Meet Our New Puppy!

Meet our new little girl, Teak!

 

We adopted her last week, in one of the fastest and unexpected adoptions ever.

The Story: Ryan and I had been talking for a while now about wanting to get a puppy, and somehow our plans went from “after we’re married” to “maybe for Christmas”. So on Friday night, the 25th of November, I sat at home a little bored and whipped out my lap top to do some casual puppy searching on Petfinder.com. Low and behold I found a litter of 3 girl puppies that were coming up in mid December from South Carolina. They were a lab mix (dropped off in a cardboard box, so there’s no knowing what they’re actually mixed with) and oh-so-adorable. I showed them to Ry (he said they were cute, but that he wanted a boy puppy) which I accepted as an “ok” to fill out an application to the rescue. I figured even if we didn’t get one of these puppies that it would be good for them to have our application on file for any future puppies we might inquire about.

That very next morning at 10 am I received a call from the rescue (Home at Last) telling us that the puppies were actually coming in tomorrow (that Sunday) and asking if we wanted to meet them. That was an easy question – obviously!!! I was jumping up and down so excited! Long story short, we met her, fell in love and prayed they would pick us. Yes, there were about 20 people interested in each puppy, so after they filtered the applications they picked about 10 total people to come meet them so they could see who they thought would be the best fit for the pup. We went the extra mile and brought our 9 year old golden, Cedar with us to see if the two got along. Thankfully, they called us Sunday night and told us we could have her! Eek!

So last Wednesday, November 30th, we got our new baby. Her name? Well my very first golden was named Aspen, and then we got Cedar (when Aspen was 9). So we decided to stay with the nature inspired names and thus named her Teak.

Needless to say I spent this past weekend doing nothing but photographing all her cuteness. See more photos of her on my photo blog HERE. (God help me when we have kids, the amount of photos I take is slightly ridiculous)

She’s so adorable, so well-tempered and training is going very well! Cedar is liking her too, and is loving the extra attention and walks! Love my new little lovebug!

 

Fall: The Changing Of Colors (a few times over)

Ok, so way back when we bought the house, the walls were green and the trim a pinkish, yellowish white. blah. So last you’ve seen (other than the sneaky peaks of wall decor updates that clearly gave colors away) this is what we were left with.

Before we even moved in, I had wanted grey walls and a blue dining room. Why? Well I’m weird I guess, but that’s just what I wanted. I thought light grey walls in the living room and a darker blue in the dining room would have a nice contrast and compliment each other. And so I continued to paint the living room Porpoise by Behr.

Please ignore the yellow color on the right, that has nothing to do with anything Traub Mansion. But this is a googled picture of the color swatch because, well….Porpoise didn’t stay long. I don’t even think it lasted a week. (and the only picture I took of it was on my old crackberry (which I didn’t seem to send to the new iphone when I switched over to the good side) Once it went up on the wall it looked lavender. Not grey. Fail. All it took was asking two of Ryan’s friends what color the walls were when they first came to visit the house and I had my answer: Home Depot and on to more painting.

I guess the light lavender had me screaming inside, and I went the total opposite as to not make the same mistake twice and went dark (blueish) grey. Enter Behr Dark Ash:

Note the old curtain solution! Ugh, why was updating those not closer to the top of my list. I think we lived with our windows like that for far too long. But the roll down shade and dirty-as-hell lace curtains just weren’t cutting it….

You can also see above the change in the dining room (obviously not blue anymore) and the addition of the Lack Ikea shelves (man do I luuurve them!)

And so the walls stayed this Dark Ash for well over a year until I got the painting itch again at the beginning of October. (Yes, I’ve been a little busy and this update is coming not so up-to-date).

I still had the desire for a grey living room. And something not so cave like. Our lack of lighting in the living room and only getting northern and western light in the room didn’t help much either. So I hit up my Benjamin Moore paint deck and found a new love. Gray Horse.

Ah, she seemed like the perfect grey-beige. I spent many a night googleing (funny how that’s a verb now…) other rooms that had been painted the same color. Gosh it seemed perfect!

Crisp, clean, fresh and most importantly GRAY!

And so a can of paint I bought and I immediately put it on one wall (just to be safe!)
A little blue, am I right? Why oh why me!? Ok so even though Home Depot had the Benjamin Moore color in their system, I have this gut feeling it wasn’t mixed correctly. But alas, instead of fixing the coloring issue, I went back to the drawing color swatch board.

I just wanted straight gray. No red or purple or blue hue added. My answer, I went to a color swatch book that I acquired in college and took out all the grays. I picked the ones that went best with the beige in the dining room, taped them to the wall and picked my favorite. Home Depot did a color match for me and although I was shocked to see that the color match had colors other than black (the swatch was pure gray – good old Color Theory class) I went with it anyway. I mean how was I going to get closer other than having them only add black to a can of white (which was bound to come off more blue anyway – black tends to do that with interior paint). If anyone fancies this color – I will certainly share my mixture recipe they gave me (and I kept for future reference)

I took the same approach and just painted the walls (2 coats each) one at a time. Here’s an array of progress photos…. (thinking I may have to spray paint my deer head – something about the orange just isn’t clicking….)

That’s about as nuts as my living room has looked in a long time. I’ll be sure to upload a final, put-back-in place photo soon. As for the left over Gray Horse? Well I used up the rest of that too….where? Ah, you’ll have to wait and see…

What are your thoughts? Are you loving/hating the new gray? Does anyone else out there have as many gray issues as I?!?