Inspiration and Visualization

I'm always scouring the internet for ideas and inspiration.  When I came across something I loved and wanted to remember, I would always bookmark it for later.  But even if I kept my bookmarks well organized (which I've been slacking on lately), it was hard for me to remember which bookmarks were for what, and why I bookmarked them, without clicking on every single one.  Then I found Pinterest.  What a fantastic site for visually oriented people like me!  If you're not familiar with Pinterest, it's basically a way for you to create online bulletin boards to "pin" all of your bookmarks to.  So I can see at a glance what I have "pinned", and therefore remember why I saved it, without having to actually open the link (brilliant!).

After getting my Pinterest account set up and familiarizing myself with how everything worked, I thought what better way to start collection inspiration for some of our home improvement and redecorating projects!  The biggest project we have coming up will be to paint the exterior of our house.  This is going to be a huge job, so I want to give a lot of thought to the color we choose.  To get some ideas, I started out (as I usually do) with a google image search.  I found some houses similar to ours that I liked, and made a pin board to collect them all in one spot, which makes it super easy to compare the different looks:

When I was doing the google image search, I also happened upon this post, from another blogger who needs to paint her old house too.  She had a found this great tool from Sherwin-Williams where you can try out different colors on your house without getting out a paintbrush.  It's called the color visualizer, and you can find it here.  I'll definitely be spending some time trying out colors on our house!  In the meantime, I'll also be searching and pinning away, like ideas for redecorating little g's bedroom, and inspiration for our someday kitchen remodel (it's never too early to start getting ideas, is it?).

Home Improvement Project #1: New Dishwasher

When we bought this house, we knew that the dishwasher was broken.  Now, I realize that a dishwasher is not really a necessity, but after having lived with one for the past 7 years, it's definitely hard to go back to not having one.  So at the top of our list of home improvement projects was to get a new one.  Neither my husband or I have the time or the know-how to take on installing a dishwasher ourselves, so we opted to hire it out.  And I'm very glad we did!

When the installer arrived this morning and started trying to take out our old dishwasher, he hit a bit of a snag:  the ceramic tile was put down after the previous dishwasher was put in, so the floor was actually higher than the the dishwasher (ugh!).  But luckily, after much hard work on his part, he was able to tilt it up just enough to slide it out (whew!).  Installing the new one was a bit of a struggle as well, since the opening between the floor and counter top is shorter than it should be, but he did it (hooray!). 

Now to test it out on all those dirty dishes that have been piling up...