The Hillllllllllls Are Aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!!

We had so much fun today roaming about Salzburg dressed up in nothing but old drapes!  Also know as:  doing the all day Sound of Music tour from Bob's Special Tours.  If you are coming to Salzburg, I HIGHLY recommend doing this tour with Bob's.  We had two awesome tour guides and Bob's is able to show you and talk about so much more than the big bus tours.  That's all we did today, so I'll just let the pictures and the captions do the talking.  So much fun today!!

Looking at the mountains from the abbey

This must be what heaven looks like.

The entrance to the abbey.  Remember the scene where the children go to the gate looking for Maria?  Remember the scene where the nuns remove parts of the car and tell the Reverend Mother they have sinned?

Austrian graveyards are really pretty!

Inside the abbey church.  This is where the real Maria and Captain Von Trapp were married, but Hollywood didn't have permission to film in the church.

Remember the scene where they were hiding from Nazis?  This was re-created in Hollywood, but meant to look like St. Peter's cemetery.

St. Peter's church - oldest in Salzburg (I think late 600's).

Inside St. Peter's

Salzburg's cathedral - the facade was shown in the movie a few times, but it didn't look this white.  It was recently cleaned about 2 years ago.

Inside the Cathedral - Europe does churches right!

Remember the scene when Maria sings the song about confidence?

These are built into the mountain!

The tour included lunch at Edelweiss Cooking School where we made our own apple strudel and Salzburger Knockrel (not 100% on that spelling).  We were served goulash for lunch and it was really good.

Evidence that I helped.

More evidence that I helped.

Mom and Dad stretching the dough - the pics of us doing it are on their camera.

I guess I'll let Steve try to make strudel too.  ;-)

Ready for the oven

Ready to go in the oven!  Johann marked the strudel my parents made with a 50.  Fun fact:  this whole trip is to celebrate their 50th anniversary!

Back to the SOM tour - this castle was used as the backyard and back facade of the house in the movie.

Same castle

This castle was used as the front facade of the house in the movie

Remember when Liesl was 16 going on 17 and she danced around on the benches with Rolf?  The lock didn't stop me - Steve walked me around the outside of the gazebo while I jumped to each of the benches.  :-)

On a country road to the lake district, we saw a farm with Scottish Highland Cows.

Red Bull headquarters

One of the lakes used for scenery in the movie (Fueschel lake - again not 100% on the spelling)

Seriously?!?  Just breathtaking scenery!  This lake was used in one of the opening shots.

This was the church used in the movie for the wedding.

Same church, but it doesn't really look a whole lot like what you see in the movie at all - it's had a facelift or two since filming.

In Mirabell Gardens.  Remember the bike ride during Do Re Mi?

The Pegasus Fountain - Remember the Do Re Mi song?

Mom and I singing Do Re Mi on the steps to Mirabell Gardens.  Although, Mom doesn't seem to be paying attention.  :-)

Mirabell Gardens

Salzburg being perfect!

We had dinner and beers at the 1,000 person biergarten.

Lots of people, and this is only a portion of the whole place.

Mom brought a lock for the lock bridge.

Mom and Dad putting the lock on the bridge.

Throwing the key - see the weird mark above my mom's hand in the sky - that's the key.

All locked!

Guten Tag!

Greetings from Salzburg, Austria!  Despite some jet lag, we had a fun day in Salzburg!  As soon as we landed, I knew I would love it here because the airport is surrounded by mountains.  We were a little too early to get into our rooms today, so we dropped our bags and made our way to our first biergarten for lunch and our first beer.  We lucked out with perfect weather today, so we took our time enjoying the beers.  Side note about the pictures you'll see for this trip:  I don't have my usual camera, or my laptop, or my editing software.  The downside to packing light...

After lunch, we still had time to kill before our rooms were ready so we went to Mozart's birthplace.  It's not the best museum I've ever been to but there were some things that were cool to see.  If you come to Salzburg and just don't have time for it, you really aren't missing that much.  The downside is, you can't take pictures in the museum and we found out by getting caught doing it - oops...we are stupid Americans.  :-)

Mozart's birthplace

His first violin 

Mozart chocolates

After the museum, we were on our way back to our hotel when my mom noticed the Sacher Hotel, famously known for the Sacher torte.  The original hotel is actually in Vienna, but since it was on the way to our hotel and overlooked the Salzach River, we thought we might as well stop and try out the torte.  The torte is chocolate cake with a chocolate apricot filling, chocolate frosting (or really ganache) with a chocolate candy on top.  Even though it is a little dry, it was still quite tasty, but the best part of the whole thing was the chocolate candy on top.  While we were there, we saw a ton of people ordering another dessert which caught our eye, but more on that later.

Cool street with tons of stores 

Same cool street with a cool church at the end

A pretty sign I liked

St. Bliase's Church (the cool church at the end of the street)

Inside the cool church

Sacher Hotel

Sacher Torte

Info on the torte

Once we got to the hotel, we all took time to wash off the last several hours of travel grime and took a nap to help alleviate some of the jet lag.  We ended the day by going back to the Sacher hotel for dinner where we tried the other dessert I mentioned - it was called Sacher Saverin (or something like that).  This was two shortcakes, soaked in rum and in between the shortcakes was some fruit and then the whole thing was covered in creme with a chocolate drizzle.  We were all pretty full from dinner, so we split it four ways - we made pretty quick work of that one!

We had a free drink coupon from our hotel, so we enjoyed Prosecco on the rooftop bar with a spectacular view.  All in all, a perfect start to Salzburg!

The Fortress

Salzach River

The view from the bar

Enjoying our drinks!

The Latest Projects

I feel like all my blogs lately are starting with something along the lines of "It's been a while..."  Well this blog is starting with the same sentiment because it has been a while.  Three projects have been completed since the last blog:  the deck, Steve's workshop, and the powder room.

The deck was finished a few days after the first of the year.  They started mid-December and having a new deck all winter long was such a tease!  For local people - we went with T. W. Ellis to build our deck.  We didn't look at anyone else because we had a couple recommendations for them, including one from Bob Ward (our builder).  Apparently, Bob Ward sub-contracts to T. W. Ellis when people want the deck the same time as the house.  We went with gray Fiburon (trex) flooring, white vinyl rails/posts, and black balusters.  We chose the black balusters because of Barry's recommendation (who we worked with at TWE) that it would still preserve a natural looking view instead of white balusters breaking that up.  And he's right; we are so glad we went with that!  In the vinyl railing, we also added lights to each post.  We went with the Saturn lights, but I'm not remembering the brand.  Google "Saturn deck lights" and you'll find it.

Barry was awesome to work with!  He presented us with several product options and several drawing options.  The deck we chose was a combination of two drawings.  Chris and someone else (can't remember his name right now) were the two who actually built the deck and they were great as well.  They'd start right around 7 each day, unless the weather didn't cooperate.

I'll be completely honest - a trex deck is not cheap.  Sure, adding lights to the posts was a bit of a splurge, but really the investment is on the trex.  But, we don't have to stain our deck ever.  Maybe we power wash it each spring, but that's nothing compared to having to stain it every couple of years.  That's worth the investment to me!  Enjoy the picture (I didn't take many pictures once it was done because I hate being cold).

The finished deck.

Next up is Steve's workshop.  Between the house, the deck, and the holidays, our bank account and credit cards took a nice hit.  We knew we needed to ease up on the projects we have planned for the house to let our finances recover a bit.  We had some Christmas money burning a hole in our pocket though.  While Steve doesn't put up much of an argument at all about the interior design ideas I come up with, and he often does the work without complaint (ie:  installing ceiling fans and new light fixtures, helping to paint, installing tile, and more), I let him use what he wanted out of our Christmas funds to build his workshop.  What he doesn't know is that this is also a gift to me for future interior design projects, but shhhhhh...don't tell him that!  :-)

When we built the house on paper, we added a three-car garage to it.  Initially when we saw the cost, we had a bit of sticker shock and took it right out.  But then we remembered that we'll have a garden in the yard.  Someday I'd like a party barn if possible.  In addition to the garden, I'd love to have a greenhouse.  But where would we store things like lawnmowers and snowblowers?  We'd have to build a shed without the three-car garage.  But then we'd have all these buildings in our backyard which didn't sound too appealing.  So we put the three-car back in.

Steve bought the storage pieces from Amazon, WalMart, and Lowes.  In the tall cabinet, he's storing bigger tools and a nail/screw/etc. organizer.  In the drawers he is storing various hand tools.  He added pegboard around the windows and workbench to put commonly used tools.  Along the outside wall, he built collapsible work benches so that we could still get a car in the garage if we ever needed to.  The collapsible work benches are pieces of pine.  He also added brackets to the ceiling to store lumber and he re-used one of the wire shelves we removed from our closet for extra storage.  We were allowed to keep the wrong kitchen cabinet that the builder put in, so Steve hung that for additional storage too.  Make sure you grunt like Tim "The Toolman" Taylor while checking out the picture!

The Workshop!  The TV was actually a broken TV we picked up - it was only a $30 fix.  So he has a workshop with a TV, Alexa, and a Fire stick!

The last item to talk about in this blog is the powder room.  No other projects were really on our radar after the workshop because of the financial reasons I've already said, and I was dealing with a neck/shoulder/back issue (it's almost healed!!) that would have made anything for the house difficult to do anyway.  But winter doldrums set in a couple weeks ago and I also got sick of looking at a very "blah" powder room.  Paint isn't too expensive to do and it's a small room, so I thought this would be easy to tackle!

The problem was, I had absolutely zero vision for this room but I knew I needed to do something to it.  A while ago, I wanted to make the wall that the toilet is against a shiplap wall, but Steve explored that avenue for me and it wouldn't have worked without having to move the toilet.  Every time one of us went into the powder room, we'd always comment how dark of a room it was.  That sparked a vision - I wanted to brighten it up in there!  But what color?  I kind of wanted to do purple because it's my favorite color, but that was what we did in the last house and I wanted to do something different.  We discussed Sea Salt since that is what is in the family room and foyer, but I wanted a different color and something that wasn't so "safe."  Steve suggested doing something similar to our front door color and I agreed that it was a great idea!  We went to Sherwin Williams to get paint swatches and we ended up narrowing it down in the store to Spa and Bora Bora Shore.  What's funny is that those were the two colors we were trying to decide between for the front door!  When we got home, we put both in the powder room with the lights on and off and we both liked Spa better - which is the same color as the front door.

I had the paint color, but had no idea what else to do in that room.  What color towels?  What color rug?  To Pinterest!  I ended up finding a picture on Pinterest of a full bathroom that had a Spa-like color with black and white accents.  I wanted to do that!  The problem is, it's a powder room, so there's not a lot of black and white accenting to do.  Unless...we change out the chrome fixtures!!  I thought this was supposed to be just a painting project...oops.

I searched everywhere for black fixtures.  Did you know there are very few options to choose from that are black fixtures?!  Every single one I liked was either too expensive or it wasn't black.  I even went to Home Depot - that's how desperate I was to make this vision work.  Thankfully, I didn't find anything there either.  Anyway, so black was out.  What's the next best thing?  Rubbed bronze.  At first glance, it's dark enough that it does look black.  We replaced the towel bar, toilet paper holder, and faucet - all were Amazon purchases.  The light fixture is from Wayfair.  The rug is from Amazon and the towels & mirror are from Target.  Enjoy the pictures!

Before

After

Before

After

Details

Details with light on

Light off so you can see the new fixture.

Ta Da!!  :-)

Laundry Room

I know, it's been a very long time since my last blog.  I actually had this blog ready to go back in November, but just haven't had the time to edit the pictures until now.  So here we go - this is a really fun room to reveal!  When we decided on this house and I was in the blissful "We're Building a Brand New House!!" phase, I started looking at Pinterest for ideas on all rooms of our house.  We all know my obsession with tile, right?  I love it...ALL of it.  I came across encaustic tile on Pinterest and pretty quickly fell in love and I wanted to put it in the laundry room.  In my opinion, encaustic tile, since it is so busy, looks best in small doses or small rooms.  That's how I decided on putting that style of tile in the laundry room.  It took me a while to finally decide on a tile, but I ultimately ended up with the common dark gray/white pattern.  The reason I chose that is so I could do whatever I wanted on the walls.  Steve surprised me with the tile as a 2017 Christmas gift, from Overstock.  A note to keep in mind - if you are going to use encaustic tile somewhere, make sure you buy all that you need (plus the obligatory extra) in one order so that the color is the same throughout the entire pattern.  Overstock advised that when ordering.

I agonized with the decision of what color grout to use.  Seriously, agonized!  Just ask Steve!  I didn't officially decide on the grout until Steve was about to mix it.  I was torn between white or dark gray (Charcoal Gray from Lowe's).  Both colors are the wrong colors in the sense that they aren't the same shade that is in the tile and I couldn't visualize either of them very well in my head.  Steve was leaning towards dark gray and he eventually talked me into it and I completely agree with him that that was the right decision.  I think white would have been too much of a contrast and even though the gray doesn't completely match, it's a lot closer than white would have looked.

Our friend Nick (who is my BFF's husband) designs kitchens and kitchen cabinets.  We reached out to Nick about having cabinets installed in our laundry room.  Nick was able to help us out with that and he even brought every color sample to me to figure out what looked best with the tile.  Here's the funny thing - before cabinets, I was starting to get in my mind that I wanted pink walls with copper accents.  I still think that would look awesome, but I really liked the blue cabinet sample that Nick had and after many people agreeing with us, that's what we decided to get.  Bye bye pink.  But I kept the copper!

Copper accents include the light switch and outlet plates (Amazon), cabinet pulls (Amazon), and the trash can (Amazon).  I'm still searching for a few other accents, but I don't know what they'll be.  I've tried to find a light fixture in copper, but that's tough to find.

Since pink wouldn't look ideal with the blue cabinets, I stopped at Sherwin Williams and picked up a wide variety of white, gray, and blue samples because I had no idea what to paint the room other than it needed to go with the blue cabinets and work with copper accents.  We chose Ice Cube by SW which is basically white, but now that it's on the walls, it looks gray to me.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I got out of work early so I started painting the trim that Steve had reinstalled the night before.  This was supposed to be an easy and quick task and we needed it done quickly because our friend and former neighbor, Brett, was coming over later that evening to help Steve install the cabinets (shout out, thanks Brett for your help!!).  Keep in mind, we were also hosting Thanksgiving the next day, so we really didn't need any drama with finishing up the laundry room.  While I was on the last piece of trim, I set down the paint can in an odd way on the grout and spilled half a can of paint on the beautiful new tile and grout.  I stared at it for a minute trying to figure out how in the world I'm supposed to clean this up.  I called Steve and as I told him what happened, I felt terrible because I had just messed up all of his hard work tiling the floor.  He did a great job calming me down and told me to get some paper towels to start cleaning it up.  As I started to wipe up the puddle of paint, I realized the grout had white paint drying in it.  How in the world do we clean that up?!  Steve tried a whole bunch of remedies he could find online like baking soda and water with a toothbrush, but that didn't work.  A friend of mine recommended Goof Off which is basically acetone and that saved the day!  I will never tell where I spilled paint in the laundry room!  :-)

That was the last project until after the holidays.  Since Thanksgiving, we've hosted our housewarming party (with 100 of our friends and family in the house all at once!), Christmas with the (former) neighbors, Christmas Eve, and Christmas morning.  We took a well-deserved break for New Years Eve and stayed in and just enjoyed the house.  We hope you all had a great holiday season and that you are looking forward to what 2019 will bring!  For us, we still have many projects planned for the house:  the deck is almost done (blog coming soon), Steve's planning his workbench for the third bay of the garage, our garden, pantry organization, the bar, and many others we've thought of.  I thought that buying a new house meant we wouldn't have so many projects to do!  ;-)  Also, 2019 brings us the return of traveling!!  Stay tuned for blogs about a cruise on the Danube River (April) and a trip to Minnesota for some National Parks (June).  Thanks again for following our blog!

Before shot - linoleum flooring, cheap shelves, and no paint on the walls

Old flooring is gone (it actually wasn't even glued down!) and the new sub-floor is done

Tile and grout are done!

Close-up of tile and grout

Fresh coat of paint - Ice Cube by Sherwin Williams

Sadie approves of the new floor

Washer/dryer back in and working on installing cabinets.

All done!!

All done!!  We've since replaced the outlet with a copper plate, I just didn't take a new picture.

Two-For-One Blog!

It's been a while, and I have good reason.  First, we've been just a bit busy moving in and settling into our new home.  Second, we still don't have internet.  Long story, and Comcast is quickly working towards becoming the new BGE.  But that's not what I'm going to blog about today.  I figured you may want to start seeing some more interior pictures as we settle in.  I had hopes to blog about a room each week, but given that we're working on a month without internet, you get two rooms today.  Shout out to my parents for letting me use some internet time at their house today!

So let's get caught up real quick from the last blog, which was right in the middle of our water drama.  Long story short, we ended up having a UV filter put in and things happened very quickly after that.  We were able to officially close on the house on October 19 which was the best early birthday present I could have ever received!  We spent our first official night in the house by the fire with some bubbly staring at the house saying over and over again that we couldn't believe we finally live there.  It's been a whirlwind since then!  Since I was off for a week before then to move stuff in, we had a great head-start unpacking, but there was still plenty to be done (and plenty we are still doing, but we are very close to being done!!).

Anyway, this will be a two-for-one blog because I'm going to blog about the family room and the guest suite.  We'll start with the family room.  I posted a sneak peek of that room on Facebook back in October, and we got a lot of comments about the color we used in that room - more on that later.  Before it all came together in real life, my vision for the room was to keep it light and airy since it gets so much natural light and then the stone fireplace brought in an "earthy" feel to the room.  So I was going on those thoughts when it came to decor.  Plus, I like feeling like I'm in a National Park in my own house.  :-)

We started with the ottoman.  When we were moving out of our townhouse in July, I really wanted to keep the ottoman that was a wedding gift from Steve's parents, but our dog chewed a hole in it when she was a puppy.  So the entire twelve years in the townhouse, the ottoman had a ratty blanket over it to hide the hole.  Since we were moving to a grown-up house, it was time to have grown-up furniture (and Sadie grew up too so she's out of her chewing phase now).  I decided to have it reupholstered and I found a person local to the area that was able to do it.  She said to go to JoAnn Fabrics and pick out anything I wanted.  I wasn't really sure what the room was going to look like yet, so when Steve and I were looking at fabric I told him we could really pick anything we want and we'll find a paint color that matches later.  We ended up picking a pattern with a gray/tan theme which was perfect because it's still neutral (so we could paint any color we wanted!) and the furniture we already had from the townhouse for that room is light tan.  The ottoman was returned to us in August and it turned out great!

We made a trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond at some point over the summer and bought the gray throw pillows.  And during one of our many trips to Ikea, we found the accent pillows.  We really needed an area rug because the family room is a pretty big room and Sadie doesn't really get a lot of traction on hard floors anymore.  Also the rug warms up the space.  With the loud pattern on the ottoman, we really needed to keep the rug very plain and we did - we found that one at Lowe's and it was so freaking heavy to move!

Next came paint.  As we started putting together the tan and gray scheme, I wanted some color in the room.  The color had to keep the light and airy feeling and I was thinking green would be nice against the fireplace and keep that earthy element.  One day we were at my best friend's house (shout out Amy!) who recently moved into a beautiful, brand new house of her own.  She had a color in her powder room that was what my mind was thinking already and she told me it was Sea Salt by Sherwin Williams.  We went to Sherwin Williams to pick out samples for the family room and several other rooms and then we made sure we liked a color in the family room and we put it on the ottoman to see if we liked it with it.  Sea Salt was the winner for both of those tests!

Now that we have the color actually painted on our walls, it is probably one of the most fun colors we've ever picked.  As the light changes throughout the day in the room, so do the walls.  In bright light it looks green and in dim light it looks gray (but a pretty gray), with different shades of both coming through at different times.  It's like a neutral paint with flare and I love it!  Steve and I love how the color pops against the white trim in the room too.  We loved the color so much that we carried it into the foyer too!

The entertainment center is from Gavigan's (a furniture chain in MD, not sure if they are located anywhere else).  While out shopping for bedroom furniture over the summer, we came across this entertainment center and it was a total impulse buy!  We both loved it and of course barn doors are "in" thanks to Joanna Gaines.  I love it in the room and it also goes well with the tan and dark elements.

The lemon and lime trees are from my friend Kathy (shout out!).  When Kathy and her husband stopped by to see the house shortly after we moved in, she saw how much light we get in that room and thought those trees would be perfect for us.  She doesn't get a lot of light at her house and she wasn't about to look at sad-looking trees all winter, so they were offered to us.  I've always wanted to grow lemons and limes but we never had room for them at the townhouse, so I'm very excited to have them now!

Currently, we only have blinds up in most of the house (our room and the guest room are the exception with curtains).  I have no idea where to start with curtains in most of the house.  In the family room, I'm not sure I even want to put curtains in because it will darken the room.  One of the biggest reasons we bought this house was because of the natural light in this room.  I have a funny story about the blinds for this room (Levolor brand from Lowe's, by the way).  When we were still bringing this room to life, I really wanted plantation shutters for the windows.  Wouldn't that be awesome!?!?  I told Steve about this idea and he was kind of on board until we priced it out:  $500...for ONE window!  There are 6 windows in that room alone and since that whole floor is open concept, I would have wanted the whole floor to have plantation shutters, which is 10 windows.  Five thousand dollars in window treatments.  So we let that one go.  Maybe if we ever strike it rich it might happen.

Family Room - Throw from Amazon; Lamps from Lowe's

Family Room

Family Room - if you are interested in the giant gingerbread man, my sister and her boyfriend make them (different sizes and can custom order different shapes).  Check out her etsy page:  hamiltonhomedesigns.etsy.com

That's it for the family room, onto the guest suite.  This room I had planned in my head before anything else for the house.  I knew from the get-go that I wanted it to have a gray and turquoise color scheme with splashes of coral for both the bedroom and the bathroom.  I already had the curtains from our family room in the townhouse (Target find a few years ago).  I knew I wanted to paint the bedroom walls gray (we chose Evening Shadow by Sherwin Williams) so that I could have turquoise bedding.  I admit that the bedding I bought isn't my favorite, but it will do until I find what I have in my mind.  I wanted something a little more solid so there aren't so many patterns in the room, but this works for now.

The nightstands were the first thing we bought for the house from Target.  As soon as I saw them, I knew we needed them for this bedroom.  The dresser was one I've had for a long time (also from Target from years ago).  The splashes of coral are the throw (Target), the extra pillows on the bed (Amazon), and a photo we took while in Antelope Canyon in Arizona.  I'm still trying to find the perfect chair to put in the corner by the two windows, but again I'm not finding exactly what I am envisioning.

Our guests that stay in this room are fortunate to have their own walk-in closet and their own bathroom.  I kept the same color scheme in the bathroom, but reversed it.  I put turquoise on the walls with gray and coral accents.  The color is Tidewater by Sherwin Williams.  The shower curtain, towels, and coral cup & toothbrush holder were all Amazon finds.  Rugs were from Target.  Enjoy the pictures!

Guest suite - Sorry I took pictures on a rainy morning!

Still need a chair for the corner by the windows.  Antelope Canyon picture actually has several shades of coral, and it's not as dark as it looks here.  That's what I get for taking pictures on a rainy day.  :-/

Door to the left is the bathroom, door in the middle is the closet, door to the right is how the door opens from the hallway.  Sadie found a great spot to lay down for my picture.  :-)

Guest suite bathroom