It's A Wonderful Life!

We finally got our tree, I'll tell you about that adventure tomorrow.  In the meantime, I did manage to decorate the mantel.

Wow, it kind of looks a bit busy, but I can't resist displaying all the Santas, elves and nutcrackers.

Then we walked to the Tower Theatre to watch a matinee performance of It's A Wonderful Life.  So much better than seeing it on the TV with a million adverts.  I'm hoping this becomes a holiday tradition for us.

Love those vintage seats, if a bit hard on the bum.

There were only about 15 people in the audience, but I think everyone of them (well the females at least) was sobbing at the end.

We're so lucky to live only a 5 minute walk away from where the theatre is.  It's located in a little shopping area called ninth & ninth.  This is also where they show many of the Sundance Film Festival movies.  As you can see it was dark when we left, so it made the walk home even more special and gave us the opportunity to take sneaky peeks at people's christmas decorations in their homes.

Peacock Mirror

So progress is slowly being made on tjuzing (zooshing) the downstairs.  I've spent the past week painting various pieces of furniture. There was an unfortunate incident with the glass cabinet that was in the family room.  We had to move the furniture out onto the deck so that the floors could be refinished.  Even though we covered the furniture, some water got in and ruined the finish of said cabinet.  Can't say I was sad because I always thought that the natural wood was too dark anyway.  So you could say it was kind of ruined accidentally on purpose.  But what color to paint it?  I really didn't have green on the radar until I heard that emerald was Pantone's color of the year.  I like emerald, but I wanted the green to be reflective of the chandelier in the kitchen and the green in the drapes (I like it when a colour is repeated).

The picture below is probably more reflective of the actual colour.

I also bought a new mirror to go over it.  It's the peacock mirror from Z Gallerie.  I like how it brings an ethnic boho vibe to the room.  It really should be bigger, but unfortunately the budget doesn't stretch to the really large and fancy one from Wisteria.

Here's an inspiration picture that helped me decide on the color and the mirror.

I think it's the same mirror, maybe they just touched it up with some gold paint.

Here's some other pretty peacock mirror images.

Sources here.

More projects aka you might as well while you're at it!

My house is a disaster!  Why do we do this to ourselves?  Every October, it seems like, we have to start some sort of remodel which completely takes over the whole house and has us living in a bomb site.  This year is no exception.  It all started out when I couldn't stand the look of my yellow walls anymore. I'm sure lots of people have had that feeling about a paint color they used to love but now despise.  But instead of just painting it which would have been "putting lipstick on a pig", we decided to fix a few small problems with the wall finish.  That turned into having the whole family room re-skimmed.  Which meant moving out all of the furniture.

Remember this room.  

It now looks like this!

I'm almost too embarrassed to show you.  It definitely looks like an episode from Hoarders.  Please don't call the child protective services on me.

And this lovely room that was recently finished.

Now looks like this!

I don't know how the poor boys are managing to practice the piano.

But that's not all, you should see their playroom.

Yep, major disaster.

 I think Damian needs to sort out those cables.

At least we can see the pretty bay window without all of the furniture in front of it.

Look at this horrible textured ceiling.  It's just gotta go (it's only taken us 15 years).

 And the start of the real mess.  And yep, the contractor was real messy and did a crappy job of protecting the floor and the trim and just about anything else!  Arghh!  And he wasn't cheap.

   That plastic between the family room and kitchen is a joke!  The drywall dust got everywhere!

Nice job of protecting the floor and cleaning up after yourself, Dave!  (Being totally sarcastic).

Yes, that is how he left it!  He even expected us to have to wipe down the sanding dust on all of the walls ourselves despite charging us a butt load of money!  Not happy with him at all.

Move on to the next part of the project, floors!

But what stain color to choose?  Such a dilemma.  The house is pretty dark, but I really love the look of dark floors we took a risk and that is what we went with.  The contractor tried to talk us into English Chestnut, but it was too red for my liking.  There's already a ton of red in the trim.  I wanted a contrast, so we choose Dark Walnut.

Nice picture of Justins's feet.

No turning back now.

Wow that yellow paint looks really yellow!

And here's Nate's prep for the painting.  Huge difference between the level of care he is taking and that of the plasterer.  It's the first time we've hired a painter to do the inside and I have to say I'm liking it!

These pictures were taken before the finish was put down.  They don't look red in real life.  They're a lovely deep brown and we're really happy with how they came out.  The guys from Underfoot Floors were awesome and the owner of the place is our neighbor which made it even better.  I highly recommend Underfoot Floors if you live in the Salt Lake area.

And since we're repainting the family room and hallways white, we might as well paint the kitchen white too!  Starting with the yellow dresser.

I think I might paint the inside the same grey that I painted the island here.

Trying to decide on paint colors.  Did originally want to go with the same grey as in the music room, but it looks really dark in the kitchen, so white it is.

And I have huge plans for this corner of the room.  Whether they'll materialize we'll see.

So let's hope it's finished before Christmas so we can actually enjoy it.