life recently

we've finished quite a few things on our house that i thought i'd post for those who care:

most exciting for us was having the sheetrock guys finish mudding the walls where the wallpaper tore the sheetrock paper off

then we worked really hard to prime everything

 jake got home from teaching snowboarding one night and got REALLY motivated and painted the bathroom all in one night - he didn't finish until after midnight!

we ended up going with the same color that we posted on facebook one night, that actually got lots of really terrible reviews from our friends, but i promise, it actually looks really good in person, especially in natural light.

we also painted our bedroom in this greyish-brown color that i REALLY love - in fact, we decided we liked it so much we're painting the rest of the house the same color

 unfortunately, we do still have the hideous pink carpet, but that is hopefully next month's project

in other news, i'm learning to cook healthier foods.  my friend Joy inspired me with a list of easy "fast-food" options that made it sound not-so-hard to start cooking lots of new-to-me foods

lentils, barley, bulgar, and quinoa

and my fridge looked so pretty when i got home from picking up some of the different options Joy said she cooked, i just couldn't help but take a picture!

so far, we've polished off all the chard, almost all of the kale, the broccoli, cilantro, and plan to finish the portobello mushrooms and red pepper tonight - YUM! (although i'm still trying to truly enjoy the grains, and i totally miss alfredo sauce...)

finally, some girls came over the other night to make cake pops with the cake pop maker i got for christmas - so fun! 

do you notice the beautiful fruit tile below all of our ingredients? can't wait for that to be gone!

thanks for following!

love,

the clarks

another house update

because my mom was asking to see more pictures...

 kitchen wall before

 jake priming the walls

 big window wall before

fireplace wall before

and because it'll be good to remember...

 kitchen wall after (ready for sheetrock guys next week)

 big window wall after

 fireplace wall after

i guess i didn't take a picture of this before...but regardless, it's a cute pic of samson

we found a little surprise in the air duct

 a mountain dew can, apparently left by the builders in 1996, which we couldn't get out without risking pushing it all the way down SO it's still there...

and i just really love this picture jake took off the front porch the other day of a cloud lying in the valley

and i KNOW you wanted to see another cute picture of samson, so, here ya go:

 even though he's not really allowed on the couch...but how can you say no to that?

thanks for following!

love,

the clarks

house update

here's a couple of recent pictures of the house:

a bunch of our friends came over for brunch on monday and the guys helped jake tear down the wallpaper in the loft

 sorry it's so dark - i've been lazy and just using my iphone instead of my camera

 while we were doing research on the best way to remove wallpaper, i read a comment someone posted that read "those who hang wall paper on sheetrock without painting or priming first should be shot" - i didn't really understand their frustration level until we started taking down the plaid

now i understand though.  all those brown spots are the exposed drywall.  and every one of those spots has to have drywall mud put back over them, smoothed out, sanded, and most likely done again before we can paint.

 tonight's project is really turning into a beast.  jake is pretty obsessed with conserving energy, and has been noticing that there is quite a bit of cold air leaking in through our sockets.  he bought some of this foam board stuff that we were using to cut out and place behind the sockets to try to stop some of that exchange.  then, he started feeling how much air was coming in through the space around the window that was covered in trim.  so, he took down the trim and started spraying "Great Stuff" into the space.  the first can went pretty fast, so he made a run to Lowes and came back with this:

lots and lots of Great Stuff!

so, we're making our house a little more efficient, one can at a time.  Jake called me over and said "Britt, do you know why this stuff is so great?"  i resisted the urge to say "because it's called 'great stuff"' and tried the answer of "because it expands in the cracks and blocks out the air!" - i thought i would get it right.  it turns out because it "has an r value of 5 to 7 per square inch" - pretty great huh? :)

(i don't really know what it means either, other than it's great!)

would you like to know what happens when a curious dog meets a can of Great Stuff?

 poor thing's going to loose part of that beard tonight because you can't just brush this stuff out...

this one is for our moms...

i know no one else will care, but i just wanted to post some pictures of our progress on the house

master bedroom, minus flowery wallpaper

and by our i mean jacob's, because he's spent all day of the last two days working on the house

 master bath, minus blue flowery wallpaper on walls and ceilings

 bathroom in master bath, minus same blue flowery wallpaper

upstairs bathroom, minus weird apple wallpaper on ceiling and walls

there's also things to see outside, but all i have is this one we took the other night when we rented a wood chipper and mulched all the branches and small trees that jake has been cutting down

anyway, that's all for now.  as jake said, "all that's left is the plaid" but, ironically, that's about 90% of the wallpaper, so we've still got plenty of work to do.

thanks for following!

love,

the clarks

our news

so, our big news is that we bought (another) house!

it's defiantly a work in progress.  the house itself is pretty tacky, but it's got "good bones" as my friend andrea says, and the things we don't like about it, we can fix easily.

like, the wallpaper that covers all 14 feet of every wall in the house:

the horrible hand-painted fruit tile in the kitchen:

 pink carpet in the bedroom:

dark green tile and weird apple wallpaper:

horrible pink and white tile in the bathroom:

but the things we like are:

the new tile job that the seller paid for:

the fireplace

and the view!

we're the only ones in the neighborhood, and are surrounded by almost 40 acres

we've only been in here for a few days, but so far here's what we've been up to:

removing the leaves from around the windows

removing the weird apple wallpaper:

our realtor said he worked really hard to find a gift bag to match our wallpaper:

(by the way, if you're in need of a realtor, we HIGHLY recommend Tim Baxter!! he's amazing!)

anyway, there will  be plenty of updates to come with changes as they are made, but for the time being, we are just excited to be in a house, with a huge hot water tank (only a 6 1/2 gallon tank on the airstream - that's about a 6 minute hot shower), two recliners, and room for samson to run around as much as he wants.

thanks for following!

love,

britt

Merry Christmas from the Clarks!

i know we've been absent from the blog world for awhile, but we will be back soon with some exciting news, and until then, here's a video of our precious puppy opening his Christmas present!

 this is just a picture - follow the link for the video!

love, 

the clarks

UPDATE!

LOOK WHAT I DID!

i figured out pintrest (thanks to sara davis!)

AND i found that transparent refrigerator on there

that's all.

-britt