Our First Anniversary: Oh the Places We'll Go!

Hey y'all,

Our first anniversary was a couple weeks ago and I wanted to follow the tradition of giving a paper gift, so I took to Pinterest for inspiration and found the perfect gift to make for my hubby. We really enjoy traveling so the gift involved that and let me be a bit creative in making it, so I think it was the perfect first anniversary gift.

I found my inspiration at the 36th Avenue and with trips to multiple Michael's, Hob Lob, Wal-Mart, Target AND School Box, I had all my materials to create our own special travel map. 

Along with a US map (to be cut up to trace out the states), I got several different pieces of scrapbook paper in grays and yellows since I'm loving that color scheme lately, Mod Podge, a 16"x 20" canvas, small wooden unpainted letters and the piece de resistance- adorable mini wooden hearts and arrows that I used to show which states we've visited. Yay Hob Lob for the sweet find!

All my materials ready to go....finally!

After longer than I care to mention, all the pieces of the US were cut up and ready to be traced (Northeastern states, we're no longer friends. Midwestern states, we're cool.) 

Cut up and ready to be traced!

I alternated the different scrapbook paper designs to create a pattern between the yellows and grays and laid them out back in the correct shape to make sure all the pieces fit together okay (amazingly, they did).

This part of the US took no time at all to trace and cut out compared to the tiny states of the northeast.

Once all the states were cut out...after a LONG time starting at the tiny pieces, I laid them all out on my canvas. Based on the color scheme I selected for the scrapbook paper, I decided not to paint the canvas and decided to leave the canvas plain since I figured I'd need all the space I could get for the map since the states were pretty big.

All ready to adhere to the canvas!

Once all the states were mod-podged to the canvas, I was ready to add in the letters as well as the hearts to show all the states we've been to. To lighten up the color of the wooden letters, I used some metallic white acrylic paint I had lying around.

I was really happy with how it turned out and I think hubby liked it as well. It'll be fun adding to it the map over the years as we visit new places.

I can't wait until we get settled in our new place and can display this map with some pictures showcasing the places we've been.

Until next time,
CZP

Happy New Year! What We've Been up to the Last Four Months

Happy belated New Year! The fall was busy for us with a lot of different projects all leading up to this:

We're selling our house! We're currently under contract so should be closing in the next month! Yippee! Our lives over the past 4 months have revolved around work (and LOTS of travel for me!) and projects to prepare the house for selling.

Our house overall was in pretty good shape, but there were definitely some projects that needed to be done, so here are some highlights of what we did!

--Updates to the kitchen: we ended up refreshing the cabinets with new hardware, cleaning and touching up the paint on the cabinets, and doing a deep clean of the grout (that was a fun Saturday!). 

Top is the new hardware and bottom is what we replaced.

Cabinets with new hardware!

Grout- before and after deep cleaning

--Refinished the fireplace in the master bedroom: the paint on the fireplace had gotten a bit dull and some of the knots in the wood were showing through the paint, so we wanted to refresh the fireplace to make it look that much more appealing in the master suite.

Before!

Prepped and ready to paint

The finished product with a drawing I bought from a street artist in Vienna.

--Organization: We packed up a lot of items to de-clutter the house, but there were some items we needed to keep handy that we used pretty frequently, so the solution was baskets to store items to look more organized. It's amazing how these spaces were transformed with just a couple decorative baskets from Target.

Coat closet - before

Coat closet - after

Laundry room - before

Laundry room - after

--Staging: I didn't take before pics, but we followed the advice of all the different websites that touted the importance of staging the house to sell it. We removed pretty much anything in the house that was personal including all pictures and knick-knacks and packed them up. We packed up a bunch of other stuff to generally de-clutter the house, especially the kitchen. The after results of all the packing up and staging the house!

The living room: our sectional previously was one large piece of furniture but we ended up completely rearranging the living room to make it flow better and to move the couch away from the fireplace.

 Kitchen: We packed away most of the items that were on the counters (i.e., our extensive wine collection since we don't drink wine that often...)  and put away all the wedding save the dates and invitations that were covering our fridge.

 

The dining room: we had been using the dining room as an office so we had to completely update that room to turn the room back into a dining room.

The house selling process should be wrapped up in the next few weeks so now our attention is turned to packing up and trying to find a new place!

Until next time,
CZP