Kitchen Progression

While I was updating the blog the other day with new pictures of our kitchen, including our new appliances, I was thinking about what a change it's taken on since we moved in.  The cost of new appliances (minus the refrigerator since it'll go with us when we move someday) is all we've had to spend to make this transformation.  So, about $1300 considering we got a great deal buying from Goedekers (previously known as number1direct.com).  (Read our review here.)  We weren't planning on forking out money for our new appliances so soon until we had a run in with our dishwasher, followed a few months later with our stove.  But, as usual with unexpected expenses, we bit the bullet, pulled money from savings, researched for days, and then got cookin' with our new stainless steel beauties.  We know we can't exactly call our kitchen "completely upgraded", but it's much better than what we started with.  Let's take a look:

Here's the kitchen right before we moved in:

This is after we painted the cabinets Valspar's Cabin Plank and the walls Valspar's Cream In My Coffee - both leftover from our first house...a.k.a. FREE!

And this, of course, is where it stands now, with our new appliances:

But wait, there's more.  We really love the chocolate brown, and it was great fun while it lasted, but since we have such a small, galley-style kitchen, we're leaning towards a lighter, brighter, and more updated space so...

This is what might be in it's future, courtesy of Photoshop:

Without paying the high price for new cabinets, we'd love to completely update this space with new paint (guilt-free since the last coat was free), new countertops, a new sink, new lighting - on the ceiling and over the sink, and some other aesthetic details - beadboard in a few places, shelving, new molding, and some other wood inserts.  The 'plan' isn't fully tweaked yet though.  For example, knocking out the hollow soffit above the cabinets, raising each cabinet to the ceiling, and then adding floating shelves underneath each cabinet is another idea.  When all is said and done, the first option will cost us around $600, and that's if we pay full price for all of the updates...which we just don't do.  :)  And, it can be done over a period of time, allowing us to continue using the kitchen, instead of all at once which is tougher on the pocket book.  But, for now it's a 'maybe'.  We're not sure yet if the investment will be worth it or if it will even make a difference to a potential buyer someday.  It sure is fun planning though, especially since that's always free.  :)

The Bird

This post isn't about that infamous 'bird' some use to communicate "I'm mad at you"...

nor is it about the hundreds of birds that decided to skip migration and land on our grandma's lawn over our Christmas vacation in New York...

but it is about the first ever, homemade artwork I created for our house!  Here's the whole story:

Right after we got hitched, we bought three identical frames from my favorite thrift store ever in Ohio for 25 cents each.  They weren't anything special except that they had ancient pictures in them of people who we had no idea about and they were orange.  Lacking pictures (because we're horrible at remembering to bring our camera when making memories), all we did was display the frames in our hutch...pictures of strangers included.  I can't even begin to count how many times we've been asked who those people were and every time saying "I have no clue" and telling the frame story.  Later, I whipped out a can of brown spray paint we had on hand and gave them a coat.  Well, then we moved and the pictures moved with us. 

See them on the top shelf?

I found two pictures (on of my dad at his first birthday and one of me at my First Communion) that replaced two of the unknown persons, but one remained...until last Tuesday.  That was the day I decided to change them up.

First I decided to lighten them up a little.

 I decided to 'go green' with them using some paint leftover from our guest bathroom.  To go from dark brown to that light green though, I first spray painted them white.

Onto the pictures.  Here's the six strangers that had been.  Anyone recognize them?  We'd love to know their stories.  :)

For now they're being stowed away somewhere in case we need them someday or someone claims them.  :)

Still lacking pictures that would fit into the frames, I decided to morph into an artist for an hour and create my own personal pictures.  I've always wanted to draw/paint some kind of picture that continued through three frames...let me explain.

First I cut three 5 x 7 pieces of card stock out using the covers of some construction paper books we had.  Then, for drawing purposes, I tape them together so that I could get a cohesive picture that could be separated later but still be cohesive in three different frames...make sense?  I decided on a 'bird and branches' theme so first I drew out the main branches and the bird.

Using leftover brown paint from the previous owner, I painted the branches and then went on to paint some leaves.

Using leftover blue paint from our master bedroom (y'all know I'm all about using what you have), I painted our pretty little bird.

After it was dry and my 'masterpiece' was complete, I carefully removed the tape joining the three and put them in their respective frames.

Introducing our new, FREE, artwork made with lots of love and leftovers by me, Bean.

Back into the hutch they go for now but later in life I'm thinking they might grace the walls of a future little girl's room or sun room...we'll see!  Big change though, right?  Anyone else break out their inner artist and create something with leftover paint recently?  My friends Lauren and Jenn did, creating some great modern paintings to flank a fireplace with two large pieces of canvas and leftover master bedroom paint!  It's very therapeutic, costs little to nothing, and looks great!  Anyone else?!  Any other ideas?  I'd love to see them!  Of course now that I've started, you can be sure to see more in the future too!

Another Year, Another Budget

2011 it is and a new budget The Bean Team is planning...only because our health insurance premiums went up $40 a month (boo).  There goes my grand plan of possibly upgrading to a smart phone, which would cost us $40 more a month.  Oh well, life is full of giving and taking, right? 

Then there's the glorious tax return.  Since Anthony is still in school, we usually get most of what we put in back..even though every year the entire check goes directly from our hands (what a great two seconds) to our student loan lender.  It's bittersweet but shoving any and all extra money towards those cotton pickin' loans will pay off in the future.  After they're paid and closed, I'm not sure what we'll do with the extra money.  I guess we'll just start shoving money towards our retirement fund?  Go out to eat at least once a week?  Skip the clearance section?  Can you go from being frugal for so long to being un-frugal?  Probably not.  :)  Although maybe that day I'll splurge and buy something from Pottery Barn.  I love that store (I've been inside it once) but right now it's only a distant dream.

New Year's Resolutions?  I've never been one to make them.  My thought is, why wait to make changes or better yourself for a new year?  Why not start today!  When I was 10, I remember making a personal resolution that on my 11th birthday I would start doing everything 100%.  My room would always be immaculate, I would get an A+ on every assignment and test, I would listen to my parents all the time, I would never get angry at anyone...yes, I know, a little ridiculous.  I remember making this two months before my birthday...probably the laziest, most hypocritical two months of my short life!  :)

Anyways, back to the budget.  We're excited to start a new Excel document for our 2011 budget...we're nerds, we know.  In case you want to be budget-conscious with us, you can start here.  

As much of a downer "being on a budget" can sometimes be, we really do love it.  It's taught us how to be smart with money - make smart purchases, pay off credit cards balances every month (if in order to buy it, you have to use credit, don't buy it), wait until that thing on our 'wish list' goes on sale, price-shop...the list goes on and on.  It's also taught us how to be creative and get great quality on little moolah.  Budgets bring blessing.  :)   

Happy New Year to you all!  Tag along with us this new year and watch as we tackle tons more budget-friendly home projects (we've got lots of big ideas) and just keep working on ourselves so that when blogging and the world as we know it falls away, we'll find ourselves in heaven.  

Peace out!     

O Rosemary, O Rosemary

Your leaves are so unchanging.  Well, they're sorta dead now but it was good while it lasted!  In case you're wondering what I'm talking about, it's our 'Christmas tree'.  Since we went home for two weeks this year, we thought it'd be a waste of time to get our tree out of the attic, put 'er together, fluff her up, stick some lights on her (I like tons of lights which equals lots of work), and put on the ornaments.  So, instead I had this great idea of using the pine-look-alike rosemary branches from the bush we have in our backyard.  Anthony was just telling me a month ago that that bush was getting a little overgrown.  So, of course I though, "why not kill two birds with one stone?"  You with me?  Here's what I did:

 Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of our 2010 'Christmas tree' until after we got home, hence why it's lookin' a little shabby...okay, dead.  But you get the point.  A few rosemary branches, a vase, and some ornaments is all there was to our 'tree' this year.  Lucky for us, our family in New York waited to put up their real tree until everyone was there to help so we did get to cross that tradition off our lists this year anyway.

Besides serving as our Christmas tree, it also made a great centerpiece for our table.  I love decorations that serve double-duty!  Anyone else have a non-traditional Christmas tree?

Happy New Year to you all!  Thank God for the past year, it's joys and trials!  I hope everyone has a great 2011!  I'm excited to see what God has planned!

I Love Lamp

If you've seen "Anchorman", you've probably heard this line.  Personally, it's one of my least favorite movies but Anthony can't stop laughing during it so for his sake, we get this title.  But, on to the real reason why 'I love lamp'.  We were blessed to go home to Anthony's family in New York this year for Christmas.  It was the first Christmas we've spent with family since we've been married!  It was an awesome two weeks filled with lots of laughs, tons of good food (thanks mom), and hours upon hours of playing games - Bananagrams, Scattergories, Golf, Skip-bo, Phase Ten, and Settlers of Catan...awesome games.  Since we flew there and are tightwads, meaning we didn't want to pay checked baggage fees (thankfully we got one checked bag free through our credit card), we bought most of our presents after we got there to save space.  We already had ideas of what we were getting for everyone except for mom and dad.  Then we saw their lamps.  Let me first say this, we love our mom and dad  but their lamps, well, they were a little ancient.  Ancient but with great curves!  So of course my mind goes straight to how-can-I-refurbish-them mode and then on to spray paint.  Anthony jumps right on board thinking of colors and then we get to the next hurdle...would they let us?  I felt bad just taking the lamps and totally changing them without asking, even if it will be their Christmas present, so we nonchalantly asked, "Hey, do you like your lamps?  I guess what we mean is, could we get you new ones?"  They gave us the "sure, we'd love new lamps!" answer we were longing to hear and to Wal-Mart we went to snatch up some paint and new shades.  Based on the colors in their living room, we 'compromised' on oil-rubbed bronze spray paint.  I really wanted to paint them a glossy brick red but in the end, Anthony convinced me that oil-rubbed bronze made more sense and was a more neutral, subtle choice.  

So here they are right before go-time:

I taped off the light bulb socket and switch to make sure I didn't get any paint inside the lamp.

Also, we had to be discreet since mom and dad didn't know we were actually re-doing their old lamps so we brought the lamps over to grandma's house where we painted them in her basement since it was too cold outside.  I learned to obey the directions on the back of spray paint cans last year where it says, "apply in temperatures between 50 and 90 degrees".  If you don't, the paint will develop lines and look cracked...take my word for it.

Since they're made out of metal (gold) and ceramic (green), I went the safe route and primed before I painted. 

All primed!  On to the best part...painting!

This is after 4 light coats of paint:

I sprayed right-side up, upside down, left side, front side, back side...every inch.  They looked amazing!!!  I say "Pottery Barn style meets the Bean Team Budget".  We forwent (is that a word?) our budget a little with these lamps since we wanted only the best for our mom and dad.  In the end, we ended up spending $6 on paint (of which we used barely any of the primer and a little under half the can of paint) and $30 on some sweet shades that completed our project.  So, two new, custom, stylish lamps complete with sentimental value for $36 bucks...a great Christmas present if you ask us.  The question remaining after we were done was "do you think they'll recognize the lamps?"  We were dying to find out...

Nope! They thought they were entirely new lamps!  How's that for boosting our egos?  We did reveal the fact that they were their old lamps and were delighted at their surprise and joy...and what a Merry Christmas it was!   :)

Because we're over-achievers in the home improvement area, you're probably not surprised to find out that we went on to re-painting and decorating mom and dad's spare bathroom.  Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures but the bathroom went from a bright orange to a very light grayish-green (Valspar's Tea Stain).  We had a blast doing it and look forward to tackling another room on our next vacation...the question is, who's house will it be?  Any volunteers?  ;)