Wildflowers

Sorry I haven't gotten a picture of the new window yet! I've been busy working at Sbux, on the house, and helping with VBS this week. Good news... The water problems have been fixed, and I have hot water, the garbage disposal works, water doesn't pool in the dishwasher, and there are no leaks! My dad is awesome.

One of the blogs in my (too-long) list featured a post about wildflower gardens. Have I told you I love flowers? All kinds... the ones you plant in pots, the ones you plant in gardens, and the ones that grow along the side of the road.

You may have noticed that my yard is huge. So far I haven't had to mow it myself yet, because my dad kindly tasks his summer workers to do it once a week. But it is BIG. When I first moved back to Indiana, my mom and I talked about doing a wildflower garden / no-mow yard along the side to make it a little less tedious to mow. Finishing the interior of the house so it was livable was a higher priority at the time, but hopefully next summer I will be able to take a chunk of the yard and have beautiful wildflowers!

Here's some inspiration from around the web:

Maya*Made's no-mow yard

you are my fave says wildflower gardens are my fave

Enjoy!

Windows and Screens

Well, summer has come to The Little Yellow House, and it is a scorcher! I've mentioned turning on the air conditioner to see if it works, but my parents always scoff and say "Already?? It's not that hot!" Unfortunately, of the 8 windows in the house, only one has a completely hole-free screen in it. One other in the bathroom only has a few small holes. So along with being hot and humid, I have no air circulation! (Of course the good screens aren't the ones in my bedroom.) But today Dad rearranged the existing screens so that I'll be able to get a breeze through the house and will be able to sleep at night!

ALSO... Today Dad and the boys are putting in my new, big, fancy front window!!! Pictures to come :) (The only bad thing is that Jack has to be locked in the bathroom so he doesn't escape through the giant hole in the wall, and he doesn't like it one bit!)

Oh, hey there.

It's nice to see you again.

Guess what?!? In five days (FIVE DAYS!) I will pack up my car and trudge across Ohio to take up residence in this lovely little place:

Well... Soon I will take up residence. It needs some carpet first, and then I can move in and start figuring out what the heck is in all those boxes!

April Showers

Well, as they say, April showers bring May flowers... except not to the Little Yellow House, 'cuz I haven't planted any flowers!!! I have big dreams for the future, though. I love plants and flowers of all kinds, and am planning to have a great big garden to grow my own food. (The garden may or may not happen this summer.) But I can't wait to do some of my own landscaping, with trees, flowers, fruits and vegetables, shrubs and bushes, flowerbeds... the whole shebang!

A lot of the existing trees in the yard have been cut down already, because they were dead, ugly, and/or in the power lines. Cutting down trees makes me sad, but in the long run it will improve the overall look of the place. I can't wait to start planting new things!!! I don't have a lot of gardening and landscaping expertise or knowledge (thankfully my family does!), but I know some of what I like!

What are your favorite kinds of flowers and bushes? Here are some of mine!

bushes

lilac

hydrangea (oak-leaf hydrangea is my favorite!)

rhododendron

peony

annuals

gerber daisy

perennials

iris

tulip

daffodil

crocus

poppy

Hello, yellow!

because.its.spring
Originally uploaded by annamariahorner

Check out some of the lovely yellow photos from designer Anna Maria Horner's blog!

Click through here:

Preserve the "Yellow"?

It's time to pick siding!

Currently the exterior of the Little Yellow House is... yellow. :) But it is in pretty bad shape, as was the rest of the house! My mom mailed me some samples so I could pick the new color.

Don't you just love the names they pick for these things? Cypress, granite gray, sterling gray, silver ash, heritage cream, autumn yellow...

I did like the gray shades -- apparently I have a thing for gray right now, because that's the carpet color I picked. Also it's much more fun to write it the British way, with an "e". Grey. See? It looks so much more elegant.

Anyway, I ended up going with autumn yellow! I mean, how can I keep calling it the Little Yellow House if it isn't yellow??? It's the shade on the far right in the photo, if you can't read the names. I took the picture outside to try and get the true color, but who knows how the computer monitors change these things...

The Little Yellow House lives on!

Living Room Color

I picked out a color for the living room! I knew I wanted a bright teal shade, but we picked out some tile for the entryway that was a dark green, so the matching was a bit tricky. The carpet in the whole house is a light gray, and later I'm hoping to add dark brown wood and purple accents. We're going with the left shade -- it's called Teal Bayou.

Inspiration from Etsy

I've started internet-hunting again for inspiration and ideas. Stephanie Levy is the featured seller on Etsy right now, and I love her mixed-media paintings and collages! I was mostly drawn to the yellow ones, because I'm really loving yellow right now :) But this one caught my eye as a bit of bedroom inspiration:

Navy blue might be a good way to temper the bright pink that I'm still leaning towards in my bedroom.

And my parents are coming out to visit on Easter weekend to move my stuff (!!!), so I'm hoping they will bring pictures of the kitchen with its new cabinets and flooring! I can't believe I'll be an Indiana resident again in just over two months!

Hiatus... Back Soon!

When life gets complicated, it's hard for me to get excited about the things I love.

As you may have guessed... life's complicated right now.

I was originally planning to move into the Little Yellow House with my best friend E. To not go into too many details, I'll now be moving alone while E stays in the 'burgh. We're still bestests, but such a big change requires some new thinking about my life and future in the Little Yellow House. It's taken me some time to adjust.

I'll be back to blogging and dreaming about the house soon!

Ceiling Canopy

Ideas for small bedrooms: Abstract art canopy, Domino magazine
Originally uploaded by xJavierx

I love the idea of a ceiling canopy! I think it adds to the layered, ethnic flair of a room. It really works in this room because it's so tiny... Not sure how it would translate to a room that's a little bigger. The textures also make the room feel warmer. Perhaps it could work on the wall, too!

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Under Construction

When I was home for Christmas visiting my family, we had several days to spend working on the house -- a little "sweat equity," as Habitat for Humanity says.

I didn't take very many pictures, and absolutely NONE of them show the work we actually accomplished! We did a fair amount of minor things like pulling nails and moving stacks of lumber, but we also drywalled one and a half whole rooms! And a closet!!! But, like I said, you can't see them because I didn't photograph it. Hopefully my mom will take some pictures soon and send them to me.

Remember the tiny kitchen? Here's the kitchen with the cabinets and ugly faux-brick walls torn out:

And remember all the random doors? This one, in the bedroom, basically leads to nowhere, so E and I are taking off all the hardware (hinges and doorknobs) so that it will be flush against the wall. Later, we nailed the door back in place and drywalled right over it!

Layered and Pink?

During the renovation of the little yellow house, we have peeled off layers and layers of different siding, wallpaper, drywall, carpet, flooring, etc. In one room we discovered a fabulous pink patterned wallpaper that has me thinking pink for my new bedroom! (E and mom just rolled their eyes at me, of course!)

What do you think?

I don't know what it is, but I love it! The trouble is, I'm not sure I'm ready to commit to painting a whole room that shade of pink, and I'm not sure how to incorporate just part of it. If I were to paint/stencil just one wall of my bedroom, what color would you paint the other three walls? Plain white? A darker pink matching the stenciling? A lighter pink?

While browsing the internet, I found this image at Desire to Inspire. What I love about it is that the pink is so contained without strict lines. The different patterns and shades of pink are tied in from the poster down to the rug and it feels very rich and indulgent without feeling overwhelming.

What it all boils down to is this: how do I make the color from the wallpaper remnants work without getting too over-the-top little girl Barbie? How can I make pink work in a grown-up room?

Refrigerators?

What kind of refrigerator do you have, a side-by-side fridge/freezer combo, or a top-bottom combo?

I prefer side-by-side fridges, because they better suit my obsession with ice! I've seen very few top-bottom fridge with an ice machine in the door. However, side-by-side fridges are generally several inches wider than top-bottom fridges, and space is a priority in this little yellow house! So I think we'll opt for a top-bottom fridge, and possibly supplement it with a fridge in the garage.

Also... wouldn't it be fun to paint it with chalkboard paint?

Wall Stencils

One of the most exciting things about remodeling the little yellow house is that I get to pick out things like paint colors, cabinets, countertops, carpet, etc. Sooo fun!!!

It's a bit overwhelming, with a world of possibilities. I won't be starting completely from scratch. E and I lived in a 2-bedroom apartment for a little over a year, so we have some furniture. But in the meantime, I'm pulling images that I see from the internet for inspiration!

(via flickr)

I love the stenciling on this wall! Right now I'm leaning towards something international / layered in my bedroom, with lots of pattern and color. I wouldn't do a whole room, but I think stenciling on one wall would provide a little something lovely.

Raw Materials

These are some of the earliest pictures I have of the house, on my first visit actually looking inside. September 2009

This is the outside of the house! That's the current front door, but we plan to move it. There's also an entrance from the porch.

I'm standing where the front door is, and E is modeling the placement of where the front door will be.

This is the living room! (Note the fake rock wall. I wanted to keep, but E wouldn't let me.)

Teeny tiny kitchen. There's a back door, a window, and a 3-foot or so alcove to the right. Alas, we didn't keep the whitewashed brick, either.

Bathroom. I love how the laminate on the walls matches the laminate on the floors. (It doesn't.)

Bedroom #1

Note the door. Straight out the back in case of emergencies!

Bedroom #2

Bedroom #2.5 (0nly accessible through bedroom #2)

Basement. Nothing much to see here.

Despite the shabby conditions of the house, the yard is big and beautiful! This is the view from the front porch. If you walk straight across the road and through that field, you'll get to my parents' house!

By the way, total exterior door count: 4

What the WHAT?!

Hello!

Welcome!

This is the story of a little yellow house.

This is the story of my little yellow house.

In the fall, my parents bought a house that had been foreclosed by the bank. It borders their farmland on 3 sides.

I've lived in Pennsylvania for almost 4 years now, but I love southern Indiana, so my parents decided to fix up the little yellow house for me to live in! I'll be moving back home at the end of May, but there's a lot of work to do before then!

I hope you enjoy the ride!

(I hope I enjoy the ride!)