The Octagon House

Hello Everyone!

Remember me? Tara! I’m back! So sorry for my absence, I have been and I am still sick. Its been absolutely no fun but then, what illness is? I feel like such a baby for saying what my issue has been but just imagine a stomach ache gone bad: For three weeks. Its been miserable! Ended up in the hospital last week and now we have a plethora of doctors and tests on the horizon. While this is going on, things have slowed down here unfortunately on the old homestead. I hate seeing Floyd struggle between work, getting home to watch Grady, making dinner and keeping the house clean while I deal with this gripping abdominal pain. But we will get through it. We always do.  I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:13

Anyhow, I was flipping through the pictures on my camera to see what I could post on and I found pictures of the stairway! Thus an ode to the stairs is about to be born!

Time to start scraping! Vinegar hard at work!

Primered!

Getting started with painting!

Yay!

I love this color with the stairs! I lovingly call it "Mustard Bread."

This needs another coat but it still looks fabulous!!!

And there you have it! The stairway transformation and some love from the Octagon house! Keep us in your prayers as we try to find some medicals answers. We have so much to do to get the house more prepared for winter and with me being laid up, its not a very good situation!  Thank you so much!

…yesterday, Floyd and I rushed over to meet in Peoria with the realtor and bank to sign the deed on this old house. And it was ours! I tried posting this yesterday but this literally sat on my screen all day and I just realized it now! I almost just deleted the whole thing but I thought you know what? This needs to be recognized! 9 months ago yesterday was my hysterectomy too. Funny how things work.

A year ago I bought an Octagon house and I had no clue that three months later I’d be doing the hardest thing of my life. 9 months later I’d realize, it was the best decision I’ve ever made.

My muffin and me!

When I first saw our Octagon house, I wanted to pack it in my purse and bring it home with me. Fortunately, the whole transaction went very smoothly and I wasn’t forced to such extremes. But today, I experienced the same antique overload that sent me reeling and spinning…literally!

Today was so much fun! We traveled to Bloomington, IL’s “Third Sunday Market.” Oh my word! It was amazing! Vendors galore! Booths! Antiques! Fleas! Er…Anyhow, it was astounding. We arrived around lunch time and got to work visiting the 450 vendors. What a wonderful day with beautiful weather!

I always have a zillion ideas running through my mind and we were able to get quite a few little treasures towards our Octagon treasure chest. I think I could have gone around the fair grounds twice but we got there so late we only had time for one round. It was so nice to go with my whole fam and pursue history. I must say, I did have a tiny heart attack when I saw two of MY toys in a booth. Twenty four years old and MY toys are in an antique vendor’s booth? Something wrong with that picture!

All of the flea market glory!

Cake cover: One of my favorite finds of the day $5 - Clorox Blech Bottle: Floyd's desire $2.50 - Yellow sprigs: I've been looking for these for ages and they've always been overpriced so I was thrilled to find them today in the color I loved! $7 - Coffee Cup Planter: My old one broke so Floyd bought me this bigger one for the same price as my old small one! $6

Clay Jar: Love it! $6 - Rolling Pin: $2.50 - Jar Clamper Thinger'ma Jinger: Thought this looked so cool and was worthy enough to add to the chimmney collection! $3 - Spoon: $2 - Plate: $2 - Bowl: $5 - Beyond Awesome Bread Box Tin: Need I say more? $5

My first purchase of the day: Egg basket! It was my most expensive purchase but I really loved it!

Meal burlap sack that was just cool! I plan on putting it on a small frame and hanging it in the kitchen! More on that project later! $5

So there you have it on our little finds! Floyd found a couple of other things as well but they were more in the “tool” department and didn’t make it into the picture, I’m not sure why. We definitely were more then pleased with our first flea market experience.  I could have brought a moving van with me and more then once I was tempted to ask a vendor or two if they wanted to use my house as “storage.” And while I absolutely LOVE my hutch, I saw a hutch there I could not believe was in existence. The owner of the booth came up to me when I went to look and the price and said “Now isn’t that a fair price.” I replied “This hutch is SO beautiful I halfway expected to see $1000 plus your soul as the price. So yes. This is an AMAZING price.” He thought that was funny! Ha ha!

Because of today’s activities we are all fairly exhausted! Infact, Floyd is snoring and Grady is rolling around fighting sleep next to me. So I think I will call it a night with this post. Sorry its so short! Tomorrow I think I will focus on the hallway and bathroom sink. I can’t wait! Thanks so much for reading!

…what not planning a party felt like! And its amazing! Don’t get me wrong. The party was so much fun and I love all the changes that were made to the house. But living in that constant planning mode can be stressful to say the least. I’m thrilled to be living out the rest of the summer in this fabulous stress free mode.

I promised in my last post that I would bring us all up to date on the tin from last summer. I plan on starting this post with just that.

Old Tin from Chillicothe's original movie theater. Took a lot of scraping to get them smooth for painting!!

The original plan was copper paint but I changed my mind and we went with bronze instead

Sad because I can't find the pictures of us working on the tin in the yard but here Floyd is in the kitchen starting to cut it to fit!

Trying it on for size!

Even though its in the prior post I thought I would post it again. We plan on putting a coat of poly on all of these, especially this one, to protect them from any water or the like!

Just love it!! Cookie anyone?

There you have it! Floyd used Lock Tight Insta Grab All Purpose Instant Adhesive to attach it to the wall. It took a couple of hours one evening to attach 6 pieces. We still have two pieces left and we’re not quite sure where to put them. They aren’t quite long enough to fill one spot and another spot we’d have to cut quite a bit off and it feels like such a waste. So we are still not sure. In the pictures I feel like the copper doesn’t look that far off from the bronze but trust me, the copper was coming off far too pink and while I love a true copper tone, it just wasn’t truly copper. I couldn’t be happier with the bronze color we decided on…I believe the actual name was antique brass.

One project that we decided to throw into the mix literally two days before the part was repainting a wall in the dining room. This, was entirely my idea. My husband, is completely a saint. Ha ha! When we got started in the hallway, I found exactly the color I had in my mind. It was so exciting! But while I was painting it, I kept looking out into the dining room and then back at the stairway/hallway. It just wasn’t blending the way I wanted. Then I had this vision. And a gleam entered my eye. Floyd saw it and knew he was doomed. I think he knows instantly just to go along with the gleam! The whole project was done in one evening! Ha ha!

Plus…in the back of my mind I had that darn vase stuck in my head. Remember? From way back when? This Entry back in March I posted this picture:

The inspirational vase!

Mind you, the only thing standing between me and this vase was the price tag. Which happened to be $35 dollars. Have you ever heard of anything so absurd? Humph! And from BIG LOTS no less! So on a visit to menards, I picked up a gallon of paint to do an accent wall and did the bay window in the same color as the stairway/hallway (tomorrow’s entry!) Then…get this, favorite part of the story. We stop at big lots for a few things. GUESS what happens to be on sale for $4 dollars. Ahem. Yeah. Thats right. THE vase. PLUS a little bowl that matched for $1 dollar. I was so excited to have the inspiration for my mustard fad finally in my house!!

Floyd, though skeptical of my last minute painting insanity, is helping me 100%!

Hydrangas from my $3 dollar bushes from Home depot!

New colors!

Yay for cheap mustard color vases and bowls and a beautiful silver serving tray from my mom from goodwill!

So there we have it! Another update full of pictures! I’m very excited for this weekend and the fun it will bring! We are going to our very first flea market and I really couldn’t be more excited! Let me know what you think of the newest updates. More to come! Love!

I think it will take me a few posts to detail everything we did before the party but I can at least get started! Maybe I should start at this past weekend and work backwards! The party was a smashing success. We had 60+ guests throughout the course of the afternoon including our family and friends. The house was just full of people and was bursting at the seams with love. The whole day was perfect and we couldn’t have felt more blessed at the end of the day.

Present Time!

Grady eating his first cupcake of the day! (Many more were consumed!)

What a grand time! But lets get back to business! We’ve got alot to talk about! Even the kitchen sink! When we first bought the house it looked like this:

I do not miss this in the least! Infact...looking at this picture makes me slightly dizzy!

Over the past year, this little sink has made a lovely transformation from traumatizing hovel to a delightful corner that I nearly want to do the dishes at. Nearly. Now that we are nearing the end of this sink extravaganza I think its time we take a look at all of the transformations that have happened!

First picture ever taken of the sink!

Ugly Green Cabinet is MIA! Along with the wallpaper!

Cabinet installed over the sink

The new Faucet

Fabric for curtain!

Curtains!

Remember that tin from so looong looooooong ago? I'm going to show you more pictures of it eventually but we used some of it as a back splash for behind the sink!

Kind of cool to see the time line. Took us long enough that’s for sure! The funny thing is we changed everything AROUND the sink, by the sink, near the sink: But not the sink itself! I just love how it looks now and couldn’t be happier! Now that things have calmed down I should be able to post more so I want to pick a topic a day to work on. I started with the sink! Tomorrow, well…I have a whole Octagon House to pick from! Until then!

What a wonderful open house and birthday party we were blessed with! I know I’ve so been slacking in the blogging department but now I need to post pictures of everything that we did to update the house for the party! I really needed to take a few days to re-coop after the party but I’m ready and rearing to go now.

I want to let people know that we are thinking about having a fall themed open house for the area later this fall for anyone and everyone to come to. Its just an idea in the making right now but I thought if there was enough interest perhaps we could get something into motion! If would be even more fun if we could get local businesses involved somehow. If you have any ideas, please feel free to contact me!

I’ve been encouraged to share a little snippet I wrote about this summer and I’m going to do so. This summer has meant so much to me and so many of my readers have played a part. I wanted to remember thus this little note entitled: 

Why Summer 2010 is Epic

1. My first summer in the Octagon House!
2. The one and only thing in my house that didn’t require fixing, tinkering, banging, tearing down, putting up, taking apart, putting together or anything else of this nature this entire year was the air conditioner. And this was discovered on the 4th of July because we were too scared to try it before then.
3. This is the first summer that I’ve grilled out with family and friends, swam, sunned and fallen asleep completely exhausted from the day’s fun activities.
4. I’ve gotten up super early and not died. Unless you are me, you probably don’t know what a feat this is.
5. Toy Story 3 came out. 11 years I waited for this day. I laughed. I cried. I wept. ‘Nuff said.
6. The dishes have gotten done every single day. Whether I’ve been *completely* caught up, that’s debatable. But! This is from someone who was not able to move off the couch! And when my washer and dryer is working, I do a load a day at least!
7. I’ve cried harder this summer then I have any other summer, but I’ve also never laughed harder. )
8. Every day I do 300 sit ups. Beat that Mista T!
9. Friends I thought would be there haven’t been. Friends I didn’t know would be there stepped up.
10. My family is nearer and dearer to me then ever and instead of being afraid of living life without them, I’m trying to freeze frame moments with them so I can have memories like these last forever.
11. New friends have been made and it astounds me that even though I’m 24 years old I enjoy people like I’m 5 again.
12. It will never be perfect but I’m figuring out the balance between being nice and not being a door mat.
13. I’m the only person I know that literally cries tears of joy when I’m mopping or sweeping or vacuuming: Just because I’m finally able to do it!
14. Grady got diagnosed with Autism. A very hard thing to go and do. But a very big thing to finally overcome.
15. I got to see the results of the single most difficult choice I’ve ever had to make come to fruition. The other day I sat down to try and figure out what exactly it was that I was doing that was making me feel so good when it hit me. I’ve finally recovered from surgery. My body has finally adjusted. I’m finally me. I feel like I’m coming alive. I feel like I’m breathing for the very first time. Like I’m walking…running…for the very first time. And its amazing.
16. When Grady started developmental therapy I had to drag him over to his little chair, plop him in it, push it into the table and hold it there until the therapist did something to catch his interest. Usually he sat for about 3 minutes. This past Friday, he got bored with playing, got up, went over, sat down, scooted himself in and looked at us as if to say, “What else ya got?”
17. At the beginning of the summer I felt pouty that Floyd and I never did anything fun. Since Floyd has been blessed with overtime but its unfortunately mandatory, I now wait at the door ready to just “be” with him. I love it. A change in perspective means everything.
18. This summer I reached my goal weight by loosing 45 pounds. Boooo yah!
19. Attitude is everything. I made a choice at the beginning of this summer to be happy. That was it. I was done being the victim or being sad or depressed. I have my sad days and I let myself be sad, but I don’t fester. I’m happy. I LOVE smiling. And by george I wanted to have a happy attitude so I went to the store and I picked one up. Aisle 16. Check them out!
20. Summer is a season. As is everyone in your life. Enjoy them for the moment they are there and then move on if they for some reason can’t stay. This summer meant the world to me and I will never forget it. I was healthy, happy, in love with my friends and family. I watch Grady grow in unbelievable ways and I sit at therapy and can’t believe we are overcoming this current trial. This summer doesn’t read autism, crumbling octagon house or husband never home because of insane work hours. It reads growing stronger, incredibly blessed and incredibly loved.
 

Thus my summer has been amazing. More to come tonight I promise. Pinky promise! I have painted walls, curtains sewn, an installed sink, planted bushes, a bird bath and more! Love to you all!

…supercalifragilisticexpialidocious anniversary! Do you know what today is? Well, I wouldn’t have known except that with preparing for this party I gave myself a moment to reminisce.  I realized this last Wednesday was the anniversary of the day that I had been sitting online desperate to find a new house with a lower payment and discovered this home on Realtor.com. Two days later our offer was accepted by the bank.

And a year ago today, August 2nd, this blog was born! I can’t believe its been a year! I remember being so nervous signing up on wordpress because I was terrified something would go wrong between then and actually signing the papers on the house. But I signed up for the blog on this fateful day a year ago and cautiously posted from then until the closing of our new home and well until now!

Looking back on the beginning blogs…it feels like a dream but it was only one year ago. We were so excited and when I read over things, so young. Ha ha! I know I know…one year. But apparently a ton of growing can happen in one year. We jumped into this head first and if we could do it all over again, I would do it exactly the same way.

What an adventure! I can’t believe! Ha ha! There is not another word to describe any of this! We’ve laughed, we’ve cried. We’ve done one so hard until the other one happened. We’ve pulled dead birds out of our furnace, listened to raccoons give birth in our attic, watched the rain and snow flood our basement to the point of drowning the water heater which leads to boiling hot water for baths and dishes, we’ve painted until we’re delirious, mudded until we’re bleary eyed, scrubbed, cleaned, scraped, purged, scoured and tidied up the place. We’ve put a kitchen together from nothing, fixed horrendous cracks, replaced walls, practiced all sorts of Macgyver skills and fallen madly in love with this eight side house.

So one year ago I started this blog. I’ve posted 88 times…well 89 with this one! Had 149 comments and 16,584! That is amazing to me! I could not feel more loved! By my family, friends, community and this old octagon house! I can’t wait for another year and the years to come!

Sadly that’s how I feel! Floyd worked 60+ hours this week, putting in 12 hours on Sat and with the party less then two weeks away, I’m definitely in panic mode. Tomorrow, er, today I plan on putting in a full days work cleaning and getting as much work done that I can get done: DONE!

I don’t have much to write about but I have a few fun things to post. Earlier this week I was able to visit Habitat for Humanity. Its one of my favorite places to go and I was able to introduce my sister Kirsten to its treasures. She found a chair and end table for her apartment at school and I was able to find a huge mirror for my huge bathroom sink. It was previously a dresser mirror but it was perfect for my needs and the price was even better! I can’t believe how much a mirror costs these days or maybe I’m just becoming cheaper by the minute!

Giant mirror with motivational "You can do it!" stickers attached to the front! And while I can always use a reminder, I asked Floyd to remove the decals!

I will have to show you more of an update with that later! I’ve been building a collection of odds and end knick knacks to hang on the chimney in the kitchen. From all different antique stores from all different days, occasions, so they all have different meanings. The collection is growing slowly but surely and it sure is a lot of fun!

The muffin tin is one of my favorites: Its so unique! I also love the utensil with all the little swirley do dad's (that is the technical term) and the colander was a birthday present from Floyd!

I don't know what the names are for a lot of these things are...even though you could tell from my above caption. However I love each and every one of them. I like to think about the people who might have used them!

Thats what I have so far! I have a few more colanders…and I’m hoping to expand my collection with a few more items, its a pretty tall chimney! I’ve seen a few kitchen items at antique stores that I’d like to have but I need to either save up or find them a little worse for wear so I can afford them! Any neat kitchen antiques you think would look cool?

Anyhow, I better get to work! I started this at three in the morning and now its two in the afternoon! Hopefully I will have more pictures of things that have gotten done by this evening! Until then, cheerio old chap!

I’m trying to update things here and there!

I updated the subscribing service since word press suggested it. Its on the right hand side and supposedly you can control if you get a weekly email or a daily email or a by the post email, so its very interesting! I’m not sure if those who were subscribed before are still subscribed or not. That just goes to show I’m not as technical and space agey as I’d like to think I am.

I also updated The Couple page and I’m searching for a few pictures to throw on there. I realized we’ve never had family photos done of any kind and I would really like to do that. Maybe at the Octagon House? How cool would that be? I’m not sure if Grady would cooperate!

I’m slowly but surely updating The House page with rooms and pictures. It takes a while to upload and write!

I also added a new little widget that shows your comments on the right hand side bar. I thought that was cute and I love it when I get comments. This just shows them off! I titled it “Your Thoughts.”

We’ve hit 16,000 views!!! How crazy is that? Right on the eve of one year of the blog! If you would have told me one year ago that we would have had that many hits, I would have laughed uproariously! Its nice to know that people care so much and keep coming back to check up on us!