That's a whole other project we have been working on.

Mario and I knew that the Howard Products would restore the pew without the need of a complete strip and refinish which would lose all of the great original character. Restor- A- Shine Polishing compound along with steel wool would restore the finish. We also used the Howard Restor- A- Finish in walnut to restore the wood color back to its original rich color . Finally we applied the Feed-N-Wax preserve to seal all our work. The whole process took about an hour.

Ebay Deal!

We were very excited to find these Pottery Barn sconces on Ebay for $29 for both. They were used but in perfect condition. I'm learning how to decorate on a buget and still get nice things! And I think it's more rewarding when you find a deal. I think I'm going to start giving garage sale shopping more dedication!!!

I just wanted to share that we lost someone very special to our family this morning Mary Lee, Mario's Grandma. She would always get me laughing. She knew how to make a person feel comfortable and it was very easy to just sit back and talk with her about "the old days" in her life. You would be was addressed as "Honey or Sweetie" which to me always sounds nice and makes me feel special. I will always cherish our visit to her home in Prescott when we lived in California. It was the most peaceful place. It rained the entire weekend we were there, so we played games with her and Mario's Grandpa Joe and had delicious meals. It was so nice coming from the fast pace life we had in California. We went shopping together in downtown Prescott which was when I first realized my interest in antiques. They drove us around their beautiful town telling us of the history and Mary Lee and I really got to know one another and realized we had a lot in common! She had a love for art and decorating. She was quite the artist, she had her paintings hung all through her house. I could tell she had a special place in her heart for Mario or "Chip" as she loved to call him. I feel very blessed that I got to know Mary Lee and I know she is in a better place with God. Mary Lee and Joe are an inspiration to Mario and I because they could argue like the best of them but at the end of the day you knew just how much they loved each other. You will be missed Mary Lee...
~Love, Amy