5 Year Anniversary!! The Gift that keeps on gifting... or cleaning...

I meant to post this yesterday when it was our actual 5 year anniversary but time slipped away! Yes, yes, 5 glorious years of marriage with my sweetie! Now, I don't get too personal or sappy ever on this blog so I'll spare you the gooey "oh so in love" crap!

We are not a gift giving couple, never Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, anniversary gifts... just not our thing, if we want something we just buy it ourselves! BUT I'm super excited about a gift we're giving each other (let's face it, mainly a gift for me!)

A NEW WASHER AND DRYER!!

Woot! Woot! Our NASTY washer & dryer came with the purchase of our house and yes, they're funky but they also don't clean great, rip holes in clothes and the dryer takes 2 hours to dry a load! And with my vacation rental business I wash A LOT of linens, towels, and clothes. 

Here's my beauties:

Don't judge! Oh, and the dryer door has to be shut with that little can of dog food because the door is broken.

RIGHT?! So sad and gross... it's TIME!

What year do you think they're from!? 80's? 90's? I can't even tell!

After much research, looks like we're going with: 

LG 3.6 cu ft High Efficiency Front Load Washer (White) ENERGY STAR

And the dryer:

I am so so excited to get these bad boys! I can't believe we've even waited this long! 

From doing a little googling, apparently the gift giving goes like this:

5 Year Anniversary:

Traditional Anniversary Gift: Wood 

modern anniversary gift: silverware

Modern Anniversary Gift: Silverware

And what do you know... before even reading this I hit up an estate sale this morning and scooped up a 75 piece silverware set in flat gold! GOLD!! Place setting for 15 people in GOLD! Did I mention they're gold?! OK, not like solid plated gold but still, they are so fabulous! I'll post a pic of them once I'm home but just had to share in this post because I coincidentally bought our anniversary gift! ha! and for only $25!!! Yippeeee!!! 

Oh and if any of you out there absolutely love your new washer and dryer please send me the brand! Still not 100% on these but with over 200 five star reviews they must be good. Do y'all do the whole gift giving thing? Is it weird we don't!? 

Where have I been!? I'm BACK!

Wow, it's been like over 6 weeks since my last post! That's very UN BywaterBoo!! I apologize. Work, working out, stressing out, enjoying life in NOLA.... it sucked me in and now I'm back and in a writing mood - FINALLY!! I really only like to write when I want to write. Which may be a bad thing but I feel like it seems forced otherwise. SO, think of this post as a culmination of about 8 posts all in one! I hope your'e ready!! 

Without further ado...

Nothin' like a Bywater Searsucker Party...

Awesome party at our neighbors house. 

 Birthday Parties...

Louisiana Derby Day...

My and my "other" husband, Dr. Craig! 

Jazz Fest with my mommy!

WORK. WORK. WORK! 

Client Presentations...

Construction sites... 

Side note - I absolutely LOVE being on construction sites! I'm from a construction family and grew up going on sites with my dad and grandpa so it's a comfortable, nostalgic place for me! Strange maybe?? I just love watching something come to life that was just in a drawing weeks before. 

Check out the view from this house! It's in the BEST location in the French Quarter. 

 Working with cutie pie bossman... the fabulous Mr. Smith.

How fabulous is this wallpaper!? Here we are looking oh so cute in the middle of an install... 

We also hosted a blog tour! Here's Shaun in the middle of all the bloggers in town for the Kitchen & Bath show.

AND on the same day as the tour the almighty MILES REDD was in town doing a book signing and talk about his book at the Ogden Museum! It was SO fun. 

Miles speaking...

I actually captured a photo of the Grande Dame of NOLA design - Gerrie Bremermann (and our awesome work neighbor) introducing Shaun (my boss) to Miles! They were eerily similar, in a very charming way. I know someday soon Shaun will have his own book out! 

New goodies at my house:

Massive new white king headboard!

Super cool hand carved African side table! Obsessed!! Such great shape. 

Aaaand I'll finish this long and random post off with the neighborhood rooster! How gorgeous are the colors on this guy!? I could design a whole room out of him! ;) 

I've missed all 2 of you who read my little blog but (hopefully) I'm back and writing more often!! Hope you're all well :) 

A new gate & fence is in the works...

We have definitely put on hold any large projects for our house until the bath reno gets paid off but there's one more project I would like to tackle while we're still in debt over the bathroom (yes my hubby wants to kill me!) 

But this project is for security and privacy. We live in one of the safest neighborhoods in New Orleans but there have been some robberies in the area. This is just one of those things we deal with living in the city. I feel safe where we are but ever since we bought our house I have wanted to put up a privacy fence and gate for our driveway.

Here's our sad attempt at gaining some privacy over the last year by using bamboo. It's been great temporarily but there is NO lock on this fence. And we have to pile bricks in front the gate to prevent it from swinging open!! Not to mention our little dog can easily escape.

Piled bricks... so sad... so...so... sad!

I was thinking about doing something more contemporary at first - like this:

And I thought the design of this one is so cool:

But in the end a classic traditional gate will probably win. I am in a 150 year old cottage, not a mid century modern beaut! Although yes, I love the contrast of old and new but I think for this project we will go with a fence similar to this:

It's simple yet has beautiful detail. And this fence will be what you see when walking to our side door which we use as our front door. So I want it to look a little dressier than a standard fence. And we have a courtyard to sit in on this side too. 

Here's a little sketch of what I'm thinking:

I will need 2 more posts on either side of the gate but this is the general idea. Technically this is our driveway but I don't want it to feel like it is. We never pull the cars into it so we decided to center one opening that will be about 40" wide. (wider than the regular 36" in case we ever have something huge we need to carry through) 

It will start about 3' or 4' back from the existing fence and we will put beautiful pots with topiary cones on either side to give it a more formal entrance - kinda like these:

Y'all know I'm all about looks but the main reason for doing this is for security. I have been researching outdoor keyless locks. This is the best option I think because all our friends will know the code and can enter by punching in the keypad. Otherwise it will automatically lock at all times. Here are the contenders:

Or this:

 And here are some hinges I'm eyeing:

I also would like to attached the mailbox to the fence. We have a funky little mailbox on the house now but it's yucky. Here's what I like:

The mailbox obviously can wait but I'm trying to get pricing and everything together soon so we can get the baby built! I'm excited and think it will add a ton of curb appeal and safety at the same time.

What do y'all think?? You like the traditional fence or the more modern look?

We Painted Our Floors WHITE! Yeah... we are cray cray...

When we had to renovate our living/dining room we of course ran out of money and decided to just paint the subfloor. Click HERE to see the before!

Here's a shot from 2011 to see the floor color - I was trying to go for a deep charcoal color but apparently I was color blind that day in selecting a color because I wound up with a deep navy!

The navy floor color never bothered me but The Hubs and I always wondered how it would be with white floors... and that day came after our annoying bath reno. The contractors trampled through the living room for weeks with their nasty shoes, etc. and there was no saving the floor.

So what the heck.... let's paint the floor a HIGH GLOSS WHITE shall we?! We scrubbed the floors clean, vacuumed the floors about 40 times and then started the process. It took 3 coats and we used an oil based white. The key here is to use oil. It took about 5 days total but was worth the wait! Here's what it looked like drying:

And here's a sneak of it with the furniture in. I have to take some more pictures of the rest of the room but wanted to share this:

 Don't these floors get insanely dirty you may ask?! Well, yes, they do get dirty. But since they are shiny, glossy oil based all I have to do is take a wet rag and wipe them down. And I kinda like to see just how dirty my floors are. Then I know I need to clean them! 

So, for the time being we love these white floors! That's the fun thing with just having a subfloor - we can do anything we want to it and it doesn't matter because it's not permanent. When the back of the house undergoes its massive reno the whole back will have wide plank heart pine floors but that day will come.... never... ;)