And the winner is...

Yellow! (if you follow me on instagram, you already knew this... but just go with the excitement people)

Our new front door has been painted yellow and I love it. Of course I couldn't stop there... so I had to paint the entry door to the garage as well... that one turned out in a light blue. I liked the blue so much- I will be painting the door that leads to the back yard (also from the garage) that color as well.

Why didn't you make them match? I've been asked about a dozen times now....

Because, I am me and I didn't want them to match. Plus D was on board with the two door colors so I can't complain. One yellow door is great... 2 yellow doors seems like overkill. Plus this was the perfect way for me to get two colors I wanted.

Of course I am sorta contemplating my wreath choice, but for now that one will do.

Paint Choices for Reference:
Yellow: Pantone Solar Power (Valspar)
Blue: Behr French Court

Now we just need to take care of those monstrous bushes (and a driveway) so you can actually see the house and we'll be all set... Anyone want to call "Curb Appeal" for me? :)

My very own COZYmade wreath...

So for the amount of time I have been making yarn wreaths... I have never had a full size one to call my own. Weird huh? I never really had a front door of my own in the amount of time since I began COZYmade.

For those of you who know me... know that all the pictures I take for the COZYmade shop were taken on the door of D's condo. The few that we're taken on a white door were taken at my mother's house. Of course at the time, I lived there... so technically I could say it was my door, but didn't feel like mine.

I just unpacked all of my COZYmade inventory to get ready to list into the shop, and realized I didn't have a wreath of my own. I am happy to state that I now have my very own wreath on my very own front door. Sure... our front door needs a coat of paint, but I couldn't resist putting a wreath up there in the meantime. 

I am also happy to report (in case I haven't shared yet...) that we officially have a doorbell. And it plays all sorts of fun music. Clearly we needed the one with options- yet set it to the most boring "ding dong" there was. But next time you visit me and it's your birthday... be ready for a "happy birthday" doorbell greeting!

Staying Organized: Yarn, Yarn and more Yarn...

If you follow me on instagram (if you don't you should...)- you know that my living room has no space for living right now. It was basically the dumping ground for when we moved in. As we started to put things away, I was beginning to think that it wasn't that bad... mostly D's massive drum collection. But as he started to put his drums away... I noticed all my craft bins hiding underneath them.

Man I have a lot of stuff. 

Right now, the office/studio space in my home is full of bins. If you remember, the office I use to work in closed, and I basically didn't know what I wanted to keep from my cube, so I packed up everything I thought I might want and moved it home. The majority of the bins in my office are not craft stuff... so I should have known it was hiding elsewhere :)

I knew I wanted to find a storage solution for my yarn, because prior to now, I never knew what I had and was always digging. If I was impatient, I would just go buy the color I needed... (which is why I now have so much of certain colors). I thought I wanted the Expedit shelving unit from Ikea...

I knew I didn't want something tall, and this seemed perfect. Until I measured the space where I wanted to put it and it was just a little too big. Sigh... on to the next idea.

I figured I would end up with those cube storage units from Target or Walmart, but was hesitant because they seemed so un-sturdy and the cube area seemed so small. I started browsing on Target.com and discovered this guy:

The Threshold 6 cube Organizer was the perfect solution. The height was the same and it was almost the same depth as the Ikea one, but it wasn't as long which is exactly what I was looking for. I ordered it (along with an entry way table which I am in love with and will tell you about later...) and when it arrived, I actually was excited to put it together and stuff it full of yarn. The result? 

Excellent. I fit 3 full sized storage bins of yarn into this amazing little shelf. The unit was deep enough to fit 2 skeins deep on each shelf (so 24 full skeins in each cube)... of the "Lion Brand Thick & Quick" yarn. The longer skeins, I could only fit one deep, but since I didn't have too many of those, I wasn't worried. Please don't do the math as to how many I fit in here, or you may want to call Hoarders. It actually scared me a little.

So 3 more bins down, about a million more to go. We did have a productive weekend though, more on that a little later.

HOME: It's Official, I am a homeowner

So with one of the most hectic days I can remember in my life, we finally closed on our house. I am officially a home owner. We closed on a Wednesday and Monday and Tuesday were spent running around gathering more information for the mortgage guy. Everything was finalized with our mortgage at like 6pm Tuesday night.

Wednesday Morning...
We awaited a call from the lawyer telling us exactly how much we needed to bring to closing. Since we needed a cashier's check, we had to schedule in a trip to the bank. While we waited, we were on our way to the new house for our final walk through when we got a call from our Realtor. The sellers were not out of the house yet. So... we turned around and waited some more.

Our walk through ended up being at 1pm (closing now scheduled for 2) where we discovered, they STILL hadn't taken everything out of the house. We were also waiting for some town permits to be closed for work we had asked the sellers to do. So... the sellers realtor, grabbed one of our keys they had left us so she could get someone to empty the stuff out. She would meet us at the closing with the key. Sounds like no big deal.

It's now about 3pm and we are just arriving to the Registry of Deeds where our closing is to take place. We start signing our life away with our lawyer. Once everything was signed... we waited some more. We still hadn't received the closed permits saying the work was done correctly, and still there was no sign of their realtor with the extra key. We had the rest of the pile of keys with us, but weren't sure which was which. Our lawyer finally got an email with copies of the closed permits and with 10 minutes to spare submitted our paperwork to the Registry of Deeds. By 4pm we were officially home owners.

So now your thinking... this is where the story ends? One would think. But not in our case. We still had to go and make sure the stuff they were suppose to remove was out of the house. Around 5pm, we get to the home... its getting dark. Try every single key they gave us in every single door. None of them work. So... we're on the phone with our realtor trying to get her to get ahold of their realtor. Turns out their realtor left the extra key on the counter inside because she couldn't make it to our closing in time. FANTASTIC. We were homeowners locked out of our own home.

By now its completely dark so we decide if we're going to call a locksmith to get us in, it would have to wait till morning. Around 8pm or so... my phone rings. It's our realtor again. She informs me that she went out to dinner with her daughter and in walks the sellers! She went over and told them what happened and asked if any of them may have an additional key to the house. One of the sellers reaches into her purse and pulls out her keys and says "I may have given them the wrong key." So she gives the key to our realtor. We met her at about 8:30 in a dark CVS parking lot. She gave us the key and said good luck.

At about 9pm we went to the house (with a flashlight... it was pitch black out) and tried the key. WE WERE FINALLY IN THE HOUSE!! I was so excited for the day to be over. I spent all day Thursday cleaning and by the weekend we had started painting. Details on that later. For now... Here are some pictures of the house.

Please note these pictures are from the MLS listing. This is how it looked when we decided to purchase. I will be updating once projects are complete. Stay tuned :)