to paint or not to paint.

my favorite blog to read is definitely younghouselove.com because of all of their delightful home renovations on the cheap, and their amazing tips on caring for a newborn in an eco-friendly and budget-friendly way!

i'm sure they get a zillion emails a day, but i submitted a question to them last night to keep in mind for their "burning questions" blog, and they responded to me right away! yay!

my burning question was: how do i make a dark room look brighter?

i love the character of the dark wood throughout our house, but billy and i have always been at odds over the dark wood paneling in our dining room and great room.  despite the plethora of windows in each room, and despite my efforts to brighten by putting down a huge white rug, long light colored curtains, repainting the ceiling a brighter white, and adding as much artificial lighting as possible, i still hate how dark it looks:

 

i think the dark wood paneling takes away from the beauty of the floors, and the two foot deep windowsills are completely lost and unappreciated in the one dimensional dark wood wall world. 

lots of people have told me that the wood walls are "so valuable" and "they don't make them like that anymore", but i really think that instead of adding to the room, it's taking away.

sherri at young house love responded that i was doing all the right things in trying to brighten the room. the only thing left to do is actually paint.  she also said that it's a fact that realtors and home appraisers these days look for and encourage painting dark walls such as ours because it's more appealing to today's customer, and making the room look bigger and brighter is key.  basically, the dark wood walls are outdated. 

sherri also suggested that i either do something amazing (cook the best dinner ever) or magical (hypnosis?) to try to convince billy to paint.  i'm hoping that squeezing out a baby in february will do the trick.  in my opinion that seems highly amazing as well as magical. 

i dream of bright white trim and a beautiful wall color... either a light grey-blue or a warm golden color. like one of these: (thanks martha)

i really think it would do wonders for the rooms. the beautiful wood floors, the dark wood staircase in the great room, the dark wood beams, and our amazing wood frame windows would really pop and be so much more appreciated.  plus the rooms would be big and bright, not dark and lodgey feeling.

who's with me!?

the schizophrenic spare bedroom.

i am having the hardest time with our front guest bedroom/ office.

at first it was super scary and looked like this:

 

then we cleaned it and it looked like a creepy dollhouse room like this:

 

then i moved things around and put a desk in there so i could use it as a home office as well, and started playing around with what i was going to put on the walls, and it looked like this:

 

so because there are tons of big blank walls in this room, and because huge art is expensive, i tried to get creative with wall hangings.  i ended up using a bunch of my pashminas and scarves, a big framed chalkboard, records, and lots of my jewelry, which i thought would look pretty because i have such pretty little urban outfitters jewelry display racks.

the result was that the room looked exactly like my college dorm room.  

minus the posters of cowboys.  but still, pretty close.

i still want to get a cool vintage dresser to put in here, and i think that will help, but today i really thought i had solved the problem.

i was hoping to find a really bohemian bedspread, to transform the colorful "dorm" looking room into a kind of intentional hippie chic.  billy and i were at one of our favorite antique stores when i spotted it!  a gorgeous red chenille bedspread with the faintest silver piping through it.  it was exactly what i wanted! and only $15!

i got it home, absolutely thrilled.  only to discover this result:

 

for some reason, with the lighting in this room, the bedspread looks hot PINK!

 

DEVASTATION!!!!

 

part of me wants to punch this room in the neck, and part of me.... secretly loves it.  i mean who doesn't love a room full of their favorite jewelry and records and hodge podge?  but seriously, it cannot be.  it looks like we have a 15 year old daughter who lives in this room.  it's all wrong!

darn you hot pink bedspread that was red in the store!  you were supposed to fix EVERYTHING!

i will continue to battle it out with my dorm room office spare bedroom.  

but now you know my plight. bah. 

building things.

we are fortunate enough to have had two different family members offer us cribs for our new arrival!

we loved both of them, but ended up deciding on the one that was closest to us in proximity... just a drive down the street to billy's sister's house instead of to virginia.  

we know it's a little early to be putting a crib together, but the baby room was empty and we figured some furniture is better than none.  

saturday billy picked up two brand new mattresses for the day bed so we have plenty of extra room for company, and then he got cracking on putting together the crib!

 

(p.s. i scored that brand new swing at my shop for $25... couldn't pass it up!)

 

isn't he cute?

 

he did such a great job!

the crib has a matching four drawer dresser with a changing table top that we'll bring over in the future.  we love that the wood matches the day bed perfectly!

we haven't hung any art yet, but i arranged how i wanted it hung on the walls in the corner by plotting it out on the crib, so billy will get the hint :)

 

we are super excited for the upcoming week because our friend john is coming to visit from wilmington, and then my cousin jessica is coming up for the weekend with her husband and two kids!  it will be our first "real" company!  we are also hoping that they will help the week go by fast because, i have to admit, despite what i said before, I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL MY ULTRASOUND NEXT MONDAY!   ahhhhh!!!!!

let's just hope baby murphy isn't shy! :D

pop it like it's hot

 i finally have a baby bump!

magic camping

this saturday billy and i went camping at this awesome campsite on the appalachian trail in PA.  the weather was fantastic!  we had so much fun. it was a 4 mile hike in and a 4 mile hike out.  don't worry, billy carried all the heavy stuff :)

but hey i held my own!

our campsite was really beautiful, and we had so much fun with our friends!

this was a really pretty dam with a waterfall down to a creek that our site overlooked.

but the most fantastic part about our camping trip, is that magically, while we were out eating smores and playing star wars with our flashlights, our master bathroom got completely redone!

mom and dad are like magical home repair fairies!  let's take a look at our beautiful master bathroom before! *cringe*

 

i know, it makes us want to throw up a little bit too. actually, a lot a bit. deeeesgusting.  and here's what it looks like after the renovation fairies:

      

isn't it amazing!?! dad custom fit the medicine cabinet and vanity (he had to cut the tile!) put in new plumbing, not to mention our beautiful new light fixtures and faucet! mom scrubbed the 40+ years of mold and mildew off every possible surface in the bathroom and repainted everything!  we love it soooo much!  and now our hall bathroom is all freed up for guests! perfect!

i love magic camping! 

nursery work.

billy and i seem to have a very different idea for a "nursery" than most.  we've always approached the idea of a room for a baby with the idea that we're going to be the ones who have to hang out in there, and we want to like it!  neither of us really like the baby blues and pinks, and we figured junior wouldn't mind if we decorated as we saw fit!  so from the beginning we have set out on a conquest to make the nursery this cool, comfortable hangout with a reading nook and bookshelves, a spare bed for company, and cool art.  most of our inspiration we found in this photo:

i found it on younghouselove and obsessed over it.  the problem is, this is what the baby room looked like when we started:

and then when we were trying to take down that dreadful wallpaper it looked like this:

but, luckily, we are making progress now.  billy's sister wendy gave us an awesome day bed that pulls out into a trundle or up into a king sized bed (score!).  we plan to put bookshelves facing in on either side, and to build the wooden overlay and add curtains on the side like in our inspiration picture.  we also found a really cool antique world map online that we're going to put on the back wall.  i can't wait to have an after picture to show you!

wendy also gave us an awesome dark wood crib and dresser/changing table that we haven't brought over from their house yet, but promises to look perfect in the room.  we'll probably invest in a cool area rug since we don't have to spend money on a crib!

here's what the baby room looks like so far:

a nice clean blank canvas for our design!  it's actually a really big room but i couldn't fit it all in the picture.  we'll put the dresser against the wall on the right and the crib in the back left hand corner.

we wanted really cool art for the room, and we both love gustav klimt.  i happened to find an art book on sale for $7 at barnes and noble so i scooped it up along with some $11 16x20" frames from target.  i used some old christmas wrapping paper as a mat, and framed three of the prints.  here are my supplies:

 i still have three more to frame but here is what i did tonight:

 

have you ever noticed that it's really hard to take a picture of a framed picture? i promise they look a lot better in real life. sheesh! but i'm happy with my cheap artwork result.

in other cheap finds, i scored the chicco infant seat i wanted off of craigs list.  it retails for $180 and i got it for $80. it was brand new in the box!

score!

i am really excited on the "cool" nursery project, so i will post updates as they happen.  we've still got time here yet though ;)

i had an appointment with my midwife today and everything went great.  the baby and i are both growing well, although i did get yelled at for not having enough protein in my diet.  i have to work on that.  lots of beans and eggs and peanut butter! (but not together!)

monday october 4th is our 20 week sonogram appointment to find out the gender and make sure everything is look a-okay in there!  2 and a half weeks away! eek!  i was really anxious to find out at first, but today i stopped and realized how fast the time is going by.  by the time i have that sonogram my pregnancy will be half way over!  i feel like it's only just begun!  i really want to treasure every moment of my pregnancy, and i don't want to rush it!  pretty soon we'll have a little one and then i'm sure the time goes by even faster!  so i don't want to say "we can't wait!" because we can wait!  but we're really excited :)

i know, i know, i'm behind on the baby blog.

and i'm not posting it now either. hehe. i need double sided tape for my art project, which i am going to get this afternoon, so hopefully i'll post on the nursery project tonight.

but in the meantime, here's my 17 week baby bump to hold you over!

 

my next midwife appointment is tomorrow and she's supposed to write me a prescription to go get an ultrasound done so we can find out if it's a little meg or a little murph in there. see you later for the nursery post i promisseeee. xo

pretty progress.

mom and dad came up this weekend to tackle some house stuff with us. we mostly worked on the master bathroom and the baby room. both are enormous projects that are not finished yet, but i am going to post a blog on the baby room and some baby stuff later.

i did hang some art and curtains in the big guest bedroom. here's a couple pics:

(if you scroll down a couple blogs you can see a picture of it without the art, and a before picture.)  we also got a ceiling fan this weekend that dad's going to install on the next trip.

we also got an awesome chandelier for a mere $60 at lowe's this weekend.  it looks phenomenal in the dining room. i haven't posted any pictures of the dining room yet because it's still under construction, but here's what it looks like so far:

(isn't the chandelier perfect in there!?) billy made the table himself!  we had to scrub years of chimney smoke off the walls and beams and wax them, repaint the ceiling, and scrub and wax the floors.   mom painted the china cabinet for me and dad hung the chandelier.  billy's sister wendy gave us the curtains, which i love.  we also plan to paint the piano the same antique white to match the table legs and china cabinet.  the only thing missing right now are chairs and an area rug!  we also need to hang and rearrange the art.  billy plans to make a bench for one side of the table, and we're on the hunt for some cool chairs for the other side.

another fun thing we got to do this weekend was use our outdoor patio.  the screened in porch really leaves something to be desired, but we had never eaten out there before and it was a lot of fun!  like having an extra room we didn't even know about!  here's a picture of our little spread:

that's all for now! stay tuned, i'm planning to post a separate blog later today about the progress in the baby room, my art project for in there, and my killer craigs list buy! xo

oooh, that felt nice.

Wilhelm and I spent a fabulous four days doing absolutely nothing at the lovely La Amada Resort in Playa Mujeres Mexico.  Billy's 30th birthday was on the first, so we decided to hop a plane for a quick celebration!  We justified it by also deciding it would be our early first anniversary trip and the beforewehavetotravelwithastroller trip. Here are some pictures from our travels: (actually we didn't travel anywhere except from the beach to our hotel room really)

our room

our pretty bathroom

the lovely balcony. 

Playa Mujeres means Ladies Beach in Spanish.  But let me tell you, the gay men love this resort.  There weren't many ladies.  Sorry Billy!  Lucky for us, the gay men certainly do know how to relax.  We picked a great hotel.  We contemplated going on day excursions to go snorkeling or kayaking, but we wound up doing absolutely nothing.  We spent lots of time swimming in the crystal clear water, laying on the beach reading, drinking fruity beverages at the swim up pool bar, and eating more Mexican food than I care to talk about.  Let's just say neither of us want to see a tortilla chip for a very long time.

Here are some more pictures of the pretty resort before we ruin you with silly pictures of ourselves:

We had probably the best traveling experience possible.  In addition to flawless service at our resort, I can't say enough about our first experience with Cancun's airport and staff.  People helped us without us asking for help, expedited us through lines, carried our luggage, and then checked it for free!  We didn't have to wait for anything.  Let me tell you, you are lucky if your airline agent doesn't curse at you while you're paying them $50 for your checked bag in Philly.  It was a breath of fresh air!  

The only negative thing that happened on our trip was the sun melted the binding on Billy's book.  For the rest of the days he had to read it page by page.  We called it "the manuscript". It was hilarious.

The first night we were there they had a bonfire and a demonstration on a Mayan rain dance.  During the dance the Mayan dude just straight up straddled the bonfire.  I'm talking balls.in.flames.  It was highly uncomfortable to watch.  He didn't seem to mind though.  Clearly I needed a picture.

they smelled like burned hair.

Here are a couple pictures of Willie and I before we get to what you're really after.  I know what it is.  It's the Meg's getting fat in a bikini shot.  Yeah yeah yeah, it's coming.

The last picture was the final result of a series of shots that somehow made Billy look like his neck had been amputated.  We'll save those for another time. 

And now, drumroll please, the fifteenandahalfweekspregnantmeginabathingsuitpicture:

MAN! LOOK AT THAT GUT!

............

Ok, I wouldn't really do that to you.  But let me just say, there was a really cute pregnant girl at the resort with her husband, she was about five months along and looked visibly and cutely pregnant. i however, just looked bloated.  It was an uncomfortable time to be in a bikini.  The baby is growing. and so is my ass.

bah.

So that's all for this edition of Mexico!  Who wants to babysit for us next summer? ;)