App Love!

Today I want to share a few of my favorite photo apps. I love to take pictures but I will be the first to admit that I don't always get the best lighting or frame the shot just so. These apps are great for those little tweaks! I usually take my photos on my iPhone and edit them on my iPad mini. I love Apple's Photo Stream feature - that's how you can access your phone pictures on your iPad or computer. It makes the editing process so easy!

Rhonna Designs ($1.99, App store)
I am IN LOVE with this app. It's a full-featured photo art app with thousands of choices. You can go as simple as a frame, or as complex as a photo that looks like a mini scrapbook layout! I particularly love that you can crop, re-crop and move your picture around throughout the process. Also great: no additional in-app purchases necessary (apparently they will have some available in the future - hey, a girl's got to have options!) Visit Rhonna's Blog to learn more.

A Beautiful Mess ($0.99, App Store, Android soon)
This app is great for adding colorful doodles and text to your photos. I love the many border effects! It has a limited color palette, which simplifies the process for people like me who can never choose -just- the right color. You can purchase additional fonts, borders, doodles etc for 99 cents each. The new undo-redo feature is just what this app needed! I love their blog by the same name.

Adobe Photoshop Express (Free, App store)
The mac daddy of photo editing software, Photoshop has come to your phone or tablet. Love that it is FREE! I did purchase the Adobe Camera Pack, which allows you to use denoise - an essential tool for me. If you just want to crop and fix the lighting, this app is great! I would still recommend saving heavy duty editing for your desktop/laptop computer.

Padgram (Free, App Store)
While this isn't a photo editing app, I couldn't post about apps without including this! If you have an iPad you are probably well aware that Instagram is not yet optimized for iPad. Instead of having to hit the 2x button and viewing grainy Instas, I love checking in with my friends pics on Padgram. You will still need to post any pictures from the iPhone app - Instagram doesn't allow any 3rd party services to post pics. Highly recommend this over any other Instagram viewer. Many others charge you to search by hashtag - boo! Padgram includes this feature in the free version.  They offer an upgrade for $2.99, but I haven't found any reason to upgrade.

What are your favorite photo apps for your phone?

Ninety one.

Yesterday was my Grandpa Jim's 91st birthday. Ninety one years old. It's something beautiful and unbelievable and sad and happy all at once.

Quite a bit has happened in the past year of his life. Much of our focus and worry had been on my Grandma Ruth because she is so very thin and doesn't make too much sense in our conversations. Her dementia is very noticeable when she speaks. Not that we had forgotten about Grandpa, but he had become quiet and keeps to himself. He always says he is doing just fine!

After the Holidays, Grandpa fell out of bed pretty hard and needed to go to a rehabilitation facility. After this fall, he was unable to return to the assisted living center. His new home is the memory care unit at the Nursing Home. While we've loved all his nurses and caregivers, these are by far the best. They know every quirk and are good with the details of his daily activities - now that he is unwilling (or unable... not sure) to share these things with us. Grandma had a pacemaker installed in March and followed Jim into the memory care unit after that procedure. It's nice to have them in the same hallway.

For his birthday we brought him a cupcake and some Fannie May candies - he can't resist sweets. I made a few low-key scrapbook pages with recent pictures to hang on his wall. The common room can be overwhelming, so we decided to head outside. It was such a beautiful night - 75 with the sun still shining. He wanted me to scratch his back. He really enjoyed the Fannie May candies.

It's hard to watch your grandparents age. For my Grandma, it has been a slow slide into dementia. I still see flashes of the Grandma I knew growing up, but with each visit there's more dementia and less Grandma. With my Grandpa, it seems as if it happened overnight. Sometime in the winter of his 88th year, he stopped speaking. He is a very smart man who holds a degree in Engineering from the University of Illinois. I think he just doesn't want to say the wrong thing, so he says nothing at all. I used to love having conversations with him. I will cherish those conversations forever.

Happy birthday, Grandpa. I love you.

Nashville trip recap

Anxious...

I am so anxious for the place to be FINISHED! Until then, I'm spending a lot of my free time looking at furniture, wallpaper and paint colors. I have purchased a few things already. All of these can be returned, just in case my impulse buys don't match up with the final product.

Pretty printed chair. Will be a dining room extra chair.

Another printed chair from Target. I'll use this in the library room.

Master Bedding from Urban Outfitters.

Materials

The two highest costs in the remodel are the wood floors and the kitchen countertop. I am rather decisive, so it was a pretty speedy decision making process. I did not use design books or look for inspiration pieces. Rather, I thought about my personal tastes and went with my gut. Here are the basic building blocks for the home.

The floors are Hand-Scraped Maple, in a Saddle finish. They are from Home Depot and the hand-scraped texture gives the wood a lived-in, semi-rustic look. It is not matte, but definitely not a glossy finish. We went with the traditional 3 1/2 inch width to make the room seem larger - although I did love the thick cut pieces.


Since this is the ground floor of the building, and it is a concrete slab, we went with engineered "click" wood. It is less expensive than solid hardwood and will lay better on concrete than solid hardwood.

The kitchen counters will pick up the blue colors from my inspiration piece! I am excited about these countertops. Since the kitchen appliances are white, we wanted to choose a counter that would blend well with them and also be extremely durable, but also could work with stainless steel appliances if I or another owner wants to upgrade. Quartz countertops are non-porous, which means they will not stain, even from things like food coloring! The kitchen cabinets repainted in a creamy white will blend nicely with this. And of course, I can accessorize the kitchen in blues and yellows! This is Silestone brand quartz in Blue Sahara.

I chose lighting that I thought would anchor the house in traditional, so when I eventually sell it the empty home has a consistent look. I found the look I liked in Hampton Bay's "Caffe Patina" line of fixtures.

The chandelier is a nice 5-light fixture that will be slightly offset to fit exactly over the dining room table in the large living/dining room. Since it is slightly formal looking, we decided to dress up the new can lights with can light covers from the same collection. Again, looking for consistency. There will be four cans in the living space, and they will be on dimmers.

The bedroom ceiling fans are not from the same collection. Since the condo has traditional 8 foot ceilings, we needed a fan that would mount flush to the ceiling. It would not be nice to bump your head! The Caffe Patina fan is not flush mount, so it was not an option. This fan, Hampton Bay Carriage House II, has a 52" spread, perfect for the large bedrooms. The four lights will brighten the rooms significantly. This is important for the 2nd bedroom, which has a rather small window. They will be installed on a dimmer switch.

I have not made a decision on the kitchen sink, but I have picked out my faucet! I am enamored with Delta's Pilar Touch2Ofaucet. With a small space, I think it is important that all aspects are high quality. This is especially important for the items that are used every single day, such as the kitchen faucet. This has a high arch that will allow for large pots to fit underneath it, and the pull out hose provides flexibility. Since there is no utility sink in the home, the touch technology will prevent messy hands from ruining the nice kitchen faucet!

Demolition Day!

Today was Demolition Day! The contractor and crew came in and ripped EVERYTHING out... kind of scary to walk into!

No more ugly carpet in the (soon to be) library!

Hole in the wall to recess the fridge, and future bar space.

Baiiii ugly countertop and sink! See you soon, cabinet doors!

Ugly kitchen carpet is gone!

Living room... ceiling is cut out to install can lighting.

70's mirrored wall follows disco music to the garbage can.

And the bathroom vanity is completely gone!

This was pretty shocking to walk into, but it will be great soon. The floors should be the first thing finished, hopefully on the 28th. The last project to finish will be the bar.

Renovations

I love color, and definitely want to draw from an inspiration piece so I don't get too carried away! I decided that the common living space (nook, kitchen, combined living/dining room) will use colors from Van Gogh's "Wheat Field with Cypresses," one of my favorite works of art.

My color palette is a range of blues, greens, yellows, cream, and hints of red. I am adding brown to the colors as well. I have a framed art print of this picture that will hang prominently in the dining area, and I hope that I can create a space reminiscent of this great piece!

We will be doing five major updates in the condo:

1. Flooring & Lighting. We are removing all flooring (carpet and some tile) in the living areas and hallways and replacing with warm, medium-brown hardwood. The kitchen and living room are getting recessed lighting, and both bedrooms will have ceiling fans and lights. This should provide an instant and significant increase in the value of the home. We will also add decorative crown molding to create a more formal feel.
2. Kitchen. This is where the bulk of the cost of the renovation will come from. The cabinets will be refinished in an off-white color. The fridge will be recessed so it is flush with the cabinets. We will install new quartz countertops, and top it off with some funky drawer pulls & knobs. Hopefully this will make the best use of the small space.
3. Library. The breakfast nook will become a library. I am searching for unique wallpaper, a great easy chair or two and rug. This room is the first you see when you enter the home, so I want it to be perfect. It will probably take a while to find all the right pieces.
4. Bar. Recessing the fridge into the hall closet would make the closet too shallow to be useful, so we are turning the remaining space on the other side into a bar! The dry bar will have a beverage refrigerator, shallow cabinets and shelving for glassware. I am very excited about the bar, and believe it will increase the value of the home.
5. Master Suite Vanity. The current vanity is in poor condition, and must be replaced. We will build a custom cabinet to fit the space (it is not a standard size) and add more storage. The countertop will also be replaced.

Wow! Now that I write it out, this is quite a bit of work. We will be doing additional small updates that I have not highlighted above, including updating all switchplates, updating the cable jacks, installing a closet system and of course painting. We are holding off on some projects due to budget, including both bathrooms, painting the patio, outdoor carpet, and replacing the carpet in both bedrooms.

I can't wait for the contractor to get started today!