Problem Solved?

We were lucky to be able to take a hand me down mattress and box spring from Cori & Bob for one of our downstairs bedrooms. This weekend, Cori delivered the bed. The mattress made it no problem, but the box spring was not so lucky. It got stuck/wedged in the stairway. There was just no getting it through. It is currently spending the rest of its days in the garage until further notice.

When we looked at the house, there was a big bed in the basement, so we didn't even think of this issue. It had to have been a King bed which has 2 twin box springs. Erica was thinking about this today, Googled "bed with no box spring" and found:

The 2 for 1 bed frame sits at standard height suitable for standard size bed skirts and offers an amazing full 14" under bed clearance which is perfect for extra storage space. Reinforced steel corners provide additional strength to assure durability and support.

This seemed to be exactly what we needed. Even better, she checked the CNET Shopper Deals website, which she does almost daily, and just happened to find one on clearance! With good reviews!

The CNET Shopper Deals website rotates new deals daily and we heart it. To find this product right now is a little uncanny. Nevertheless, we have 2 on order with free site-to-store shipping.

Now, we don't know for sure that this will fit down the stairs either, but it comes disassembled to some degree. It is definitely worth a shot and the low cost alternative given the other options which are 1.) reconfigure the stairs in some way, stealing space from the guest room closet which is above the stairs. 2.) purchase King sized beds.

Face Lift

Erica spent a lot of time the past week researching Colorado gardening and which plants do well here. There are a lot of options and it was overwhelming. The idea of a native xeric (low water) garden was really intriguing. But at the end of the day, we decided on more traditional selections and just a few staple plants in order to keep things simple. We can add more flowers next year.

3 Hope for Humanity (H4H) shrub roses were planted across the garden on the left side of the front door. They are very dark red with lots of blooms. H4H was introduced for the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Red Cross. The sign at the store said they grow 2'-4' tall, but the tag on the plants said 4'-5' tall. Either way they will work. If they are on the larger side, I will just have to be more aggressive in pruning them in the spring. I had Knockout shrub roses in Kansas City and they did great with virtually zero care and no watering. These should be the same (fingers crossed because I did not buy the 2 year plant warranty from the nursery). I mixed a little rose fertilizer we inherited with the house into the top soil around each during planting. They are already getting way more care than the KC roses ever did.

On the right side of the entry, we planted English Lavender which should fill this little plot nicely. I am thinking of planting some annuals or small perennials around the bottom of it (our copper outdoor lights aren't quite in place yet). We were not able to work the beds on the very far right of the house, but everything did get chopped down. Not sure what we are going to plant there.

We ended up with black mulch because Lowe's was having a really good sale on mulch in red, brown, or black for $2.50 a bag, regularly $4.27. When we got to Lowe's everything was sold out except for black. We were thinking of choosing black before we got there, so that made things easy. We actually like the way it looks quite a bit with all of the other black accents on the house. It supposedly has a 12 month color guarantee. Only time will tell.

The finished product (so far). Remember the jungle from before? It will be exciting to see how everything grows and fills in.

The addition of some hanging baskets in front of the awning, an outdoor rug in the patio area and finishing up the far right bed will make this transformation complete. We hope.

At the Nursery

We made a trip to our neighborhood nursery and garden center today which helped us make super progress on the flower beds in the front yard. Progress pictures will be posted tomorrow! Thanks for the coupon, Cori!

Thanks also to everyone who has commented and voted on our fireplace flower dilemma so far! We will have a follow up post once we evaluate all of the good feedback from everyone :)

We are Having a Marital Dispute

We were at Z Gallerie last night and found a spray of flowers we like. Erica has been looking for something fun to put in one of the vases that flank the fireplace. This is where things get ugly.

Chris wants to put something on the other side as well, as he is a self proclaimed "Lover of Symmetry". At the very least, Chris wants to put some other kind of flower or greenery on the other side. Z Gallerie did have a nice sprig of pussy willow that we also both liked that would be a contender.

Erica likes the idea of only one of the vases being dressed up with foliage. The vases are symmetrical, symmetrical flowers would be too much in her opinion.

We do both like the pop of color it gives to the room and think the size of the flowers are appropriate (the flowers are larger than they appear).

What do you think? Please Vote!

It looks like all votes are being counted twice, just an FYI. We also tried to make the text in the survey bigger, but have not been able to accomplish this. We also know that the word complement is spelled incorrectly in the survey, but it is just too much work to correct at this point.

On a bright note, here are the rest of our non-controversial purchases from Z. The best part - they were all on sale.

Simple glass tea light holder for on our dining room table.

Quirky skull tealight holders. They are heavy and about 4" high. We lit them last night while we watched the movie 127 Hours and they are really pretty when lit. I know that might be hard to imagine.

DJ's Berkeley Cafe

Chris is looking mighty excited for his spicy sausage with homemade green chile scramble.

Erica flew in this morning. We are getting our electrical panel replaced and don't have power, so we headed to breakfast at a neighborhood cafe that got good reviews on Yelp. We need to fuel up so we can work in the yard today. It is much cooler and overcast. Perfect weather for working outdoors.

UPDATE: Because the power was out, we couldn't get into the garage to get the gardening tools. So, we went to Lowe's and Home Depot. We finally picked out some sconces for the dining room. It was a difficult task because the previous sconces were hard wired with an on/off switch at each sconce, and no light switch at the wall. To make life easier, we were looking for the same set-up and it is hard to come by. We will have to do some patching and painting before we can hang the new lights.

Now that we are back, the electricity is back on, but it is not just "cooler" as previously reported, but down right cold and damp. Maybe the yard can wait until tomorrow? It feels like movie weather. Or maybe it is finish painting the kitchen weather.

IKEA Is Not The Devil

If you hadn't heard already, we had an issue with our new couch. IKEA sent us two left arms.

When Erica called to confirm the correct arm had shipped last week, IKEA didn't know when that would happen and could not give an estimate. So, Erica was ready to unleash an unimaginable fury storm on the first unsuspecting customer service representative that she could talk to this week. But, when she was finally able to talk to someone, she found out that our new arm had been shipped and should be delivered today. And it was.

Here is our awesome couch complete with right and left arms. Pardon the dirty camera lens.

P.S. Is there such a thing as an unimaginable fury storm? Chris hopes he never finds out.

The C&E B&B Is Open

The guest room is finally clean. It has a bed and a dresser and a nightstand and pretty pictures on the wall. The only thing left to deal with is the awesome faux finish on the walls. We also decided Erica's Hope Chest at the foot of the bed has to go. Just not enough space.

We are ready for guests. Come one, come all.

Erica wants to refinish this furniture set ala Young House Love in a nice espresso or mahogany finish. Chris thinks she is crazy for wanting to do this, by the way. We'll see what happens, but in the meantime, a girl can dream.

Welcome to the Jungle

These are the front flower beds. At one time, they were filled with prize rose bushes which have been severely neglected. This past week, Erica read all about how to prune roses. Unfortunately, when she started to clean out the beds, there wasn't much to prune. The roses are pretty much dead and there is no saving them. The green you are seeing is grass and Holly.

The plan now is to clear everything and dig up all of the root balls (which for the roses are really like stumps) and put down weed cloth and mulch and then start thinking about what we should plant. Colorado State University has a program called PlantSelect with downloadable garden designs.

Afraid we might miss our planting window if we take too long to decide. Lots of research this week so we can hopefully get planting next weekend.

Pillows

Picked up a few more pillows from IKEA. We already had the solid beige pillows. We have another big black and white pillow and we are in need of at least one more colorful pillow, we think.

Erica called on the couch arm that is supposed to be on its way. It has not been shipped yet and they do not have a ship date. This made her very unhappy. She is going to have a nice phone call with them again on Monday. It should be FUN.

Hitting Some Balls with the Team

Used the new golf clubs for the first time today, when our team at work went out to hit a few balls together late this morning. I did pretty well considering I haven't had a club in my hands for many months and then only during a few lessons last summer. The guys I work with have seen me golf pre and post lessons, and they said I am golfing a little differently now :)

Wine Room Progress

We have made some great progress in the Wine Room, or as Chris likes to call it, "Erica's Room". It is conveniently located adjacent to the kitchen and we will probably eat our meals together and sip coffee here in the mornings. It is hard to take pictures in this room because it is small. But, here are a few that give you an idea of what it is all about.

The desk and wine storage area. Yes, that is a Giraffe print chair. Told you it was Erica's room.

You can see the Silver Sage paint better here (more info on this in the previous post.) We also hung art. The picture on the right is a poster from a vineyard we visited on our first vacation together.

That X is going to be a table once we get a glass top for it.

We still need to paint the trim white. It only has two coats of primer on it for now. One of the previous owners painted the window panes gold. Not sure what we are going to do about that.

Silver Sage

We painted the Wine Room Silver Sage. This is a Restoration Hardware color that we had color matched at Home Depot in Behr paint. Behr also makes the same color by the same name. It is a gray-green color that is surprisingly neutral. Eventually, the kitchen will also be painted this color.