Fall is settling in....

and the social calender has been non-stop lately... all fun things of course ;) A couple of weekends ago we had another couple join us in our trek upstate for some fall fun ... on the agenda was Pie-in-the-Sky in Oneonta, NY for apples/pumpkins and some fall flavored ice cream, Ommegang Brewery for some beer tasting and frites and then some various shops and Brooks BBQ to round things out. What a fantastic weekend it was! The weather decided not to be so favorable, but I think we all really enjoyed ourselves and it was nice to spend some quality time together outside of the hustle and bustle that is NYC.

I thought that since I hadn't captured any pics on my iPhone that weekend that all was lost in the picture department... HOWEVER, you are all in luck as I have found some Ommegang pics to show you from this past summer with the fam ;) I also threw in a pic of the gorgeous drive home on Sunday and some of the gords we picked up from Pie-in-the-Sky to decorate our 3 Thanksgiving tables... yes, you heard that correctly, THREE tables for roughly 18 peeps in our small little doll house. This shall be interesting....

* The setup over the summer was still an outdoor beer tasting situation. Now there is a proper closed in porch with a really nice/large bar that they hold the tastings on!

* This beer pic is for you Hana since we know how much you enjoyed this brew :)

I must say, we have been pretty disappointed by the tree colors this fall..... I don't know if it is due to the wacky weather or what, but leaves have been going straight from green to basically falling off instead of turning wonderful orange/yellow/red hues that we are used to seeing in fall. 

That's all we've got for now folks... hopefully more to come soon!

Bedroom revamp...

Besides the kitchen being revamped, the next most exciting room has to be the downstairs master bedroom. This is what it looked like before (although I really wish I had photos with more angles of the room, there were really large bookshelves built in to the left side of the entrance that were torn out):

* Sorry peeps for the teeny tiny pic.
Here are a few pics while we were in the process of ripping down wallpaper, which miraculously tore down in large sheets with no scraping required:

Now pics of the bedroom after paint and after we put some temporary furniture in it (side tables are permanent though):

I must say, the bedroom floors cleaned up pretty darn well after my sister and I put in a little elbow grease!

*Chandelier by Ikea ;)

The bedroom is coming along much better than I had anticipated... the color is called Silver Bells by Benjamin Moore and is a really pale gray but in some light, turns a pale purple which is fine by us! It is a very calming color. Sorry for such awkward lighting in all the pics.... this room is the worst to photograph.

Next up is the hallway.... YES the hallway we have previously blogged about that was mucho difficult to scrub all the wallpaper off of, all 10 gazillion layers of it!

Hallway before/after:

Looks like a whole new hallway, wouldn't you say?

Things are really starting to look fresh and new around UpstateHaven! We still have a bunch of furniture to purchase and stuff to hang on the wall, but I don't mind taking my time and really picking out things we LOVE instead of like as a temporary solution, ya know?

We have some exciting stuff going on the next month.... some friends staying with us at the 'Haven and our first real hosting duties on Thanksgiving!!!!! YIKES! I hope I don't go overboard with food and decoration, I'm just so excited to finally be able to host in a space that holds more than a handful of people :)

Kitchen reno complete!

The kitchen reno is finally complete and we could NOT be happier! The floor looks phenomenal and it really pulled everything together to complete the look we were going for. I have a bunch of photos starting with how the kitchen originally looked, moving to how it looked after the cabinetry was ripped out and then the "fresh and so clean clean" version....

Straight up YIKES....

Mags inspecting the joint....

Just before the dining table/chairs were brought in...

And just because we are very into the small touches that make a place really feel like home....

*Doesn't everyone need a wall-mounted bottle opener?

Needless to say we are very happy with the outcome and cannot wait to move on to the downstairs bathroom! Many thanks to Uncle David for seeing our dream kitchen through to the end :)

More reno pics to come tomorrow!



After all that lack of posting...

and complaining that I had no photos to post on here of before and afters, now I am completely overwhelmed with available posts. The hubs and I were once again up at UpstateHaven this past weekend and actually, for once, got a ton of small projects out of the way. It definintely helped that the weather was amazing, making any outdoor reno a must!

I'll start with Hubbie's project from this past weekend... the garage door! We love the old school look of the garage door as well as the sturdiness of it, so we decided to re-paint it and spruce it up a bit.... see how long we can ride it out before getting a new one someday.

Here is the before/after:

* I think Hubs really did a stellar job on freshening it up and making it look quasi-new again!

Next up is the back of our house.... when we purchased this house, there was a dead tree that needed removing before it came crashing down on our roof, a roof that needed new shingles and as I have posted before, the windows that needed replacing. After we took care of those 3 things, we decided it was time to add shutters to any windows missing them and replacing the old ones to get a more uniform look.

Here is what we ended up with (before/after):

* Loving the baby shutters my Uncle custom made for our petite upstairs bathroom window :)

The final outdoor project I was able to start this weekend was painting the old bedframe from my Grandma's bedroom. All the pieces we found in the house were super sturdy and well built, while we couldn't keep them all, one of the ones we decided to keep was the bedframe for a guest room! I decided that spray painting the frame (after a good scrubbing and some primer) would be the best option.... not sure that was the fasest and best way to go in all honesty. I used a full can on only one side of the headboard... meaning I still have 3 more sides of bedrame to go. It looks pretty decent though so far, despite inhaling way too many fumes and the paint hitting more grass than actual wood.

* Here is the home of the old bed..... BOY have things changed in this room. I cannot wait to share the proof with everyone!

It continuously blows my mind as to what new paint can do to just about anything!

Many more posts to come!!!

Oh Weekend...

It makes me very happy to finally see your presence around the corner :) Lot's of good stuff going on this weekend peeps .... purging our UpstateHaven of yet MORE junk that keeps creeping out of no where , seeing our newly tiled floors/shutters/kitchen doors and working on putting up some more curtain tie-backs/perhaps spray painting a bed frame and then some tidying, setting up our table yada yada yada!  Luckily the weather is great for driving and it is supposed to keep getting warmer over the weekend. Sounds good to me!

We honestly have no new pics to put on this little blog of ours.... things have been beyond busy and parents have been in town... I know that is no excuse, but I am using it as one ;) After this weekend our computer should be filled to the brim with reno pics and I will post as many as I can.

I will leave you with a fun pic taken our our cat Emma... she decided to dress up as a super hero in daddies underoos and a bandana... she is a weird one that Emma ;)

* Doesn't she look SO happy to be in that getup?
I almost forgot to mention, we will prob spend many hours putting together some new Ikea chairs to go along with my Grandmother's old dining table, and we all KNOW how that goes! Even though, not to toot my own horn, but living with a Swede I have become quite proficient in Ikea directions so let's hope it doesn't take up too much of our time that could be spent outdoors gathering a couple new freckles before the fall REALLY sets in.

Hope everyone has a glorious fall weekend and see you all next week with boat loads of new updates/pics!

xoxo