We Love Our New House! Except for...

THE LAUNDRY ROOM.

Such an insanely depressing sight...so horrible that I never wear clean clothes anymore.  Ok I guess I'm being a bit dramatic and yes, we Dan still washes our clothes but I absolutely DREAD going in there and have been known to let out little screams at times when something seems frightening such as: a small dead bug, weird eery noise, or just the soul realization that I'm in the basement by myself and I'm scared.  Who should live like this?!  (sorry, I'll try to make that my last dramatic comment).   I can't even bear to think that I'm going to show you a picture of our laundry room for much longer so I'll just have to post it quick before I decide not to go through with it!  Don't judge:

But honestly-what can we do?  It's a 1950's basement! There is absolutely no time right now to tackle this project, so I'm going to use this opportunity to start brainstorming.  So maybe in 6-12 months (knowing me, I'll start this in like 4 months because I'll be so impatient), we will have ideas and plans!  Please let me know of any advice you all might have!  Here's an example of a basement laundry room makeover on the right compared to our current laundry room on the left:

A girl can dream right?  The potential I see is possibly the hanging curtains to cover the walls and the floor covering paint to start.  That should be budget friendly I would think.  What do you think?  Last week I submitted these photos to HGTV to see if they would bring someone out to fix this!  How cool would that be?!  I'll keep you posted!  In the meantime, happy laundering!!

Groom's Dinner Test Run

We got to test out Rojo Mexican Grill on Sunday afternoon!  Great food!  Sunny!  It was perfect!  This is where we are having the Groom's dinner so get ready for a FIESTA!

Dan's mom is taking Cinco de Mayo to anotha level!

The Wedding Room

Ahh yes...where all the magic happens:



That Was Then, This Is Now THURSDAY!

I promise, I won't be a "once a week blogger" but we have been SO busy!  But I'm happy to feature another That Was Then, This Is Now THURSDAY!  Today we're happy to announce the new railing!

Before:

After:


Again, way to go Dan!

That Was Then, This Is Now THURSDAY!

Today is our first feature of..."That Was Then, This Is Now THURSDAY"!  First up, the guest room!  Below is a picture from when we toured the house:

Note: dirty carpet, skateboard in window sill, very attractive hideous tapestry and Lil Wayne himself!  I think I've also told some of you about the pancake with syrup plate we saw the first time touring and then saw again about a month later...

But it's all good!  Because there's nothing new carpet and beautiful new paint can't fix! 

Obviously still need to figure out the window covering situation but now it's a welcoming house guest haven!

Couples Shower!

This was SO fun-I can't even describe it!!  I'm so thankful to be welcomed into an amazing family!  Dan's aunt and uncle (Tim and Carol) threw us a Couples Shower at their house and we did everything from eat, drink, laugh, open presents and play the Pre-Newlywed Game, which was a huge hit!  Thank you to everyone who came and for all of the gifts and support!  I'll never forget it!

My mom and sister and me!

Some of the girls!

The ladies doing their toe pops :)

I think this is everyone's favorite picture from the game!

Some great McShanes!



Arts and Crafts Night

THANK YOU so much to everyone who helped with wedding invitations and crafts Friday night!  How fun!  The girls came over and we had pizza and wine and then taped, glued, cut, tied, and stamped all night long!

Ashley was really good at cutting string...we had to force her to not sit by herself near the trash can in deep concentration :)

All of the invitation components!  Just nuts!


Look at these two!  I swear...all they did was eat!  Just kidding :)

A Green Thumb?

Ok guys...don't you think planting something shows potential for reaching domestic goddess status?  I said POTENTIAL!  Over lunch, my co-worker Angie and I hopped over to Home Depot to pick out some plants for my new planter outside of our mudroom entrance.  I had tried going to pick them out by myself before but needed help and no Home Depot associate in an orange apron confronted me so I failed.  This time, we got 4 plants and Dan helped me plant them when we (finally) got home last night (after work, we went to Office Max to print numerous things for the wedding, went to Home Depot to get paint for the mudroom and stopped at HomeGoods to pick up the end table I bought on Thursday that wouldn't fit in my car!-more to come on this!)  Thank you Angie for your help-it seems like you know how to answer every household question I have!  So it was a successful night for flowers at the McArnold household!  Now if I can just remember to water them daily...

Credits to: Crate and Barrel for the planter

Non Credits to: the poor picture quality of my cell phone

She Arrived! Green Loveseat :)

I really do have so much to blog about but I will quickly tell you about our new green loveseat that arrived yesterday!  This was my first Overstock.com purchase and I would say it was successful!  After searching for the perfect piece of furniture to live in front of our picture window, we came across this unique little loveseat that adds a punch of color to our living room!  I was kind of nervous that the color would be different than it looked online but thankfully it is exactly was I was expecting!  It was on the porch in a huge box when I got home from work and while I was in the shower, Dan brought it in, put it together (he even put the matching pillows on) and voila!  LOVE!  I will post more pictures of it in our actual house soon!



Transforming the Office

This is a photo I took of the office in our new house during our closing inspection.  While I realize this style can definitely suite some people, it just isn't my cup of tea.  And since this room was my absolute favorite part of the whole house, I needed to see the potential for it to become the light, airy, modern office I was hoping for.

So what we did first was make a list and we also made this room a priority.  First off, it needed new carpet.  Secondly, new paint (this red was just a bit too dark for us).  Other things on the wish list: paint wood trim and book shelves white to match the trim, paint french doors white, clean out the fireplace, get a good desk and cool lamps/lighting, etc. etc.  What you might not notice on the list is "start with an accent chair".  But isn't it always the best when you find one small thing that inspires you for an entire room?  Well, that's exactly what happened.  On a Sunday afternoon, Caroline and I were running errands and stopped in to HomeGoods.  That's when we saw The Chair.

We squealed all the way from the check out counter, out the door and to the car!  All of the HomeGoods associates celebrated our purchase with us and we had several compliments on the chair as we headed to the car smiling from ear to ear!  But there it was.  The color scheme, the mood...the new focal point and inspiration!  I will say that the downfall of the day was returning home with what we thought was an amazing treasure to this audience:

Tough crowd when you're bringing home a bright colored, floral print chair.  But oh well!  We didn't let them bring us down!  Various projects ensued for the next 2 weeks...

Priming this dark red took a LONG time and 2 coats.  We just had wine, listened to Motown and made it our Friday night!

Next, we painted the office green!  I hope you like it! 

Next, I worked on painting the fireplace trim, mantle and all of the built in bookshelves white.  This was a week long process starting with the tedious task of sanding, wiping everything down, taping, priming and then painting.  I'm sorry I don't have any progress photos of the trim but the next step was to paint a fun backsplash color in each shelf (something that would tie in the chair colors).  Remember me having to say goodbye to our purple walls in our apartment?  Well, it wasn't goodbye forever!!  YAY!


And here's the final product!  I'll post some more pictures of the rest of the room once we get a desk in here and light fixtures hung, etc!

And this is me with my beloved French doors!  Dan had a week off of work after the busy season so I will take this time to recognize all of the amazing things he accomplished!  Painting these doors from brown to white was a tedious, week long process!  But Dan did it all!  (not to mention: painting the guest room, painting the stair well, getting a new bed frame, mowing the lawn, putting together a ton of furniture, putting together our new grill, etc. etc!)  So hoots to Dan and the white french doors!

And it all started with a little chair....

:)

Dress Fitting Weekend!

You guessed it!  My first dress fitting was this weekend!  Dan's mom came down from Fargo to go with my mom and I and, boy, did we have a blast!  The seamstress we went to works out of her house and she was a cutie patootie!  I'm so glad she's going to do all the special alterations because I really trusted her and could tell she really knew what she was doing!  After the fitting we had lunch on the patio at Dixie's on Grand and then we had dinner later that night at Tucci Benucch at the Mall of America!  Very fun weekend and I can't WAIT to wear my dress!!



We had to stop by the church too!  A very fun day out with the moms!

We Learned to Dance!

Well...as you can see from this photo of us at a wedding in July 2009, we needed to learn how to dance.  Especially for our own wedding!  

So last night we took a "Wedding Dance" class through St. Louis Park Community Ed!  With 5 other couples and one crazy "artsy fartsy" teacher, we learned to Waltz, Foxtrot and Rumba!  I had no idea Dan had it in him but he did so well!!   I told him to bring his flare and he definitely did!  I was stepping on his feet most of the time! :)

So stay tuned for our hopefully amazing first dance!