Quick trip to Reno/Tahoe

I had never been to Reno - and you may be asking why would you even want to go to Reno? It wasn't so much to spend time in that small city but to venture out and really see the area and drive out to Lake Tahoe. It was great!

The weather was perfect - super sunny and warm. We brought our tennis rackets in our suitcase and found a park along the Truckee River and played two different mornings on our short trip. We also walked about 2 miles to get to a beautiful park near the Univ of Nevada and really loved checking that out.

We did gamble a bit and went through all the casinos in Reno...nothing special but some of the city has been redone and is super nice - near the Truckee River.

Then on Sunday before we left we drove a little over an hour to Lake Tahoe and spent some time in South Lake. South Lake borders CA and NV. It was actually really nice so we are thinking the next time we visit this area we'll definitely stay near by and spend more time in this area. It's more expensive then staying in Reno but it's so beautiful.

Here are some pics from our short trip.

Ryan had a free 5 minutes of playing this slot and if he was in the top 5 highest scores for the day he would win something. Sadly he didn't make the top 5.

We walked to this great park from the hotel.

 

Beautiful Lake Tahoe!

 

 

Heading over to Lake Tahoe. Beautiful mountains.

Stripes

Ryan and I have been getting fit over the last few months (between our two neighbors and us we lost a total of 80lbs combined!) so I felt our workout room needed a little sprucing up. I didn't want to do a whole lot so as I searched on pinterest I realized stripes may be the way to go. Since I wanted to minimal painting I stuck with the original color of the wall and just needed to find a paint color that would coordinate.

Here is the blank walls I started with. Literally nothing was on these walls since we moved in so it was just beige, beige and more beige. Well we had mounted a TV to the mall and calendar so I guess there were a few things on the wall but nothing that looked nice :)

 

 

 

 

Next I needed to chose a color. Since I wanted to coordinate with the current color and the color of the baseboards and molding around the closet and main door I went with the color "ivory tower" - the top color of the paint swatch below. 

 

 

 

 

Pretty lucky guess on the paint color because it turned out to match the molding exactly...which makes the room really come together....keep reading to see the end result.

 

Pinterest was great with having so many tutorials on how to paint stripes. I bought some frog tape and began taping. I only wanted to paint two stripes. So I measured the wall from floor to ceiling and divided by 5 (with only painting two of the 5 stripes). I wanted to make this super easy as well so I didn't want to paint the stripe that was close to the floor or close to the ceiling...that made this sooooo easy!

 

To make the lines I took a laser level and just penciled a line all along the wall. I did this all on my own so it is doable with just one person.



 

I may be able to tell from the above picture but I made sure to put a piece of tape in the stripe that I didn't want to paint in so that I didn't mistakenly start painting in the wrong stripe. Then I started painting the ivory stripes. I also got at Lowe's these cheap white mirrors ($6 a piece) and got some command strips to stick the mirrors to the wall. I put some cork board squares up on the wall so that we could pin our race numbers and goals to the wall. I love how it turned out. I didn't take another picture but I also striped the opposite wall as well. The back wall still needs something but I'm looking for an inspirational quote to add and just haven't found the right one yet. 

 

 

 

Trips

Well I haven't posted an update in while. Here is an update on the trips we took the last couple of months.

In February we went to Arizona to visit Ryan's uncle and aunt (Ken and Kathy). They live in a new community near the town of Elo (southern AZ) and we spent 4 days with them. We went to a golf tournament one day, I went shopping with Kathy at Mesa Market Place one day and tried our best to stay active while we were there.

We then went up to the Phoenix area and spent time with my relatives on both the Cadiz and Pool side. It was great to see everyone during this visit.

Then in March we went to Puerto Vallarta with our friends and neighbors, Leah and Jaurdey. It was so much fun. We rented a condo that was huge - 3000sq ft with wrap around balconies facing the ocean. It was amazing. The pool was pretty cool as well - though it was partially under construction so that part wasn't cool.

Her are pics from our travels:

 

We went to Pipi's in the above pictures. It was pretty cool restaurant. A must see if you ever visit PV.

We found this tiki hut restaurant were we sipped a few drinks on the beach. It was actually a little chilly at this point in the night but we loved this spot.

These pics above were taken at Barracuda restaurant - a pain to fine but pretty good food.

 

I'm ready to plan our next trip - Hawaii again maybe?

 

 

Mudroom complete

So after we put a new closet near our front door, that left an empty closet near our door to the garage so my thought was to change it into a mudroom area where you can hang purses and take your shoes off, etc.

So I felt motivated to paint and get it all organized. I painted it green so I may use the rest of the gallon somewhere else in the house since I really like the color. Then I installed a light system and hung a shelf unit. Ryan had installed the cat door a few weeks ago. More on that in a moment. Here are some pictures of the project:

 


















Above are pictures of the lighting system I put in. They are really for under-mount cabinet lights but they have a little switch and plug in so obviously super easy then. They are hidden behind the wall so you don't really focus on the fact that there is a cord and I linked two of the lights together so it's a good amount of light into the small room now.

I painted the room a pretty green as I mentioned but my cell phone pictures don't really do it justice.

And then the final look after I put the decor and shelf in:

 

Our new coat closet turned mudroom room. It's probably not much of an actual mudroom
but it's still a great place to hang your coat purse and take your shoes off :)

So the story with the cat door. You can see it in the above pic but our goal is to get the cats to go through this door so they can right into a cabinet in the garage where their liter is. It's all up and ready for use BUT the cats are afraid to actually go through the door. SO they haven't used the liter out there yet. We keep trying to get them to go through the door but nothing yet. Hopefully soon as it will be super nice to have the liter in the garage.

Here is a picture of the cabinet from the garage side of things. If they just walk through the cat door they would end up in this cabinet to use their liter (so they aren't really roaming the garage free at all). I'm hoping it will work as we begin to train them. Scooter will be the hardest to train.

Weekend with Halen!

We got to have Halen Friday to Saturday while Candace went to see one of Chris' concerts in Sequim. I drove out to Bremerton to pick him up (and all his stuff) and then took the ferry back home. He was such a trooper. He sleep all through the night though I felt I needed to keep getting up and checking on him :)

By Saturday morning he was a bit more fussy - he's teething and needed to pooh I think :) Anyway we had a fun time with him.

Great Grandma & Grandpa got Pooh Bear for Halen. I had it at my house until I saw him next. He was a little scared at first because Pooh is so big but he loved him.

Using Pooh as a pillow. Halen's cheeks were so red from teething. I knew he wasn't feeling that great.

Waiting for the ferry. I was trying to entertain him while waiting to get on so I kept sneaking into the backseat to make him smile.

                                                         Hanging out with Uncle Ryan.

Wanda's Birthday

To celebrate Wanda's 65th Birthday I took her to the Queen Mary Tea Room with surprise guest, niece Kathy! It was so much fun to surprise Wanda as she didn't know where we were going. I remember going to the Tea Room with my sister and mom before so it was fun to share this experience with Wanda as well. Here are a few pictures from our morning breakfast.

Smile - says the crumpet :)

Another closet?

So I've been thinking for some time how nice it would be to actually have a closet near my front door - why they put the coat closet down the hall makes no sense (except it is near the garage so I guess there was a reason). So we decided to get some help and have a coat closet built in our entry way. I've been nervous about it since it will take up space but then again all this house has is space so using up 4ft of space for a closet shouldn't be a big deal. Here are some before, after and in between pics of the closet.

Two more projects I have in mind: making one of our other closets and small mudroom/coat drop spot and then extending the kitchen cabinets in our kitchen. The mudroom I think I can finish myself since that wouldn't take much. Looking forward to that mini project!

Before (around Christmas, hence some of the Christmas decor). It always looked nice just could use some good storage solution when you walk in).

Above is with everything cleared out. The board on the wall went with my wall shelf and I just hadn't removed it yet.

The closet will go in the left hand corner.

Below is where the closet was getting framed out and drywalled:

                                   

Any the final look? I love the extra storage I now have near the front door. I just need to put the closet rack back up and then it's ready for use.  I also will add a light inside the closet (update: to make this easy which is always my theme I added motion censored light so when you open the close a lamp switches on). It looks like it's always been there :)