And we’re back!

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Frame by Frame Style

It’s been a crazy few weeks, but after taking a few days to recoup and enjoy a nice quiet Valentine’s Day, I’m back to writing and will have some new posts for you soon.

BJ and I had a great Valentine’s Day this year. We started our celebration a few days early and enjoyed dinner, music, wine and a fun evening out with our friends at a local winery.

On Valentine’s Day, BJ sent me this beautiful arrangement of red roses. I love them! They still look so pretty and smell amazing! Flowers always seem to brighten the day especially when they are from someone special.

On Valentine’s Day night, BJ and I made a delicious dinner at home and opened a bottle of Biltmore Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon that we brought back from our first anniversary trip. It was a great date night at home.

This weekend, we started back into to our home decorating and DIY projects. I will post the details soon, but for now, I will leave you with this picture of Zoey on a sleepy Sunday evening.

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

Happy Halloween everyone! BJ and I had a fun time handing out candy tonight. We hope you have (or had) a safe night enjoying costumes parties or trick-or-treating! Don’t eat too much candy!

Zoey is spending her evening anxiously awaiting the Great Pumpkin to rise out of the pumpkin patch and bring toys to all the little kiddies and little kitties of the world!

Have a great night!

The Blanket Basket Acquisition

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

When you’re a cat owner/lover, you quickly learn that your stuff, is really your cat’s stuff. Your original purpose for items when they come into your home may not stay that way for long.

Take this basket:

We bought it with the intention that we would use it for blanket storage. Now that we have a bigger couch, we can have extra blankets available for guests or to snuggle up with on a chilly evening.

But since this is really “Zoey’s house,” as we often joke, our blanket basket is now Zoey’s basket.

But that’s why we love her. She is a keeper and definitely brings joy into our home.

Does your pet claim particular items as their own?

Happy Independence Day!

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

Happy Independence Day! We hope you have a great day barbecuing, spending time with family and friends, as well as celebrating our great country!

Not only is today the birth of our country, it is also a special day for us for another reason. Today is Zoey’s birthday! She is our independent girl. Happy Birthday to America and Zoey!

The DIY Towel Tree is Complete!

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

Two posts in one day! We’re on a roll this weekend.

The towel tree is compete. After traveling to three home improvement stores this afternoon (and the mall and we got pizza too:)) we finally settled on hooks for the tree. After much debate and several trips from the bathroom fixture aisles to the hardware aisles and back, we decided to go with bronze robe hooks. We chose bronze because it was closest thing we could find to match the vinyl tree. The decision on the design of the hooks came down to sturdiness. And the robe hooks are a much “classier” look versus a bland hardware hook.

The last store we visited was the Home Depot and that is where we found our selection. Thankfully, they had more than just two in stock. The bases are also large enough that they cover the marks left by the previous towel rack.

And drumroll please… Here is the before and after:

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Zoey was also very helpful during this project. She supervised and laid on the bits of toilet paper that were left in the rug from when she attacked the roll. It's going to be fun trying to clean those up.

The weird thing is she spends all day in our bedroom and bathroom and she leaves the toilet paper alone. But if the guest bathroom door is open, the toilet paper doesn’t stand a chance.

This is Zoey’s “I didn’t do it” face.

A Gray Cat and the Cherry Tree

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

The tree is on the wall!

Now we need some hooks to make it complete. We already have the holes drilled for two hooks. This is thanks to the former towel rack that didn’t serve much of a purpose.

So we are officially on the search to find hooks to hang in our tree. The idea is that if we find black hooks they will blend in and look like leaves. There will be one hook that sets away from the tree, but it’s only because it is from the former towel rack. Instead of plastering the hole and painting it, we decided it would be easier to use it as a hook. I thought it would be cool if we could find a vinyl bird to place out near the hook so it blends in. I’m going to keep my eyes out for that next time we visit Target. I know I’ve seen vinyl birds before.

Zoey is also excited we are working on projects again. She is enjoying the bag from our pottery barn find and last night she pawed the tree after it was on the wall. Maybe she wanted to confirm it wasn’t real? Not sure why she pawed it, but maybe it was her sign of approval.

Happy Saturday everyone!

Winter cleaning

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

It’s that time of year again. Time for spring… err… winter cleaning.

This year I got a head start on my spring cleaning and now I’m calling it “winter cleaning.” As part of my new year’s resolutions, I want to get organized. I started with my scary bathroom drawer and moved my way around the house. So far, I’ve cleaned/organized our closet and now I’m moving on to other locations in the house. My next stops are the laundry room and kitchen pantry.

All of this organization mania started a few weeks ago when I received this in the mail:

I love the Container Store. I would also love to go there and buy an Elfa system for every closet in the house as well as the laundry room. But for now, cleaning and self-organizing will have to do.

So as promised, an update on the closet. Here is the before and after for our master closet.

Before:

After:

It doesn’t look like this yet… but it’s still a work in progress. We are getting closer!

I spent a few hours just sorting through and getting rid of clothes I no longer wear. A local non-profit will be in receipt of our donations in the near future. After I eliminated the clothes I no longer wear, I start organizing and folding the remaining clothes. For the non hanging clothes, I folded and neatly arranged them on the shelves and then I organized the hanging clothes by color and type. Finally I organized the shoes and scarves and then, I could see the floor again! Hooray! Now I won’t feel as stressed when I walk into the closet every day. I can pick out my clothes in a more welcoming environment.

While I’ve been cleaning, BJ has been busy working on the crown molding project. He made it all the way above the kitchen cabinets before running out of molding. Another trip to the home improvement store is in our future. We also need to pick out new baseboards for the dining room, so the timing worked out well.

So far, our 2012 has been full of cleaning and home improvement projects. Even Zoey is excited to see the progress!

That’s her serious face.

Well even if Zoey isn’t excited, we certainly are. I can’t wait to wrap up the dining room and crown molding projects.

We have some big plans for this year. Here are some of the things we would like to do in 2012:

1. Cleaning/Organizing the garage
2. Cleaning/Organizing the laundry room and kitchen pantry
3. Towel rack projects for master and guest bathroom
4. Decorate the loft area

And I’m still working on my resolution to blog more often. So much to do! More updates to come.

Curtains = Cat Beds

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Frame by Frame Style

Did you know that curtains can also double as cat beds? Zoey certainly thinks they can. Normally when I’m working in my office, Zoey can either be found laying in my lap or the desk by my feet. The other day, she was no where to be found. That is, until I looked behind the curtains to find a sleeping kitten:

I’ll admit it was a little chilly last week, but I didn’t think it would be cold enough for Zoey to seek warmth in the curtains. Maybe she is just getting herself ready for the winter months. It was really cute to see her all snuggled up in the curtains. I wish I could’ve gotten a picture of when she was sleeping on the other side of the room on top of the curtains.

Here is Zoey all tucked in her new curtain bed.

To give you some perspective, I have one curtain panel hung on each window of my office and then the curtain is draped over a hook. Zoey was laying in the part of the curtains that gathered on the floor.

So aside from finding sleeping kittens in our curtains, BJ and I have been busy working on projects around the house.

Here is a sneak peek of some upcoming posts about our projects.

The blue paint is finally on the wall! Remember the paint chip that we taped on our wall nearly one year ago:

Well, we finally finished the wall!

Over the weekend, I learned a very valuable lesson about gardening. Do not put off cleaning your flowers beds and then spend all day working on them. You will wake up the next morning with sore muscles you didn’t even know you had. My hat goes off to professional landscapers. I’m still beat from spending all day weeding, trimming flowers and bushes and pulling out unwanted sticker bushes. And there is still more to do.

The before:

It’s already been a busy October and there is still more month ahead!

Candy corn

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Frame by Frame Style

Has anyone noticed the insane amount of Halloween candy in stores? This year it seemed extremely early that the Halloween candy started creeping its way into stores (no pun intended). Was it just me, or did it start showing up at the end of August? Seeing holiday decorations and candy early always makes me anxious to start decorating for that holiday, but I always try to withstand the urge to start decorating over a month ahead of time. It keeps me from getting tired of the decorations before the holiday arrives. But this year, I gave in and started decorating for Halloween a little early.

Now that it’s pretty much a month from Halloween, I decided to try a fun centerpiece idea I found on Pinterest.

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To make my version of this fun candy corn centerpiece, I used our Crate and Barrel vases and our candles from Ikea …

…And added some candy corn I bought at Target to make my interpretation:

I arranged them on our dining room table with a wire pumpkin I found at Michael’s last year for a fun fall table display. They look really nice with our Vera Bradley Yellow Bird placemats.

I’m still not sure I’m crazy about the garland, but I’m going to wait a bit and see if it grows on me. Or I will leave there until I find an alternative that I like better.

So on another note, lately Zoey has been very helpful around the house. She really enjoys redecorating our fall displays. Evidently, our fall leaves are also fun toys. Some of our friends came for a visit recently and they found a few leaves Zoey sampled from the stairway garland. The other day, I caught her in action.

And to end my short Fall-themed post, if I had smell-o-vision for my blog, it would smell like the delicious apple crisp I made on Monday. So for all you pumpkin spice latte drinkers out there, this is the perfect Fall dessert (other than pumpkin pie) to enjoy with your Fall beverage of choice. For me, it’s a carmel macchiato, because I’ve never been a big pumpkin spice latte drinker. So grab a dish of apple crisp (with vanilla ice cream, of course), curl up with a blanket and your pumpkin spice latte and enjoy the rest of the week!

Meet Zoey

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Frame by Frame Style

You might’ve already noticed Zoey hanging out in some of our photos like “Where’s Waldo.” In some of the photos she is easy to spot, but in other you may not catch our gray tiger at first glance. You should get used to seeing her because Zoey is quite the ham. She loves to follow us around the house, which means that she is in most of the photos I take. We love our kitten and that fact that she shows up in so many of our photos. Below are a few photos that feature Zoey in all her glory. Keep an eye out for Zoey in future photos and posts!