Baby Steps...

I haven't checked my blog stats in quite a while now. To be honest, over the last couple of months, blogging has taken a back seat to the rest of my life. Not even a back seat...more like following me frantically in a chase car, like in an action movie, desperately trying to get my attention. But a break from my job has allowed me to get caught up again and getting some major foundation work done on my house has started us planning again. And after seeing all the "Best of 2011" posts across blogland, I checked into my stats and found out that my most viewed post was "That's right...I bought this house..." And that totally made sense, since I entered it into a big fat design giveaway, hosted by Mandi Gubler from Vintage Revivals. And it got me thinking about how much my house has changed since I wrote that post. Sometimes it's hard for me to see how much we have done so far because I live here. And I'm really busy thinking about all the things I want to change. But by comparing the before and "now" (not totally "After!" ready yet...), I do get a real kick out of seeing the progress we have made in 8 months.

And just to prove it, here is a pic from my most-read blog post of 2011 (and of all time)...

Ugh.

And here is how it looks today...

(Notice no red shag carpet. Or red striped floral wallpaper. Huzzah!)

There is still some more that we would like to do before the room is done. After this winter, we are going to pull out the fireplace insert and list it on Craigslist...or donate it to ReStore. When we first saw the house, we thought the insert would be super rad in case of an ice storm. However, soon after moving in, we realized that this insert needs electricity to run the fan. So that idea went right out the window. Plus it's ugly. And there's really no way to fix that. We will pull it out and paint the entire fireplace white.

I am still on the hunt for a better rug...

This is the rug that used to be in the living room upstairs. Adam wanted a rug in front of the fireplace so that if an ember popped out, it wouldn't burn our brand new carpet. It's totally functional, but super boring. And eventually we will look into replacing our boring couches. They aren't comfortable and I would like to have the option of a pull out for overnight guests.

Overall, though, not bad! Looking at the first picture is like looking at a totally different house. Maybe because it was. It wasn't ours when it looked like that. But it is now. :)