The Pampered Mom's Thanksgiving Menu 2013

While everyone is busy preparing for tomorrow, I thought I would share what's on menu tomorrow.  I hope everyone enjoys the company of family and friends, stays warm and thankful.

What are you making for your family & friends?

Imhoff House: Basement Progress + Interior Paint Colors

After all the carpet in the basement was pulled up, we had to make a decision on what to put down.  Do we go with carpet, tile or stain?  It was a huge decision, and one that we needed to make quickly.  There are obvisouly plus's and minus's when flooring a basement.  I wasn't sure what exactly I wanted, but I knew I didn't want to carpet the main area.  This basically left tile and stain.  I also knew I wanted to the flooring to be dark ... basically black!  Because the flooring would have to be done the next week, we needed to get paint on the walls.  With a dark floor [either tile or stain] I wanted a light wall.  I feel like my whole house is grey, but really, the colors just worked perfectly.  Before we made an flooring decision, we picked out the paint and we ... I mean Ryan painted the basement bedroom, main living area and the bathroom.  

Here are the colors we used ...

 

 

It looks amazing!  I am in love with the colors [which were used upstairs as well].  

So what do you think?  Stain or tile? Benefits?

Imhoff House: Our Dirty Little Secret

It's not secret that moving into a new house is a LOT of work!  More that what most would prefer, espeically if you're moving a family.  Like any house, it needed to be cleaned ... however, our house ... basically needed all hands on deck.  It seriously was one of the dirtiest houses I had been in - in a LONG time.  From the outside and just walking around,  you wouldn't have thought so.  But when you're moving and getting down to the nitty gritty - you start to see things that you didn't before.

For example, moving our stove ... terribly dirty, and we would never have know just walking through the house.  During the first open house, we both agreed that if we moved in, there would need to be some serious changes to the basement.  What was fine for the family before ... was not going to work for us.  We knew that for sure.  From the multicolored berber carpet to the webs on the ceiling, our basement quickly became our dirty little secret.

 

These photos don't even really show how terrible it was.  I know people who came over wondered why we bought this house after seeing the basement!

When guests would come over to the house, we were in total defense mode.  We either skipped the basement completely, or tried to dodge the subject of the basement all together during tours. It was the worst of the worst.  One of the first things the hubs did when he moved in was rip it up.  It was wet underneath, it came up in a million tiny pieces, and the smell ... let's not even talk about the smell!

Let me tell you ... it wasn't pretty ...

However now ... it's quickly gone from a place where we wouldn't dare, to a place where we are excited to spend some quality time!

I'll begin sharing this week how we went from drab to FAB!  And it really didn't cost all that much!