meganandjeffrey.com

Jeff and I decided that we were not really going to make a big deal about celebrating Valentine’s Day…not because we were being ba hum bugs, but mainly just because we have too much going on to hurt our wallets on this Hallmark holiday.  However, we did decide that were going to treat ourselves to a casual lobster din at home and it turned out to be the most lovely night.  I would choose staying home over going out any day, especially when there is lobster in the mix.  YUM!!  Jeff even sautéed brussel sprouts up for me- my favorite veggie!  I also made sure we had a delicious Valentine’s day breakfast together before we headed off to work…so I guess when it comes down to…we did celebrate the good ole holiday.

The other highlight of my day was my cute niece’s Valentine’s Day card to me.  Leave it to my nieces to give us a little confidence boost….they are just too adorable!

It’s been a while since we chatted about our house, here are some updated pics. There have been some changes, not as many as a year ago with the total renovation taking place but slowly we pick away at a project here an there and are one step closer to having a complete home.

Our Living Room – Well we added furniture since our last post. A nice L shaped couch with matching ottoman to cozy up on and watch some TV. We also added a chair with a cool printed fabric and even had some pillows made of the same fabric to bring both pieces together. (All Megan of Course Haha)

If you remember our mantle post, check out the finished version. I tiled our fireplace and added some trim and its now complete, ready to light and warm up on cold winter nights.

The dining room hasn’t changed much since the last post. This room was one of the first rooms finished but we added the mirror on the wall to fill the empty wall space. We bought a couple table runners for the holidays and so far this room is the place to be at any of our parties, everyone congregates here.

Another view of the dining room. On the left is a piece of furniture from Megan’s grandfather in which we turned into our bar. We stripped the paint and repainted it. My grandfather actually took the top piece and made it into a wine glass holder and wine bottle rack. And a christmas present from Megan with the heineken beer kegerator which puts the finishing touches on our bar area.

Kitchen – Only thing left to finish in this part of the home is hanging lights above our island but consider this part of the house finished in my eyes. Stainless steel appliances, granite countertops and oil rubbed bronze hardware, how can you not like this city kitchen?

 Our little powder room with striped painted walls and the vessel sink bowl.

That’s it for now, next post will be on our upstairs. Thanks for reading

We appologize greatly for the hugely unacceptable lag time in blogging.  Things have been so crazy since we last posted and we honestly just needed time to settle into our lives and our home.  With everything going on, we literally had very little time to blog or even send out a Christmas card.  However, now that we are getting super settled into our new lifestyle, things have slowed down a bit and I am so incredibly thankful for that.  We definitely want to keep up the blogging to first stay in touch with all of our friends and family throughout the country and the world.  Since we last blogged, Jeff and I settled nicely into our new home, we celebrated Jeff’s 29th birthday, Jeff got a new job and retired from ice hockey, ShopMamie hit the road this fall in a big way traveling from show to show, my sister had her first little baby girl, Sloane, increasing my niece and nephew count to 7, we traveled to Penn State to celebrate Jeff’s Uncle Fran’s retirement as Lieutenant Colonel from the U.S. Army, we celebrated our first Christmas in our new home and hosted Christmas Eve, and brought in the New Year in Dewey Beach with great friends.  It has honestly been great being home and being able to spend quality time with our families and friends.  Check out our little iPhone instagram photo montage.  We’re happy to be back!  :)

We babysat this little fur-ball over the weekend.  His name is Bubba and he is my sister and brother-in-law’s three month old little pup.  He is a Doodle Doodle or North American Labrador Retriever, they obviously prefer the later name, lol.  Her daughters have allergies and they knew they wanted a medium-sized dog that didn’t shed.  I have to say having a dog that doesn’t shed a hair is kind of amazing!

Well, it turns out that Jeff and I fell in love with the little guy (although he did get into everything…including our closets a couple times).  I think it made us want a little puppy of our own…that is once we get settled into our own lives.

Jeff will kill me for posting this, but I got him on tape saying that he wants a puppy (not now, but soon).

Ever know that the mushroom capital of the world is only 15 minutes away from us?  Well now you do!  We headed out to Kennett Square on Saturday to check out the scene of the annual mushroom festival and basically ate our way through the whole fair.  We had breaded mushrooms and I enjoyed pumpkin & mushroom ice cream (sounds odd, but it was actually delicious)!  They also had loads of cream of mushroom soup, mushroom macaroni and cheese, crab stuffed portabella mushrooms, mushroom risotto, and the list goes on and on.  I think Jeff was more fascinated by the non-mushroom foods like the Wild Bill’s unlimited soda fountain and the massive plate of fresh potato chips with cheese sauce (aka heart attack on a plate) that he got.  We missed the mushroom soup cook-off, but I heard that was pretty cool too.  The only thing that they we’re missing was mushroom beer (but I’m not sure if that’s even possible).  I love little festivals like this…it was a nice little Saturday. xo

Our mantle is coming along slowly but surely!  The last time we posted about our mantle, it looked like this:

And now, as you can see below, it has a fresh coat of paint, a large TV on top, and nice floors below it.    It is not quite ready for it’s before and after pictures because it still need tile to go around the sides of the fireplace.  We have picked the tile out and now it just needs installation.

It’s come a long way from this:

Don’t you think?  Click here to see a previous post on how we did the transformation.

One of my favorite things about summer is spending the beach weekends with my adorable nieces and nephews.  Jeff and I are so close to these crazy kids and we just love them so much.   Believe it or not, I will miss being bunked up in tight quarters with them every weekend. It was sad waving goodbye to summer over Labor Day weekend, but we will definitely have sweet dreams of it until next year.  My sister and sister-in-law sent over photos of the kids all ready for the first day of school (+ one 2 year old wishing he was going with his brother and sister).  They just looked so cute, I couldn’t resist sharing.  Jeff and I can only hope that our kids will be just as cool one day. 

Truth be told, this is the first and only time I have ever cared about a yard,….now that its our yard. Hehe

In all the countries and cities that I have lived in the past, I have never even once worried about the yard but now that it’s our house, I am fully on board. I’m doing my best to take extra special care to this little backyard of ours, especially since one of our wedding presents was this nicely landscaped yard. It really is not much, only a small 10 x 10 yard which is typical of city life but it works great for us. It’s tiny so it’s extremely easy to maintain, we have some sweet flowers to add some color but the best part of it all is we have a little grass area for our future puppy

What more can someone ask for?

A couple of weeks ago I threw some grass seed down and after a few solid days of rain around here, the yard is taking a new shape.

Bought some weed/poison ivy killer for the unwanted plant life which is growing on the deck. Not sure if the neighbors cared when I hopped into their yards and went to town with the killer but something needed to be done and those lazy bums weren’t doing anything.

A 10 x 10 yard does not need a lawn mower, a small $50 electric weed wacker works just as well. But not sure how long this thing will last, not happy with the mess it leaves, might have to invest in one of those hippie push reel mowers.

Remember this dining room furniture piece that Jeff’s Mom donated to our furniture fund??

Well, check it out now…

We are so incredibly proud of our very first COMPLETE furniture makeover project and although we were very skeptical along the way, we are very satisfied with the end result.  This is how we did it….

The original furniture was a dark stained wood and it also had a small floral etching at the top of the piece.  We filled the carving/etching in with wood filler and lightly sanded down the entire peice.  The back of the piece also had mirrors from top to bottom, so we simply, removed those before beginning the project.

After spending an hour taping down the glass with painter’s tape (as you can see above), I was instructed that we could simply remove the glass panes….grrrrrr…so, we removed the glass and began priming the entire piece with primer from Lowe’s.

We then got Valspar spray paint (almond color) from Lowe’s and sprayed it all over with a couple coats of spray paint.  We ended  up going through 3 bottles of the $3 spray paint.  We kept the inside white (just simply from originally priming it).  And since I wasn’t a huge fan of the mirrored back and we had extra bead board in our basement, we painted the bead board white and secured it to the back of the piece.  After adding some new hardware, voilah, our piece was complete.

As you can see from the last picture, it also lights up from the inside, which was an original feature of the piece.  The bottom light bulb was burnt out, so, we just have to replace that, and it will be complete.  We thought about ripping the lighting out, but I think it’s a nice feature, what do you a think?

As soon as it was complete, I wasted no time, filling it up with glassware, that was overflowing our kitchen cabinets.  It is the perfect little piece to hold our wine/champagne glasses, vases, candlesticks, pitchers, bowls.  Hope you liked the end result! xo Megan & Jeff

I don’t know about you, but I am taking full advantage of these last summer days until the very last bit of hot sun is gone.  Luckily, that usually doesn’t happen till mid to end of September here.  I always equate summer with amazing summer BBQ’s and we haven’t been able to use our new grill a whole lot this summer.  So, I decided that grilled turkey burgers and corn on the cob had to be on the menu for dindin last week and yum, it was delicious.  Jeff grilled up a little storm, while I pan seared some mushrooms and onions and chopped up some fresh pinapple.  Little trick I learned from good ole Martha:  grill corn with the husks on, just be sure to soak it in water prior to placing them on the grill.  And if you want the grill marks on it,  shuck the corn after 5-6 minutes on the grill and place them back on the grill for 1-2 minutes.  Nothing is better than a big juicy turkey burger (less guilt with turkey) and all the fixings.  Gosh, it was one delish din…love you summer.