Well, for the guest room, hopefully!  Jake’s best friend and the best man at our wedding is coming to visit in a few weeks and I’ve got a few more things on the to-do list I want to check off before he gets here.  After we built the bed, it’s just stayed like this as we moved on to some other projects.

Not too bad, but not guest-ready just yet!  Besides making up the bed, I’d really like to get a few more things checked off.  Maybe not all of these, but hopefully some of this list:

• Find window blinds & curtains
• Hang some art / pictures
• Add a few cute accessories
• Put out a basket for guest towels
• Re-finish the nightstand
• Add a small side table for the chair (plus mags/water, etc)
• Add toss pillows
• Spruce up the dresser finish

I have only a couple of weeks, but we extended Memorial Day weekend by a day, so maybe I can get some things done!  Here’s a few ideas I have. 

 (1 & 2) I was thinking of painting the base of the nightstand a cream or tan to tie into the duvet and staining the top the dark walnut to match the bed, then brightening up the whole area with a neat and unexpected lamp.  (3) To add a touch of modern, I love orange and blue together but am also so stuck on persimmon right now I think that tone would look really nice as well.  Matched with a sweater pillow for the organic and comfy feel and I think we’d get a good mix of modern and homey. (4) I saw a pair of ivory and gold striped curtains in a recent Crate and Barrell catalog and was in love!  The gold curtains agains the navy walls would be amazing, but I think maybe a solid panel would tone down the patterns in the room a bit.  (5) For the walls I have some ideas of mixing some traditional, antique, handmade, and modern elements, but you’re just going to see how it all comes together!

Any fun Memorial Day plans?

If you haven’t noticed how much I have mentioned them here, here, and here my parents are pretty much the best, most generous and fun people to have around.  Well, my entire family is, really, and Jake and I are so blessed and fortunate to have them in our lives!  Yet again, they helped us out by loaning us a patio set for a couple of years until we could invest in one.  Here she is seen in a photo from our deck days.

The set is great, sturdy, has 6 stackable chairs, the works.  Recently, though we came across a great deal on Hayneedle for a beautiful wood set that was about 30% off on sale, with a 10% off coupon and then free shipping.  It was a really great deal so we jumped on it! Once it came in, we packed up the loaner…

And drove it over to my sister‘s house to be the next beneficiary of my parent’s awesomeness!  She just bought her house last summer, so starting this spring off with an outside set is a big help to her as well! (Don’t mind her face… yes, she’s saying, “are you blogging????”)  Yep. :-)

Then came the fun stuff (insert sarcasm here). You know – allen wrenches.  Oh man, do I hate these things.  I don’t know why we can’t assemble furniture with regular screws.  And I think it took me more time to unpack all these boxes then it did to assemble the chairs.

But at least they were packed well and we had all our parts and pieces and nothing was damaged.  A+ in that department!  I didn’t take any pictures while assembling.  I was just concentrating on holding on to the allen wrench and trying not to curse too badly as I dropped the darn thing repeatedly.  The Hubs assembled the table in the backyard while I choose to stay in the driveway to assemble the chairs.  All in all the whole set maybe took us 30 minutes to assemble so not too bad.

We brought it all out back into our “patio staging area” (we’ve laid it all out to try to figure out how big we want our brick patio to be), brought over our fancy umbrella stand, put up our new umbrella we got for Christmas and voila!

I love the color of the wood.  Initially we though we would go for more of a cedar color that tied into the deck and the fence, but after seeing this set we were really liking the contrast and the way they tied more into our metal side chairs with the red cushions.

The chairs have a nice high back and are super comfortable with or without the cushions so that’s a bonus. It makes for a great spot to relax and enjoy a nice long outdoor meal and time with friends!

In addition to shade, the umbrella helps make it feel a little more private when we’re out there.  Our neighbors have a roof deck that looks down on us and although we’re lucky they’re never out there, it still helps us feel more secluded. #solarglarealert

Our snazzy “new” umbrella stand looks pretty cute too! 

What have you been up to?  Getting ready to enjoy some BBQ and summer parties too??  We’ve got a ways to go but it’s starting to come together great!

I feel terrible.  I’ve been busy and neglecting all 4 of my readers of this blog!  There are excuses, like “work has been insane” and “I’ve been sick”, but do those really matter when all of you are counting on me to bring a piece of email to your inbox???

The truth is, although all of that has gotten in the way for a couple of weeks, I’ve really missed blogging!  I’ve discovered that I really like doing this!  It’s not only to share with my friends and family what’s been going on and what little projects we might be tackling, but this blog is allowing Jake and I to document this amazing time in our lives!  We get to capture all those pictures and moments as we watch our house transform and share some really great experiences in our lives.  As an added bonus, the time I spend writing and editing photos just really makes this nerdy-girl happy!

So I pledge to you, 4 Readers, that I will try to be better and not let a week go by without a post!  I pledge to myself, that I will try to better and allow myself these moments to work on something I feel passionate about!

See you soon!