Fall is in the air

 Everyone promised that the Fall would be beautiful here in New England. And although it has only technically been fall for a few days, so far I couldn't agree more! There are lots of apple orchards here and plenty of trees and already they are slowly starting to change color- and sometimes even smile at me!

School is in full swing now and all three kids are totally loving it. They are making friends and seem to be caught up academically so we are so happy for that.  Declan has started practicing (5 hours a week!) for a theater production. It's a Christmas show called "Dobb's Diner". It seems really fun and he loves it. He's also taking piano and so far, so good with that.  Amelia has had 2 Field Hockey games and while she's still learning, really enjoys it.  And Finn will start swimming in October. Busy and fun!

I have been busy trying to get involved with PTO, exercise class, and the local mother's club; basically ways to  try to keep busy and meet some people. As much as I love Finn, he's not exactly giving me adult conversation (though sometimes the stuff he says is amazing).  We spent a lovely day Sunday with some new friends and it was so good for us to feel "social". We are planning to host a Halloween party. It might be small, but it will be a fun way to get to know some people better.

The other thing that I've been doing is slowly work on house projects.  We lived in our house in Westerville for 8 years. Everyone knows I pretty much did not like the house from the day I moved in. However, there were several projects I wanted to do that would have really improved the house. The biggest project we wanted done was to have a patio put in.  Matt drug his feet about every house project, including that one. Finally we had it put in, and had landscaping done, last fall. We loved it. We had about 2 weeks to enjoy it.  I think that really kind of hit home with Matt that why wait to do some of the "fun" projects? Do them while WE get to enjoy them. So he's been on board with some of my craziness.  
Below are some pictures that show the "after" of the dining room as well as my new TV console. It was quite a find!! Once we paint the wall behind it I will do some after pictures of that room as well.

TV Console. Was to be sold as a sideboard, but I loved it for this!

New table, painted the built in hutch grey, removed the bookshelves, new hardware.

The "new" columns. Don't they look a million times better than the weird Roman ones?

The light is really bad in this picture, but on the right is my grandma's old curio. I did a shabby chic paint on it of grey and white.

You can see the curio better in this picture.
We even took the baby blue carpet off of the stairs! They really really need painted, but it's still a major improvement!