Author Archives: April

Light the way…

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A couple of months ago, the sweetie and I updated the porch light and the house numbers. Upon purchasing the house 2 years ago (!) we inherited a dirty old plastic porch light and faded house numbers that had been hammered onto a piece of old wood. The wood had been painted to match the faded trim around the porch and garage. Sooner rather than later, I would like to re-paint the trim, however, the sweetie and I just can’t come to an agreement on color. But that’s a whole other post in itself. Now back to the porch light and the house numbers. The old porch light and house numbers looked like this:

This is actually a picture I took right before we had the windows replaced. Someone whose name rhymes with Pearl forgot to take before pictures of the old light and numbers. But I digress, in the above picture you can see that the old porch light was an odd shape ,the picture doesn’t show quite how nasty this light really was. It was cracked and stained with years worth of dirt that wouldn’t come off even with lots of elbow grease. And you can see the ugly color  the house numbers were painted, even though I blurred them out a bit. The numbers themselves were pretty beat up too.  So, it was time for some updating.

Every little project in my house, gets a lot of thought before it actually gets done. So it took the sweetie and I a year and a half to decide upon what sort of house numbers we wanted, and what type of porch light to buy.  Honestly, we went through so many different options I can’t remember all of them. But I do know that the finalist really was the best suited for Casa de Yellow. (How’s that for some good Spanglish?)

In the above picture you will see that we chose a pretty shaped wooden background for the letters. I spray painted it with black lacquer paint, so it would have some shine to it and match the numbers better. Which brings me to the numbers, for those I ended up with a brushed nickel finish. I blurred out the other numbers for privacy sake, but left one of them so that you could get a better idea of the overall look.

Here is a closer view of the house numbers, of course most of them are blurred out, again for privacy sake:

And the porch light, which I love. It’s not too big or too small for our little casa. And it’s so much brighter than the old light.

The stucco does need to be repaired around the new light, but we are procrastinating holding off on repairing it since we will be getting the entire house re-stuccoed. Hopefully, very soon. *keeping fingers crossed*

There are so many mini and not so mini projects around the casa that are either in progress or need to be done it’s overwhelming. It could drive a girl to eat an entire carton of Pecan Praline ice cream! But instead I’ll leave you with some pretty pictures of porches.

apartmenttherapy.com

robolady.blogspot.com

younghouselove.com

July Flowers

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Last night, the sweetie and I got to work on the front flower bed. If you remember, a couple months back I planted some seeds in the front, I talked about that here. Well, my poor little seedlings didn’t stand a chance against the birds, the wind, and the heat. Hardly, any of them came up, and the ones that did come up, came up in a huge clump of green weeds flowers in the middle of my flower bed. I’m not even gonna talk about the poor baby flowers under the tree. I guess the soil under my majestic Pinion tree still isn’t up to par. So, maybe this year I will baby the soil a bit more with some good ol’ cow poop and the “good dirt” that comes in a bag. Then maybe next year I can have some color in that corner of the yard.

Well, since the seeds didn’t come up I gave in and bought some plants to place in my barren flower beds. Saturday my mom came over and we had a blast going through all of the plants in the garden section of Home Depot.

O.K. we may have gone a little overboard, but aren’t all those colors just fabulous!! I hope they look that fabulous after a couple of weeks in my yard.

Most of the plants I picked up were prennials, meaning that theoretically, they should come back year after year.

So here’s what I ended up with:

Moonshine Yarrow, it’s supposed to be very hardy, and I’ve seen several other yards around town with globs of them.

naturehills.com

Some Black Eyed Susans, because who doesn’t like a Black Eyed Susan, unless you’re Susan.

nicksgreenleafgardens.com

And some Yellow Tickseed. No, there are not ticks on them, contrary to what the sweetie thought when I brought them home. They are called tickseed, because their sprouts almost look like ticks. But aren’t they cute?

And some Yellow Daisy’s, because everyone likes Daisy’s right?

Here are some more pictures of what we planted:

I have a few more to plant tonight, so I’ll be adding more photos later. Hopefully my July flowers will turn out much better than my May flower experience.

Screaming for Ice Cream…

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Last week I had mentioned doing a post about ice cream once a week. But with some whimpering from my jeans and the fear that I might pop a button off of them that could possibly land in someones eye, I’ve decided to make these more of an occasional post rather than a weekly.  Which bodes well with my waistline and my jeans.

Last night, instead of having a healthy bowl of Special K, or a nice piece of watermelon, I decided to jump off the healthy snack wagon and have a little scoop of heaven in a bowl.

Blue Bell’s  Peaches and Homemade Vanilla. Heavenly does not begin to describe it. It was all I could do to stop at one small ice cream bowl, but my poor jeans were screaming in pain from all of the stretching. And there was that little fear of buttons flying off of my screaming jeans that kept my need for seconds at bay.

My sweetie and I were not the only ones at the yellow casa who enjoyed a good dose of ice cream heaven.

Well, I think she enjoyed the container it came in more than the sweet treat itself. But I suppose it’s healthier than eating it’s contents, afterall, doesn’t cardboard contain fiber?

Lions and tigers and bears…Oh my!!

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted pictures of anything that I’ve done, I figured you might be getting tired of seeing pictures of things I’ve just come across on the internet. So, I thought it was time to just do it, as Nike would say. Here are some pretty pictures I took this past weekend. My nieces and nephew came down for a visit, so like any good aunt would do, I fed them sugar and took them to the zoo.

I just can’t believe how big they’ve gotten. I’m beginning to understand why my Grandma always said she wanted to put a brick on my head so I’d stop growing. At the time it sounded scary and not to mention painful, but now I see why she said that. It’s hard seeing the little ones grow up.

We saw lots of really cool stuff at the zoo, or rather the BioPark as the good people at the City would prefer. We saw giant bees…

Giraffes eating grass…

Brick walls and the pretty blue sky…OK maybe the kids didn’t think that was as cool as Auntie did. But isn’t it pretty?

Pretty butterflies at the Butterfly Garden. I got some great ideas here for my yard. I’ll need to sit down and have a little talk with Annie dog. Maybe she and I can come to an agreement, she will stop eating my plants and I will continue taking her on car rides and giving her tummy rubs.

Aside from seeing butterflies and giraffes, we saw other wild animals. Like this specimen…

It was a great weekend, and I’m so glad that my family could come together for a day and see one another. Hopefully soon we can do it all over again.

We all scream for ice cream…

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Well, unless you are lactose intolerant, then you don’t scream for Ice Cream. But I know I do, in fact, I would eat ice cream for dinner at least 5 times a week if my sweetie didn’t cook for me.  Then I would look like this…

dreamstime.com

Or maybe more like this…actually, I think I may have had a pair of sunglasses like these when I was a kid.  Don’t judge, it was the 80’s, everyone had funny looking sunglasses.

arnoldsrestaurant.com

Recently, my sweetie and I were taking a stroll through the grocery store, yes we stroll…through the grocery store…my sweetie is a bit of a foodie (he hates that word, but he really is a foodie)  and what to my wondering eyes do appear, but a beautiful carton of BLUE BELL ICE CREAM!  I heard angels sing,  light shone on that wonderous carton of Pecan Praline. I tell you, it was like heaven in the freezer section of that grocery store.

What’s the big deal you ask, it’s just ice cream. JUST ICE CREAM!!!  It’s Blue Bell Ice cream, ice cream this New Mexican craved when she moved away from the southerenly portions of the US of A.  You see if you have no idea what I’m talking about then you’ve never spent anytime in the south, I don’t hold this against you, but I do reccommend you have some overnighted right away. It’s scrumptous!

texascooking.com

Since anything sweet at  Casa de April is kind of a big deal  , I thought it appropriate to attempt do a weekly post about the most recent ice cream or dessert experiment.  Tonight I will sample Blue Bell’s Peaches and Cream. Come back soon for the results!

Independence, it’s a good thing!

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With the coming of the 4th of July, and 4, no scratch that 5 house guests (one will be of the 4 legged persuasion), I’ve been thinking of sweet desserts that would be fun for the upcoming celebration of our independence, and the celebration of family getting together. Here are some yummy looking desserts thanks to Martha Stewart.

I love the way this table is set.  They can even make hot dogs and watermelon look fancy!

Are you salivating over these delicious desserts? I know I am. At least one or two of these desserts will be sampled at casa de April this weekend. If a certain someone named after a month isn’t too lazy.

But for now, I must complete the preparations for my guests. Have a happy and safe 4th everyone!!

All images courtesy of marthastewart.com

Sleeping Beauty

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You may remember my post entitled Bring on the Guests, which was about backyard guest houses. Boy, do I wish I had one of those right about now!  I’ve got some company coming in and have absolutely no where to put them but my tiny spare bedroom/office and living room on…wait for it… airbeds. Not exactly what I envisioned my future house guests sleeping on when I bought my house two years ago.

thirlestanecastle.co.uk

So while I’m taking a break from manically cleaning the house, I thought I would share some “guest bed” ideas that I’ve been considering for my teeny tiny spare room/office.  Here is a sleeper chair from JCPenney’s Home Store, it opens up to a twin size sleeper:

I like the idea of a small sleeper chair, but what if I have a couple visiting. They certainly won’t be comfortable in a twin size bed. Enter this little guy:

This guy opens up to a queen size sleeper, which would be perfect for a couple. But might be slightly too big for my teeny tiny spare room/office.   They have a full size version, that might be just what I’m looking for:

All of these options come with your choice of color and fabric, and they’re on clearance right now! Bonus!!

So, maybe after the drama of franticlly hiding clutter cleaning and organizing the yellow casa I will have the opportunity to go sleeper shopping. Maybe the next time I get a random email or phone call from a loved one, I won’t be in panic mode when they ask to stay the night.

Take a seat…

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I have slowly been replacing my old college hand me down furniture with newer pieces that are more my style.  For instance my couch:

I purchased this beaut in January right after Christmas, on sale!! *Insert Happy Dance Here* I will have to do some sleuthing to find pics of the old couch for comparisons sake.  Let’s just say the old couch was holey and I don’t mean Holy in the God sense, but holey. The previous owners had dogs that enjoyed chewing on furniture. But at the time it was a great deal for a poor college kid, and they delivered!!

The new couch is leather with red undertones. I used to hate leather couches, until I got my Annie dog, then I realized why people buy leather couches. Muddy paw prints are so much easier to get off of a leather couch than say a twill one.

With the purchase of my new couch, it dawned on me how dingy the rest of my furniture looked. Which made me want to get out my bargain hunting gear and take off for the great wilds, of JCpenney Home store, American Home, and countless other hunting grounds. Then in the next second I realized that I would have to save to buy more furniture since I had just spent most of 2010’s furniture budget (yes, I have a furniture a budget) on my pretty new couch and gorgeous dining room set (even though, technically, I don’t have a dining room). Oh, I forgot to tell you about the dining room set. Well let me show you a picture:

I love it! In fact, the day after it’s arrival I invited my mom over to Chez April, so that we could use more than two chairs! That was very exciting, I even took pictures of everyone eating. I won’t share those, I think I’d be in trouble with both the momma and the sweetie then!

Yes, I have a red accent wall. Some would say they are cliche, and expected, but I love it. Especially since I see that wall when I am  sitting on my sweet new couch. It’s another element in my casa that makes me happy so it’s staying, trends or not.  Or until I get the painting bug again.

But the point of this post was to talk about living room chairs. The chair we have in our living room now, was generously given to us by a friend of a friend, whose grandma passed away. Very sad, but I was happy to help them out by taking some of the furniture they didn’t know what to do with.

In the picture at the beginning of this post,  I have it covered up with a drop cloth, because the upholstery is less than modern. But the chair itself is so snuggle worthy. Between myself, the sweetie and Annie dog, there is a constant battle over who gets to sit in it. This has me a little undecided if I should buy a completely new chair, or have this one re-upholstered.

Here are some new chairs I am considering:

The above chair is a recliner, but doesn’t look like those giant “man” recliners one would think of when recliner comes to mind.  I love that there are 20 different colors you can order it in. Choices so many choices!!!

This one I like too, you can order it in copper, coral, or merlot. I’m liking the merlot, because it’s got more texture than the others. Here it is in coral:

This chair I have been looking at for a long time. But I’m not sure how it would look in a yellow living room. I kind of wanted to go a little lighter in color with the chair, since the couch and curtains are so dark. This chair is also a recliner, I love chairs with pleasant surprises like that!

It’s hard to think about purchasing a chair that costs as much if not more than my couch. So, for now I will be on the hunt until some unsuspecting bargain catches my eye.

All images courtesy of JCPenney.com

Red, red, red, wine…

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Actually, I’m not talking about red wine, or any wine for that matter. I’m talking about red doors.

Odd how the above door, doesn’t have a handle, but it works for a visual aide. My current front door is an old wood door, that should probably be replaced, since sometimes it brings light into my living room, even when it’s closed.

But I digress, I’m loving red doors right now, and I’d like to paint my front door red. I figure since our front door will probably be replaced soon, it would a be a good test subject. I’ve also thought about painting the security door red as well, but that might be too much of a commitment for me right now.

So on to colors, this first one is from Valspar National Trust for Historic Preservation. It’s called La Fonda Fireberry:

Valspar.com

Isn’t it just so cheery! I love brights! That might be why I didn’t hesitate to buy my yellow shoebox.

Here is another color I’m considering, it’s called Fairmont Sweet Clay. This one is slightly more muted than the first:

Valspar.com

For now I will leave it at two colors. This evening the sweetie and I plan on taking our Friday night pilgrimage to Lowes, so I’ll pick up some samples while I’m there, and of course drool over the fancy tubs and pretty kitchens.

I’ll leave you with some images of pretty red doors, and some links to some pretty cool sites.

Dream a little dream…

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This past March I had the pleasure of visiting the 2010 HGTV dream home. Obviously, I was not the lucky fan to win it, but the generous people of HGTV opened the doors to visitors.  I thought I would share a few hundred pictures I took during my visit.

We start our tour in the kitchen:

They had this beautiful glass all over the house.  In fact the guest house was practically constructed of the stuff! An entire wall was covered in it!

Yes, the bathroom is SEE THROUGH! I don’t know if I would be comfortable doing my bathroom thing with someone else laying on the bed watching TV. But on the upside you wouldn’t miss anything while watching House Hunters.

Here’s a close up of the glass wall in the guest house:

Here’s a close up of the glass in the kitchen, this also gives you a better idea of how tall the ceilings were, that’s part of a window in the upper left corner:

Speaking of ceilings, I loved the lighting and the exposed wood beams:

The house wasn’t that dreamy to me, don’t get me wrong, I liked it. And if I had been the lucky viewer to win it, I would have enjoyed it ,until of course I had to sell it ,because who can afford $10k a year on TAXES?!  But there were a lot of small touches I liked that I might use in my house someday.

I liked the lines of this chair, not necessarily the upholstery, but the lines were interesting:

Here’s another chair, I loved the Hounds Tooth pattern, but I’m unsure of how comfy a chair would be without arms:

And the media room. It was quite interesting, they lined the room with cork to keep the noise down. What a great idea right? Wonder how it would look after the family cat gets a hold of it:

The other bedrooms and bathrooms weren’t that spectacular. Here are some accent shots I took in the children’s rooms, Jack and Jill bathroom, and the office:

I loved the faucet fixtures they used, I am looking at something similar for my bathroom. Someday the sweetie and I will agree on what fixtures should go up in the bathroom.

Here’s a bookshelf in the office. I loved how they had everything arranged. When my office gets set up maybe I will consider something like this:

And now my favorite part of the house, the master bath and closet! What’s so amazing about a closet you might ask. Well, this puppy was as big as my BEDROOM! If you live in a small house like I do, that’s pretty darn spectacular, and, all that storage is just dreamy.

This closet even had a window, but apparently I was so enamoured with the storage that I didn’t get a picture of it.

The bathroom was also quite dreamy:

I loved the tub, of  course I always love tubs. Especially since I don’t have one, the heart wants what it can’t have, I suppose.

The funniest part of visiting the dream home, was the pantry. Well, not the pantry itself, but the food they stocked it with.

Apparently, the people of HGTV think all New Mexicans eat is pinto beans, rice, menudo, and pickles! Granted we do eat a lot of beans and rice, but rarely do we pair it with Kosher Dills.

All in all, this was a lovely day spent with my beautiful mother. I didn’t really think the house was that dreamy, but it sure was fun getting to see it. Thanks HGTV for allowing your adoring fans a visit!