My thrift finds!

 With Spring quickly approaching, the "garage sale" signs have been 

slowly making their appearances!

Yesterday, I noticed a sign in our neighborhood that said 

"EPIC YARD SALE, MULTI FAMILY, ESTATE SALE"....

so I knew that I had to go check it out today.

I pull up and it was one driveway with a bunch of junk, overpriced junk.

Talk about false advertising.

So I decided to meet my sister at a local thrift store instead.

The thrift store had a half off sale today, and these were my lucky finds:

The pink half table was $1.98

The Red chair was $2.98

I haven't decided what I am going to do to them to make them more "me"

but I will be able to better decide that after I decide which rooms they are going in.

Who knows they may end up right next to each other (after a paint coat or two...of course)

Our backside

Now that weather is getting nicer, I was able to get some pretty 

good pics of the backside of our house!

We haven't done anything to the yard since we bought the place, except

rake up the leaves that were all over

the lawn.  

 

Notice there are 3 chimneys on our home!

That is because the home used to be heated with coal.  

See the little box at ground level below the chimney on the first  picture?....

That is the original coal chute.  

They had several chimneys/fireplaces around the home so the WHOLE house could stay warm.

2/3 Coal burners have been removed by previous owners.

I really glad that there is minimal landscaping done so far...that makes it easier 

to just landscape as we wish, without having to rip a bunch of stuff out first!

So excited to have some bbq's in this little patio area come Summer time!

ps-we got an awesome BBQ grill that someone had sitting

on the side of the road with a "FREE" sign on it.

 

Side of home

Backside..love the Ivy!

Patio area

Patio Area

The steps to the house...since it was a Foreclosure, the bank put in some "really nice" railings for safety measure.  Those will be leaving us hopefully sooner than later!

The backyard, see the tall old shed on the right?  That is the homes old carriage house

backdoor, the brick has paint on it, that needs to be removed

Renovation gone bad!

Wouldn't you hate if someone took an old vintage piece of clothing
and added new fabric styles, new buttons and
tried to "update" the item?
That is exactly what has happened to this 101 year old homes bathroom......

Our bathroom is yet another room that the previous owner

trade marked with excellent paint color choice!

On the bright side, this color of blue is perfect for the approaching Easter season!

AND it looks just like the hue of blue peeps, and who doesn't love peeps...right?

We have not decided fully on a color scheme for

the bathroom, but the ENTIRE (minus the tub and toilet) needs to

be redone!

I hate when people buy an old home (ours is now 101 years old), and put 

newer things in it.  This bathroom should have never had this tile installed on the floor,

and that vanity is straight from 1991.

Did you notice the counter top matches the walls and back splash...oh goodie goodie!

The tub is the original one that went into this home,

as soon as indoor plumbing was available!

It is the best soaking tub, it's soooo deep.

Behind the makeshift mirror above the vanity is a window that someone 

covered with drywall....you can see the window from the outside of the home.

I am so excited to get rolling on this project, but it is going to be just that...a PROJECT.

the sub floor needs to be replaced, as someone before us let the toilet leak and voila...that equals damage.

But when this is restored back to it's old school vintage vibe, it will be beautiful!

original claw foot tub!

The horrible vanity that needs to be replaced in order to honor the homes originality

This toilet has been replaced as it had a cracked tank..

The doorway to the bathroom (and our two dogs!)

Our Washer/Dryer are here!

I know nobody else will really

care about this post,

but it shows how many little things you have to do

when buying your own home!

Shaun and I have never had a washer/Dryer in any of the apartments we lived in,

we always had to go to the laundry mat, or someone elses house to wash our clothes.

Doing laundry is easy when you have it in your own home,

going somewhere else to do it, makes it the worst 

house chore ever!

Anyway, my amazing Grandma told us to go find

a washer/dryer and tell her how much half the cost would be...

that was our house warming gift from her (pretty generous!).

So on Presidents Day we went out and stopped at 

Costco,

they had a W/D set for about $830 and you have to pick it up and get it into your house.

next was Home Depot,

they had mainly High efficiency models (which people say tend to break more easily), so we moved on to.....

Lowes,

they had a presidents day sale going on!  We found a basic Whirlpool model

that was on sale, that we could get another 10% off on top of the sale since we were spending over $399, and they also gave us another 5% off on top of that!

So the grand total for the same model we saw at Costco came to:

$838 with hoses, hook ups and DELIVERY!

SOLD

The guys delivered them last night, and I was not impressed

with them.  Here is why:

They were frustrated that I (the 6 month pregnant lady) did not shovel the 2 feet of

snow drifts in the back yard so they could go thru the back door

They did not wipe their feet on the 2 outdoor rugs they walked across, and tracked MUD from the 

front door, thru the living room, thru the dining room, thru the kitchen and all over the laundry room

I spent 15 mins on my hands and knees wiping up wet mud off our wood floors, they just looked at me...

When Shaun got home he spent another 15 mins wiping up mud

and the stupidest part of all, they walked across my GOOD rug in the kitchen and destroyed it, when there was 9 feet of more accessible tile floor they could have walked on

the first load of laundry done in our own home....so convenient!

Overall, I was happy with the Lowe's sale prices, but not happy with the idiots that delivered the washer/dryer.

Now the room makeover has begun........

the next pics will not have white walls or ugly floors!

Laundry room BEFORE

Our laundry room is one of the rooms in

our home in need of the most TLC.

And now that we got our tax return back, we

have some extra money to put into our home!!

This is the list of what needs to be done:

• New flooring
• Paint walls and baseboards
• fix the kiddie coat hanger (make it look presentable)
• Buy washer/dryer (cannot wait for this!!!)
• Organize all our cleaning stuff that is thrown everywhere
• possibly paint the oak cabinets (I HATE OAK)

Here is what it looks like!

Laundry room currently...AKA Before makeover!

laundry hookup with cabinets above

laundry room before

need new floors asap

This door in the laundry room goes to the backyard

I have no idea what colors etc I want,

but a trip to home depot and sherwin williams is in

our plans for the evening.

Cheap Easy Chicken Corn Chowder Recipe

The other night I was feeling a little lazy,

and nothing sounded good for dinner....

(come to find out, I was coming down with the cold my baby has)

ANYWAYS,

So I decided to make some homemade corn chowder.

I had never mad corn chowder, but if you have chicken stock....you can make basically any soup!

Here is the recipe I came up with,

it tasted so yummy.

My husband and my baby boy LOVED it....hope you do too!

Easy Chicken Corn Chowder

2 cups milk

2 cups chicken broth/stock

1 can cream corn

1 can corn (drained)

2 carrots (chopped)

1 huge potato (chopped)

1 large chicken breast (uncooked)

1 cup instant potatoes

salt/pepper/garlic to taste

Steps:

Put the raw chicken and everything else in the pot and cook on very low for 1 hour...

or until chicken is cooked and veggies are perfectly cooked.

Stir a few times throughout that hour....

Enjoy!

Before/during bedroom makeover

Yesterday I was looking through some old pics and found the one I

took of our Son's room before

we even made an offer on the home!

Yay...I thought I 

had never taken one.

So here is the before and during pics:

Before, blue walls and ceiling w clouds painted on top

During makeover, after painting was finished