New Mascot? Wally the green "monstah" ain't got nothing on this kid!

Halloween 2009

I hope everybody had a Happy Halloween! It was so nice that it was on a Saturday this year, although I didn't get very many trick or treaters. Here are a few photos from the night, including my adorable niece and nephews!

Where to begin?

Wow, almost three months has gone by since my last post. I guess that means its been a busy summer!

I will have to start with the most important thing that happened, I became an aunt! My nephew "C" was born on June 26th and I have spent most of my summer weaseling my way back and forth from Connecticut for plenty of visits with the little guy.

Here are a few photos from his first couple of months:

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Next we traveled to Cape Cod for summer vacation and had a fabulous time! I am already counting down the days until next summer. We had the best time as usual with Jen and Don and her amazing family.

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August came and that brought our annual Cousins Weekend to my family's beach house in Old Saybrook, CT.

I had a terrific summer, but am certainly glad that we are getting into pumpkin/hot chocolate/halloween time of year!

Before & After

This project came about when we were looking at new houses to buy a few years ago. We happened to visit an open house where the family had a home theater in an extra room in their basement. It was very small, but cozy and they did an awesome job with it. It got our wheels turning that we could recreate something like that if we bought a house with a finished basement. Fast forward about two years and when we finally did settle on a home, it had a perfect basement to create our dream room. Not only did it have a finished basement, but there was another room for storage - so we didn't have to compromise anything.

Without further ado, here are some before and after shots:

This project was certainly time consuming but so worth it in the end. Luckily for us, our brother in law's are an electrician and a contractor, so there was alot of help given to us, which we greatly appreciated!

Kelly over at http://www.kellyskornerblog.com/ has a new installment of Show us where you live Friday. This one for me will be a little different - this one for me will be show us where your sister lives. My sister Allison and my brother in law Brad are patiently awaiting the arrival of their first baby due on June 19th. The room is finally just about complete so I thought I would share a few photos. I guess it can count a little towards me since I was the one who found the bedding and some of the decorative accents. Oh, and the wall color too! HA!

This is the view from when you walk into the room. Wall color is Benjamin Moore Ylang Ylang from the Aura Collection.

Look at those cute little pick up trucks on the radiator. Brad has been collecting them for years and finally has a reason to put them to good use!

The curtains in the room were made by my very talented Mother. A lot of cursing went into those valances, HA

Over in the little alcove, we found these prints from www.landofnod.com . We thought they were perfect and a great punch of color.

Here is the changing table area with pictures of their other "baby" ~ Tucker.

The bedding came from www.poshtots.com as well as the painting. Posh Tots have been the best to work with and so accomodating to all our special requests. If you look really close, you will see that the license plate says COOPER.

Here is a close up of the bedding - Isn't it the cutest thing ever?

And of course, no baby with the middle name "Fenway" room would be complete with at least one old Red Sox sign. I found this on ebay and thought it went with the vintage feel of the room wonderfully.

This post would not be finished without a gratuitous shot of momma-to-be....

So there you have it. Now we just have to wait for Cooper to make his debut.

22 Days and counting!

Tablescape Thursday

Over at http://www.betweennapsontheporch.blospot.com/ has been doing something fun called Tablescape Thursdays. I am a very new reader to her blog, but I wanted to add my own little tablescape that I did recently. This was from a Mexican Dinner Party we did at Casa Jen & Joe.

And here is one from Thanksgiving last year:

Thanks for taking a peek! Be sure to go back to www.betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com and take a look at all the fabulous posters tablescapes!

Show us where you live Friday - Dining Rooms

This is our dining room as a 'pre-before'. We haven't even begun to overhaul our dining room yet. I am imagining in the future possibly a bay window in place of the two windows, or perhaps even french doors out to a flagstone patio. I can also visualize some built in shelves to show off my collection of white serving pieces.

Here is the dining room still as a "current before" (i.e. We've spruced it up a little bit to make me happy, but it obviously doesn't even hold a candle to what I want it to look like as an end result.) I loved the colorful chairs that I had in there, but since re-doing my living room which opens up to the dining room, I had to put them in my new kitchen. They majorly clashed with the fabrics and colors in there and they look like they belong in their new home around the kitchen table.

This photo was taken during our Christmas Party.

Here are a couple photos from the Thanksgiving last year

And also for my husbands Birthday Brunch last year:





The little sideboard comes in handy, but I can't wait to really have built ins that will hold all my serving pieces.

Here is the dining room dressed in its Spanish best for Mexican Mastalski Night ~ October 2008

Well hopefully within the next year or so I can update with some fabulous new "After" shots. But for now, hope you enjoyed the tour!